Hamas Infiltration of NGOs Funded by Global Affairs Canada

"The Government of Canada does not tolerate any misuse or diversion of international assistance. Canada exercises enhanced due diligence for international assistance funding through established funding agreements, ongoing oversight and a systematic screening process."

"[There are] established mechanisms [through which Canada and other donors] ensure that relief and reconstruction efforts are not diverted and are used for intended purposes.:

"Global Affairs Canada officials in the region closely monitor programming activities to ensure compliance [with Canadian anti-terrorism legislation]."

"Because delivering humanitarian assistance is complex and often involved partners working in unstable and high-risk environments [every humanitarian organization Ottawa partners with] must have strong safeguards in place and report suspected misuse immediately."

"Canada has a no-contact policy with Hamas, as a listed terrorist entity."

Global Affairs Canada spokesperson Alexandre Fournier 

Excerpts and translations from leaked Hamas documents  NGO Monitor

 

Internal Hamas documents seized by the Israel Defense Forces during its Gaza counteroffensive render details on how it was that the terrorist group has infiltrated and exploited international NGOs in their humanitarian operations in the Gaza Strip. Electronic scans of the documents in Arabic along with English translations by NGO Monitor, a non-profit based in Jerusalem that focuses on holding non-governmental organizations accountable with a particular view on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been extremely revealing. 

 

NGO Monitor

It would seem that the Canadian government donated over $300,000 to a proposed project through the U.S.-based Catholic Relief Services, implemented by the Ajyal Association for Creativity and Development, an NGO based in Gaza. According to the Hamas documents, the project's beneficiaries were selected from a Hamas-operated Ministry of Social Development list, which includes security screenings conducted by Hamas on all the Ajyal staff operating on the project.

 

For the project, 37 'team members' were involved, including one listed as aligned with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, like Hamas itself, a listed terrorist organization in Canada. Canadian government records reveal that the Catholic Relief Services was the recipient of grants close to $6.5 million  in 2014, about $10 million in 2018, and some $210,000 in 2020, courtesy of Global Affairs Canada.

 

Another document dated December 14, 2022 identifies the AISHA Association for Woman and Child Protection, an NGO based in Gaza, having received over $1 million between 2018 and 2019 from the Government of Canada, despite that AISHA was listed as 'co-operating with the Hamas Ministry of Interior and National Security'. 

 

Dozens of workers from a number of NGOs were listed in the Hamas memos secured by the IDF, among them individuals whom Hamas identifies as its operatives. Among them an international emergency medical services NGO which employed a Hamas captain. The medical aid group based in Britain had an employee "affiliated with Hamas" who "works" with the Al-Qassam Brigades; the so-called military arm of Hamas. Also named as a Hamas member in the documents was the director of an Australian charity.

 

A 53-page report released by NGO Monitor in December titled "Puppet Regime: Hamas' Coercive Grip on Aid and NGO Operations in Gaza", reference the revealed Hamas documents, describing how Hamas targeted numerous NGOs, among them some funded by the government of Canada -- to be infiltrated for the purpose of controlling and maintaining  tabs on them. Embedding its operatives into the NGOs through the use of 'guarantors', Hamas handpicked Gazans to serve as point-persons with the charities, required to hold senior roles at the organizations.

Excerpts and translations from leaked Hamas documents  NGO Monitor

 

A December 14, 2022 document stated that those individuals "can be exploited for security purposes, in order to infiltrate associations", originating from the Hamas Ministry of Interior and National Security. Also listed was a female guarantor listed as "affiliated with Hamas", as a lecturer at the University of Palestine, married to a Hamas sergeant. At the Canadian-funded Handicap International/Humanity & Inclusion, "affiliated with the Hamas movement", according to the documents in the hands of the IDF. Handicap International received over $28 million in grants from Ottawa between 2019 and 2024, according to government records.   

"NGO Monitor's research underscores the danger of oversight failures for humanitarian aid projects involving hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds."

"As the evidence demonstrates these often become pipelines for the diversion of Canadian money by heinous terrorist groups and their affiliates."

"[The documents captured by the IDF in Gaza] clearly delineate the process by which Hamas systematically diverts aid from international NGOs, and how personnel from these organizations were aware of, and often co-operated with, this manipulation."

"[The evidence is] now too obvious to ignore; [the] blind approach to aid in areas controlled by tyrants and terrorist regimes [needs to change. Canada, in addition to other aid-giving countries, must] implement changes in order to ensure that stolen aid does not continue propping up Hamas in Gaza."

Gerald Steinberg, president, NGO Monitor 

Hamas terrorists secure an area in a square before handing over four Israeli hostages to a Red Cross team in Gaza City on January 25, 2025. Photo by OMAR AL-QATTAA /AFP via Getty Images

Canadian Hypocrisy at the United Nations

Canada’s misleading denial that it nominated Iran to UN body addressing women’s rights & terror prevention   UN Watch

 

"There have been incorrect reports on social media about Canada’s position on the nomination of Iran to the United Nations Economic and Social Council Committee for Programme and Coordination – an advisory body with no decision-making role. Iran was nominated as part of the Asia-Pacific Group."

"Canada is not a member of the group and did not endorse or vote for this nomination. There was no vote, as per established procedures."

"Canada does not support Iran for positions of influence within the United Nations. We will continue to actively work with partners to counter Iranian candidacies."

Global Affairs, Canada  

 

"Canada’s foreign ministry made a misleading statement on X.com to mask the fact it allowed the nomination of the Islamic Republic of Iran to a UN committee that addresses critical issues including women’s rights and terrorism prevention — failing to object as the US did, and as Canada and EU states have done in the past."

"The fact is that Canada, as a member of the 54-nation UN Economic and Social Council, participated in the consensus nomination of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the UN Committee for Programme and Coordination on April 8, 2026."

"This committee deals with budget priorities and program coordination on critical issues, and will meet soon, May 14-21, to address women’s rights, human rights, and terrorism prevention."

"At a minimum, Canada should have taken the floor to object that it is wrong to nominate a regime that only months ago massacred thousands of protesters, and that brutally oppresses women, tortures political prisoners, and systematically violates basic human rights."

"This is exactly what the United States did in that meeting. It was the only country that formally objected and disassociated itself from the consensus decision, citing Iran’s appalling record on women’s rights.

Canada and other Western democracies, however, remained silent and allowed the consensus to pass in ECOSOC, a body of which Canada is a member."

UN Watch

 

"The United States disassociates from consensus on the nomination of Iran to the Committee on Program and Co-ordination."

"The regime threatens its neighbours and has for decades infringed on the Iranian people's ability to exercise their basic human rights."

"Due to these and other concerns, we believe Iran is unfit to serve on a body advising member states on program and budgetary matters."

U.S. Ambassador Dan Negrea 

The Security Council chamber at the United Nation in New York City. Photo by Spencer Platt /Getty Images

 

Canada obligingly assisted  in the approval of a motion for the Islamic Republic of Iran -- that would be the Iranian regime that just a few months earlier responded to nation-wide protests against the regime by dispatching police, the IRGC and Basij to violently disband the protests by all and any means, leading to the killing of an estimated 30,000 Iranians and the arrests and death sentences of untold numbers of 'enemies of the Islamic Republic' -- to a position on the UN's Committee for Program and Coordination.

 

Iranian-Canadians who desperately wish for the Ayatollah-led, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-enforced Republic to fall, and yearn for the freedom from oppression that would mean for their families in Iran, would have reacted to the news of this incredible betrayal with disbelief. While at the same time, the infiltrated members of the regime and the IRGC that have made a home for themselves in Canada would have beamed with pleasure. Just as Hamas has on occasion congratulated the ruling Liberal government for some of its decisions, now the Iranian regime was given the same opportunity.

 

Officially, for internal consumption, the Liberal government of prime minister Mark Carney denied any such reports; that they did no such thing. The actual facts belie that assertion. Canada gave aid and comfort to a regime under the duress of a conflict brought by the State of Israel and the U.S. military launching an aerial war on the regime, its military, the IRGC, their weapons depots and rocket launchers and nuclear sites. While the Iranian regime presents a distinct danger with its nuclear ambitions and its sponsorship of terrorist groups to the world at large and the Middle East in particular, Canada's government calls for a ceasefire so the regime can survive.

 

Canada's decision at the April 8 meeting of the UN Economic and Social Council enables Iran to have an advisory and oversight role on programs as diverse as gender equality and terrorism prevention, as well as 'peaceful uses of outer space'. Global Affairs Canada's insistence that Canada's role in the event has been misunderstood, is an evasive and shameful tactic in a bid to shield the government from the shame and blame it most certainly deserves for betraying the most elemental foundations of human rights against tyrannical rule. 

 

Official video from the UN Economic and Social Council, most recently chaired by Bob Rae, Canada's ambassador to the UN, showed an official chairing a plenary session of the council where the Islamic Republic of Iran was included on a list of countries set to be appointed to a three-year term on the Committee for Program and Co-ordination. With no objections from the representatives of the assembled countries, the officiating individual bangs a gavel and declares: "It is so decided". 

 

And Canada helped in that decision; not a word of doubt expressed of the inappropriateness of a corrupt, terror-promoting, nation known for persecuting its own people -- much less its violence visited upon Iranian women who dare to oppose strictures placed upon their most basic of human rights -- sitting on such a committee from Canada.

 

Screenshot from a UN live stream showing the precise moment that a plenary session of the UN Economic and Social Council approved the nomination of the Islamic Republic of Iran to a UN oversight committee. Photo by UN

 

Which Country is Dependent on the Other's Military Hardware, Canada?

"For some reason, [Foreign Minister Melanie Joly] forgot that in the last decade, the Canadian Defence Ministry purchased Israeli weapon systems worth more than a billion dollars."

"[Israeli military technology is] protecting Canadian pilots, fighters, and naval combatants around the world."

Jerusalem Post analysis

"Global Affairs Canada can confirm that Canada has not received any requests, and therefore not issued any permits, for full weapon systems for major conventional arms or light weapons to Israel for over 30 years."

"The permits which have been granted since October 7, 2023, are for the export of non-lethal equipment."

Global Affairs Canada

A member of the Swiss army walks past an Israeli-made Spike LR2 Long-Range Missile on March 21, 2024. A version of the Spike LR2 was recently fast-tracked by Canada for its troops in Latvia. Photo by STEFAN WERMUTH / AFP

Israeli media was quick to point out that Canada's military was far more dependent on Israeli tech than was ever the case in reverse, in their reaction to the surprise news out of Canada that the government of Justin Trudeau made a public statement that it planned to cut off military exports to Israel, a week earlier. Canada's own records on trade reveal that the Israel Defense Forces never purchased more than a fraction of the $1 billion in military equipment that Canada had ordered from Israeli sources.

Canada, as it happened -- according to its own records -- exported "military goods" to Israel valued at $21,329,783.93 in the last year that data is publicly available for. Among the top ten buyers of Canadian military goods in that year, Saudi Arabia ranked as the largest buyer at $1.15 billion, over fifty times the Israeli figure. A sale that was controversial among activists in Canada, but which failed to stop the order.

Moreover, the Canadian exports to Israel were almost all non-lethal, despite Canada's Foreign Minister Joly's statement that Canada had been selling "arms" to Israel. Project Ploughshares, a non-profit among the most strenuous advocates for Canada to refuse orders of military goods to Israel, reported in December that recent Canadian exports consisted for the most part of F-35 fighter jet parts. "According to industry representatives and Canadian officials, all F-35s produced include Canadian-made parts and components", they reported.

On the other hand, Israeli military contractors supplied the Canadian Armed Forces with specialized and comprehensive defence systems, not readily accessed from any other source. Canadian troops stationed in Latvia took delivery last month of a rush order of the Israeli-produced Spike LR2 anti-tank system. The Spike purchase was fast-tracked after military officials found troops to be under-equipped for anti-tank warfare. 

 

MMR Radar, made by IAI subsidiary ELTA. (credit: ISRAEL AEROSPACE INDUSTRIES)

 

This was not the only, much less first occasion the Canadian military had urgently depended on Israel to make good a sudden equipment deficiency that was identified  while Canadian troops were deployed overseas. Canada rented a small fleet of Israeli-made Heron spy drones in 2008, to protect Canadian troops stationed at Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan. When commanders discovered that Canada's existing drone fleet was incapable of effectively keeping tabs on Taliban fighters planting roadside bombs around the airfield, the Herons were rushed into service.

"The radars are capable of detecting hostile indirect fire, locating the position of the enemy weapon, and calculating the point of impact of  projectile, as well as simultaneously tracking multiple airborne threats", an explanatory statement of the event in question read.

On Canadian search and rescue aircraft, radar technology licensed from Israel's ELTA Systems is standard, used to provide missile defence for the Canadian Surface Combatant fleet, under construction. The disparity in military exports between Canada and Israel is wide. Israeli exports to Canada are over twice what Israel takes from Canada, not to mention the fact that the Israeli imports are more complex.

A dashboard maintained by the Observatory of Economic Complexity reveals that Canada took in $1.33 billion of Israeli goods, as opposed to a vastly lesser $506 million of Canadian goods in the reverse direction. 

Israeli-made Drones (photo credit: IAI)

"[In 2022 the top three Israeli products purchased by Canada were[special purpose ships, medical instruments [and] packaged medicaments."

"[In contrast, top exports to Israel by Canada were] perfume plants [and] electric heaters."

Observatory of Economic Complexity

"As far as I'm concerned, Canada can keep its perfume parts and we'll be happy to sell our world-class medical instruments to the countries who don't play domestic politics on the backs of murdered and kidnapped Israelis."

Yoni Leviatan, Tel Aviv

Canada's Arctic Geopolitical and Environmental Interests

Reuters

"[The move back to Ottawa would] allow the team to better co-operate with other government departments and agencies, enhance our capacity to deliver on the department's international Arctic mandate, and strengthen implementation of the International Chapter of the Arctic and Northern Policy Framework."

"We will continue building upon the good relationships formed through the Canadian International Arctic Centre, many of which are with Northern Canadians, while our global mission network will continue to advance Canadian Arctic interests abroad."

"Canada's priorities in the Arctic Council are to maintain a strong focus on Arctic peoples and communities, particularly on sustainable development and environmental protection issues, with our State and Indigenous partners."

"This includes strong support across the Arctic for continued climate change action, and effective and meaningful participation of Indigenous peoples at the Council."

Charlotte MacLeod, spokesperson, Global Affairs Canada

"This decision truly makes no sense. It runs so counter the process announced by the minister not to focus people in Ottawa This was an excellent opportunity for the minister to put words to action and use the Canadian International Arctic Centre in Oslo, Norway as a model."

"[Canada's national interests are] in play [when considering the country's presence in Nordic countries and Arctic multilateral organizations]."

"We should be building that capacity. Part of the problem has been that organizations like the CIAC have been whittled down over the years."

Artur Wilczynski, former Canadian ambassador to Norway

 

"[The centre focuses on Canada's participation in the Arctic Council, but is] equally focused on other multilateral, regional, and bilateral Arctic-related tasks, in collaboration with other similarly interested groups in government, private security, and civil society."

"Another advantage of being based in Norway is the access we have to research institutions and NGOs. [Norway is a] key hub for the international Arctic agenda."

"It's immensely helpful to keep up with current projects and happenings, and to create bilateral connections with Canadian partners in science, technology and academia, and social and cultural work."

Bob Paquin, former CIAC head

Canada's Arctic Marine Atlas

Over the past eight years under this 'post-national', progressive government, Canada's government departments appear to have stagnated, a result of disinterest on the part of its executive office holders and lack of familiarity and direction by the prime minister of the day. The previous, Conservative-led government identified a need for Canada to pay more attention to its Arctic holdings, commissioning a series of Arctic vessels including ice-breakers. The government led by Justin Trudeau has its focus on climate change almost to the exclusion of all else, but for his promotion of equity, diversity, inclusion.

 

Canada's former department of Foreign Affairs, renamed Global Affairs by a prime minister who likes to put his personal stamp on everything to distance any advances or civil measures instituted by his conservative predecessor, has been criticized for floundering, for failing to make a mark internationally, despite Justin Trudeau's famous chirp abroad that "Canada's back!" under his flawless steering.  A steering of the ship of state that led to a diminished quality of administration of the country's value system and culture which the current prime minister claims to be nil.

 

He is attending a meeting of Nordic leaders in Iceland as a special guest where he took to the podium to lecture his peers on the environment. At a time when, partially due to poor forest management, Canadian out-of-control wildfires are sending carbon and particulate matter all over North America and Europe. His appointee as Minister of Global Affairs, Melanie Joly, several weeks back pledged to increase Canada's presence abroad. 

 

More recently she announced to a disbelieving coterie of Arctic experts that she has decided to close Global Affairs' Canadian International Arctic Centre in Oslo, repatriating its chief to Canada, and presumably firing local staff working at the Oslo-based CIAC. It is a decision that seems to fly in the fact of a general agreement and intention to proceed with a major overhaul of the department she leads. Global Affairs Canada's own review notably found that considerably less is spent on foreign affairs, trade and international assistance per capita than many of its global peers, with less diplomatic presence abroad than its G7counterparts.

"Canada's overall presence and ability to exert influence abroad has not kept pace with evolving global realities."

"While advances in technology offer new possibilities for virtual and hybrid global engagement, strengthened presence on the ground is require to report, advocate and represent Canada's strategic interests where it matters most."

"[Global Affairs Canada should ensure the] adequacy of resources dedicated to the work of the Arctic Council."

Global Affairs Canada's report Future of Diplomacy 

The nuclear cruise missile submarine of the Northern Fleet "Oryol" at the permanent base. (Source: Andrey Luzik)

 

A key part of what the CIAC does is the support of Canada's work at the Arctic Council. The centre is one of two divisions carrying out Arctic engagement for Global Affairs. In 2016, GIAC maintained staff in both Washington and Moscow. A transition over the years saw all of CIAC's staff located in Oslo. Now, they're being redirected to Canada. Ironically, during his meeting in Iceland with Nordic prime ministers, Canada's Justin Trudeau insisted on the importance of the Arctic for Canada's geopolitical and environmental interests.

 

Rezonans-N over-the-horizon radar in the Russian Arctic. (Source: Courtesy of Rosoboronexport)

Not to be overlooked is the fact that the Arctic represents a key line of defence for Canada from potential Russian aggression, given the very real fact of Russian President Vladimir Putin's steady-paced increase of his country's presence in the North. Mr. Putin has made no secret of the fact that the natural resources in the Arctic are of great extraction interest to him. Old, Soviet-era military bases in the Russian Arctic have been refurbished in the last few years and are actively in use now as manned military stations.

 

Svalbard’s ground station, SvalSat, downloads time-sensitive data from most of the world’s commercial and scientific satellites, but not from military missions, its operator says. Source: Kongsberg Satellite Services

"Canada is a natural Arctic country. We're in NATO, interested in Arctic science and permafrost. The US is getting interested in the Arctic, China's coming across the Arctic. So many parts of the world are important, but ... the Arctic should be far more central to what we're doing in general, and particularly in foreign and defence policies."

"Are we really taking the Arctic seriously when we close an office in one of the most important Arctic regions with our NATO partners and our Arctic Council partners?"

Tom Axworthy, Arctic expert, chair, Public Policy, Massey College