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20-11-2025
MONTREAL: Canadian human rights activists are demanding answers from their government after a former United Nations special rapporteur who investigated Israeli abuses against Palestinians was interrogated at the Canadian border on “national security” grounds.
Richard Falk, 95, was stopped at Toronto Pearson International Airport on Thursday and questioned for several hours. He said a security official told him that Canada had concerns that he and his wife, fellow legal scholar Hilal Elver, posed “a danger to the national security of Canada”.
The treatment of the couple has sparked anger and calls for an explanation from Ottawa.
“We need answers and from the highest levels of government,” said Corey Balsam, national coordinator at Independent Jewish Voices-Canada, a group that supports Palestinian rights.
Despite the outcry, Canadian authorities have not publicly addressed the incident. But the office of Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree, who oversees the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), has acknowledged the case in a statement to media, saying he is seeking more information about what happened.
“National security safeguards are an integral part of our immigration and border-management framework and, while we cannot comment on specific cases, we are committed to ensuring that our border screening processes respect due process and international obligations,” Simon Lafortune, a spokesperson for Anandasangaree, told media in an email.
“To that end, Minister Anandasangaree has asked the CBSA to provide more specific details on how this particular incident occurred.”
Falk told media on Saturday that he and Elver were asked about their work on Israel, Gaza and genocide as well as about their participation in an event in Ottawa looking into Canada’s role in Israel’s war on Gaza, which a UN inquiry and numerous rights groups have described as a genocide.
After more than four hours of questioning, the pair, both US citizens were allowed to enter Canada and take part in the Palestine Tribunal on Canadian Responsibility.
Alex Paterson, senior director of strategy and parliamentary affairs at the advocacy group Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, called the government’s treatment of the couple “patently ridiculous”.
“I think it just lays bare for everyone the reality that they wanted to hamper the tribunal’s work and try and keep Canadian complicity in Israel’s genocide … in the shadows,” Paterson told media on Monday.
He added that the Canadian government “has been trying to avoid questions of its complicity in arming the genocide, and that’s reason enough to do this”.
Since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, Canadian human rights advocates have been calling on the government to apply pressure on Israel, a longstanding ally, to end its attacks on the Palestinian enclave.
Those calls for concrete action from Canada have grown as Israel’s military assault and restrictions on aid have killed tens of thousands of people and pushed Gaza into a humanitarian crisis.
Last year, the Canadian government announced it was suspending some weapons export permits to Israel amid the atrocities in the territory.
Prime Minister Mark Carney, who took office in March, also voiced opposition to Israel’s blockade on aid to Gaza and a surge in Israeli military and settler violence in the occupied West Bank.
Meanwhile, along with several allies, Carney’s government recognized an independent Palestinian state in September. (Int’l News Desk)
