Tareq Hadhad attends the Oath of Citizenship ceremony at The Canadian Museum of Immigration in Halifax on Jan. 15, 2020.Riley Smith/The Canadian Press
The Advocates’ Society, a prominent professional club for Canadian litigators, has cancelled its end-of-term dinner in June after weeks of controversy over its keynote speaker.
The organization had booked Tareq Hadhad, a Syrian refugee turned entrepreneur, to speak at its annual gala, but the group rescinded the offer after some members raised concerns about Mr. Hadhad’s social-media statements on Gaza and Israel.
The decision to cancel Mr. Hadhad’s appearance sparked outrage among another subset of the membership, which accused The Advocates’ Society of stifling free speech and muzzling racialized voices. The fallout has played out publicly since, with numerous legal groups and prominent lawyers weighing in.
On Thursday, the society sent an e-mail to its more than 6,000 members announcing that it would not be proceeding with the dinner.
“We sincerely apologize to all our members who have been made to feel unwelcome by the decisions we made surrounding the End of Term Dinner. Our decisions are especially problematic where Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Semitic and Islamophobic racism are a reality and where the impacts of global conflicts are felt intensely by our members here in Canada,” it said.
Employment and human rights lawyer Muneeza Sheikh, who has been a vocal critic of the decision to drop Mr. Hadhad, said cancelling the dinner was the appropriate decision, given all that has happened.
“It’s just been an incredibly disappointing process. I’m not entirely convinced that the experience of racialized lawyers is something that The Advocates’ Society has taken into consideration,” she said. “Mr. Hadhad’s story is a beautiful story and it made really great sense to have him on as a keynote.”
In 2012, Mr. Hadhad and his family fled Syria after their home and family business – a chocolate factory – were destroyed in the war. They eventually settled in Nova Scotia and founded Peace by Chocolate, which donates a portion of its profits to peace-building projects around the world. He has since become a well-known public speaker.
Mr. Hadhad posts often on social media and at times has commented on the war in Gaza. In a May, 2024 post, which his critics have highlighted, he wrote: “Just looking at this and thinking of all the children that we failed everywhere and continue to fail in Rafah and all of Gaza. This genocide must be stopped.”
Jonathan Lisus, one of the most prominent litigators in Canada, was among those who wrote to The Advocates’ Society. He said including Mr. Hadhad was “highly insensitive” given his “one-sided view” on the events in Israel and Gaza.
“Mr. Hadhad’s record of public statements makes a strong case that while expressing understandable concern for civilian deaths in Gaza he is unsympathetic, and certainly indifferent, to the harm and suffering of Jewish people and the Jewish state,” Mr. Lisus wrote.
Recently, Mr. Hadhad issued a public statement addressing this concern.
“It is deeply concerning that in a country like Canada, individuals can be deemed unfit to speak based not on what they have done but on assumptions about what they haven’t said,” he wrote. “I have never celebrated or condoned harm toward any people. My advocacy has consistently been driven by compassion for all innocent lives lost in conflict, regardless of faith or nationality. That includes civilians in Syria, in Gaza, in Israel, in Ukraine and in every corner of the world where people are caught in the crossfire of violence.”