Last week, Canadians were shocked to learn that armoured vehicles built by a company headquartered in Ontario are being rushed to the U.S. for ICE tactical operations — a deal so opaque that the government and manufacturer refuse to clarify where the vehicles are actually being produced or how the export was approved. Premier Doug Ford, who previously pledged to build “Fortress AM-CAN” to assist Trump in building his new “Golden Age,” gleefully welcomed the news. 

Canadian politicians and advocacy organizations, on the other hand, were not so thrilled. Given that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has been accused of human-rights abuses, and the vehicles in question are designed for heavy tactical and paramilitary situations, many have been outspoken on how deeply troubling this deal is.

Threats of making Canada the “51st state” have put Canadians on edge when it comes to what is unfolding south of the border, and the many videos of brutal, violent ICE raids have only fuelled fears about the direction of the U.S. administration. ICE has been snatching people out of lines moments before citizenship ceremonies and kidnapping children, sometimes without disclosing to parents where their children are taken. They were caught on camera forcibly removing a man from his vehicle, clutching his baby daughter while having a seizure. Even U.S. citizens are being violently arrested and detained.

Understandably, the news about Ontario’s potential involvement in sending equipment to assist in this brutality quickly went viral, raising questions about the oversight of arms exports and manufacturing that makes its way into the hands of foreign law-enforcement or military agencies — even when the production is claimed to originate in the United States.

The No More Loopholes Act

But for those who have been following along with the recently tabled No More Loopholes Act, this conversation has been underway for a long time. Throughout more than two years of unfolding genocide in Gaza, the Palestinian Youth Movement and their allies in the Arms Embargo Now Coalition have been diligently uncovering the legal pathway that allows Canadian-made military parts and explosives to quietly flow to the U.S. — bypassing oversight.

Canada’s defence exports to the U.S. operate inside a black box: once a component crosses the border, Canada no longer tracks where it goes, or how it’s used. So while Canada may claim they have placed an Arms Embargo on military trade with Israel, this loophole still enables weapons parts and explosives manufactured in Canada to be purchased by the U.S., assembled into missiles and F35 Jets, and sent to Israel, directly resulting in the murder of innocent Palestinians.

Palestinian Youth Movement along with a growing coalition of organizations and Canadians have been demanding the Canada-U.S. loophole be closed and a total, two-way Arms Embargo finally be imposed. The second report — Exposing the US Loophole: How Canadian F-35 Parts and Explosives Reach Israel — reveals once again that Canada never stopped arming Israel, despite claims to the contrary. For the first time, Canadians are able to see the pipeline of military goods flowing from Canada to Israel via the U.S., facilitated by a deadly loophole in Canadian law.

“Once these arms enter the U.S., Global Affairs Canada (GAC) no longer tracks them. The Canadian government thus distances itself from the final use of these exports, and absolves itself from responsibility for any subsequent human rights violations perpetrated using those military goods. This amounts to a strategy of purposeful negligence to avoid both the legal responsibility and the economic cost of properly regulating Canadian weapons exports.” — page 3 of the report

As the report demonstrates, the flow of military goods from Canada to Israel through the loophole can in fact be tracked — the government is simply choosing not to. As of the date of this publication, opposition MPs have not made any public statements outright denying the evidence listed in the report (they have said they are currently reviewing it). However, over 30 sitting MPs have publicly stated their support for a full and immediate arms embargo and for related measures, including The No More Loopholes Act, as listed on armsembargonow.ca.

Israel is currently engaging in explicit human rights abuses, war crimes and genocide, as clearly stated in the UN’s recent report Gaza genocide: a collective crime. Under Canada’s obligation as signatories of the Arms Trade Treaty, no arms or explosives should then be travelling to Israel. The existence of the loophole thus puts Canada in violation of its own domestic and International Law.

We invite all Canadians to learn about how this loophole operates. Here are a few critical pieces of information found in Exposing the US Loophole: How Canadian F-35 Parts and Explosives Reach Israel to get you started:

• The evidence details hundreds of shipments of explosives and aircraft parts — from Canadian factories and through Canadian ports — that contain vital components of both Israel’s F-35 fighter jets and the bombs they are dropping on Gaza.

• 150 shipments of Canadian explosives and flammable materials from General Dynamics facilities in Valleyfield and Repentigny, Quebec, were shipped to the U.S. Army Ammunition Plants that manufacture 2000-pound MK-84 bombs, 155mm artillery shells, and 120mm tank rounds for export to Israel.

• The Valleyfield plant is the sole North American supplier of M31A2 triple-base propellant and is currently fulfilling a contract to produce this propellant for the U.S. to supply its allies, including Israel. This propellant is used to fire the hundreds of thousands of 155mm artillery shells that Israel has deployed in its assault on Gaza.

• Public shipping records show deliveries of “flammable solids” from General Dynamics’ Valleyfield plant in Quebec to Radford. As the supplier chart below shows, General Dynamics Canada produces both nitroglycerin and the final M31A2 propellant. The M31A2 propellant requires both nitrocellulose, produced by Radford, and nitroglycerin. Taken together, the contract, the shared propellant chemistry, and the documented shipments make it highly plausible that General Dynamics is shipping the final propellant to Radford. Those propellants are then loaded into U.S. munitions, including 155mm artillery shells that the United States has supplied to Israel. This production directly fuels Israel’s military occupation and violence, as the United States has supplied tens of thousands of 155mm artillery shells to Israel for its assault on Gaza.

• 433 shipments of TNT manufactured in Poland and routed through the Port Saguenay, Quebec, between October 2023 and November 2025. Shipments were then transported by truck on Canadian and American highways to U.S. Army Ammunition Plants, which use the TNT to produce the 2000-pound MK-84 and I-2000 Penetrator bombs that Israel drops on Gaza.

• 3,434 shipments of military aircraft components sent by American Lockheed factories to the Israeli Ministry of Defense, the Israeli Air Force Base, and Israeli weapons manufacturers between April 2024 and August 2025 — immediately after receiving hundreds of matching shipments from Canadian manufacturers.

These are just a few examples of the documented flow of weapons components from Canada to Israel through the U.S. Loophole. See the full report to learn more.

Canada’s Complicity

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese refers to the atrocity unfolding in Palestine as a collective crime fuelled by the complicit involvement of ‘third states’ that have enabled ongoing systematic violations of International Law. She names Canada as one such third state for several reasons, one of which is the pipeline of material arms that flows from Canada to Israel via the U.S. loophole as detailed above.

Albanese describes the world as standing “on a knife-edge between the collapse of the international rule of law and hope for renewal.” 

Such renewal is only possible when third states confront their own complicity, take responsibility for their actions and uphold justice.

Canada can no longer hide behind cold, technical jargon like “untracked,” “permitted,” and “intermediary exports.” Whether it is sending Armoured Vehicles to facilitate the violent arrest and deportation of innocent people in the U.S., or looking the other way when Canadian arms and weapons components are used to create bombs dropped on families in Gaza — the atrocities unfolding in real time on screens around the world do not lie. Complicit crimes that the Exposing the US Loophole report has brought all the more into focus.

The vision Canadians hold of ourselves as a global “Peacekeeping Nation” is one value of many that lit up the country’s collective identity in the face of Donald Trump’s threats to absorb Canada as the U.S. 51st state. Indeed, the party Canadians elected vowed: 

“The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over.“

Ignoring the free flow of arms parts and explosives to the U.S. that aid and abet the opposite of “peacekeeping” flies in the face of everything we think we are as a nation of compassionate, friendly people known on the world stage for our compulsive need to say “sorry.” We can and must take action now to right the wrongs currently being perpetrated on innocent people around the world.

By amending the Export and Import Permits Act to strengthen Canada’s compliance with the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), The No More Loopholes Act would be a step towards the right side of history. Join us in calling on MPs in Parliament to adopt The No More Loopholes Act to shut down the dangerous loophole that undermines Canada’s international obligations and put civilian lives at risk.