{"id":46095,"date":"2019-05-13T13:46:28","date_gmt":"2019-05-13T18:46:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46095"},"modified":"2019-05-13T13:46:34","modified_gmt":"2019-05-13T18:46:34","slug":"canadas-minister-of-defence-is-an-arms-pusher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46095","title":{"rendered":"Canada\u2019s Minister of Defence is an Arms Pusher"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2019\/05\/13\/canadas-minister-of-defence-is-an-arms-pusher\/\">Canada\u2019s Minister of Defence is an Arms Pusher<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Would it surprise you to learn that Canada\u2019s minister of defence is an arms pusher?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last Friday members of&nbsp;Mouvement Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois pour la Paix&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/watch\/?v=1269223556565643\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">interrupted<\/a>&nbsp;a $135-a-plate luncheon to&nbsp;confront defence minister&nbsp;Harjit Sajjan. At an event sponsored by SNC Lavalin, Bombardier, Rio Tinto, etc.,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/watch\/?v=1269223556565643\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">we called<\/a>&nbsp;for cutting military spending, for Canada to withdraw from NATO and an end to weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While Sajjan\u2019s responsibility for NATO and military spending are straightforward, his role in fueling the Saudi led war in Yemen is less obvious. But, the Department of National Defence (DND) plays a substantial role in&nbsp;Canadian&nbsp;arms exports to Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As he did the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.canada.ca\/en\/department-national-defence\/news\/2018\/05\/speaking-notes-for-the-honourable-harjit-s-sajjan-minister-of-national-defence---cansec-breakfast-keynote.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">last three years<\/a>, Sajjan is set to speak at the&nbsp;CANSEC arms bazar in Ottawa&nbsp;later this month. For more than two decades the&nbsp;annual Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI)&nbsp;conference has brought together representatives of arms companies, DND, Canadian Forces (CF), various other arms of the federal governmentand dozens of foreign governments. In 2018&nbsp;more than&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.defenceandsecurity.ca\/CANSEC\/cansec\/Attend\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">11,000 people<\/a>&nbsp;attended the&nbsp;two-day conference, including&nbsp;16 MPs and senators and many generals and admirals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The corporation supplying Saudi Arabia with more than\u00a0$10 billion in\u00a0<em>Light Armoured Vehicles<\/em>produces the same LAVs for the CF. In a 2012 Canadian Military History article Frank Maas writes, \u201c<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/scholars.wlu.ca\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https:\/\/www.google.com\/&amp;httpsredir=1&amp;article=1554&amp;context=cmh\" target=\"_blank\">the CF<\/a>\u00a0has continued to purchase LAVs because they have been successful in the field, and they support a domestic producer, General Dynamics Land Systems Canada (GDLS-C), that cooperates closely with the military.\u201d GDLS\u2019\u00a0London, Ontario, operations exist largely because of interventionist military industrial policy. A 2013 Federal government report on \u201c<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca\/app-acq\/documents\/eam-lmp-eng.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Leveraging Defence<\/a>\u00a0Procurement Through Key Industrial Capabilities\u201d lists\u00a0GDLS\u00a0as one of three \u201cCanadian Defence Industry Success Stories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canada\u2019s Minister of Defence is an Arms Pusher Would it surprise you to learn that Canada\u2019s minister of defence is an arms pusher? Last Friday members of&nbsp;Mouvement Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois pour la Paix&nbsp;interrupted&nbsp;a $135-a-plate luncheon to&nbsp;confront defence minister&nbsp;Harjit Sajjan. At an event sponsored by SNC Lavalin, Bombardier, Rio Tinto, etc.,&nbsp;we called&nbsp;for cutting military spending, for Canada to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[103,5493,25857,25858,862,901,7937],"class_list":["post-46095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-canada","tag-counterpunch","tag-mouvement-quebecois-pour-la-paix","tag-snc-lavalin","tag-war","tag-yemen","tag-yves-engler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46095"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46096,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46095\/revisions\/46096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}