An interactive map showing the countries Canada does arms trading business with.This article originally appeared on VICE CanadaOttawa wasn't happy with now-ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, but the Canadian government didn't have much of a problem when Canadian companies increased weapons shipments to his government by 182,819 percent from 2012 to 2013.It's all part of how Canada's military exports have re-oriented in recent years, as more and more Canada-made weaponry heads out into the world, and into the hands of some fairly unfriendly characters. When those less-than-stable regimes eventually crumble, like Morsi's did, figuring out where those Canadian-made armaments end up is a real crapshoot.
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Everyone's favorite Wahhabi dictators come out on top of Canada's export list again.The Saudis scooped up a good $153 million (£85m) in Canadian military goods in 2013 – which is a marked decline from 2012, when they peeled off over $422 million (£246m) in bills to improve their absurdly well-financed military.Most of that is tanks. The Canadian wing of American arms manufacturer General Dynamics got a $13 billion contract to assemble light armoured vehicles for the royal family's desert kingdom.
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The data released last month doesn't touch the multibillion-dollar arms trade between Canada and the United States—that's covered elsewhere. The new data does note, however, that Ottawa's exports to Mexico City, already insignificant, have slipped further.Canada's sales to Mexico in 2013, totaling around $900,000, mostly comprised of surveillance equipment and military ground vehicles. That's down a bit from the year prior but generally up when compared with the last few years.The Mexican army, of course, is in the midst of a bloody war with the drug cartels that effectively run huge swaths of the country. The police, on the other hand, have been implicated in a mass killing of protesting students.The Caribbean nations, meanwhile, only picked up a few hundred thousand dollars worth of Canadian equipment.
While Canada has never shipped much in the way of military goods to South America, four countries are on their way to becoming crucial clients of the Canadian defence industry.
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Obviously, thanks to NATO, Canada's military hardware is in ample supply in Europe.We're talking $85 million to Austria, $11 million to Belgium, $5 million to Denmark, $1 million to Finland, $46 million to Germany, $14 million to the Swiss, $50 million to Italy, $12 million to Luxembourg, $28 million to France, $14 million to the Netherlands, $5 million to Norway, $6 million to Spain, $9 million to Sweden, and more than $100 million (£557m) to the United Kingdom.For those European countries that aren't NATO members – namely, the post-Soviet countries – there's the Wassenaar Arrangement, which facilitates weapons trades between liberal non-NATO countries on the continent.
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South Africa and Nigeria are two of the only nations in Africa that are boasting Canada-made armaments. The former rang up nearly $4.5 million (£2.5m) in 2013, while the latter bought more than $3.5 million (£1.9m).It's no big surprise that South Africa is scooping up Canadian arms – $45 million (£25m) worth from 2010 to 2013 – as the country has spent more than a decade trying to upgrade its military to a real fighting force, all the while facing the strain of repeated deployments to various regional conflicts.Most of South Africa's purchases were for ground vehicles and airplane parts.Nigeria, on the other hand, is Africa's largest economy, its most populous nation, its largest oil producer, and one of its go-to sources for military personnel and hardware for peacekeeping missions. Its president, however, has been accused of botching a response to the child-kidnapping Boko Haram rebels. The fast-moving, well-financed Salafist militia has captured various towns in the North, and managed to take over a Nigerian military base.Here's hoping that, while perusing through that base, those terrorists don't come across any of the military vehicles that Canada sold to the Nigerian army in 2013 – $4.5 million (£2.5m) worth in the last two years alone.
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You know what they say: Keep your friends close, and sell your enemies $990,000 in military training hardware.Well, that's the adage that Ottawa goes by when dealing with China, apparently.While Canada had barely sold any sort of military hardware to the world's largest military, things changed in 2013 as Canada – right after chastising the Communists for being a target of their cyber warfare – inked a military partnership agreement.So things will probably ramp up to that end in 2014. Right now, it's just the million dollars for military training and simulation, and $300,000 in rifles.The region's altruistic do-gooder, South Korea, also shops in Canada. The less-hermit-y of the two Koreas purchased $13 million (£7.2m) worth of jets, spacecraft, and ships—or, at least, parts for them. That makes the Republic of Korea the tenth largest importer of Canada arms.Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Taiwan all spend upwards of a million dollars a year on Canadian military goods.Another one in the "oops" category is Thailand – an otherwise stable nation that got thrown into turmoil in 2013 as protesters shut down the capital, and got sprayed with bullets for their trouble. Now, the military is in charge, and they've got millions of dollars in Canadian weapons at their disposal.Exports to Thailand topped $10 million (£5.5m) in 2013, mostly in military aircraft. In years prior, Canada did send over hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of "chemical or biological toxic agents, riot control agents, radioactive materials, and related equipment, components, materials."Follow Justin on Twitter.