Canada needs to follow through on its promise to help Palestinians

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Deborah Cowen is professor of political geography at the University of Toronto. Naomi Klein is an author of nine books and professor of climate justice at University of British Columbia. Kyo Maclear is a writer and associated faculty at University of Guelph, College of Arts. Madeleine Thien is a writer whose work has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and awarded a Governor-General’s Literary Award for Fiction.

On July 15, Palestinian-Canadian families and their friends will gather for sit-ins outside immigration offices from coast to coast. They are not protesting for abstract policy changes or hypothetical futures. They are pleading for the lives of their loved ones in Gaza – lives that hang in the balance, while Canada fails to act on its own promises.

We are compelled to speak out because each of us is indebted to others who made our own families’ sanctuary possible. Each one of us is a descendant of refugees or war resisters. We know well that our lives are only possible here and now because sanctuary was extended to ordinary people, then and there. As descendants of displaced and dispersed peoples – like so many others who call this land home – we cannot be silent in the face of our duties to each other.

We are not alone in feeling a need to act. According to a Leger poll conducted last month, nearly half of Canadians believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Yet our government has not given Canadians the chance to live up to our duties under international law to provide refuge in the face of those atrocities, or to show the kind of consistent solidarity that we have with Ukrainians.

In 2022, the Canadian government launched a temporary visa program for Ukrainian nationals and their family members of any nationality. It was a huge success: within two years, almost 300,000 Ukrainians had arrived in Canada, more than the population of Saskatoon.

In 2024, Canada created a “special measures” visa program for Palestinians in Gaza who have family in Canada, and yet, one year after the program’s announcement, not a single person has been evacuated by the Canadian government through this pathway, and only small numbers of Gazans have managed to make it to Canada by other means.

In fact, the Gaza “special measures” visa program has so far proved to be little more than a cruel taunt. Over 7,500 Canadians have applied to get family out of Gaza via the federal visa pathway, co-ordinating with lawyers, meeting with local MPs, and navigating an onerous documentation process. As they await word from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), many Palestinians are being killed every day by Israeli air strikes and gunfire as they attempt to receive flour and fava beans.

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This abandonment is not unique to Gaza. Canada’s proposed Bill C-2, the so-called “Strong Borders Act,” would give the government sweeping powers to cancel immigration applications, deport asylum seekers without hearings, and restrict due process – bringing Canadian refugee policy further in line with punitive U.S.-style border regimes.

This is certainly not the first time that the Canadian border has acted as a colour line. Chinese head taxes, bans on Black migration, the incarceration and exile of Japanese-Canadians, the denial of the Komagata Maru, and the “none is too many” response to Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust, have all defined a border of welcome and unwelcome that was first forged in the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. Yet, some of our own family stories of arrival represent important exceptions, when people insisted on a different path.

Today again, in this moment of horrors, many Canadians are trying to live up to our collective duty to provide sanctuary. They donate to private fundraising appeals, and are dogged and creative in lining up jobs, admission to Canadian universities, homes and medical care for Palestinians trying to come here. Like so many others, we have tried to answer calls from those in our sectors, working to assist fellow writers and scholars in Gaza seeking temporary refuge in Canada.

Yet these quiet grassroots efforts have been almost completely thwarted: over and over again the government of Canada has failed to do what is necessary to get eligible Palestinians safely out of Gaza, blaming the need for biometric ID checks they know are functionally impossible amidst Israel’s onslaught. Others have been stranded in Egypt and Jordan, their visas interminably stalled, despite having secured admission and scholarships to universities across our country. Last week, a group of Canadian academics called on the federal government to speed up approvals after two Palestinian students, who had been accepted at Canadian universities, were both killed before they could leave Gaza.

No person should be displaced against their will, and the calls coming from both Jerusalem and Washington to rid all of Gaza of Palestinians are patently illegal. But those who choose life-saving refuge, including temporary refuge, also have that right enshrined. Our government’s inaction is a massive ethical failing and a clear violation of obligations under international humanitarian law. These obligations are particularly acute given Canada’s long and ongoing track record of providing military and diplomatic support to Israel, thereby contributing to the horrific conditions that are producing the urgent need for refuge.

Canadian officials throw up their hands in the face of logistical hurdles but other governments are putting us to shame. European countries have taken in thousands of Gazans. Belgium evacuated hundreds of sick Palestinian children – twice. The U.S., Spain, Italy, Australia all found ways to act.

In France, a program that combined the efforts of universities, civil society and government ministries was able, in April and May, to evacuate almost 200 people from Gaza. The point of the French program is to provide temporary sanctuary so that scholars and artists can survive the onslaught and – as soon as possible – return to their homes and rebuild.

Meera Falyouna, a 25-year-old masters student who is currently stranded near Rafah, waiting to hear if she will be able to attend the University of Regina, puts the stakes of Canada’s choice in the starkest terms. “I don’t want to be among the dead people. I want to be counted as dreamers, as future engineers, professors, doctors,” she told The Canadian Press. “I want to be a person who has impact to Canada and also one day to return back to my country and help to rebuild the Palestinian academic system.”

France’s experience provides ample evidence that Ms. Falyouna’s dreams are realistic: when the political will exists, expedited approvals and immediate evacuation from Gaza are possible. Moreover, Canada’s history tells us – and our own families’ biographies confirm – that, in the face of mass killing and forced displacement, we must rise to our collective moral obligations. Our Palestinian-Canadian friends and neighbours are asking the government to keep its promises and uphold those obligations. Untold horror has already unfolded in Gaza. It’s long past time to join our hands to say: Enough.