This is essentially saying that it should be legal to circumvent embargos. I understand that prohibiting resale can be abused - it's illegal to prohibit resale under many circumstances in the US under antitrust law for example. But that only applies within the US market. The example here is a company deliberately breaching an embargo. If we allowed these sorts of sales then this could prompt the US to take even more drastic measures to enforce its sanctions, like blockading Iranian ports.
>This is essentially saying that it should be legal to circumvent embargos.
Yes, that's true. The US embargo policies undermine the prosperity of foreign and predominantly poor nations (including Cuba), the freedom of companies to engage in business with third partners, and the sovereignty of other nations, in this case, Canada.
It is a shame that the US can still bully businesses and countries around like this, and it is an even bigger shame that Canada complies.
Yes, it's attacking their prosperity. That's the whole point of embargos: to attack the prosperity of countries that are doing bad things (like developing nuclear weapons). We choose to attack countries prosperity because it's drastically less harmful than attacking them militarily. For that reason it's crucial that those who circumvent embargos are held responsible.
To use an analogy, if the US is a cop the embargos are her taser and military intervention are her handgun. Outside of exigent circumstances she should prefer the former to the latter. While it's worthwhile to criticize unnecessary usages of the former, removing the less lethal option means plenty of bad actors get shot when getting tased would have resolved the threat.
