Canada – the quiet warmonger http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_63321.shtml

But even before expanding its militarism, Canada has been quietly serving as a merchant of death. Although it is extremely hard to find exact numbers, due to deliberate government obfuscation, it is known that Canada is the world’s sixth largest supplier of weaponry. Not bad for a country with a smaller population than the state of California.Most Canadians are oblivious to the efforts of its government to get a big piece of the action in the killing business.

But to the extent that Canadians know anything at all about the military industry, they are assured by the federal government that strict guidelines are in place to ‘control’ the flow of weapons systems – but not actually stop them. Because of these flexible guidelines, Canada finds its weapons, or weapon components, in high demand, not only by foreign governments engaged in wars (sometimes against their own people) but also by ‘business-friendly’ régimes that oppress their populations through threats, intimidation, and the omnipresence of local brutal security forces.

Canada reports, through a variety of agencies, what weapons, or parts of weapons, are produced; but it is a Gordian knot trying to determine exactly what has gone where. The various agencies report various things, and it is clear that some reporting is deliberately evasive. For instance, Canada ships helicopters to the army in Colombia but doesn’t list this as ‘military equipment’ because the weaponry is not installed in them. The weaponry is shipped to the US as components where it is assembled and sent to Colombia separately.