200 Protesters Converge on CANSEC Arms Trade Show
Demonstrators gathered outside the convention centre Thursday morning to oppose Canada's largest weapons trade show, citing sales to authoritarian regimes.
Around 200 demonstrators gathered Thursday morning outside the Cohere convention centre in the south end to protest CANSEC, the Canadian arms trade show that drew approximately 20,000 delegates and 320 exhibitors this week.
Protesters arrived around 7 a.m., blowing whistles, banging drums, and holding banners with the names of children killed in Gaza. Some carried large images of Prime Minister Mark Carney, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Rosie Lucente, a spokesperson for the Shut Down CANSEC campaign, told the Ottawa Citizen the gathering aimed to draw attention to what she called "the largest weapons trade show in Canada" and the companies exhibiting there. "They sell their weapons to Israel, to the Philippine government, to other governments that are carrying out genocide," Lucente said. "They fuel dictatorships, and every deal made here at CANSEC is a death sentence."
Police said there were minor tussles when demonstrators tried to block a crosswalk, but no arrests were made. The show, held May 27 and 28, was the largest in CANSEC's history — up from 285 exhibitors in 2025 and 265 in 2024. Attendance jumped to 20,000 registered delegates from 14,596 last year, driven partly by the government's $180 billion defence procurement announcement.
For the first time, journalists critical of the defence industry and military spending were denied entry to CANSEC, drawing concern from media outlets about press access.