Global Affairs Canada (GAC) employees met with a Canadian subsidiary of Israeli arms giant Elbit Systems three days before Parliament voted on a motion calling for an end to arms exports to Israel.
Hours before the vote on March 18, 2024, one of the GAC employees who met with the company briefed the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and was instructed to relay information about the meeting to then-foreign affairs minister Mélanie Joly.
Following those discussions, Joly pushed to reach a last-minute compromise with the NDP on the final wording of the motion, but did not apply restrictions to existing military exports to Israel after the motion passed.
GAC redacted details about what was discussed during the meetings in records obtained by The Maple through an access to information request.
The documents show that on March 15, the GAC employees met with Sean Kelly, vice president of Dartmouth-based GeoSpectrum Technologies, which is a registered subsidiary of Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms company.
On that date, Kelly wrote to two employees at GAC’s export division thanking them for the meeting and seemingly recapping what was discussed. GAC redacted almost all the other contents of Kelly’s email.
The day of the Parliament vote, Elizabeth Clarke, who is the director of GAC’s export control operations, forwarded the message from GeoSpectrum to her colleagues and asked for permission to share it with Joly’s office.
A little more than 20 minutes later, Karolina Guay, then chief of staff to the deputy minister of foreign affairs, wrote that Shalini Anand, the other GAC employee who met with GeoSpectrum, had “brilliantly” briefed the PMO on an “issue” seemingly raised as a result of the meeting with the company. The deputy minister asked that the information be relayed to Joly’s office.
At around 9:30 p.m. that evening, a majority of MPs, including members of the Liberal government, voted in favour of an amended motion that called on the government to “cease the further authorization and transfer of arms exports to Israel.”
The originally worded motion called on the government to “suspend all trade in military goods and technology with Israel,” which would have introduced more comprehensive restrictions.
The wording was watered down following intense negotiations between the Liberals and NDP before the final vote.
NDP MP Heather McPherson, who sponsored the motion, told The Maple that the Liberals had initially shown no sign of wanting to reach an agreement, but changed their tune after community groups across the country lobbied Liberal MPs.
Two days before the vote, Joly proposed sweeping changes to the motion that were unacceptable to the NDP. Serious conversations about a workable compromise began hours before the vote when Joly herself finally got involved with the talks.
After the vote, the Liberal government revealed it would not apply restrictions to military goods authorized for export to Israel under existing permits. In the summer of 2024, Joly revealed she had suspended around 30 existing permits, but only for goods that the government believed Israel could use in its genocide in Gaza.
In February 2025, the Liberal government authorized two permits worth $37.2 million for military goods related to Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system.
Alex Cosh
Joly did not issue a notice to exporters regarding any restrictions on military goods to Israel, despite promising to do so within weeks of the vote.
The Maple contacted GeoSpectrum for comment for this story. Reached by phone, an employee said no one from the company was willing to discuss their meeting with GAC.
The Maple emailed GAC asking if their meeting with GeoSpectrum before the vote in Parliament had any impact on the final wording of the motion or the Liberal government’s decision to withhold restrictions on existing permits. No response was received.
McPherson told The Maple that in her view, the Liberals based their decisions primarily on economic and trade factors rather than considerations about human rights or international law. The Liberal government, she noted, meets far more frequently with defence contractors and their lobby organizations than human rights groups.
In July 2024, The Maple reported that GeoSpectrum was among four companies that asked to intervene in a lawsuit concerning the federal government’s authorization of arms exports to Israel.
The company’s lawyer told the federal court in a letter that the goods GeoSpectrum exports are “non-lethal water-based sonar system[s],” which he argued are not instruments of war and shouldn’t be included in the lawsuit.
The company also makes naval surveillance systems, unmanned naval craft and software.
During the first months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the Liberal government sought to distinguish between full arms systems and what it called “non-lethal” military goods. Internally, however, GAC officials admitted that “non-lethal” carries no legally binding definition in Canada’s export control regime.
Despite the Liberal government’s pause on some military exports to Israel, Canadian companies sold a total of $18.9 million of goods to Israel in 2024. That figure does not account for goods sold via the United States which are not tracked or regulated under Canadian export law.
The Liberal government recently voted down an NDP motion calling for that loophole to be closed over concerns that doing so might upset the U.S. government and harm Canada economically.
Last year, a coalition of arms control advocates published two reports that revealed extensive details about ongoing military exports from Canada to Israel, both directly and via the U.S.
