Mark Carney’s Liberal Party is avoiding questions about a Canadian company receiving a contract to supply the Israeli military with up to $78.8 million of artillery propellants, despite the Liberal government’s promise to block military exports to Israel last year.
The arms-monitoring group Project Ploughshares noted last week that the United States Department of Defence (DOD) website listed the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC) as the recipient for a contract in September 2024 to provide the U.S. with the artillery propellants.
The ultimate destinations of the propellants, according to the DOD website, include Israel.
According to the Project Ploughshares report, CCC, a Crown corporation, signed the contract on behalf of General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems - Canada in Valleyfield, Quebec (GD-OTS), which is the sole-source supplier of the product.
The contract is an amendment of a larger deal for the general supply of artillery propellants to the U.S. military that dates back to 2019 and is valued at a total of $1.79 billion.
The amendment was made months after the Liberal government promised to pause approvals of new military export permits to Israel, and two weeks after Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly pledged to cancel another arms shipment that was due to be supplied to Israel via the U.S.
Last August, the U.S. government announced that GD-OTS was contracted to supply Israel with $83 million of high explosive mortar cartridges. After a public outcry, Joly said she had been in touch with the company and promised to block the deal (after initially denying its existence).
Alex Cosh
It’s unclear whether the Liberal government knew about the artillery propellant deal before it was reported by Project Ploughshares. Responses from both the government and the Liberal Party have provided little clarity.
In an emailed statement sent to The Maple this week, Global Affairs Canada (GAC), which regulates military exports, said the government “remains in communication with the parties involved to ensure compliance with Canada’s rigorous export controls regime.”
The ministry did not answer a question from The Maple about whether or not it was aware of the contract amendment before the Project Ploughshares report drew attention to it.
Joly suggested to journalist Nora Loreto at a campaign event in Quebec last week that the report was “false,” without elaborating.
“The way she spoke it sounded like she was still using talking lines from before this report,” Loreto told The Maple in an email.
“Had I had a follow up I would have asked her if she had actually been briefed on the report because her reply made it sound like she hadn’t.”
The Liberal Party, which is currently fighting to secure a fourth consecutive term in government, has refused to answer questions about the contract. The Maple sent multiple requests and voice messages to the party’s media line, but did not receive any response.
An email sent by The Maple to Joly’s Liberal Party re-election campaign in Ahuntsic-Cartierville also went unanswered.
Other Liberal Party candidates have also refused to answer questions about the issue. Peace activist and journalist Yves Engler filmed himself asking Liberal candidate Peter Schiefke about the propellant contract, but Schiefke refused to provide comment.
The CCC deferred The Maple’s questions to GAC, and GD-OTS did not provide any response to emailed inquiries from The Maple.
Lack Of Consistency
According to Kelsey Gallagher, who wrote the Project Ploughshares report, the original contract was for the general supply of artillery propellants to the U.S. army.
The propellants are not themselves ammunition rounds, but serve as the explosive fuel that allows artillery systems to fire 155 mm rounds.
GD-OTS’ Valleyfield plant is the sole-source supplier of the specific type of propellant, M31A2, named in the contract, according to Project Ploughshares.
A product brochure states that the company is “recognized internationally as a developer and producer of high quality extruded propellants for both military and sporting applications.”
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the original contract was amended to supply Ukraine with propellants through the U.S. DOD, Gallagher said.
It was then amended last year to additionally supply Israel, which is currently waging a brutal assault on Gaza and facing charges of committing a genocide against the Palestinians.
“This is the first time that Israel has been explicitly listed as a recipient of these Canadian-made propellants,” Gallagher told The Maple.
The deal, he explained, “clearly speaks to a lack of consistency in Canada’s position” on arms exports to Israel, given the Liberal government’s promises last year to pause all such exports.
However, Gallagher said the government’s level of knowledge about such deals is unclear.
If the Canadian government was in fact unaware of the propellant deal, then it is potentially being awarded contracts for weapon systems “that would be a violation of Canada’s obligations under domestic law and international law,” Gallagher said.
Canada is a signatory to the international Arms Trade Treaty, which prohibits the sale of military goods if there is a substantial risk of the goods being used to violate human rights or other international laws.
However, the Canadian government does not apply those regulations to military exports to the U.S., a fact that critics have long flagged as a major loophole in Canada’s export control regime.
Gallagher said this means that military exports that flow to problematic recipients via the U.S. are typically dealt with on an “ad hoc” basis, if they are scrutinized at all.
Israel, the Project Ploughshares report noted, has relied heavily on 155 mm artillery shells during its war on Gaza and reportedly fired 10,000 of those shells into Gaza during the first weeks of the campaign.
A coalition of humanitarian organizations led by Oxfam U.S. wrote to former U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin in November 2023 specifically urging the Biden administration to stop supplying Israel with 155 mm shells.
The letter noted: “In Gaza, one of the world’s most densely populated places, 155mm artillery shells are inherently indiscriminate. These munitions are unguided and have a high error radius, often landing 25 meters away from the intended target.”
“155mm shells expel 2,000 sharp metal fragments in every direction, risking injury, death, and permanent disability to civilians within 300 meters of the blast.”
Election Questions
A campaign group called Vote Palestine is urging federal election candidates to sign on to a platform of five pledges, which includes a call for a two-way arms embargo on Israel. This would include any military exports that travel via the U.S.
So far nine Liberal Party candidates have endorsed the platform, according to the Vote Palestine website. No Conservative candidates have endorsed the platform, and are unlikely to do so given Pierre Poilievre’s aggressively pro-Israel messaging.
Alex Cosh
Dania Majid, a member of the Vote Palestine steering committee and a co-founder and president of the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, told The Maple that the campaign was also in conversation with other Liberal candidates.
She added that approximately 200 organizations have endorsed the platform and 9,000 individuals have pledged to cast their votes for candidates who support the campaign’s platform.
“The mobilization has been really great, and it’s been very much coming from the grassroots,” said Majid.
She stressed that the campaign is non-partisan, and that it has reached out to Conservative candidates too. “You can be a Conservative and you can also support Palestine. We’re talking about universal human rights, and they should not be partisan politics.”
Michael Bueckert, acting president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), said his organization, which is part of the Vote Palestine campaign, has not heard anything from the Liberal Party regarding the artillery propellant deal.
“Either Joly was lying to us when she said that she wasn’t going to let these types of weapons deals go through, or she’s incapable of implementing her promises elsewhere in the federal government,” Bueckert told The Maple.
Regarding GAC’s statement, Bueckert added: “The fact remains that Canada brokered a weapons deal that explicitly identifies Israel as the end consumer. This is immoral given Israel’s ongoing genocide, but it also breaks Joly’s explicit promise to Canadians.”
Bueckert noted the fact that GD-OTS is named as the sole-source supplier for the propellant, meaning that Canada has the opportunity to shut off a key part of the supply chain that provides this type of weaponry to Israel.
Bueckert said he thinks more candidates — including Liberals — are feeling pressure to commit to a pro-Palestine platform in this election than in previous campaigns. He noted that during the 2021 election, no Liberals signed onto a similar platform that was proposed at that time.
Last month, a group of 29 MPs — including Liberals — belonging to the Canada-Palestine Parliamentary Friendship Group released a statement that included a call for a “strong two-way arms embargo with no exceptions or loopholes.”
“Whether or not that’ll impact Carney is an open question, because we really don’t know where he stands on anything,” Bueckert said.
During the Liberal Party leadership race, CJPME gave Carney a “D+” on Palestinian rights in part due to the fact that he has said very little publicly on the issue. Since winning the leadership race by a wide margin, Carney kept Joly in the role of Foreign Affairs Minister, despite her track record being heavily criticized by pro-Palestine groups.
“This is a moment when the Liberals are going to be tested on their record,” said Bueckert.
“If we are successful in the Vote Palestine campaign and in our other strategies to try to make this an election issue, then it means that Liberal candidates are going to be confronted with what they did during the genocide.”
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