The integration of Canadian and US military production puts Canada at risk of complicity in violence against human rights defenders
Photo: Indigenous Lenca defender Berta Cáceres was murdered on March 2, 2016 due to her opposition to the construction of the Agua Zarca dam in Honduras. Her organization, COPINH, is accompanied by Peace Brigades International.
Our question: Would it be possible to have a Canadian-version of the proposed US “Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act” that, if implemented, would suspend “security assistance” to Honduras until trade unionists, journalists, lawyers, Afro-Indigenous activists, Indigenous activists, small-farmer activists, LGBTI activists and others being attacked are no longer at risk of violence from the Honduran military and police?
Canadian and US military production is deeply integrated. That integration, and the lack of transparency around Canadian military exports to the United States, can lead to risks to the lives of human rights defenders and a lack of accountability within Canada for both preventing and addressing human rights violations.
“Deeply embedded in U.S. supply chains”
Andrew Latham, a Minnesota-based Senior Washington Fellow with the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy in Ottawa, recently noted: “Many Canadian defense firms are deeply embedded in U.S. supply chains, manufacturing critical components for American platforms, including fighter jets, naval vessels, and munitions. The Defense Production Sharing Agreement (DPSA), in place since 1956, was specifically designed to ensure a seamless defense production relationship between the two countries.”
Latham cites the example of: “Magellan Aerospace, a key Canadian supplier, provides crucial parts for the F-35 fighter jet program.” In their article about Canadian suppliers of F-35 parts, The Breach has further specified: “Magellan Aerospace, PCC-Dorval, Apex; Kitchener ON, Dorval QC, Moncton N.B. – Machined parts.”
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Action Center for Corporate Accountability has documented: “Lockheed Martin supplies Israel with F-16 and F-35 fighter jets, which Israel has been using extensively to bomb Gaza.”
Photo: Human rights defender Ihab Marwan Kamal Faisal.
On January 16, 2025, Ihab Marwan Kamal Faisal of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and his family were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City. In February 2024, in two separate incidents, two of PCHR’s lawyers, Nour Abu Al-Nour and Dana Yaghi, were also killed along with their families by Israeli airstrikes.
Tariffs applied to the “defence trade”
When US President Donald Trump imposed 25 per cent tariffs on March 4, the Canadian “defence” sector was not excluded.
The Ottawa-based Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI), the “national industry voice of more than 900 Canadian defence and security companies”, commented: “We are profoundly disappointed by the tariffs imposed today by the Trump Administration on Canadian imports, which will impact defence trade. Canadian-made parts, components, and raw materials make their way into everything from the life-support systems used on injured American soldiers to the jets patrolling U.S. airspace. CADSI will continue working closely with Canadian government officials across multiple departments to seek clarity, provide feedback on responses, and track the effects of these tariffs and the Canadian countermeasures on our sector.”
Questions about F-35s and warships
This tariff war has prompted calls for a reconsideration of Canada’s purchase of US manufactured weapons systems.
Esprit de Corps, “Canada’s only independent monthly defence magazine”, has noted: “Canada’s planned purchase of the Lockheed Martin stealth fighter jet, the F-35, could be headed for some turbulence. Questions are being asked around official Ottawa about why Canadian taxpayers should spend $19 billion on a product from a country whose president has threatened to economically destroy Canada and then annex it as the 51st state.”
Ottawa Citizen journalist David Pugliese has also recently reported: “Having an American-controlled command system running Canada’s new warships [Canadian Surface Combatants] poses a serious risk, particularly at a time when the U.S. is openly hostile to this country, warns the former commander of the Royal Canadian Navy.”
A $1-billion question mark
It does not appear, however, that the tariff war has yet prompted a critical re-evaluation of the Defence Production Sharing Agreement (DPSA).
Both the Project Ploughshares peace research institute and the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries have stated that Canadian military exports to the United States are at least $1 billion a year, perhaps more.
Last year, Project Ploughshares highlighted: “The Government of Canada does not regulate the majority of Canada’s military transfers to the United States.” It has further recommended that Canada should “begin a full reporting of the transfer of military goods, including parts and components, to the United States.”
And yet there are troubling questions about how these exports could be implicated in human rights violations.
US “security assistance” linked to civilian harm
Professor Patricia L. Sullivan at the Department of Public Policy, Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense, University of North Carolina, has noted: “Between 2002 and 2019, US$300 billion in US security assistance flowed to foreign governments and at least one million foreign nationals received US military training.”
Professor Sullivan adds in her Sage Journals article: “Does American military aid increase the risk of civilian harm? …Until very recently, there have been few systematic attempts to evaluate the effects of security sector assistance. …The results of this study suggest [there] is strong evidence that ‘lethal’ aid—military equipment, weapons, military training, and combat assistance—increases extrajudicial killings by security forces in states without effective institutions to constrain executive authority.”
US legislation to protect human rights defenders
The “Human Rights Defenders Protection Act of 2024” introduced by US Senator Benjamin L. Cardin notes in its Section 2:
“(12) The United States has neither a coherent strategy to strengthen protections for human rights defenders, nor adequate measures to prevent and respond to cases in which members of foreign security forces, law enforcement, judicial institutions, criminal groups, or private companies contribute to attacks on human rights defenders. The United States also lacks adequate consular resources and authorities to facilitate temporary evacuation of human rights defenders facing immediate lethal danger.
(13) While the United States possesses multiple tools to hold perpetrators of reprisals accountable, including sanctions, export controls, visa restrictions, and diplomatic pressure, the United States deploys such tools unevenly and without clear connections to a broader strategic framework to strengthen protections for human rights defenders.”
The Berta Cáceres Act
Similarly, the “Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act”, sponsored by US Representative Johnson, Henry C. “Hank,” Jr. in 2021, proposes: “To suspend United States security assistance with Honduras until such time as human rights violations by Honduran security forces cease and their perpetrators are brought to justice.”
Section 2 of that legislation further states:
“(1) The Honduran military and police are widely established to be deeply corrupt and commit human rights abuses, including torture, rape, illegal detention, and murder, with impunity.
(21) In this context of corruption and human rights abuses, trade unionists, journalists, lawyers, Afro-Indigenous activists, Indigenous activists, small-farmer activists, LGBTI activists, human rights defenders, environmental defenders, and critics of the government remain at severe risk; and previous human rights abuses against them remain largely unpunished.
(23) United States agencies allocated approximately $39 million that Congress appropriated through the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017, to the Honduran police and military for fiscal year 2017.”
Next steps in Canada to protect the lives of defenders
What do we do given this link between Canadian “military goods” exported to the United States and the human rights violations linked to US “security assistance”?
Currently, there is also no coherent strategy within “Voices at Risk: Canada’s Guidelines on Supporting Human Rights Defenders”, specific mention in the Export and Import Permits Act (EIPA) or evident use of the Defense Production Sharing Agreement (DPSA) that specifically provides for the protection of human rights defenders from weapons and military components produced in Canada that are either directly or indirectly exported to countries where the rights of human rights defenders are violated.
While there is limited information publicly available about the direct export of Canadian military goods, and some information that has been gained through diligent independent research efforts about specific military exports to the United States, most information about Canadian military exports to the US are not disclosed to the public.
The full disclosure of the export of Canadian “military goods” to the United States would at least enable a measure of transparency, the possibility of some accountability for human rights violations committed using those goods, and perhaps provide for other measures to protect the lives of at-risk human rights defenders.
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