News - World: Prominent Canadian newspaper revealed that Saudi Arabia imported military equipment from Canada during the year 2020 at a value of 1.3 billion dollars, out of 10 billion dollars over the years.

The Globe and Mail said that the majority of the military equipment was in the form of armored vehicles equipped with machine guns.

Canada is the second country in the world after the United States in terms of the value of arms and military equipment exports to Saudi Arabia.

Former Canadian representatives called on the Ottawa government to stop arming the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the midst of its aggression against Yemen, which has been going on for six years, They indicated that Canada's arms exports to Saudi Arabia should be ended as a priority for the next government.

They emphasized by adding their voices to civil society organizations that have raised legitimate concerns about their human rights and humanitarian implications.

They also emphasized that the bulk of the exports are light armored vehicles, or LAVs, manufactured by General Dynamics Land Systems Canada in London, Ontario.

The Canadian government intervened in 2014 to sell hundreds of LAVs to the Saudi armed forces. The arms contract totaled $14 billion, the largest in Canadian history, and It emphasized that it had given priority to arms deals at the expense of human rights in its dealings with Saudi Arabia.

"While Ottawa speaks loudly and proudly of Canada as a beacon of human and women's rights, there has been a clear disconnect," said the Canadian Council of Churches' Peace Research Institute.

The Executive Director of the Blushers Project, Cesar Jaramillo, explained that there is a gap between rhetoric and reality, as the issue of Canada has become too big to be ignored.

He pointed out that Ottawa declares its commitment to more stringent and transparent arms control regimes at every opportunity, but on the ground it is not.

Two human rights organizations accused Canada of violating international law by refusing to stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia, especially the International Arms Trade Treaty, Amnesty International and Project Blushers said in a report that Ottawa's review of Riyadh's arms exports was flawed.

The two organizations said Canada's 2020 review misinterpreted or ignored the main pillars of the 2019 Arms Trade Treaty, particularly with Saudi Arabia, Riyadh imports arms from 22 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Canada, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, China, Turkey and Belgium.