The Senate
Motion Pertaining to the Situation in Gaza--Debate Adjourned
October 7, 2025
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry found that Israel has violated the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide by:
. . . killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births.
The responsibility for ending the genocide rests, above all, with Israel, but not Israel alone. All states, including Canada, have legal obligations under international and domestic law to end the genocide and punish those responsible for it.
This brings me to my motion. I am calling on the Government of Canada to examine the risk to Canada and Canadians of complicity in violations of international law, including war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, and to report on its findings within three months of the adoption of this motion.
Why do we need this motion? Well, over the last two years, serious violations of international law have been perpetrated in Gaza. These vile acts have been livestreamed on our phones and broadcast by Israeli leaders with arrogance and seeming impunity.
What did we do to try and prevent it? What have we done to make it easier for Israel to commit war crimes? Why did we proscribe and punish Canadians for trying to do what they could to raise the alarm? Why is there a double standard in the way we have responded to the situation in Gaza compared to, say, Ukraine? These are just some of the questions that my motion seeks answers to, and not just answers from the government, because these are questions that we need to ask more broadly of Canadian society.
How have universities acted against students and teachers advocating for Palestinian justice? What have they done about the investments in Israel? What about corporate Canada and our pension funds? How have professional bodies, hospitals and school boards weaponized anti-Semitism to silence their members from speaking out against atrocities in Palestine?
Why has the media been so one-sided in its reporting on the situation in Palestine, and what role did that play in allowing the genocide to unfold? What amount of foreign interference and disinformation, on behalf of Israel and its allies, did our security and intelligence agencies allow in Canada — in service of war crimes?
The prohibition to commit genocide is a jus cogens, or peremptory norm, from which no party, including individuals and corporations, can derogate.
In tabling this motion, I am calling on Canadians to have a national conversation about what we did while a genocide was unfolding before our very eyes. This may be an uncomfortable conversation, but it is a necessary one that is already taking place across the country. For example, a citizens’ tribunal on Canadian complicity is being planned for November, mirroring the work of The Gaza Tribunal in the U.K. and modelled on the famous Bertrand Russell Tribunal on U.S. war crimes in Vietnam.
The question of complicity is not an academic debate. It is a matter of international law, which Canada claims to uphold. The ultimate test of our adherence to international law is when we find ourselves on the wrong side of it. And in the case of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, we may well be in that uncomfortable position.
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory said in their October 2024 position paper:
The Commission also takes note of State responsibility through complicity, namely when a State knowingly aids or assists another State in the commission of an internationally wrongful act. The Commission notes, for violations of international humanitarian law, it has already reported that Israel has committed war crimes in the context of the war in Gaza since 7 October 2023. On the issue of genocide, the Commission notes the provisional measures orders issued by the Court in the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip . . . . The Commission finds that all States are on notice that Israel may be or is committing internationally wrongful acts in both its conduct in the military operations in Gaza and its unlawful occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Thus, the Commission finds that, unless States cease their aid and assistance to Israel in the commission of these acts, those States shall be deemed to be complicit in those internationally wrongful acts.
The Canadian government’s position, as articulated most recently by our newly appointed ambassador to the UN, is that it is waiting on the International Court of Justice, or ICJ, to come to a final pronouncement on whether a genocide has taken place in Gaza. This is, at best, a misunderstanding of international law.
The Genocide Convention is as much about preventing a genocide as it is about punishing the perpetrators. Canada has been put on notice of an impending genocide at least as early as January 2024. In the latest advisory from the ICJ in April 2024, the court said that all states must “. . . employ all means reasonably available to them to prevent genocide so far as possible.”
Throughout those early months in Israel’s assault on Gaza, the Canadian government position was largely to defend Israel’s actions. We heard it in this very chamber from the former government representative, who, in answer to my repeated questions on the subject, claimed that humanitarian aid was not impeded by Israel, that there was no targeting of civilians by the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, and that Israel’s actions were well within its right of self-defence.
Yet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and numerous human rights organizations have documented the intentional blockade of humanitarian aid and food as well as the weaponization of aid through private contractors.
All this information is known to the Government of Canada. The government has acknowledged as much by issuing periodic statements expressing dismay about the situation in Gaza.
Perhaps the strongest statement came on May 19, 2025, when, together with the United Kingdom and France, Canada stated:
We strongly oppose the expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable. . . . We call on the Israeli Government to stop its military operations in Gaza and immediately allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.
If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response.
Well, the military offensive was ramped up, and Israel continued to restrict humanitarian aid to the point that the United Nations has called Gaza “the hungriest place in the world.” Four months after the statement, Canada still has not taken any concrete actions to stop the slaughter and restore humanitarian aid into Gaza. In the meantime, the horror has deepened. Today, with more than 200,000 Palestinians killed or injured and almost all of Gaza’s infrastructure obliterated, we can look back on our empty, pious statements and see them for what they were.
Under the genocide convention, as well as domestic law, Canada is obliged to take all reasonable actions within its power to stop the assault on Gaza. Instead of upholding our legal responsibilities, however, Canada has continued to assist Israel by maintaining strong military, political and economic ties with the Israeli government.
For example, Canada permitted exports of military equipment to Israel between October and December 2023 amounting to $28.5 million, more than the total amounts approved for the full years of 2021 and 2022. It was not until March 2024 that the Minister of Foreign Affairs announced that Canada would suspend future applications for the export of arms to Israel.
Yet, a group of non-governmental agencies, or NGOs, released a report in July 2025 documenting ongoing shipments of military goods from Canada to Israel, including shipments of bullets, military equipment, weapons parts, aircraft components and communication devices between October 2023 and July 2025.
When asked to explain these shipments, the best that Global Affairs Canada could offer was that the information employed by the NGOs, drawing on Israeli customs data, was not consistent with the datasets used to administer the Export and Import Permits Act.
The Government of Canada also allows the recruitment of volunteers into the Israeli military for combat as well as non-combat assignments in contravention of the Foreign Enlistment Act. We are, in effect, turning a blind eye to Canadians who are aiding and abetting war crimes on behalf of Israel.
Another factor in possible Canadian complicity is our failure to impose financial or economic measures on Israel. Canada has not sanctioned any member of the Israeli military or Israel as a state.
In other words, in the words of the International Court of Justice, or ICJ, July 2024 Advisory Opinion, Canada has failed to cease all financial, trade, investment and economic relations with Israel that maintain the unlawful occupation or contribute to maintaining it.
Canada continues to provide trade benefits to Israel through the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement. CIFTA, as it’s called, has long been in violation of international law by failing to differentiate between goods and services from Israel and those from the illegally occupied territories, including the occupied Syrian Golan. That we still offer preferential market access to Israel during its genocide in Palestine only compounds our disregard for international law.
Honourable colleagues, some of you will be thinking that it is self-defeating for our government to admit to complicity because of damage to our national interest. I am sure that is going through the minds of legal advisors in the Department of Justice Canada and Global Affairs Canada, as well as around the cabinet table. The instinct of the government is, of course, to plead plausible deniability: that we did what we could, that we didn’t know until now, that our hands were tied and that we are interested in solutions rather than blame, et cetera. We may even end up arguing that a genocide did not take place, as a way of absolving ourselves from the responsibility of not acting sufficiently to prevent it. That would be the kind of cynical, twisted logic that allowed Canada to pretend for 150 years that it did its best for Indigenous Peoples, that it had no idea of the harms caused and that the past is best left buried and forgotten.
It took Canada over a decade to acknowledge and apologize for its inaction on the Rwandan genocide. Will it take as long again on Palestine? That the world failed to stop another genocide when it had the chance to do so is a stain on all countries. The sooner that Canada can come to terms with its role in that failure, the better it will be for our moral standing in the world and our ability to be taken seriously on global issues.
Now that we have recognized the state of Palestine, our responsibility to uphold international law for Palestine is greater than ever. There are many angles to this motion, and I invite honourable colleagues to speak to any of them. If we pass this motion soon, we may even have a response from the government in time for International Holocaust Remembrance Day. We will then learn, on January 27, 2026, if Canada really means “never again” when it says, “Never again.”
Thank you.
Honourable senators, today, as I rise to speak in support of Senator Woo’s motion, I recognize this is the second anniversary of horrific attacks by Hamas during the holiest time of year for Jewish people. My heart, thoughts and prayers are with the millions of people whose lives have ended or were forever impacted by those events. They are also with those whose lives have been destroyed and those who continue to deal with the anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial that Senator Woo so appropriately addressed. We must end those discriminations. We must end anti-Semitism in a Holocaust denial period.
We must also come to face the lives of those who have been destroyed by the unending horrors of the escalating violence in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel and Lebanon. The motion rightly calls on the federal government to examine the risk to Canada and Canadians of complicity in violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza in light of the findings and orders by both the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.
Canadians who have been in Gaza, including as doctors and aid workers — no strangers to humanitarian and human rights crises — have struggled to describe the extent of the atrocities they have witnessed.
Alex Neve, who is delivering this year’s CBC Massey Lectures, focused on the state of international human rights, has stated simply that the word “. . . apocalyptic seems insufficient.”
The tens of thousands dead from bullets and bombardments but also from malnutrition and diseases, most of them women and children, “. . . shatters the collective heart of humanity.”
Canada has a reputation as a country committed to human rights and justice. This motion asks the government to do the bare minimum in line with those commitments — to assess whether we are complicit in war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
Tens of thousands have died. Civilians live in constant fear and grief. Homes, schools and hospitals have been destroyed. International law is being ignored. World leaders are failing to pursue peace and justice, enabling war through arms and silence.
A decade ago, I was involved in work with academics and civil society organizations like the International Crisis Group to designate Gaza as an open-air prison. The goal was to draw attention to conditions that even then were dire: restrictions on movement, impassible borders and people trapped without regard to safety or human rights.
I was struck by how few people felt able to speak out. Many knew the reality but chose silence as a result of political costs or calculations or the risks of being accused of anti-Semitism or disloyalty.
Today, as the evidence of violations of international law mounts, the risk of backlash increases, and yet the cost of silence also becomes ever more dangerous.
To quote Naomi Klein:
There’s . . . a great deal of effort to suppress an honest examination of what has happened in Gaza and what is ongoing in Gaza. This has to do with an escalation of attacks on the Palestine solidarity movement globally, using these anti-terror laws to intimidate funders, to intimidate universities, to intimidate all of civil society. . . . all of Gaza is a crime scene. It’s too large a crime to cover up. So all you can do is target the witnesses, which is what the war on journalists, the killing of so many courageous Palestinian journalists in Gaza, has been about. It’s been about getting rid of the witnesses.
. . . We need to understand what this is about. This is about . . . not calling a genocide a genocide, not doing the research, presenting any of it as a form of antisemitism. . . . This is neo-McCarthyism... This is an attempt to just shut down discussion, because the evidence is so overwhelming.
I teach at a university, and you would think that we would be talking about this in every classroom, but the chill is real. I visit universities, I talk at universities, and I’ve been approached by so many students who have told me their professors will not talk about this in class. I don’t think we can underestimate the extent to which this chilling effect can work. But thankfully we still have courageous human rights defenders, including working within the UN system, like —
— Special Rapporteur —
— Francesca Albanese, who are going to continue the pressure for an arms embargo, for the types of strategies that we need at all of our institutions to divest from companies that are involved in the systematic violation of human rights.
Many of us know by heart the words that German pastor Martin Niemöller used to condemn his initial inaction, and that of others around him, as the horrors of the Holocaust unfolded. It goes like this:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.
How many times must those of us in places of relative privilege learn the brutal lesson that human rights violations are never just someone else’s problem? There is no such thing as staying silent or looking away without consequence. In Gaza, we see the deadly costs.
Canada’s recent action to formally recognize the state of Palestine is an important diplomatic step. It does not, however, absolve us of further obligations or protect us from complicity in breaches of international, humanitarian and human rights law.
The international court processes highlighted by this motion underscore that every country will eventually be called to answer for what it did — or failed to do — in Gaza. It is not just Canada’s reputation on the line. We are at risk of undermining the international institutions that we helped build and all that we work and hope for, at home and globally: justice, equality and peace.
We cannot turn away now and send the message that international law is optional or subject to political expediency.
The motion before us is a vital step toward accountability with respect to the Geneva Conventions, the Genocide Convention and Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as well as our values.
Upholding these obligations will mean working with international allies to bring about peace, secure humanitarian access to Gaza and support the work of international courts. Canada must also take steps at home to stop any remaining arms exports and other economic ties to those violating international law. We must also oppose dehumanizing rhetoric, wherever it occurs, understanding the role it all too often plays as a first and calculated step toward eroding human rights and inciting violence.
Colleagues, history judges not only those who commit atrocities, but also those who stand by silently while they are committed. It is not enough for Canada to champion human rights while refusing to investigate credible evidence that our trade, diplomatic and military policies may be enabling war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
Those most marginalized and vulnerable may bear the cost of our silence first, but eventually it will reach all of us. Today, we have an opportunity and a responsibility to ensure Canada finds the courage to do what is right and reaffirm our commitment to human rights at home and abroad.
Meegwetch, thank you.
