Canada taken to court over Saudi arms deal

A contentious $15 billion weapons deal to send armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia was totally legal and above board, the Canadian government is arguing in federal court this week. 

The deal was signed off personally by Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs Stephane Dion earlier this year, but the move has been challenged in court as going against Canada's own export regulations.

Under Canada's Export and Import Permits Act, weapons exports can only go ahead in cases where there is "no reasonable risk" that such weapons could be used against civilians.

The backers of the lawsuit, which include Universite de Montreal law professor Daniel Turp and some of his students, have argued that Saudi Arabia's poor human rights record should have negated the deal.

"I am delighted that a new stage has been reached in this citizens' initiative - which now involves more than forty jurists, and mostly students from the Universite de Montreal," Turp said in a statement in September.

They also say the deal goes against the Geneva Conventions, an accusation that Ottawa strongly denies.

The minister "acted without jurisdiction or beyond its jurisdiction… knowing that in this country [Saudi Arabia] the fundamental rights of citizens are the subject of serious and repeated violations, and knowing or should have known that there is a risk that the vehicles are used against the civilian population," the suit alleges.

But the government says it was well within its rights to approve the deal.

The minister was perfectly within his rights to consider economic and political factors before rendering his decision

Brokered by a Crown entity, the agreement would see Canadian company General Dynamics Land Systems ship $15 billion worth of light-armoured vehicles - equipped with mounted machine-guns - to Saudi Arabia for use by the country's National Guard.

In the government's statement of facts in the case, Ottawa described the minister's decision as a "perfectly valid exercise" in his discretionary power to approve imports and exports.

Dion considered human rights and international humanitarian law, but those were not the only things involved in making the decision, the government brief states.

"The minister was perfectly within his rights to consider economic and political factors before rendering his decision," it states.

Canada first exported armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia in the early 1990s. Between 1993 and July 2015, Canada sold more than 2,900 LAVs to the Gulf kingdom worth almost $2.5 billion.

"There has been no incident to have us believe that these vehicles have been used to commit human rights violations," reads the government's statement.

But videos posted online earlier this year appeared to show Canadian-made vehicles on the border with Yemen, where Saudi Arabia is leading a coalition in a war against the country's Houthi rebels.

Human rights groups have accused the Saudi-led coalition of deliberately bombing civilians in Yemen, and targeting civilian locations such as hospitals, clinics, markets and schools.

Amnesty International has urged the international community to stop supplying all parties to the conflict in Yemen with "weapons, munitions, military equipment or technology that could be used in the conflict until they end such serious violations".

Saudi Arabia 'does not constitute a threat, but rather a key military ally'

Despite accusations that Saudi Arabia has committed war crimes in Yemen, the Canadian government explicitly states that Saudi Arabia is a "key partner" for Canada in the region.

Ottawa goes even further in its statement of facts, saying that Saudi Arabia "does not constitute a threat, but rather a key military ally supporting the international community’s efforts to combat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as well as instability in Yemen".

The deal with Saudi Arabia catapulted Canada to the second spot on the list of the world's largest arms exporters to the Middle East, behind only the United States and ahead of both France and the United Kingdom.

Saudi Arabia's weapons spending, meanwhile, jumped by 50 percent to $9.3 billion in 2015, according to consulting firm, IHS Inc.

Jillian Kestler D'Amours is a journalist based in Canada. Follow her on Twitter: @jkdamours