Israel's documented interference in Canadian democracy — and what the asterisks are hiding. A report published on May 13, 2026, by CJPME (Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East)
The Asterisks in the Parliamentary Report
It describes the primary perpetrators of transnational repression against ethnocultural communities in Canada. Six countries were identified. Three names are visible in the public document. Three are replaced with asterisks—redacted at the direction of the Prime Minister’s office, on grounds of national security, national defence, and international relations.
The Prime Minister of Canada removed the names of countries that his own government's security apparatus identified as targeting Canadians on Canadian soil. The justification: disclosure would be injurious to international relations. Not to the safety of Canadians. To the relationships Canada has with the governments doing the targeting.
That is the sentence this piece begins with. Because everything that follows is a description of what is behind the asterisks—documented, sourced, and confirmed in part by Canada’s own government—and what it means that the asterisks are still there.
Foreign Interference, by Definition
This is the definition of foreign interference as written in Canada’s own Countering Foreign Interference Act: a foreign state attempting to covertly influence decisions or outcomes, using deception, through Canadian proxies. The Canadian government confirmed elements of the allegations. No accountability followed.
Between 2019 and 2021, Israel’s Ministry of Justice secretly hired a Toronto law firm to intervene in a Canadian federal court dispute over the labelling of wines from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The firm was paid to prepare talking points for use in discussions with Canadian authorities and attend court hearings on Israel’s behalf while remaining, in The Breach’s words, “publicly undetected.” Canada ultimately appealed the federal court ruling that had found “Product of Israel” labels on settlement goods misleading, false, and deceptive—the position Israel’s covert intervention had sought. To this day, Canadian regulations treat settlement goods as if they were produced inside Israel rather than in occupied Palestinian territory.
The Exigent Foundation, an Ontario-based organization, ran at least eight propaganda trips to Israel for right-wing journalists and media personalities. At least two of those trips, in late 2025, were secretly funded by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs — nearly $175,000 CAD approved without disclosure to participants or the public. Many of those participants published articles about their experiences without disclosing any financial connection to the Israeli government. One of them, a federal lobbyist contracted by the Jewish National Fund, is now promoting a book about what he calls a “hidden hand” behind pro-Palestinian organizing in Canada.
The hand, it turns out, was in the room.
The $730 Million Campaign — and the Charter It Is Closing
The pattern is not confined to Queen’s Park. On May 13, 2026, Liberal MP Vince Gasparro posted publicly from Vancouver, announcing a “productive morning meeting” with the Jewish Security Network and community leaders.
The government deliverables he listed: doubling the Canada Community Security Program to $135 million, passing Bill C-9, and providing the Jewish Security Network with $10 million in direct funding.
He closed by thanking CJPAC—the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee, the political action arm of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA)—for “leadership during my trip as well.”
What trip? When? Who paid? Journalists should ask these questions. Under Canada’s Foreign Influence Transparency Registry, they should appear somewhere.
This is what transnational repression looks like when it operates inside a democracy with a Charter of Rights. It does not arrive in the night. It arrives in a meeting, a tweet, a legal filing, a lobbying campaign. It arrives with the language of fighting hatred. And it targets, among others, Jewish Canadians whose opposition to Israeli government policy is being framed — by Israeli state ministries — as a form of antisemitism requiring restriction.
Named. Profiled. Targeted. On Canadian Soil.
The Surveillance Infrastructure Already Inside Canadian Policing
Citizen Lab, based at the University of Toronto, confirmed that NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware has been used to hack the phones of Palestinian human rights defenders. Citizen Lab also found that Israeli spyware was being used by authoritarian Gulf states to repress activists on Canadian soil. The Ontario Provincial Police has been linked to Paragon Solutions, an Israeli firm, through a Citizen Lab report published in March 2025. Edmonton police are using AI-powered facial recognition from Corsight AI—an Israeli company whose technology has been used, according to CBC, for mass surveillance in Gaza.
The RCMP has admitted to using tools with capabilities similar to Pegasus, which it calls “On-Device Investigative Tools.” Thirteen federal departments were using spyware as of 2023. When asked, CSIS and the RCMP will neither confirm nor deny whether they use Palantir—the AI and data analytics company already embedded in Canadian federal and provincial government procurement through a master supply agreement, whose tools were used in Israeli military operations in Gaza, and whose Canadian public pension funds are among its major shareholders.
AWZ Ventures, a Toronto-based company financing Israeli spyware firms, is led by former Israeli intelligence officials. One of its leading partners is former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
The technology tested on the civilian population of Gaza is already inside Canadian policing. The bank being built to finance the next generation of this procurement—the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank, whose charter was negotiated in Montréal on March 26, 2026—explicitly finances dual-use AI and surveillance infrastructure. The DSRB is not building something new. It is scaling something already deployed. Something already proven on a captive civilian population. Something already running inside Canadian government systems.
The company central to all of it holds a $36.6 million contract with the Ontario Provincial Police and a $14 million contract with the Department of National Defence, while Canadian public pension funds hold its shares, and the government will not confirm or deny the full scope of its use.
What Canada Has Confirmed — and Done Nothing About
Here is what Canada’s own government has confirmed:
It confirmed elements of the Israeli disinformation campaign that created fake Canadian websites and hundreds of AI-generated social media accounts to spread anti-Muslim racism. Then it took no action.
It confirmed that foreign interference legislation—the Countering Foreign Interference Act—gives it tools to respond, including expelling diplomats and laying criminal charges. It has not used those tools in relation to Israel.
It redacted Israel’s name from Parliament’s foreign interference report at the Prime Minister’s direction.
Its standing committee studying Bill C-9 was forced to conclude its work after two days, at the government’s direction, despite more than 40 civil society organizations warning that the bill would suppress protest and criminalize dissent.
Its Arms Trade Treaty obligations require the Minister of Foreign Affairs to block military export permits when there is a substantial risk goods could be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law. The International Court of Justice found it plausible in January 2024 that Israel’s conduct in Gaza could constitute genocide.
The government’s response was to change its language and continue shipping.
The Sign Is Still There. And We Can See the Hands Holding It.
Alex Neve, Canada’s longtime human rights advocate, has written that international law is not broken. Our commitment to it is.
Alfred de Zayas, who served as UN Independent Expert on International Order and has tracked Canada’s UN voting record resolution by resolution for decades, puts it precisely: “One is tempted to think that international law no longer exists, that barbarism and the law of the jungle have taken over. But no, we must all persevere and reaffirm human values and the importance of international law.” His word for the alternative to accountability is complicity. Qui tacet consentire videtur. Silence implies consent.
Mark Carney said at Davos that middle powers must apply the same standards to allies and rivals. He said that looking away is not a passive act. He said Canada was taking the sign out of the window.
The sign is still there. And behind it, carefully documented, confirmed in part by his own government, and redacted at his own direction: the hand that put it there.
You Are Living Inside This Story
Who is the target? Palestinian Canadians, Muslim Canadians, Jewish anti-Zionist Canadians, student activists, independent journalists, and Canadian civilians who have no idea they are inside this story.
Who pays? Your taxes fund the OPP’s Palantir contract. Your pension may hold Palantir shares. Your neighbour’s name may be on Canary Mission. Your government confirmed the interference and did nothing. Your parliament has the foreign government’s name on a classified list and will not show it to you.
The Charter at 44 gives you tools. A court used one of them in March to block an injunction against a Toronto protest. The same government that celebrated the Charter’s anniversary tried to ban that protest the week before.
The first thing these systems require is that you not look. The second thing they require is that, having looked, you say nothing.
This is the invitation to do neither.
