NightOwl

Kelsey Gallagher, a researcher with the arms monitoring group Project Ploughshares, said the admission comes as no surprise, since there is no codified definition of “non-lethal” goods in Canadian military export regulations. He noted that all military goods enable lethal operations in some way.

“Given the level of humanitarian harm being witnessed in Gaza and now the wider Middle East, I think it’s entirely inappropriate for the Canadian government to politicize messaging on this issue in such a way that it misleads the public,” he explained.

“If the intention was to mislead Canadians regarding the threat posed by Canada’s continued arming of Israel, then I think that goal was achieved.”

Canada said in May it would bring in up to 5,000 Gazans - expanding on a pledge in December to take in 1,000 from the Palestinian enclave. Months later, just over 300 have arrived, with 698 applications approved out of over 4,200 submitted.

Reuters spoke with multiple applicants who said they have been waiting for months since submitting biometric information, dashing their hopes of a swift reunion with relatives in Canada.

Immigration lawyers say the wait for Gazans is longer than those faced by other groups fleeing conflict or disaster, and that the small numbers approved contrast with hundreds of thousands of visas granted to Ukrainians under a similar program offering temporary status.

Commenting on the latest aggressions against the country, a senior Yemeni source told Al Mayadeen that the country has been hit by more than 860 US, British, and Israeli raids over the past year, 39 of which were conducted this week alone.