No More Loopholes
On November 18 the coalition comprising Arms Embargo Now released its second and updated report tracing in detail the “weapons pipeline running from Canadian factories and ports to Israel through the United States”. It documents hundreds of shipments of explosives and aircraft parts – from Canadian factories and through Canadian ports—to the US and on to Israel. Canada is exposed as a vital and massive transit corridor. Via this link you can read the entire comprehensive report and about their accompanying campaign “No More Loopholes”.
The Canadian government claims to have almost entirely paused the export permits required to send weapons to Israel. However, Canada exports annually over a billion dollars worth of arms to the United States with no restrictions on how or where those may be passed to other countries, pre-eminently Israel.
On September 19 MP Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East) introduced for First Reading in the House of Commons her private member’s bill formally known as Bill C-233 “An Act to Amend the Export and Import Permits Act”, otherwise the “No More Loopholes” Bill. Read the entire text here. In brief, it aims aiming to close all gaps in Canada’s arms-export rules that allow weapons parts to pass through the United States and into Israel or other conflict zones without any oversight. If passed, it will end Canadian government hypocrisy with regard to the genocide in Palestine.
We at CFOS understand the Arms Embargo Now call in the context of the document “A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide” released by Kairos Palestine on November 14 in the West Bank at their Conference, attended by over 300 delegates from Palestine and abroad. A successor to the 2009 Kairos Palestine document, among other measures in its 14 pages it appeals to its partner churches internationally “to pressure their governments to isolate Israel, hold it accountable, impose sanctions, boycott it, and to ban the export of arms….”
CFOS supports the Kairos document, the No More Loopholes campaign, and Bill C-233. In this spirit we urge members urgently to contact their MPs, make sure that they are aware of the documents above, and determine how they plan to vote on Bill C-233. Complete details here. This bill will only become law if CFOS and sibling movements mobilize and push our MPs to support it.