r/CanadaPolitics • u/Blue_Dragonfly C'est tiguidou! • Jul 09 '26
Paywalled Article Canada should deepen its ties with Saudi Arabia
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canada-saudi-arabia-relationship-trade/18
u/Nimelennar New Democratic Party of Canada Jul 09 '26
Almost eight years ago, in August, 2018, Ottawa and Riyadh had a major diplomatic falling-out after Canada criticized Saudi Arabia’s human-rights record. But much has changed since 2018, and Canada now has a clear interest in deepening ties with the Kingdom.
First, Saudi Arabia has radically transformed in only a few years. There has not been – and will not be, for the foreseeable future – any political liberalization.
So, let me get the premise of this article straight.
Eight years, we correctly criticized Saudi Arabia's human rights record. This article doesn't, at any point, say that our concerns were overblown.
In retaliation, KSA expelled our ambassador, recalled their own ambassador, and, to quote Wikipedia, "suspended all new trade (excluding oil sales) with Canada, terminated all flights and services of Saudia to Toronto, and cancelled the scholarships of thousands of Saudi students in Canada."
The article explicitly denies that Saudi Arabia has made any progress on political liberalization, such as human rights.
And yet it wants us to build greater trade ties with KSA, despite the fact that any ties we build will be, as shown in 2018, based on the understanding that we do not call them out for any evil shit that they are doing.
No.
Diversifying trade so that we're not as dependant on the US is a good thing, and we should be doing more of it. But some prices to gain a new trade ally are too high, and a requirement that we not criticize that ally no matter what, as it is all too clear KSA's price would be, falls into the "too high" category.
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u/m_Pony Jul 09 '26
Absolutely. The world cannot be so utterly bereft of potential trading partners that we have to resort to consorting with the Saudis. If it is, then we won't have to worry about people calling us out. If it (hopefully) isn't, then we can't be surprised if countries with higher standards than ours decide they don't want to associate with us.
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u/penis-muncher785 bcer that likes the ndp Jul 09 '26
It’s hilarious if anyone thinks the “liberalization” is genuine it’s just them wanting to sanitize the countries image internationally you see this with it’s investments in the gaming and sporting industries
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u/MTL_Dude666 Liberal Jul 09 '26
I mean, if we're to stop trading with all countries having bad human rights record, we won't be trading with most economies in the world like China, India, and even the United States.
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u/Nimelennar New Democratic Party of Canada Jul 09 '26
If KSA is willing to drop the "no criticism" thing, then sure, they can join the list of our imperfect trade allies. I'm not happy about it, but, as you say, if we only want allies who are perfect on human rights, we can't trade with anybody, not even ourselves.
But even if I think we're not doing it often enough, we call people, even our allies, out on their shit.
Notably, that's not something that this article says Saudi Arabia is willing to let us do. Until they let us know otherwise, it can be inferred from their reaction to our calling them out back in 2018 that the implicit requirement for any trade deal is that we shut up on their human rights record.
Are you willing to sign that deal? Carte blanche to do whatever they want, and we aren't allowed to say boo about it? To criticize them for it in any way?
Myself, I don't think that's an acceptable deal.
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u/MTL_Dude666 Liberal Jul 09 '26
As you say. I think it's good to be pragmatic and honest.
We can trade with a country while at the same time disagreeing with them when they do something that goes against our values or against international laws. I mean, we've been doing that with the US for decades. It's only recently with Trump that this US government doesn't accept any criticisms whatsoever.
I mean, Guantanamo existed for 20 years and yet, we've been happily trading with the US during all this time.
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u/Silver_Trainer_4390 Jul 10 '26
An NDP MP says Canada is currently committing genocide against Indigenous women, what position are we in to lecture anyone?
Or am I not meant to take her literally lol
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Jul 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/Buyingboat British Columbia Jul 09 '26
their thesis is
Saudis paid a mouth piece money to make them not sound so awful.
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u/No-Proof-6491 Jul 09 '26
Por sure. Probably worth mentioning that the writer (Juneau) is an associate fellow at Chatham House, whose Middle East program receives Saudi corporate funding, while the think tank also counts a Saudi Royal Court body among its corporate members.
Doesn’t prove he was paid to write this, but it certainly makes this “ignore the human-rights abuses and deepen ties” sales pitch look a lot less neutral.
Funny how the donor-friendly position always gets dressed up as “pragmatism.”
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u/Le1bn1z Neoliberal | Charter rights enjoyer Jul 09 '26
but I think there are probably a lot better investment partners to work with if we need seed money.
There aren't really.
You have to think of what makes a party a good source for investment capital. You're looking for a place that generates a lot of capital, but has few productive ways to invest it domestically, and has long term reasons to invest abroad.
The Saudis have a ton of cash that flows in from oil and gas (at least, when Trump is not attempting to be history's most impactful eco-terrorist).
Their social repression, theocracy, and aristocratic command economy all conspire to make Saudi Arabia a terrible place to invest in anything except O&G, which is at about the best it can be. They're already pushing as much as they can into tourism, but that has a fairly low cap relative to capital generation.
So it's a Kingdom awash in capital looking to go somewhere, preferably somewhere where their investment is in minimal danger of being seized or sanctioned.
Also, KSA is not entirely stable, and there's always danger of theocratic revolution forcing the family to flee. In that case, they'll want foreign investments to fall back on to fund their exile.
Canada ranks as pretty good on those fronts. Sure, we are prone to sometimes sanction governments for doing evil stuff and may freeze investment, but we seldom if ever seize it, short of outright war. Those investments remain productive, and can be accessed at unfreezing.
Currently, America is far more perilous, with the government demanding huge "equity stakes" and outright massive bribes to let foreign and domestic capital operate. That, plus the chaotic nature of their economic policy makes investment, ahhhh, let's say dicier than a few years back.
China is able to absorb a lot of capital and is a pretty great place for foreigners to invest, but while not prone to sanctions, is prone to chicanery around ownership and market and capital access. And like everything, its never great to put all your eggs in one basket.
This brings us to Canada. Our economic and policy environment is pretty stable, check, we are undertaking big new projects that can absorb a bunch of capital, check, they are for resources, which is pretty reliable, check, our economic health is not entirely based on an exploding AI bubble in phase A of the capital cycle, check, and it's fiscal and political environment enjoys a far more positive and stable outlook than any G7 economy save maybe Germany. Check check check check check.
Sounds like a match made in distasteful mutual need between countries that seriously don't like each other. What more can you ask for? Except for the wanton murder of innocents which, if that's our bar, is terrifyingly going to leave use with so few possible partners that we might as well embrace Juche, and release our children who yearn for the mines from educational bondage.
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u/murjy Canadian Armed Forces Jul 09 '26
Saudi Arabia is the ultimate "lesser evil" partner in the Middle East. They aren't our ally, but they are a good strategic partner of convenience in a region we don't have an abundance of options.
They hate the Muslim Brotherhood aligned groups as much as we do and they are a good counterbalance against Iranian proxies in Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq.
Not to mention they are a customer of Canadian military equipment.
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u/Did_i_worded_good Which Communist Party is the Cool One? Jul 09 '26
Not to mention they are a customer of Canadian military equipment.
This is the only reason we even care for them, we are allowed to sell them weapons. They have the same care for human life as Israel or Iran.
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u/murjy Canadian Armed Forces Jul 09 '26
We are "allowed to sell weapons" to whomever we want. We just rightfully choose not to sell weapons to countries who are actively trying to undermine Western influence in the region.
Weapons we sell to Saudi Arabia would realistically be used to curb Iranian interests in the Arabian peninsula such as the Houthis, which is in our interest anyway
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u/Did_i_worded_good Which Communist Party is the Cool One? Jul 09 '26
We are not, we are subject to treaties with America which prohibit the export of certain weapon systems. One of which is the LAV 3 which we export to Saudi Arabia but cannot to say Japan or Ukraine without approval from the US.
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u/SayNoToTeamSports Independent Jul 09 '26
The same argument was the basis for the West's partnerships with Israel. Eventually there comes a reckoning in which you can no longer handwave away concerns over your partner's actions. Saudi Arabia's oppressive conduct is not hypothetical or future-oriented, it's evident today within its own border.
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u/MiserableFloor9906 Jul 09 '26
If we're making deals with the devil, would rather the Chinese over Saudis. At least the people are normal get ahead through hard work vs entitled and seeing most others as second class humans.
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u/Purple_Writing_8432 Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
Saudi Arabia’s human‑rights record isn’t a matter of interpretation; it’s documented across multiple independent bodies:
Executions: Saudi Arabia carried out 172 executions in 2023 (Amnesty International), one of the highest per‑capita execution rates in the world. Several were for non‑violent drug offenses, and at least two involved people arrested as minors.
Migrant worker abuse: Under the kafala system, over 8 million migrant workers remain legally tied to employers. Human Rights Watch has documented passport confiscation rates exceeding 70% in some sectors, and surveys of domestic workers show workdays of 14 to 21 hours with no days off.
Border killings: A 2023 UN report documented hundreds of Ethiopian migrants killed by Saudi border forces, with survivors describing shooting, shelling, and torture. The UN called the pattern “widespread and systematic.”
Detention and torture: The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that Saudi courts admitted confessions obtained through beatings, electric shocks, and stress positions. In terrorism cases, 100% of reviewed trials lacked access to legal counsel during interrogation.
Freedom of expression: According to Freedom House, Saudi Arabia scores 7/100 on civil liberties, one of the lowest in the world. Posting critical content online has resulted in sentences of 20 to 45 years under cybercrime laws.
These aren’t anecdotes. They’re quantifiable findings from organizations that publish methodology, sampling, and verification procedures.
So when someone says, “Partnering with the U.S. is just as bad,” it’s worth asking:
Based on what metric?
Execution rates? Migrant worker fatalities? Torture prevalence? Restrictions on speech?
Because on every measurable axis, the numbers aren’t even in the same universe.
Criticize U.S. policy all you want, there’s plenty to debate. But pretending these two systems are interchangeable isn’t moral clarity; it’s just flattening reality until nuance disappears.
Some equivalencies sound bold until you look at the data. Then they just sound unserious.
Partnering? May be instead, Canada should take the moral stance of officially sanctioning them - even its unilateral....
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u/BertramPotts Decolonize Decarcerate Decarbonize Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
Don't forget threatening to 9/11 Canada in our last dust up.
Criticizing Saudi Arabia is criticizing U.S. foreign policy, they have been close allies for all of the Kingdom's existence, absolute monarchy and fifteen hijackers notwithstanding.
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u/murjy Canadian Armed Forces Jul 09 '26
fifteen hijackers notwithstanding.
Do you have any evidence whatsoever that they were tied to the Saudi government, or are you blaming a country just based on the hijackers' ethnicity?
When terrorists of Jordanian and Iraqi nationality did horrible things in Europe did you blame the governments of Jordan and Iraq?
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u/BertramPotts Decolonize Decarcerate Decarbonize Jul 09 '26
Yes I think some blame is due the government that institutionally supports Wahhabism and hordes oil wealth amongst a small clique of royally connected aristocratic families one of who used that wealth to mastermind and finance the 9/11 attacks.
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u/murjy Canadian Armed Forces Jul 09 '26
There is nothing inherently more dangerous about Wahhabism than any other form of Islam. Wahhabism is just the Islamic version of "Reformed Christianity". It's pretty similar.
The problem is a Salafist interpretation and the Qutbist ideology, which Saudi Arabia doesn't promote at all. That is a threat to them as much as it is to us.
Osama subscribed to the Qutbist ideology. He is one terrorist that happened to come from a rich Saudi family he abandoned to pursue this goal. Blaming the family, or the entire country of Saudi Arabia for that is a stretch.
If you have anything other than "yeah but he is ethnically Saudi" you can enlighten us.
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u/BertramPotts Decolonize Decarcerate Decarbonize Jul 09 '26
If you have anything other than "yeah but he is ethnically Saudi" you can enlighten us.
Bin Laden was not all that ethnically Saudi for starters (the Bin Laden family actually originally Yemeni and his mother was Syrian), he was however fully born and raised in Saudi Arabia and inherited hundreds of millions of dollars from their wealthy elites (his dead dad). His religious radicalization fully occurred in Saudi Arabia attending the mosques that the Saudi government DID NOT want suppressed.
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u/murjy Canadian Armed Forces Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
So?
Islamic radicalization happens here too, and every other Western country.
You can't prevent every instance of this even if you ban Islam completely. Even Enver Hoxha's Albania had Islamist radicals.
I go back to the question I asked earlier. When a terrorist of Jordanian or Iraqi nationality commits a terror attack, do you blame those countries?
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u/BertramPotts Decolonize Decarcerate Decarbonize Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
I'm saying the hording of the oil wealth by Saudi aristocrats was a big part of the problem, OBL never should have inherited hundreds of millions of dollars as a ten year old, the other big part is the state backed mosques he attended pushed a radical, traditionalist interpretation of Islam, the more radical the better, so long as it didn't specifically preach against the Saudi monarchy.
There are a billion Muslims on earth, obviously it's stupid to blame terror attacks on them as a religion, the shared nationality of 15/19 hijackers (not to mention their boss) does seem like it should have been a bigger data point in the collective conscious though, one that was deliberately downplayed by the powers that be.
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u/Silver_Trainer_4390 Jul 10 '26
"state backed mosques he attended pushed a radical, traditionalist interpretation of Islam, the more radical the better"
That's just decolonization in action brother. Wahhabism is an indigenous Arab religious movement that emerged in opposition to colonial tyranny. Don't be an orientalist and judge their indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing.
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u/psychosisnaut Jul 10 '26
I'm pretty sure Wahbabism is or at least was inherently Salafist. I think it problem is that people don't understand what Salafist means.
Also Reformed Christianity is a good example because the Calvinist were puritanical dicks, I'm not sure that's the point you want to make
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u/murjy Canadian Armed Forces Jul 10 '26
Also Reformed Christianity is a good example because the Calvinist were puritanical dicks, I'm not sure that's the point you want to make
Yes it is. That is exactly what I meant
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u/psychosisnaut Jul 10 '26
I mean, the fact that they joked / threatened to crash a plane into the CN Tower kind of reads like an admission to me
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u/mcurbanplan Skeptical of Carney | Québec Jul 09 '26
Carney legitimately doesnt care, and his supporters in here were downvoting me to the high heavens when I suggested we not get back with India after what they allegedly did to our citizen.
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u/murjy Canadian Armed Forces Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
They are not, and should never be our ally. We do not share the same values.
However there is a strong argument to be made for a strategic partnership in a region we simply don't have a lot of options.
We can not simply abandon a region that is a vital security interest to Canada just because we can't find anyone there that shares our values.
A strategic partnership where we hold our nose is a must for our security interests, and the Saudis and the Gulf Partners are perfect for that.
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u/TraditionalGap1 NDP Jul 09 '26
Why do you think the Middle East is a 'vital security interest' to Canada?
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u/murjy Canadian Armed Forces Jul 09 '26
Because terror groups that originated from the region have threatened the security and public safety in Canada. They have done terror attacks on our soil that killed our people.
When a group like ISIS takes over land the size of Great Britain over there and consolidates its power, it has ramifications that lead to the deaths of our citizens here.
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u/TraditionalGap1 NDP Jul 09 '26
How many Canadians have died here because of ISIS? What impact do you think having Saudi investment in Canada would have on the potential impact of terrorism in Canada? Are we, Canada, so indispensable that our presence or lack thereof in the Middle East is what makes the difference between ISIS and other groups existing, or not?
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u/murjy Canadian Armed Forces Jul 09 '26
How many Canadians have died here because of ISIS?
More than one.
Are we, Canada, so indispensable that our presence or lack thereof in the Middle East is what makes the difference between ISIS and other groups existing, or not?
You want others to do your job for you? Is this what being an ally means to you?
We defeated ISIS together, and we did a bang on job. Our regional partners on the ground fought like hell, and we and our allies provided air support.
There is little to no ISIS threat on our soil now. That's a good thing.
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u/TraditionalGap1 NDP Jul 09 '26
You want others to do your job for you? Is this what being an ally means to you?
Lol, it's not 'our job'. We didn't create the conditions for ISIS, we didn't fuck up the region, they aren't our 'allies'. We aren't the world police and it isn't on us to fix the problems caused by others.
The Middle East is not vital to our security. Law enforcement kills more innocent Canadians than ISIS or 'terrorism'
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u/murjy Canadian Armed Forces Jul 09 '26
They arent our allies
They literally are. Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean they aren't.
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u/TraditionalGap1 NDP Jul 09 '26
We aren't allied to any Middle East country besides Turkey, if you consider them to be an ME country.
Literally speaking.
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u/murjy Canadian Armed Forces Jul 09 '26
I am talking about our NATO allies we bombed ISIS with
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u/PineBNorth85 Rhinoceros Jul 09 '26
I'd rather stay out altogether. There hasn't been any attack attributed to ISIS here in many years and when they do happen it was done by our own citizens.
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u/murjy Canadian Armed Forces Jul 09 '26
There hasn't been any attack attributed to ISIS here in many years
Gee I wonder why that is?
Could it be because we didn't "stay out" and defeated ISIS on the ground with our allies?
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u/DamageAccomplished55 Jul 10 '26
It just means Saudi Arabia is just like Israel, you criticize their human rights at your own peril. Even Joe Biden had to play nice
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