moved that Bill C-233, An Act to amend the Export and Import Permits Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, for seconding this important bill.
It is with both a heavy heart and a deep sense of purpose that I rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-233, an act to amend the Export and Import Permits Act, or what many civil society organizations have been calling the no more loopholes act, legislation that seeks to finally bring Canada's arms export regime into full compliance with the Arms Trade Treaty.
The bill is about something far larger than policy or procedure. It is about whether we, as a nation, will choose to be builders of peace or merchants of war. It is about whether Canadian-made weapons, the products of our factories, our labour and our infrastructure, will continue to fuel the killing of innocent civilians abroad.
We cannot claim to be one thing on the world stage, a supporter of human rights, while turning a wilfully blind eye to what we are doing by maintaining this giant loophole. Canadians expect and deserve better.
Let me emphasize first and foremost that the legislation is not partisan. It should never be partisan. Every member of the House, regardless of political stripe, must ask themselves whether we want Canadian-made arms to be used to commit war crimes. Do we want our export laws to continue to contain loopholes so large that bombs and munitions slip through them? Do we want Canada's name to be associated with genocide and human suffering? The bill is our opportunity to say no, clearly, unequivocally and finally.
Canada acceded to the Arms Trade Treaty in 2019. The government did so with great fanfare, promising to uphold the highest standards of transparency, accountability and peace. Bill C-47 passed to amend the Export and Import Permits Act, establishing a new framework for arms brokering and export controls.
At the time, Canadians were told that our government was committed to ensuring that our weapons would never contribute to human rights abuses, that we were joining the world in saying never again to atrocities fuelled by the global arms trade. What we were not told, and what Canadians are now only beginning to understand, is that the 2019 amendments left open a gaping loophole, a loophole that has since become a giant and open back door for weapons, components and explosives to flow freely from Canada to the United States and then onward to some of the most brutal conflicts in the world.
The U.S. loophole is indeed the heart of the problem. Canada never adopted article 4, which required Canada to treat weapons, parts and components with the same scrutiny as full weapons systems. Canada also left out article 6, which clearly prohibits arms transfers where there is a serious risk that they will be used in genocide or war crimes. By omitting these articles, it means that, under section 7 of the Export and Import Permits Act, the lion's share of exports to the United States are exempt from the permit reporting and human rights risk assessment requirements that apply to every other country.
That means that Canadian-made weapons, explosives and parts can cross into the United States completely unmonitored, with no transparency and no public record. Once they arrive in the U.S., those components are often integrated into larger weapons systems, F-35 fighter jets, Apache helicopters and heavy munitions, and then exported to countries such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and Sudan, where they have been used to devastate civilian populations.
In fact, in 2009, under the Harper administration, General Dynamics Land Systems, a Canadian company, provided 724 light armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia. These light armoured vehicles were seen being used in Saudi Arabia's operations in Yemen for years, where hundreds of thousands of Yemenis were killed.
In 2014, under another contract, Canada supplied a newer make of armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia. In 2015, that continued under the Trudeau administration. This is not speculation; this is not hyperbole. This is fact, documented in commercial export data, defence contracts and investigative journalism.
A recent report by Arms Embargo Now uncovered that hundreds of shipments of Canadian military goods are directly contributing to atrocities abroad. Between April 2004 and August 2025 alone, 34 shipments of Canadian-made aircraft components went to Lockheed Martin in the United States. Later, those same components were transferred to the Israeli Ministry of Defense and Israeli weapons manufacturers. Another 360 shipments of Canadian aircraft parts went to the F-35 assembly facility in Fort Worth, Texas. These are the same F-35s that have been dropping bombs on Gaza. Meanwhile, 150 shipments of explosives from Quebec went to U.S. ammunition plants, producing 2,000 pounds of bombs and artillery shells exported to Israel.
This is not indirect complicity. This is active participation in a deadly supply chain. Let us be clear about what that means. When Canadian-made components end up in weapons that kill civilians in Gaza, when our explosives are part of the bombs that are dropped on hospitals and apartment buildings, Canadians bear responsibility. When weapons bearing the logo of a Canadian arms manufacturer have been documented in the hands of paramilitary groups in Sudan, groups accused of massacring civilians and committing ethnic cleansing, Canada is complicit.
The United Nations and human rights observers have warned repeatedly that the flow of arms, including those traced back to Canada, has fuelled one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. We cannot continue to hide behind bureaucratic language or the convenient fiction that what leaves Canada for the United States stays in the U.S. It does not, and we all know it.
The government has tried to reassure Canadians. The former foreign affairs minister said that no Canadian “arms or parts of arms” were sent to Gaza. Her successor, the current foreign affairs minister, said that Canada would “not allow Canadian-made weapons to fuel this conflict in any way”. Those words ring hollow when confronted with the evidence.
The government has done nothing to close the U.S. loophole, nothing to stop the use of Canadian-made weapons or components in the bombardment of Gaza, nothing to ensure compliance with the Arms Trade Treaty. By exempting U.S.-bound exports from oversight, Canada is violating not just the spirit but the letter of the Arms Trade Treaty. Article 5 of the treaty requires all state parties to regulate arms transfers in a consistent, objective and non-discriminatory manner. Article 6 prohibits transfers that would contribute to genocide, crimes against humanity or serious violations of the Geneva Conventions. Article 7 requires each state to assess the risk of exported weapons being used to commit such acts.
When the government issued general export permit no. 47 in 2019, allowing the full export of full-system conventional arms to the U.S. without permits or risk assessments, it undermined the very treaty we acceded to. That was why we need to pass Bill C-233, to end such blanket exemptions, so that Canada can finally live up to the promises we made to the world and to ourselves.
Bill C-233, the “no more loopholes act”, will close the U.S. export loophole requiring permits and human rights assessments for all military goods, regardless of destination; end the issuance of general export of brokering permits that bypass case-by-case review; ensure full transparency and public reporting of all military exports, including those to the U.S.; and reinforce Canada's compliance with the Arms Trade Treaty and restore integrity to our export regime.
A few weeks ago, I received a leaked document of the Liberals' talking points to counter my private member's bill. The Liberals say that Bill C-233 is misguided. They say this bill would decimate Canada's defence industry, that it would create unnecessary delays and potentially block Canada-made materials and equipment from getting to our allies in Europe like Ukraine, and that it would weaken Canada's role in NATO. Let me address each one of these points head-on.
First, living up to Canada's commitments to the Arms Trade Treaty is not misguided. It demonstrates the integrity and trustworthiness of a nation.
Second, the bill would not decimate the defence industry. It would simply require that all exports, including those going to the United States, meet the same human rights and risk assessment standards that we already apply to every other destination. If a country is already compliant with the Arms Trade Treaty, it has nothing to worry about. Canada's defence system will not be put in jeopardy, as Canada is reliant on imports of military goods going to Canada, not exports.
Third, this bill would not disrupt NATO or delay aid to Ukraine. Not only is there no evidence that it would delay or potentially block Canada's military aid to Ukraine, but the vast majority of the aid to Ukraine is sent either directly to Ukraine or to European allies. This bill seeks to standardize the regulatory process for arms exports going to the U.S. In addition, transfers of military aid, including for Ukraine, are handled by the Department of National Defence, not the export permitting process overseen by Global Affairs.
Fourth, harmonizing export controls with our European allies strengthens, not weakens, NATO. Of the 32 NATO members, 30 are state parties to the Arms Trade Treaty. The two states that are signatories to the Arms Trade Treaty but have not acceded to the treaty, are Turkey and the U.S. Passing Bill C-233 would, in fact, bring Canada into alignment with the vast majority of our allies, not out of step with them.
Some have bizarrely claimed that more transparency would compromise our sovereignty. Transparency is not a threat to sovereignty; it is its foundation. A sovereign nation should be able to stand before the world and say with confidence that its weapons are not being used to kill innocent civilians. This is not weakness; this is actually strength.
While I acknowledge that Canada's defence industry contributes to our economy, that economic benefit cannot come at the expense of human lives. Our message to the defence industry is clear: If exports are compliant with international law, business can continue; if exports risk enabling war crimes, then they must stop. We cannot and must not build prosperity on the backs of human suffering.
This is ultimately a test of our integrity, particularly at a time when there will be unprecedented defence spending with a commitment of $81.8 billion in budget 2025, far exceeding the 2% NATO commitment the Prime Minister made during the campaign. We cannot continue to call for peace while profiting from war crimes, and we cannot condemn atrocities abroad while quietly enabling them through our exports.
Canada once led the world in peacekeeping. We once stood proudly as a voice of conscience on the global stage. However, today, our moral standing is being eroded, not by what we say but by what we permit. As we debate this bill, the bombs are still falling on Gaza. Families are still being buried beneath rubble. Children are dying in hospitals that are running out of fuel and medicine. Somewhere in the chain of destruction, there are Canadian-made parts, like propellants and circuitry, that help make these weapons possible. That must end.
History will judge us not by how we defended industries or alliances, but by whether we defended humanity. Bill C-233 is about closing the loopholes, yes, but it is also about opening our eyes. It is about aligning our laws with our values, our words, our deeds, our actions and our conscience, with no more exceptions, no more excuses and no more Canadian complicity in war crimes.
To my colleagues in this House, if we truly believe in human rights, in the rule of law and in peace, then we must support this bill. When the crime is the killing of innocent civilians, there can be no loopholes, no silence, no culture of impunity, no looking away, no wilful ignorance and no moral blindness.
Canadians will be watching how each member votes, and it will be recorded in Hansard forever. They want Canada to be a force for peace. It is time for us to live up to that promise.
