On May 28, virtually every attendee arriving at CANSEC—North America’s largest annual arms trade show—was met with the piercing cry of “war criminal,” as over 300 protesters gathered to denounce war profiteering and Canada’s complicity in crimes against humanity committed by Israeli armed forces and political authorities since October 7, 2023.

Inside the arms fair, the focus was on Canada-US relations, European militarization and NATO commitments. But protesters outside were highlighting the presence of weapons companies and parts manufacturers implicated in Israeli war crimes. Amid Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza and the continued blockade of humanitarian aid, they were calling for an immediate and full arms embargo and divestment from companies complicit in war crimes and illegal occupation.

Local and provincial police, outfitted in anti-riot gear, maintained a heavy presence, while private security guarded the outer gates. A surveillance drone hovered above the parking lot outside CANSEC’s gated entrance. Police lines were positioned tightly around protesters, frequently leaving no room for media to move between and document the demonstration.

Demonstrators gathered at multiple access points around the EY Centre. That morning, a group—primarily women—formed a blockade on Uplands Drive, covering the street, their hands, and their clothing in red paint, symbolizing the bloodshed in Gaza.

Out of a population of just under 5.8 million, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, more than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the start of Israel’s assault. Among the dead are at least 1,400 health care workers and 181 journalists, including international personnel.

In early May, UN human rights experts condemned the sharp rise in casualties following the collapse of the January ceasefire with Hamas in March, noting that more than 400 people were killed within just 24 hours on March 18.

As outlined in an appeal made by 38 human rights experts including Special Rapporteurs on human rights, on health and internally displaced persons, “International norms were established precisely to prevent such horrors. Yet, as millions protest globally for justice and humanity, their cries are muted. This situation conveys a deadly message: Palestinian lives are dispensable, and international law, if unenforced, is meaningless.”

According to Oxfam, Israel has since issued over 30 forced displacement orders, expanded military exclusion zones across 80 percent of Gaza, and heightened military presence on security corridors that restrict civilian movement across the strip.

“This isn’t counterterrorism, as Israel alleges—it’s the systematic clearing of Gaza through militarized force into enclaves of internment,” Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam’s policy lead in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said in a recent statement.

“The companies that are arming Israel’s genocide right now are here in front of us in this building. It’s our duty as humans in this world who are witnessing a genocide to interrupt their business as usual in every way that we can,” echoed Rachel Small, an organizer with the Canadian branch of international peace group World BEYOND War.

The anti-war organization recently launched a campaign to pressure municipal officials in Ottawa to reject an application from the Canadian company Gastops to build a new factory in the city. Gastops is the only company manufacturing engine sensors for Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jets. The jets are often described as the most technologically advanced in the world, owing to their advanced communications systems. A global call for an arms embargo, including halting all transfers of F-35 jets to Israel, was launched last summer when the Israeli military [dropped three 2,000 pound bombs] on the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone in Khan Younis, killing 90 people.

“There’s the big-name companies that everyone knows,” explained Small, referring to Israeli-owned firms exhibiting at CANSEC, like Elbit. But demonstrators also wanted to draw attention to Canadian companies manufacturing parts for the machinery used by the Israeli military.

According to Small, Ottawa residents have sent over 500 emails in support of the campaign to stop construction of the Gastops facility. As of this writing, neither the company nor the municipal government has responded.

In early September last year, the Liberal government announced that Canadian arms exports to Israel would be suspended, including those exported indirectly via the United States. Former Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly told reporters at the time, “We will not have any form of arms or parts of arms be sent to Gaza, period.”

The stated commitment has not held up in practice. Canadian peace research institute Project Ploughshares reported that a Canadian factory was the sole source provider of an explosive fuel for US-made 155mm calibre artillery shells. Last September, Québec-based General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems-Canada (GD-OTS-Canada) was contracted to produce approximately $78.8 million worth of M31A2 triple base propellant for the United States Department of Defense, destined for Ukraine and Israel.

“This agreement was signed after Canada announced that it was suspending arms exports to Israel,” Ploughshares’ senior researcher Kelsey Gallagher wrote in the report.

The government’s announcement has still not gone beyond political rhetoric. Putting demonstrators’ call for an arms embargo into context, Small explained that there is no sweeping prohibition at the moment, “despite words that would suggest the contrary from Joly and other Liberal cabinet ministers.”

Last January, Global Affairs put a pause on issuing new export permits for direct military exports to Israel. Brampton-based Roshel, a manufacturer of smart armoured vehicles and one of the sponsors of CANSEC, still sought export permits to Israel that spring.

Amnesty International criticized Canada for not going far enough or halting past transfers, “including nearly $30 million approved in the first two months of the conflict.” In August, Canada suspended 30 prior permits. Yet, as Small explained, approximately 100 permits remain active today.

It’s not just weapons companies, however. Last week, Canadian human rights organization Just Peace Advocates released two reports on Canadian investments in Israeli and international companies implicated in illegal activities in Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The organization found that the “Big Five” Canadian banks are currently investing roughly $183 billion in 66 companies. Of this, the Royal Bank of Canada invested roughly $61.1 billion, or nearly double that of all the other banks.

During the 2024-25 fiscal year, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) invested more than $27 billion in 61 companies described by Just Peace Advocates as implicated in illegal activities in Occupied Palestinian Territory, including Bank Leumi, Bank Hapoalim, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Israel Discount Bank, and Mizrahi Tefahot Bank. These investments account for 12.5 percent of CPPIB’s total holdings—over half of the investment board’s holdings in all Israeli companies.

Karen Rodman, director of Just Peace Advocates, noted that pension funds like the CDPQ and the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan had refused to invest in specific sectors like oil production, tobacco or firearms based on environmental or socially responsible investment principles. She pointed out that this has not been the case for weapons companies or other firms implicated in maintaining or enabling Israeli apartheid.

Rodman said that data on Canadian investments has been submitted to Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. Albanese’s report is expected to be delivered to the UN Human Rights Council in June.

As CANSEC unfolded, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new cabinet was kicking off its first day in the House of Commons. On the same day, a press conference was held on Parliament Hill by Doctors Against Genocide, a global coalition of health care workers lobbying international governments to prevent genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The speakers included five doctors who had recently returned from treating patients in Gaza.

“We wanted to make sure the focus in Ottawa for the day would be the urgent need to end Canada’s complicity in genocide,” said Maysa Hawwash, a Palestinian-Canadian founding member of Doctors Against Genocide. “As a signatory to the Genocide Convention and numerous human rights treaties, Canada has a legal duty to prevent and punish genocide, not merely condemn it after the fact.”

“We are health care workers who took an oath to protect life. An oath that now compels us to speak truth to power. What you see in Gaza today is the logical endpoint of this decades-long machinery of dehumanization… Canada’s complicity through arms deals, diplomatic cover and the shameful promotion of weapons expos like CANSEC fuels the machinery of genocide.”

I don’t know what to say anymore. As doctors, we can’t stop a genocide and we can’t end a famine.

We provided a diagnosis - genocide.

We provided a prescription to end the genocide - for Canada to end its complicity and direct involvement in Israel’s crimes now. pic.twitter.com/yNnxio0r1m

— Yipeng Ge 葛义朋 (@yipengGe) May 30, 2025

Inside CANSEC, there was no indication of any qualms about the US’s heightened support for Israel’s scorched-earth and ethnic cleansing campaigns in Gaza.

“Every individual that is killed in Gaza is a direct result of the Iranian regime and Hamas,” former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated in response to the protesters outside CANSEC, who called attention to the continued slaughter of Palestinian civilians and Israel standing accused of genocide by South Africa at the International Court of Justice.

Pompeo, a keynote speaker at CANSEC, was reiterating statements he had made previously. A month after Israel began bombarding Gaza in 2023, Pompeo described diplomatic calls at the UN for Israel to “comply with the laws of war” and calls for a ceasefire as “restrictions on the victim,” seeing Iranian influence in Palestine as warranting a “more forcible response.”

“They attacked Israel on October 7—the most indecent act, the most barbarous attack I have seen in my adult life,” he said when asked to respond to the protesters. “It is the case today that [if] Hamas would put down its weapons, the Iranians would cease funding Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, there would be peace in the region. Period, full-stop.”

This framing of Israeli apartheid as a strategic response to regional conflict has served to legitimize the prolonged assault that Carney has recently stepped up to denounce.

On May 19, the Canadian government issued a joint statement with the United Kingdom and France on the situation in Gaza and the West Bank. Strong language signalled a change in the status quo for Canada’s timid stance on Gaza. Israel’s punitive and catastrophic response to the attack by Hamas was characterized as “wholly disproportionate.”

“We will not stand by while the Netanyahu Government pursues these egregious actions,” the joint statement read. “If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response.”

Germany’s newly appointed Chancellor Friedrich Merz had also recently made principled remarks on arms exports to Israel. “The extent to which the civilian population is being affected, as is ever more the case in the last few days, can no longer be justified as a struggle against the terrorism of Hamas,” Merz stated earlier this month.

In light of Carney’s support of the joint statement with the UK and Germany, Doctors Against Genocide delivered a “prescription to the Canadian government to end the genocide in Gaza,” including targeted sanctions—like Canada’s sanctions on war criminals and complicit companies in Sudan—and a full two-way arms embargo on Israel.

These actions have been supported by 38 human rights organizations and professional coalitions across Canada. For Carney’s government to stand firm on its commitment, Hawwash explained, numerous Canadian ministries need to be mobilized.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Anita Anand would have to invoke unilateral sanctions through Canada’s Special Economic Measures Act. Minister of International Trade Maninder Sidhu would need to cancel all permits for transfers of arms, parts, and components to Israel, and end all direct shipments. Minister of Defence David McGuinty would in turn need to cancel ongoing and planned purchases of military goods from Israel. The Minister of Government Transformation, Public Works and Procurement, Joël Lightbound, would need to update Canada’s Procurement Code of Conduct to explicitly prohibit the purchase of arms from companies complicit in illegal activities in the occupied Palestinian territories.

In the absence of Canadian legislation that specifically tackles the re-export loophole, Minister Sidhu’s office would need to introduce end-use assurances that prohibit arms sold to the US being re-exported to Israel. All general permits for arms transfers to the US would need to be cancelled and replaced with individual permits.

Joly, who now serves as Canada’s minister of industry, did not appear for a scheduled press conference at CANSEC and was chased by a camera crew before slipping out of the building.

As the country’s most powerful people surveyed an inventory of some of the world’s most advanced missiles, tanks and guns, Canadians speaking out with posters and paint this past week found themselves in handcuffs, released from police custody only well after midnight. Thirteen people were arrested, including volunteer citizen journalist Ramona Murphy.

Brent Patterson, director of the human rights organization Peace Brigades International-Canada, explained that police got impatient with the protest dispersal after noon on Wednesday and that the arrests happened after mainstream media left the demonstration.

A photograph submitted by Peace Brigades shows an Ottawa police officer pushing down on the man’s neck while he was being restrained. According to Patterson, the man was not resisting arrest and was “just grabbed by the police.”

“We believe that unnecessary force was used in all the arrests,” he said.

By the end of the day on May 29, everyone arrested had been released. Ten people were charged.

Mere days into office, Canadian elected leaders are under mounting pressure to take concrete action in response to Israel’s war crimes during its bloody and merciless siege. Whether talk yields action in Parliament remains to be seen.

Lital Khaikin is a freelance journalist and author based in Montréal, and regularly contributes features on humanitarian and environmental issues related to underreported regions and conflict zones.