Freshslice Pizza owner urges Prime Minister Trudeau to stop Saudi arms deal

The founder of a popular B.C.-based pizza chain is slamming the federal government over its arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

Freshslice president Ray Russell posted a letter on the company’s Facebook page, urging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to cancel the $15 billion sale of Canadian-made military equipment.

Russell says in light of the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the kingdom’s human rights record, the contract amounts to “blood money.”

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“By any modern standard, Saudi Arabia is a human rights pariah,” Russell wrote. “The country is among the ‘worst of the worst’ human rights offenders in the world.”

Russell went on to say he is a “proud Canadian immigrant” who came to the country with $8 in his pocket and went on to build a company with $35 million in annual sales.

“It pains me to tell you that I can no longer support the Liberal Party of Canada, or any political party that supports this sale,” wrote Russell, who came to Canada in 1987 from Iran.

Trudeau has faced increasing public pressure to scrap the contract, signed by the previous Conservative government and billed as the largest arms deal in Canadian history, in the wake of Khashoggi’s death.

He appeared to be inching closer Wednesday to cancelling Canada’s $15-billion deal.

On Tuesday, Trudeau seemed reluctant to cancel the deal, citing significant financial penalties — as much as $1 billion or more — built into the contract signed by the previous Conservative government.

But on Wednesday, he said Canadians expect there to be “consequences” for the murder of Khashoggi, who was killed earlier this month after entering the Saudi consulate in Turkey. And he suggested his government is looking for ways to cancel the arms contract without triggering the penalties.

One global affairs expert noted that cancelling the contract could have “a huge number of economic implications, both immediately and in the wider economy.”

— With files from Natalie Lovie and The Canadian Press