A groundbreaking new report released by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) has leveled serious allegations against Israel, claiming the country operates a far-reaching, deeply rooted covert influence campaign across Canada – and that the Canadian federal government has so far declined to classify these activities as foreign interference. The advocacy group has put forward a slate of urgent policy recommendations, urging Ottawa to formally name Israel as a high-priority foreign threat actor on par with nations like China and India, expel Israeli diplomatic personnel, and impose a full ban on Israeli-manufactured spyware.
In the 187-page report, CJPME argues that while cross-national lobbying in pursuit of national interest is a standard global practice, Israeli activities in Canada cross critical ethical and legal lines due to their consistent lack of public disclosure. The report lays out five detailed, documented case studies of covert operations, all structured to reshape Canadian public opinion, bend regulatory policy, and manipulate media narratives through hidden local intermediaries. CJPME’s findings draw on corroborating reporting from respected Canadian and international outlets, including Canadian investigative newsroom The Breach, left-leaning investigative site Press Progress, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, Israeli outlet Haaretz, and The New York Times.
The first documented incident centers on undisclosed polling conducted in the weeks after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on southern Israel. According to the report, Toronto-based public relations firm Aurora Strategies carried out the poll on behalf of the Israeli consulate, without disclosing the Israeli government’s funding or involvement. The poll used intentionally biased framing to skew results in support of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, and Liberal Party insiders reportedly discussed sharing the unpublished results directly with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office before its public release.
A second case dates back to a 2019 Canadian Federal Court ruling that labeled “Product of Israel” labeling for goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank as misleading to consumers. The report confirms that Israel’s Ministry of Justice quietly contracted a Toronto-based law firm to intervene in the legal proceedings, with firm staff even drafting pre-written talking points for Canadian federal officials to use on the issue. The covert effort was designed to pressure the Canadian government to appeal the ruling and preserve the labeling system that benefits Israeli settlement producers.
Third, the report details so-called “propaganda junkets” organized by the Israeli government, which use Canadian domestic groups as unacknowledged proxies to fly Canadian politicians and other influential public figures to Israel on all-expense-paid trips. CJPME emphasizes that the lack of transparency around these trips enables hidden influence-building, noting that many unelected influential participants face no mandatory disclosure requirements comparable to elected lawmakers. The report draws a parallel to the 1985 ban on paid trips to Apartheid-era South Africa implemented by former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, arguing that even full transparency would not erase the ethical harm of these covert trips – even as some Conservative MPs defied Mulroney’s voluntary ban decades ago.
The fourth case focuses on a large-scale disinformation operation uncovered in 2024, run by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs targeting Canadian audiences. According to the report, the Israeli government hired a Tel Aviv-based political marketing firm to build fake English-language websites – including one platform branded “United Citizens for Canada” – alongside hundreds of artificial intelligence-powered fake social media accounts generated using ChatGPT. These accounts spread anti-Muslim racist messaging framed as pro-Israel content, portraying Muslim communities as a threat to Western society as part of a broader Israeli strategy to suppress global pro-Palestinian advocacy beyond its borders. At the time the operation was uncovered, Canadian officials confirmed that they viewed the fake platforms as foreign interference and validated core elements of the allegations when raising concerns with Israeli authorities, but no public accountability measures have ever been implemented.
The final case outlined is what CJPME terms a campaign of transnational repression targeting Canadian activists who publicly criticize Israeli policy. The report documents that this campaign includes coordinated surveillance, ideological profiling, and doxxing – the public release of private personal information – of Palestinian solidarity organizers in Canada. In recent months, the report notes, Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs has pushed a narrative framing all opposition to Israel’s ongoing blockade of Gaza as tied to a conspiracy organized by Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Israel’s ambassador to Canada, Iddo Moed, has publicly called on the Canadian government to restrict specific civil liberties related to pro-Palestinian advocacy, which CJPME describes as open lobbying to curtail core Canadian democratic rights. To counter this surveillance effort, the report recommends a full ban on the purchase and use of Israeli spyware tools including NSO Group’s Pegasus, Cytrox’s Predator, and Paragon Solution’s Graphite, all of which have been used to track and target government critics globally.
Beyond the spyware ban, CJPME’s full set of recommendations calls on the Canadian government to leverage its existing legal and diplomatic tools to counter foreign interference, including expelling Israel’s ambassador to Canada and other implicated diplomatic staff, and imposing targeted sanctions on all actors involved in the covert influence campaigns. “A holistic approach to countering illicit Israeli influence will require holding Israeli state officials accountable while finding ways to discourage Canadian participation in these schemes,” the report concludes.