Please join our weekly vigil to reunite Palestinian Canadians with their loved ones from Gaza on Wednesday, August 27 from 11 am to 1 pm (we meet every Wednesday at this same time) at 300 Slater (at Kent), the Ottawa offices of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
Canada must immediately open an emergency humanitarian corridor to urgently evacuate all program applicants to prevent further death and physical and psychological harm to those who, by all rights, should have been in Canada with their families long ago.
As the apartheid regime threatens a complete takeover of Gaza, it is more important than ever that our voices are heard.
Every week, we bring family images and stories to the headquarters of a bureaucracy that fails to respect the life and death consequences of its failures in the Gaza Temporary Visa program.
Since the Gaza Temporary Visa program was implemented in January 2024, Canada has assisted in the evacuation of fewer than 2% of program applicants, an astounding number considering the daily risk of being blown to bits or suffering the slow death of starvation.
During the final weekend in July, Canada reportedly evacuated 11 Canadian citizens from Gaza. This contradicts their stated position that they are powerless to get families across the border.
Right now, Canada is insisting no one can leave without biometrics (fingerprints and photographs). This violates Canada's own very specific program guidelines: "Given the situation we understand that you won’t be able to give your biometrics or complete a full admissibility check until you’ve left Gaza. If your application passes a preliminary eligibility and admissibility assessment we’ll forward your name to the local authorities to facilitate your exit from Gaza through the Rafah border crossing.”
Canada already has photographs because all applicants sent copies of their passports. In addition, since Israeli apartheid occupation authorities have a registry of all Palestinians in Gaza, they would be the first to say no to the exit of anyone they felt posed some theoretical threat. But Canada is not even willing to take the word of its Israeli allies on this matter.
Instead, it is assuming, based on anti-Palestinian racism, that all Palestinians are a threat until they prove otherwise. That includes starving children, grandmothers, school teachers, health care workers, farmers, gravely injured and ill program applicants.
The Canadian government’s assumption of guilt mirrors (indeed, goes far beyond) the Obama assassination-by-drone policy which, as reported in 2012, "in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants ... unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”
Canada can shed as many tears as it likes over the losses of hundreds of program applicants who would be here safe with their families were it not for wrongfully treating every Palestinian as a supposed threat. But that is no consolation for those traumatized for life by these immeasurable losses. It must take action.
The only Palestinians who have made it to Canada (861 as of July 1, 2025) made it out on their own by exhausting life savings to pay border bribes to escape before the closure and demolition of Rafah. In the same 540-day period under the Ukraine program, over 650,000 visas had been approved and 186,454 arrived in Canada. In the first year of the program, over 8,000 Israelis were granted visas to come to Canada.
Clearly, Canada has the capacity to process applications in the same time period it did for Ukrainians (average 14-day turnaround), and it also has the ability to facilitate evacuations.
The fact that it has not done so is not a matter of organizational ability or staff resources. Rather it is rooted in systemic anti-Palestinian racism, and the ludicrous racial profiling presumption of guilt that every Palestinian in Gaza is a risk until proven otherwise.
In the meantime, far too many loved ones have been killed waiting for Canada, a shameful reflection of another bleak period in our history when Jews fleeing a genocide were turned away under a None is Too Many policy.
Please join us for this peaceful vigil every Wednesday organized by Ottawa Palestinians with loved ones in Gaza and the
Canadian Palestinian Family Reunification Project
of the Rural Refugee Rights Network.
Also check out other Health & Wellness events in Ottawa.
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