About Us – Gazan Canadians Families League (GazanCanadins)

🇨🇦 Who We Are

We are the Gazan Canadians Families League — a national, grassroots movement formed by Palestinian families living in Canada with direct ties to the Gaza Strip. Most of us are Canadian citizens with immediate family in Gaza. Many of us were born or raised here. All of us came to this country seeking peace, equality, and dignity.

We are professionals, students, parents, teachers, and taxpayers. We are small business owners, healthcare workers, tradespeople, academics, regular Canadians. But in the last years, many of us lost our jobs, our incomes, and our stability while advocating to save our families.

We are all volunteers. None of us are paid. We organize, campaign, speak to the media, meet with MPs, and build a national movement while grieving the deaths of our own loved ones, and watching the Canadian government do nothing.

We came together because we realized that as Gazan families, we needed our own voice , a voice to confront the systemic anti-Palestinian racism we are facing, and the deep dehumanization of Palestinian life happening across the Western world, and especially in Canada.

Our Mission

To reunite Canadian citizens with their loved ones in Gaza through pressure on the government to fully implement and improve the Gaza Special Immigration Measures Program, and to expose the institutional racism and bureaucratic cruelty embedded in the way Palestinian Canadians are being treated.

We fight for dignity, equality, and recognition of Palestinian Canadians life as deserving of safety and belonging in Canada.

What We Do

• Peaceful sit-ins and vigils outside Immigration Canada offices and the parliament in Ottawa

• Strategic media campaigns, videos, and public advocacy

• MP and Senator lobbying to demand accountability

• Collaborations with Canadian grassroots movements and human rights organizations

• Support networks for families navigating trauma and loss

We are the now working on Operation Skyfall, a Canada-wide campaign of peaceful disruption aimed at making Canada listen. It is non-violent, community-based, and focused on survival.

Who We Represent

We represent Palestinian Canadian families with direct ties to Gaza, including Canadian citizens with parents, siblings, spouses, or children trapped under siege. We are a minority of a minority, and our families are being killed while we wait on government silence.

We are working in full collaboration with grassroots movements, settlement workers, faith leaders, and human rights organizations across Canada.

We also maintain a WhatsApp & Telegram community group connecting hundreds of Gazan families and allies. You are welcome to join.

Email us: GazanCanadiansLeague@gmail.com
Follow us on Instagram and WhatsApp (links in main page)

Why Are We Doing This?

In October 2023, we began lobbying the Canadian government to act. In response, Immigration Canada introduced the Gaza Special Immigration Measures Program, a program that was supposed to let Canadian citizens bring their families to safety.

But as of now — not a single person has been evacuated by Canada.

According to Amnesty International (2024):

“The program is full of bureaucratic roadblocks and delays that make it inaccessible to the vast majority of people it was designed to help.”

According to Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) (2024):

“Canada’s Gaza policy has become a PR stunt. Not one person has been evacuated. This is a moral failure.”

Meanwhile, other countries acted with urgency:

• France evacuated students

• Belgium brought hundreds of patients

• Germany, Italy, Australia, and the UAE rescued entire families

But Canada? Silence. Excuses. Bureaucracy.

Why Are We Angry?

Because Canada welcomed over 500,000 Ukrainians under a program that waived biometric and medical requirements, because it was the right thing to do. (Source: IRCC press briefings, 2022)

Yet Palestinians are being treated like criminals, even after passing eligibility and security screening. Immigration Canada now claims they can’t evacuate people from Gaza because they can’t collect biometrics on the ground.

But how can someone have a criminal record in Canada if they’ve never even left Gaza?

This is not about security. This is about systemic anti-Palestinian racism.
It’s a program built to fail, never meant to work, and now being used to blame us for our own deaths.

Why Operation Skyfall?

Because we are watching our people fall from the sky, under airstrikes, under starvation, under grief.

Because this government, led by Immigration Minister Lena Diab and now Prime Minister Mark Carney, has abandoned us.

Minister Diab has refused to meet us. She turned her back on us during our advocacy day in Ottawa. She ignored emails from Canadians with Arab or Muslim names. She stopped meeting with community leaders in her own riding.

We are done begging.

We are sitting in front of Immigration Canada offices until they act.

Who Can Join?

We are asking non-Palestinian Canadians to step up.

Because we are tired. We are grieving. We are raising kids and working jobs while organizing this movement. We need our fellow Canadians — people of all backgrounds — to take this fight forward.

If you are a settlement worker, an immigration expert, a student, or someone who believes in human dignity, we need you with us.

How You Can Help

• Send an email to your MP and to Lena Diab

• Join our weekly sit-ins — even for 30 minutes during your lunch break

• Donate to support our grassroots efforts (Instagram bio)

• Share our posts and campaigns with your community

• If you’re a settlement agency, start preparing for the day we win

Our Values Are Canadian Values

We believe in:

• Human dignity

• Compassion

• Equality under the law

• The right to family reunification

• The obligation to protect life

These are not foreign values. These are Canadian values.

And we are fighting to make sure Canada lives up to them.