What was the rationale?
I’m not sure it’s about “appeasing Trump”, so much as “making money”. Defense contracts pay well, and there is a significant portion of the Canadian manufacturing industry that relies on that income.
The unfortunate truth is, no matter who you sell weapons to, they are eventually going to be used to kill people. That’s what they’re for.
Now imagine if all that labour and resources that go into weapons industry was instead directed towards things like building affordable housing, infrastructure, providing healthcare, and so on.
Completely different kinds of industry. Swapping out those investments would put tens of thousands of hard working Canadians out of jobs.
Ah, yes those poor workers making weapons that are used to murder innocent civilians across the globe. My heart bleeds for them.
Like usual this trashy community always defend our contribution to the genocide and lick Carney the bullshitter boots
The utter lack of ability to do any sort of self criticism or to hold their leaders accountable for anything is the most frustrating part about liberals. They just see everything as a team sport, and they can never criticize their own team.
No one is forcing weapons buyers to use them.
Not everyone has a bullshit office job.
Nobody is forcing Canada to produce weapons that are used predominantly to massacre civilians either. Meanwhile, I’d much rather have a bullshit office job than have blood of children on my hands. But I guess some people are just utterly depraved.
Yeah, all those monsterous welders, machinists, fabricators, and foundry workers. They are literally the worst kinds of people. /s
They’re literally working in the industry of murder. Also, thought you just literally claimed that these skills were exclusive to people murdering industry. Turns out they could be applied to productive purposes that actually benefit people in Canada. Who knew!
They work in high-tech manufacturing. The majority of which is not exclusively defense tech. They make all kinds of stuff, including defense tech. The money made from those contracts, supports an entire industry that also makes everything else. Without it, there would be no Canadian domestic manufacturing industry left.
And seriously…where do you think the money for all that comes from? Do you honestly think that foreign countries that are currently buying Canadian armored vehicles are just going to switch over to investing in Canadian healthcare? Or housing? It’s weird that you think Canadians can just reallocate that money to other things. You want to stop the manufacturing industry from taking those contracts…that money doesn’t get used for other things. It simply disappears from our economy altogether, and all those workers that relied on it, lose their jobs.
There’s absolutely no reason why labour and resources allocated to filling military contracts couldn’t be directed towards productive purposes. And seriously, what do you think money is exactly? It’s just an allocator. We have a fiat currency last I checked, and our government can issue as much currency as it wants. That’s where money comes from in case you didn’t know. We don’t have to be selling armored vehicles to other countries at all. Our government could be creating crown corporations and hiring workers to build things people in Canada need.
The whole context of this discussion here is literally about using this industry for other things. 🤦
It would also put tens of thousands of hard working Canadians into jobs that don’t stress their moral compass. Canada needs doctors more than it needs weapons manufacturers
So…you think that people are just interchangeable components that can just be plugged into a new role, whenever the wind changes? That all those skilled tradesmen can just be swapped into other jobs in healthcare, or construction, or IT…and the difference in qualifications and pay are irrelevant to the issue?
You may be able to create new jobs in other industries, but that doesn’t change the fact that thousands of other people just lost their income. On paper, it seems like a straight swap. One job disappears and another one opens. But the reality is a lot more complicated.
You don’t see any difference in selling weapons to Israel vs selling them to Ukraine?
Technically, Canada isn’t “selling weapons to Israel”. We’re selling weapons components to the US. What they do with that, is out of our control. If Canada wants to stop that from happening, we would need to cut off all defense contracts with the US…which would tank our entire manufacturing industry.
If your industry knows the weapons it is building will most likely be used for genocide (which, considering the US is now fully fascist and at Israel’s beck and call, puts the likelihood at near 100%), then I’d consider it deeply unethical to continue selling those weapons to the US.
It is not unlike IBM continuing to assist the Nazi’s with their computers. Yes, saying no would be a financial hit, but like… Take the hit? It’s supporting genocide otherwise. And if that industry would collapse if it decided not to support genocide, then maybe they should find a different way to make money, otherwise that industry shouldn’t exist.
Basically, the Likudnik government in Israel is a big welfare teat for the weapons industries. We the taxpayers see our money taken not to improve living conditions at home directly, but to subsidise selected harmful (weapons-making) industries by way of “aid to Israel”. Now, this helps the people who own those industries and are invested in them and work for them, but it doesn’t help the rest of us any — not like it would if it were invested in our health care system, or schools, libraries, public transit, carbon reduction.
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Be a politicians, have friends who work in arms manufacturing.
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Send aide in the form of money, taken from tax payers, to a different government.
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That government uses your donated taxes to buy arms from your buddy.
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Your now rich friends make your life easier with their freshly laundered money.
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Yeah. There can only be one reason. Let’s not ask in case there’s a second reason that doesn’t help our agenda.
Did I read that right?
The worst is the Bloc Quebecois
Exactly how would the Canadian government be able to enforce it? The Americans will do what the Americans are going to do.
First of all, it’s the principle of not participating in a literal fucking genocide. Second, Americans can do what they want to do without Canada continuing to send weapons to them to commit atrocities. Seems like a really low bar for anybody with even a shred of moral integrity.
It’s the principle? So we just pretend, and our conscience is clear
We just pretend what? Seems to me that the argument you’re trying to make here is if we don’t facilitate the genocide, then somebody else will.
The No More Loopholes Act was a ‘just pretend’ act to make it look like some MPs were doing something about it, Why? For the ‘principal’? The optics? So their conscience could be clear? ‘Well, we tried’. The Act was toothless, there was no way the US government would have paid it any heed. They commenced the Iranian bombing action without even warning Canadian soldiers on the US bases so they could evacuate ahead of time. Just went ahead and left our soldiers in danger. You think they would ever be choosy about the ammunition they used?
And yet, the fact of the matter remains that we couldn’t even pass this performative and toothless act. What does that say about our government?
That our government is pragmatic and considers that it is not worth poking the tiger on passing a frivolous act that will antagonize the US, provoke Trump into a retaliatory vendetta, yet accomplish no meaningful objective.
It will never cease to amaze how easy it is for some people to make excuses for participating in a genocide. Saying I will not be part of a genocide is itself a meaningful objective, and if you do not understand this simple truth then you’re truly lost.
We manage it with every country we trade weapons with except the US.
We PRETEND to manage it with every other country,
Good enough for the law to apply equally.
What exactly does that mean? The egalitarian paradox - the more equally the law is applied, the more dis-equal they become.
We should at least pretend to hold the US to the same standard as everyone else.
Pretending anything when it comes to the US can be a very dangerous thing, especially when you act on that ‘pretend’.
Do you want equal treatment, or equal outcomes? You can never have both in international relations.
