January 15, 2025 – With the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, Canadians with loved ones in Gaza are urging the Canadian government to take immediate action to ensure that those who applied to come to Canada under a special temporary residence program are able to exit Gaza and finalize their applications in Egypt or Jordan.
“Our community is weighed down with a huge sorrow that Canada has failed for over a year to protect our loved ones by acting quickly to get them out,” says Gazan Canadians League spokesperson Israa Alsaafin. “The only loved ones who escaped got out without assistance from Canada. To date, this program has been a total failure, and hundreds have been killed waiting for Canada. But now is an opportunity for Canada to finally do something right and ensure that it is ready to meet our loved ones at the Gaza border exits and get them reunited with us here in safety.”
As the Gaza special measures program marked its 1-year anniversary on January 9, only 616 individuals had arrived in Canada, all of them able to do so only because they lost their life savings to pay the exorbitant border exit fees. Some 4,700 applications have been received.
“In its first year, the Canadian government processed applications for and welcomed 249,000 Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion, which shows that the system can work when the skin colour and religion of the applicants is politically acceptable to the immigration bureaucracy,” says Matthew Behrens of the Rural Refugee Rights Network. “Canada processed an average of 700 applications a day for Ukrainians, usually within a two-week turnaround, whereas the average for people trying to escape a genocide in Gaza is 2 applications per day, with a lethal waiting time for some of over a year.”
While many welcome the possibility of a 42-day ceasefire, conditions in the region remain tenuous, and any excuse could be used to end the ceasefire and continue the slaughter that has claimed upwards of 200,000 Palestinian lives, according to the British medical journal The Lancet.
“For the longest time, over 600 names of applicants to come to Canada have been in the hands of Israeli occupation authorities,” explains Omar Mansour, a founder of the Gazan Canadians League. “Canada not only needs to ensure that those 600 people are urgently approved for exit; it must also ensure that the remaining 2,500 to 3,000 applicants still in Gaza are expedited for exit approval as well. Time is really short here, and conditions can change on a dime. A failure to expedite all of these applications means more of our family members will die either from renewed bombing or starvation and disease. Despite all of its failures to be pro-active, now is the time for Canada to finally do right by our long-suffering community.”
Advocates are urging Canadian foreign affairs officials to be logistically prepared to meet applicants at border crossings and ensure their safe passage to Cairo or Amman, where they can finalize their biometrics and make plans to join family in Canada.
For more information, contact Gazan Canadians League and the Rural Refugee Rights Network at tasc@web.ca or (613) 300-9536
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