By World BEYOND War, March 15, 2026
On Thursday, a group of well over 50 people converged on the Roshel armoured vehicle plant in Brampton at the evening shift change, including representatives of Brampton 4 Palestine, Palestinian Youth Movement, World BEYOND War, Greenpeace, Climate4Palestine, Queers for Palestine, and Jews Say No to Genocide. As we approached Roshel, we could see the facility’s enclosure filled with many armoured vehicles, some of them covered in tarps, others in plain view.
The following speech was given by a Toronto World BEYOND War member outside of the factory:
We’re here at Roshel because we refuse to turn away from the horrific violence playing out right now from Gaza to Sudan, from Iran to Venezuela, from Cuba to the Congo. We’re here because we refuse to allow companies in our city, in our neighborhoods, in our backyards to arm and profit from war crimes and militarized violence wherever they are happening.
Last year we held a blockade right here at Roshel because the company was in the process of trying to send dozens of their armored vehicles to Israel. Because of resistance here and across the country and the unified historic push for an arms embargo, those permits were denied. But that was not the beginning of Roshel’s relationship with arming Israel and it certainly won’t be the end if the executives who lead the company have anything to do with it. Nearly all of Roshel’s senior leadership has worked extensively with Israeli military and weapons companies.
Just a month ago a member of our team spotted Roshel’s armoured Senator vehicles in action in the live footage of ICE’s deadly attack on Minneapolis, the same hour Alex Pretti was killed. This is sickening and scandalous. It is disgusting for Roshel to profit off of the fascist terror ICE is unleashing across the US. And there is absolutely no justification for Canada to have allowed a Canadian weapons company to send a rush order of armoured vehicles to ICE in the past month but this is exactly how Canada’s arms exports to the U.S. work.
We’re here because we are not going to accept Canadian militarism and its arms exports regime as it is but are determined to act locally to change it. Just yesterday a historic vote passed at Brampton City Council to make Brampton an Apartheid free community and to support the demand for a full arms embargo on Israel, making this city the FIRST in Ontario to take this stand. This is a huge win.
Unfortunately, also just yesterday, Bill C-233, No More Loopholes Act – a bill designed to stop Canada’s ongoing arming of genocide and war crimes – was voted down in the House of Commons. Through the organizing of many many thousands of people across the country, we handed the Liberal government a real opportunity to turn their endless rhetoric into actual action, and align Canadian arms exports with human rights and international law. Instead, Carney’s government has just shamefully doubled down on ensuring an uninterrupted flow of Canadian weapons for Trump and Netanyahu’s escalating war crimes. The vote on the No More Loopholes Act was a litmus test. And the Carney government failed. They picked the side of militarism and U.S. weapons companies. The side of Trump and Netanyahu. The side of genocide and war crimes.
We’re here today because though we’re disappointed, though we’re angry, we are not giving up. We will keep pushing for sanctions, divestment, and real action to stop Israel’s ongoing genocide. We will keep showing up in solidarity for an arms embargo and with everyone facing down the barrel of Canadian militarism and its ever-growing partnership with the US war machine, from Palestine to Venezuela, from Cuba to the Congo, from Lebanon to Sudan to Iran. As always we are inspired by Palestinian steadfastness, sumud. We will not stop. We will not rest. We will not back down.
