The repressive Saudi regime that everyone said would use a bunch of Canadian-made armoured vehicles against its own people, has quite likely used a bunch of Canadian-made armoured vehicles against its own people.  Whoopsies!

It's the inevitable outcome to a decision by the government that made manufacturing jobs at home more important than the lives of civilians abroad.  Forced to choose between human rights and the rights of the middle class to make arms and sell them to a repressive regime, Justin Trudeau's government chose the middle class.

Now Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland has said the government takes seriously the allegations and said her department will investigate the charges against the Saudis.  But it's probably too late to do anything.  The time for action has likely passed.

Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself, though.  Let's take quick stock of where we are and how the government put us in this place.

According to reports in the last week or so, primarily in the Globe and Mail, Saudi Arabia looks to be using armoured, rolling weapon platforms made in Newmarket for one of the country's periodic crackdowns.  The vehicles in videos provided by activists appear to be the same type as manufactured by Terradyne Armored Vehicles.  It's just one of a number of Canadian arms manufacturers who are selling weapons and fighting vehicles to the Saudis.

The most famous of these arms deal involves a $15 billion one between the Saudi government and London Ont.'s General Dynamics.  Back in the heady days of a year-and-a-half ago, when the Liberal government was still fresh and sunny, then-foreign minister Stephane Dion approved the bulk sale of the so-called "light-armoured vehicles," or "LAVs," by General Dynamics to Saudi Arabia.  Dion signed off on the agreement on the condition that the country only use the armed and armoured vehicles to protect the country from the likes of ISIS.

The foreign minister has to sign off in cases like this to satisfy export rules that say, essentially, Canadian manufacturers can't sell arms to certain governments that will use the arms against their own people.  (It's a shade more complex than that, but there's no need for us to delve into that here.)

At the time, Dion said the deal was a fait accompli, as it was made by the previous government, and his signature was just a formality.  But despite his protestations, the fact remains without that formal signature, the arms export wouldn't have gone forward.

But, the government's position was the Saudis are an ally and they pinky swore they wouldn't hurt any of their own people with these vehicles.  So while they said they didn't really care for the deal, they felt duty bound to go through with it.

Of course, this was a farce from the beginning.  Only a few months after the deal was signed, the Globe reported how the Saudi government was using armoured vehicles.

Now, these weren't Canadian-made ones, but it certainly proved the government was willing to turn this kind of vehicle against its own people.

It's getting harder and harder to take the government's sunny ways as anything other than empty smarm.  Saying the right thing, over and over, but doing the expedient thing all the while is becoming one of the hallmarks of this government.

But, don't worry, the government is "concerned."  So concerned, they released a statement expressing their general concern.

"The minister is deeply concerned about this situation and has asked officials to review it immediately," the department said in a statement to the Globe.  "If it is found that Canadian exports have been used to commit serious violations of human rights, the minister will take action."

It's unlikely that "action" would involve anything meaningful.  It's hard to imagine a scenario where Saudi Arabia would return vehicles they'd used — and probably found effective — just because Canada asked for them back.  The only real recourse the government can pull off with a real chance of success is to put a halt to any more.

But there's the rub.  If they were to cancel a deal of this magnitude, it would put in jeopardy some 3,000 jobs in southwestern Ontario.  These are the sort of good-paying manufacturing jobs that are fast disappearing throughout the country.  And this is a government which talks constantly about good-paying jobs for a good middle class.

If the LAVs in the Globe's reporting are indeed Canadian made, and are being used by the Saudis against their own population, the government will be faced with a choice: let jobs die, or let people die.

If I were a Saudi citizen under siege from my own government, I wouldn't put too much faith in the Canadians on this one.

Photo Credit: Fightback Canada