Photo: Protests at the CANSEC arms at the EY Centre in Ottawa have drawn attention to Lockheed Martin, a sponsor of CANSEC 2025.

The Lockheed Martin “2025 Annual Meeting of Stockholders” is a virtual gathering happening on May 9, less than three weeks before the U.S. based transnational exhibits at the CANSEC arms show in Ottawa, May 28-29.

The Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth, the School Sisters of Notre Dame and the Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica have made a “stockholder proposal” (on page 82) to Lockheed Martin that resolves that “shareholders request the Board of Directors to annually conduct an evaluation and issue a public report, at reasonable cost and omitting proprietary information, describing the alignment of its political activities (including direct and indirect lobbying and political and electioneering expenditures) with it Human Rights Policy.”

The “whereas” section of the proposal notes: “The UN has criticized the ‘symbiotic relationship’ between governments and defense contractors, ‘which can cause States to approve arms exports despite genuine human rights risks that should prevent them’.”

It further highlights: “F-35s have been used repeatedly by Israeli forces to target Palestinian civilians in Gaza and are connected to apparent war crimes. Despite this, in June 2024, Israel sign a $3 billion deal with Lockheed to sell 25 F-35s to Israel.”

Lockheed Martin has responded (on pages 83-84 of this circular): “The Board of Directors Recommends a vote AGAINST Proposal 5 because Lockheed Martin’s lobbying practices already align with our Human Rights Policy, and our stockholders overwhelmingly rejected the same proposal last year with no indication of change in their views. Thus, Proposal 5 is redundant and unnecessary.”

The response from Lockheed Martin continues: “Proposal 5 also asserts that our work to sell F-35s to international customers causes us to be complicit in war crimes, suggesting we should not sell F-35s to certain allies of the U.S. Government despite the government’s review, approval and facilitation of our sales of the planes to those allies. Proposal 5’s assertions misstate the F-35 program’s role in strengthening global alliances and partnerships through connected deterrence capabilities, thus strengthening human rights and the ability to defend human rights. Ultimately, our work is closely aligned with our customers and is subject to rigorous government oversight to ensure that our business complies with legal requirements and furthers the interest of the U.S. Government and its allies to support human rights including by helping to deter conflict around the world.”

The Lockheed Martin Board of Directors response concludes: “We received a similar proposal from the same proponents in 2024, and 87% of our stockholders rejected that proposal at the 2024 Annual Meeting.”

Weapons sales and human rights defenders

Peace Brigades International-Canada focuses on the protection and security needs of human rights defenders.

We uphold and affirm the statement by Amnesty International that: “Legal concepts of ‘corporate complicity’ in and the ‘aiding and abetting’ of international crimes continue to evolve and could in the future apply to arms companies that continue supplying weapons in the knowledge that they may be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international human rights or humanitarian law.”

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.

In its Global Analysis 2023/24 released in May 2024, Dublin-based Front Line Defenders stated: “Those defending the right to health and the right to life as doctors, nurses, or ambulance workers, those exposing and documenting war crimes as journalists, and those providing humanitarian support as volunteers or employees of aid agencies were all specifically targeted by Israeli bombs or guns.”

In a joint statement calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, Washington, DC-based Global Witness, that reports annually on killings of land and environmental defenders, has also supported the demand for halting the transfer of weapons, parts, and ammunition that may be used to commit violations of international humanitarian law.

We continue to follow this and take note of this “Shut Down CANSEC” mobilization.

Google Maps Image of Westminster Quaker Meeting House.

CNN reports: “British police raided a Quaker meeting house in London on Thursday [March 27] and arrested six women attending a meeting on climate change and the war in Gaza, according to a statement from Quakers UK.”

That CNN news report adds: “Quakers, a nickname for members of the Religious Society of Friends, follow a religious tradition that originally grew from Protestant Christianity in the 17th century. Quakers have a long history of supporting protest movements and non-violence is one of their core beliefs.”

Quakers in Britain

The day following the raid, Friday March 28, Quakers in Britain stated: “Just before 7.15pm more than 20 uniformed police, some equipped with tasers, forced their way into Westminster Meeting House.”

Their statement further noted: “Quakers in Britain strongly condemned the violation of their place of worship which they say is a direct result of stricter protest laws removing virtually all routes to challenge the status quo.”

Youth Demand

Press TV reports: “On Thursday, 30 Met police officers stormed into the Youth Demand Welcome Talk at the Quaker Meeting House in Westminster and arrested six young women, including one attending their first ever welcome talk and a journalist.”

A Youth Demand spokesperson said the [“Welcome Talk”] meeting was “an opportunity to share plans for non-violent civil resistance actions” due to take place in April, and that one of those arrested was a journalist.

One of those arrested was student Ella Grace-Taylor who said: “By arming Israel and refusing to call what is happening a genocide, they are perpetrating mass slaughter. Hundreds of children were killed in Palestine in the last week. We won’t stop saying it.”

Video statement on the arrests by Youth Demand.

The Youth Demand website is here, their Instagram account is here.

The Quakers

The Quaker statement following the arrests highlights: “Quakers support the right to nonviolent public protest, acting themselves from a deep moral imperative to stand up against injustice and for our planet. Many have taken nonviolent direct action over the centuries from the abolition of slavery to women’s suffrage and prison reform.”

In that statement, Paul Parker, recording clerk for Quakers in Britain, said: “This forceful removal of young people holding a protest group meeting clearly shows what happens when a society criminalises protest.”

The Westminster Quaker Meeting House website notes: “Quaker Meetings for Worship have been held in Westminster weekly since 1655. Former Meeting Houses were in Pall Mall, the Strand and near to Westminster Abbey. The current Meeting House was damaged by wartime bombs, and re-built in the 1950s.”

PBI and Quakers

Peace Brigades International (PBI) was co-founded by Murray Thomson of the Ottawa Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Three other co-founders were Friends: Charlie Walker of Philadelphia, Dan Clark from San Francisco, and Lee Stern of the New York area. That founding meeting took place on Grindstone Island where the Canadian Friends Service Committee had previously operated a Peace Education Centre.

JoLeigh Commandant, a Toronto Quaker, became the first staff person for PBI’s Central American program. Alaine Hawkins, a Toronto Quaker, was the coordinator of the Central America Project in from 1986 to 1991. In 1996, Toronto Quaker Alan Dixon was the coordinator of the PBI North American Project. Previously, in 1990 he was part of PBI’s Emergency Response Network and in 1992 he took a training to be a field volunteer and was part of the PBI team in El Salvador for six months. Karen Ridd, an attender at the Winnipeg Monthly Meeting, was a PBI field volunteer in El Salvador in 1989, and is now a staff person with the Canadian Friends Service Committee.

The raid on the Westminster Quaker Meeting House in London is a developing story and we continue to follow this.

Photo: “Youth Demand activists protest against the Gaza genocide outside Keir Starmer’s house in London, April 2024.”

Further reading: Peace Brigades International remembers the life and activism of (American Quaker peace activist) David Hartsough (March 27, 2025).

Photo: The statement was announced on Wednesday March 26 on the steps of the Spanish Parliament in Madrid as Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced his intention to accelerate the country’s military spending.

Peace Brigade International-Spanish State, along with nearly 850 organizations and 16,000 individuals, has signed this letter that opposes the European Commission plan to “ReArm Europe” by spending €800 billion over the next four years.

Signatories of the letter also include Greenpeace Spain, Mundubat, ATTAC Spain, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom-Spain, and the Observatory of Peace and Human Rights-University of Tolima.

The letter pointedly asks: “Would it not be necessary to invest in greater political and diplomatic efforts that, in the face of threats of aggression, seek paths of dialogue that have not yet been explored?”

It then asserts: “The rearmament of Europe will not bring peace, it will not contribute to détente, but it will bring us even closer to war. Militaristic contexts are also often accompanied by setbacks in rights, freedoms and social policies, causing fear and social alarm, an ideal scenario for normalising mechanisms of repression and authoritarianism, as we are already beginning to see.”

It also provides this critique: “This Europe which is silent or, worse, supports Israel in its genocide in Gaza and the West Bank and even persecutes those who denounce it, needs to clearly redefine what are those common values whose defense is put forward as a justification for rearmament.”

The letter concludes: “We do not resign ourselves to war, because we do not want the peace of the cemeteries, because history shows us that the only realistic way to achieve peace is not military, but political.”

The full letter signed by our colleagues at PBI-Spanish State can be read at Manifiesto: ‘No nos resignamos al rearme y a la guerra en Europa’.

Military spending set to increase across Europe and in Canada

Along with Spain, plans to dramatically increase military spending are now being seen in multiple countries, including Germany, Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, Switzerland, The Netherlands, and Norway.

On January 24 of this year, CBC News reported: “Defence Minister Bill Blair says it’s ‘absolutely achievable’ for Canada to meet NATO’s military investment benchmark of two per cent of gross domestic product within two years.” The Fraser Institute further explains: “To reach 2.0 per cent of GDP in 2027/28, the government would need to spend $68.8 billion on defence during that fiscal year. Assuming the initial jump remains the same, this implies the government would need to increase annual defence spending by $16.5 billion from 2025/26 to 2027/28—$15.3 billion more than currently planned.”

On February 25, BBC reported: “[British prime minister] Keir Starmer has set out plans to increase defence spending to 2.5% of national income by 2027. The prime minister said he would cut the foreign aid budget to fund the military boost – a move welcomed by the US administration but labelled a ‘betrayal’ by development charities.”

In response, PBI-UK stated: “We are stunned and disappointed by the UK Government’s decision to slash aid in order to fund defence spending. Following in the wake of the USAID freeze, this decision will leave even more civil society organisations and human rights defenders exposed at a time of escalating global crises.”

A report posted this week on the website of Wilton Park, “an Executive Agency of the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office”, additionally warns: “As ongoing conflicts remain unresolved and major military powers continue to prepare for the possibility of a wider war, there is simultaneously more at stake for human rights and an increasingly difficult environment in which to defend them. Women HRDs [human rights defenders] face particularly severe risks in this context.”

Webinar, April 8

PBI-Canada is partnering with World Beyond War this coming Tuesday April 8 at 7 pm ET for a webinar that will highlight that the militarization of Indigenous territories, borders and foreign policy has already put the lives of land defenders, migrants and communities around the world at risk. A panel of authors and activists will share critical perspectives on why more militarism is not the answer. Registration link coming soon!

Shut Down CANSEC, May 28

PBI-Canada will also be observing the Shut Down CANSEC mobilization being planned on Wednesday May 28 starting at 7 am ET.

The protest will challenge the CANSEC arms show that brings together some of the world’s largest weapons companies and more than 50 international delegations including from countries where state security forces repress, threaten and kill human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists and community members.

#MakingSpaceForPeace

Photo: David Hartsough.

On March 22, the family of David Hartsough announced his passing at the age of 84 after four years of fighting cancer.

The book Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist notes: “David Hartsough knows how to get in the way! He has used his body to block Navy ships headed for Vietnam and trains loaded with munitions on their way to El Salvador and Nicaragua. He has marched with mothers confronting a violent regime in Guatemala and stood with refugees threatened by death squads in the Philippines.”

Photo: “The first demonstration David Hartsough ever organized was at the Nike missile site near his home in Pennsylvania. Although he was only 14 at the time, the FBI placed him under surveillance for organizing the nonviolent protest.”

Photo: A sit-in challenges segregation at People’s Drug Store in Arlington, Virginia, in June 1960.

A review of Hartsough’s book “Waging Peace” highlights: “We see how his service with Peace Brigades International in El Salvador and Guatemala prepared him for a risky experiment to defend refugees from death squads in the Philippines. In turn this action laid the foundations for Nonviolent Peaceforce, a modern day embodiment of Gandhi’s vision of the Shanti Sena, a standing nonviolent army.”

In 2002, Hartsough cofounded Nonviolent Peaceforce.

In July 2001, Ottawa peace activist Carl Stieren wrote: “This new proposal [for Nonviolent Peaceforce] is based on the techniques and experience of the unarmed bodyguards Peace Brigades International in Guatemala and Colombia, and the witness of groups such as Christian Peacemaker Teams in the West Bank.”

Stieren adds that the proposal was backed by PBI co-founders Hans Sinn and Murray Thomson, as well as by Lyn Adam of PBI-Canada and Tim Wallis who had been the London-based Executive Director of PBI.

Hartsough on PBI in Guatemala

Video: Hartsough reflects on PBI in Guatemala.

After the founding of Nonviolent Peaceforce, Hartsough reflected on his experience of PBI in Guatemala:

“In Guatemala in the early 80s it was genocidal violence against especially the Indigenous population but against everybody who wasn’t 100 percent behind the government… Civil society had ceased to exist, either people were killed or had been disappeared, imprisoned or fled the country.

In that situation, in early 1985, a group called the Mutual Support Group, the GAM, came together. They had all lost family members; they had been disappeared. They came, mostly Indigenous peoples, came to Guatemala City with pictures of their loved ones … walked down one of the main streets … and were chanting ‘where are they?’.

The president of Guatemala got on national television and said these people were all subversives … a licence to the military to open fire. I was with Peace Brigades International, just walking along the street with a little camera, a notepad and some change so we could try to make a phone call. And I had never been so afraid in my life…

Photo of protest from around that time (from the book “Unarmed Bodyguards”).

[After] late-February/ early-March of 85 … leaders [from the GAM] came to Peace Brigades International [and asked] ‘can you accompany us?’. And Peace Brigades International only had three or four people there at the time gulped and said, ‘we will try’.

And so, for two or three years they accompanied them day and night…

Gradually their courage gave courage to others in that society… And people who had fled the country, including Rigoberta Menchu, decided ‘well, you know if I’m accompanied maybe it’s safe enough to come back…’

Those women say we wouldn’t be alive if it hadn’t been for Peace Brigades International. And the other organization people say we wouldn’t have had the courage to be active again if hadn’t been for these women.

So, that’s a small example of where a really small number of courageous, nonviolent internationals, going not to direct what’s going on or to come up with the answers, but to be there as nonviolent bodyguards, to help make it safer for the local courageous people to do their work…”

Hartsough at PBI conference on a “ready response brigade” and “local units”

PBI co-founder Daniel N. Clark has written that Hartsough was also at a PBI conference two years earlier in July 1983 that led to our first work in Nicaragua:

“PBI’s Ready Response Brigade was envisioned as a crisis response unit composed of contingents from various regions able on short notice to place their members in Central America for brief periods… Local units would also be available for peacekeeping in local or regional conflicts in their home areas.

On July 30, we had held a conference … with the specific goal of establishing local units in the San Francisco area. …The conference was attended by about 70 people, and resulted in the formation of local PBI groups in San Francisco, Salinas, and Santa Cruz…

Conference participants included David Hartsough of AFSC [the American Friends Service Committee]… At the close of the conference, Jack [Schultz] was authorized to organize a Santa Cruz contingent of the Ready Response Brigade… Because preparation of the Santa Cruz Brigade was already underway when we received [a request from the Nicaraguan government for an international presence], and appeared to have excellent local support resources, we decided to invite them to respond to the Nicaraguan appeal by organizing a ten-person brigade to be present in Jalapa the last two weeks of September [1983].”

Other reflections

For more reflections on the life and vision of Hartsough, please see Nonviolent Peaceforce and World Beyond War.

To learn more about his book, Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist, please click here.

Photo: Hartsough blocking a weapons truck at Concord Naval Weapons Station, 1988.

Photo: On February 24, we held our first webinar of the year focused on the situation of human rights defenders in the Colombian port city of Buenaventura.

This year PBI-Canada has a schedule of confirmed and planned webinars that we hope you will find of interest, that will provide important context, and that will ultimately assist the protection needs of human rights defenders.

Immediately on the horizon:

Tuesday April 8: The militarization of Indigenous territories, borders and foreign policy has already put the lives of land defenders, migrants and communities around the world at risk. Join this webinar to hear a panel of authors and activists share critical perspectives on why more militarism is not the answer.

Sunday May 4: As 50+ international delegations and 280+ exhibitors prepare for the CANSEC arms show in Ottawa in late-May, we gather frontline defenders and allies to provide testimony on how “military goods” are used to repress human rights defenders in Honduras, Indonesia, Palestine and the Philippines.

We will be sharing registration links for these two webinars soon.

Our plans for the coming months

June: Peace Brigades International needs volunteers to accompany frontline defenders in Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico. This webinar will feature past volunteers and an accompanied defender to highlight this work and to encourage applications to volunteer with PBI teams in Latin America.

June: We will hear from frontline environmental defenders in the Amazonian region of Putumayo in Colombia whose lives are at-risk due to illegal armed actors/paramilitary groups and for their opposition to the environmental destruction that comes with the extraction of minerals and oil by transnational companies.

June or September: The United Nations Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations will be presenting a thematic report to the Human Rights Council on the use of artificial intelligence and the UN Guiding Principles. We will look at the new threats posed to defenders by AI.

September: This coming September 6 marks the 30^th anniversary of the death of Dudley George, an Indigenous land defender killed by an Ontario Provincial Police sniper during a re-occupation of Ipperwash provincial park. PBI visited the area four times in 1995/96. We look back at that time and assess the safety of defenders today.

Tuesday November 18: During the United Nations COP30 climate summit in Brazil, we will bring together a UN Special Rapporteur and environmental defenders to talk about the risks and protection needs of those on the frontlines challenging the extractive industries that are accelerating the climate crisis.

Our commitment

Our commitment is to amplify the voices of human rights defenders, provide context to understand their struggles, and to document in short articles the physical accompaniments provided by PBI teams around the world.

Those articles, uploaded on an almost daily basis, can be read here. Apart from subscribing to our e-newsletter here, you can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, X and now Bluesky.

If you would like to help support this work, you can make an online donation through the CanadaHelps.org platform here.

The work of Peace Brigades International-Canada is carried out by one staff-person and the exceptional contributions of eleven volunteer Board members.

PBI-Canada coordinator Brent Patterson.

Photo: Narayan Desai spinning thread, a symbol of the non-cooperation movement, during a public meeting in February 1992. Photo by Yann Forget.

Ten years ago this month, the Mumbai, India-based newspaper The Economic Times reported: “Noted Gandhian and former Chancellor of Gujarat Vidyapith [university], Narayan Desai, died at a private hospital in [in the city of] Surat.”

Image by mkgandhi.org.

At Peace Brigades International (PBI), we remember that Narayan was one of the five original signatories of a letter dated January 12, 1981, inviting people “to attend a conference to revive the idea of an international organization committed to unarmed third party intervention in conflict situations.”

That conference took place eight months later, starting on August 31, 1981, at the Quaker Peace Education Centre on Grindstone Island, about 110 kilometres south-west of Ottawa. It was the meeting that founded PBI.

His formative early years

Narayan Desai was born on December 24, 1924.

The Journal of South Asian Studies notes: “He spent the first decade of his life at Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram under the watchful eyes of his father and the Mahatma instead of receiving a formal school education. The next decade was spent at Gandhi’s ashrams at Wardha and then nearby Sevagram.”

His father died on August 15,1942 when Narayan was 17 years old. He was being detained at that time in the Aga Khan Palace with Gandhi for their role in the “Quit India Movement” demanding an end to British rule in India, launched just days before at the Bombay session of the All-India Congress Committee.

Narayan’s role in naming Peace Brigades International

PBI co-founder Daniel N. Clark has written about the naming process that appears to have taken place on September 2, 1981. Clark notes: “During a coffee break, ‘Peace Brigades International’ was first voiced by Narayan, seized on by Charlie [Walker], and on reconvening accepted by everyone.”

Given Narayan’s involvement with the “Shanti Sena” movement, we can presume that this influenced his suggestion. The Sanskrit or Hindi words “Shanti Sena” can be translated as “Peace Army” or “Peace Brigade”. Narayan had also been a delegate at a conference in Lebanon in 1961/62 where the World Peace Brigade was founded.

“Shanti Sena”

The Global Nonviolent Action Database has explained: “After India’s independence [from the British Empire was won in August 1947] Gandhi had the idea of creating Shanti Sena … an army of nonviolent soldiers that could keep the peace [between Hindus and Muslims]. Gandhi planned a conference [that was to take place on February 8] 1948 at his Sevagram Ashram to discuss the organization of the Shanti Sena, but he was assassinated [on January 30, 1948, just days] before talks began.”

The Sevagram Ashram where Gandhi’s “peace brigade” conference was to take place is one of the ashrams where Narayan lived at that time.

The idea of a Shanti Sena was later revived in 1957. The Global Nonviolent Action Database further notes: “Under the leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan and Narayan Desai, the Shanti Sena became a group of about 6,000 Shanti Sainiks (peace soldiers) in the mid-1960s at the height of its membership.”

Narayan has noted that when Jayaprakash was the president of “Shanti Sena”, Narayan was the secretary of the organization. Jayaprakash was a Gandhian-Marxist revolutionary who was sentenced, at the age of 29, to a year’s imprisonment for his participation in 1932 in the civil disobedience movement against British rule.

The Institute for Total Revolution

The concept of “total revolution” has been attributed to Jayaprakash.

The War Resisters League notes that at some point after October 1979, less than two years before the founding of PBI in September 1981, Narayan established the Institute for Total Revolution (“Sampoorna Kranti Vidyalaya”).

A Desh Gujarat news article explained at the time of Narayan’s passing that: “The Institute imparts training in non-violence and Gandhian way of life.”

The Journal of Resistance Studies also provides this commentary about Narayan and the concept of “Total Revolution”: “This overt mixture of Marxist and Gandhian philosophies began to forge a new, people’s power approach to liberation theory (Girdner, 2013), and – as a core organizer in both the Boodhan land gift movement of the 1950s and a leader of the Shanti Sena Peace Army of the early 1960s – Narayan Desai became closely affiliated with these attempts at implementing revolutionary aspects of the nonviolent campaigns. The work of Shanti Sena, building a highly disciplined peace force to stand up against actual military opposition, was the leading Indian version of an idea being taken up globally at the time.”

Narayan’s call for “south-south dialogue”

The Journal of Resistance Studies has also noted: “Perhaps the most significant project Narayan embarked on as WRI [War Resisters International] Chair was a 1991 tour of eleven Latin America countries, sponsored by Servicio Paz y Justicia (SERPAZ).”

That article continues: “Organized as a bilateral, mutual exchange program, the three months of conversations exploded a number of myths that Desai had been prepared for, including that Latin Americans would not be interested in Gandhi or nonviolence per se… The need for greater South-South work came into even sharper perspective for him, as did the more substantial differences between the movements of the North and South.”

At that time (1991), Narayan commented: “A sort of violence which is not generally perceived in the west is the structural violence of the society. During the past years, many Latin American countries have seen political change from dictatorship to so called democracy – that political change has not satisfied most people and they want deeper change. And they associate that deeper change with Total Revolution…The exploitation, the colonization, the insults, their dignity being attacked is something that they thought was violence much more than the killing of a few people here or there… We in the South have so many things in common and yet know so little about each other…I always begin: ‘My objective is south-to-south dialogue’… and they say ‘That is exactly what we want.’”

Ten years after the passing of Narayan, we continue to be informed by his political life, his fundamental contributions to Peace Brigades International, and his subsequent theoretical thinking on nonviolence and social change.

Photo: Narayan Desai.

Photo: CANSEC last year.

The Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI) organized CANSEC arms show will take place in Ottawa this coming May 28-29.

Through the lens of PBI-Canada’s work to protect the lives of human rights defenders (HRDs) who are threatened with violence and assassination, we provide this analysis that connects CANSEC with potential risks to HRDs.

Public funding and adherence to UN Guiding Principles

1- The Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada has posted that CADSI received $291,400.00 from Global Affairs Canada in 2024 and $208,600.00 from GAC in 2023. This appears to date back to at least to 2010 when they received $142,876.00 from Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (DFAITC).

Companies, including “defence and security” companies, have obligations under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Amnesty International has commented: “This means companies must assess and address human rights risks and abuses arising in all aspects of their business, including how clients such as national armies and police forces use their weaponry and related services.”

The Government of Canada says it has adopted these internationally respected guidelines and that it expects Canadian companies operating abroad to abide by them.

And yet Amnesty International has highlighted: “Major industry players including Airbus, BAE Systems and Raytheon [all of which are CADSI members] are not undertaking adequate human rights due diligence which could prevent their products from being used in potential human rights violations and war crimes.”

Transparency about countries that violate human rights

2- In September 2021, The Guardian reported: “[Along with Saudi Arabia, the] countries formally invited by the Department for International Trade (DIT) to the bi-annual DSEI (Defence and Security Equipment International) arms fair at London’s Excel that are considered to be a human rights concern were Bahrain, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, and Iraq.”

The Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC) has previously posted: “At CANSEC 2014, CCC led eight foreign delegations visiting from Argentina, Bahrain, Chile, Colombia, Kuwait, Mexico, Peru, and Saudi Arabia.”

And the organizers of CANSEC posted in 2015 the delegations included: “Argentina; Bahrain; Chile; Denmark; Equatorial Guinea; Israel; Italy; Kuwait; Mexico; New Zealand; Oman; Peru; United States; United Arab Emirates; United Kingdom.”

CADSI does not currently publicly disclose the list of the “50+ international delegations” that will be at CANSEC 2025. This information would be very helpful to facilitate the type of public debate The Guardian article generated.

The Canadian Commercial Corporation and accountability

3- In June 2017, the Philippines Embassy in Canada posted on Facebook: “The Canadian Commercial Corporation, a Canadian government corporation, invited and hosted the Philippine Delegation [at CANSEC].”

This invitation to the Philippines from the CCC came a year into the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte who has now been arrested on an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant accusing him of crimes against humanity dating back to November 2011.

In May 2018, National Post journalist David Pugliese further reported: “The Canadian Commercial Corporation acknowledges it conducts no follow-up to ensure exported Canadian-built equipment isn’t being used to abuse human rights.”

If the Canadian Commercial Corporation did do that follow-up, they might note that Global Witness and the Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment have documented that “the Philippine military [is] the single biggest perpetrator of lethal attacks [against environmental defenders] across the country.”

Global Witness chart of land and environmental defenders killed.

The Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act

4- 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.

Esprit de Corps has also reported: “The U.S. is the main market for Canadian defence exports, according to CADSI. That is valued at over $4.5 billion annually.”

Last year, Project Ploughshares highlighted: “The Government of Canada does not regulate the majority of Canada’s military transfers to the United States.”

The “Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act”, sponsored by US Representative Johnson, Henry C. “Hank,” Jr. in 2021, proposed: “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.”

The legislation also states: “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.”

Project Ploughshares has recommended that Canada should “begin a full reporting of the transfer of military goods, including parts and components, to the United States.”

Without this transparency, we cannot know if Canadian exports to the U.S. help construct the “security assistance” they send to Honduran security forces that the “Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act” is seeking to suspend.

International laws and the criminalization of protest

5- In January 2024, three Canadian law professors commented: “The International Court of Justice has issued a ground-breaking decision in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, ordering Israel to comply with six provisional measures to safeguard the right of Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from genocidal violence. The court’s order is binding on Israel and formalizes the international legal obligations of other countries that are parties to the UN Genocide Convention.”

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Action Center for Corporate Accountability has documented this list of companies implicated in this violence and that arguably have obligations under the UN Genocide Convention and, as previously mentioned, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Five CANSEC 2025 sponsors – Google, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Cisco and Leonardo – are on the AFSC list.

It is unclear if the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) and the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) have sought a legal opinion following the ICJ ruling with respect to their obligations given the States and companies present at CANSEC.

What is clear, however, is that the OPS and the OPP appear to have focused considerable resources on facilitating the entrance of the representatives of arms companies and international delegations (whatever their human rights records might be) to the CANSEC arms show while criminalizing those who assemble on public spaces outside the EY Centre to protest genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

We continue to follow this.

We further note the Shut Down CANSEC Instagram page.