This ground-breaking new report is making waves in the press and catching the public’s attention – it’s our job to turn it into a crisis for our political leaders.
All these actions are meaningful. If you are on your own, you can still apply pressure at this critical time. However, our actions are most powerful when we do them collectively. Where possible, bring your friends and family along with you, leverage the communities and constituencies you are already part of, and plug into a local organization to join the movement for the long term.
Let’s get to work.
Talking points
- This ground-breaking new report from the Arms Embargo Now campaign, World Beyond War, and the Palestine Youth Movement exposes one of the biggest foreign policy scandals in decades and proves that our government has been lying to us for over a year.
- Despite the government claiming to have restricted military exports to Israel over a year ago, this research – independently verified by CBC and Toronto Star journalists – uncovered evidence of hundreds of shipments of military goods from Canada to Israel over the last year and a half.
- From hundreds of thousands of bullets shipped as recently as April, to components of F-35s, the fighter jet being used to decimate Gaza, the ongoing flow of military exports makes Canada directly complicit in what most scholars and organizations agree is a genocide.
- Canada must immediately impose a complete two-way arms embargo and end its role in this machinery of death and destruction.
Get the report in front of as many eyes as possible
What? | How? | |
If you have | Email the report to your MP and key ministers | Use our easy tool to email your MP and key Cabinet Ministers. Take a few extra minutes to personalize your message. Forward the tool to 5 friends: “Hi [name]! Did you see the new report that just launched this week? Researchers found proof of shipments of Canadian-made weapons to Israel, despite the government claiming they had stopped over a year ago. It’s pretty shameful. Stopping the flow of Canadian weapons is the least we can do as mass starvation takes hold in Gaza. Check out the report and send an email here: armsembargonow.ca/report” |
Make sure your loved ones know about the report | Email or text your friends, family, coworkers, neighbours, and comrades. Explain to them what you’ve learned and why it matters – and direct them to armsembargonow.ca/report to read the report and take action themselves. If you are already part of an organization, think about how to use your | |
Phone your MP and/or key ministers | Phone your MP. You can find their contact info here. Use the talking points above to help frame your conversation with staff or your message. Better yet, get together with 5 friends or host a phone zap on Zoom to make phone calls together. Ask your MP for a meeting to discuss the findings. You can also call Minister of Foreign Affairs Anita Anand at 613-995-4014. | |
Mail the report to your MP | Print out the report, write a personal note outlining your outrage as a constituent and your contact information, and mail it to your MP’s constituency office. | |
Share the report on socials | Spread the word about the report by sharing our Instagram posts @pymtoronto and @worldbeyondwarcanada, or reposting the graphics found here. Directly message these graphics to at least 5 friends. | |
If you have | Deliver the report to your MP’s office | Print out the report and go to your MP’s constituency office. If staff come to the door, share your concerns, give them the report, and ask for a meeting or phone call with your MP to discuss this new evidence. If no one answers, leave a copy of the report in their mail box, and consider adding a personal note outlining your outrage as a constituent and your contact information. |
Write a letter to the editor | Pick one of the news articles about the report linked above, or any coverage you can find about Gaza, and submit a letter to the editor in response. Express your alarm and outrage that the government has been lying to us – and has allowed military exports to continue, uninterrupted, to a state committing a genocide. | |
Canvass in your community | Print out some flyers. Bring them to a local park, street festival, Palestine protest, subway station, or busy intersection. Hand the flyers out to folks in your community to spread the word about the report and encourage folks to take action themselves: “Hi, have you seen the news? Our government has been lying to us for over a year, and Canada is still sending weapons to Israel! Scan this QR to learn more!” | |
Poster in your community | Print out some posters (or, consider printing pictures of the newspaper headlines linked below!). Grab a buddy, mix up some wheatpaste (or use packing tape!), and get postering! Consider busy intersections, outside subway stations, or other high traffic locations so that you can reach more eyes with our message. | |
If you have a team and more capacity… | Organize a local press conference at your MP office | Local press conferences can help generate more press coverage of the report and reach more people. Assemble a couple of speakers (ex. Palestinians who can speak to their family or community’s experience, members of local organizations who have been fighting for an arms embargo, etc), and write a media advisory inviting local journalists to attend your conference. Be sure to tie it to the recently released report so there is a clear news hook, and journalists have existing material to work with. Set up outside your MP’s office, have each speaker deliver brief remarks, and be prepared for a couple questions. Record or livestream the event yourself so you can tell a powerful story even if the press doesn’t show up. |
Organize a townhall in your community | A townhall is a community event for political education and plugging people into the movement. Gather a team of folks to help distribute the workload, book a space, and promote your event as widely as possible. You will probably want a couple of speakers – anyone can walk the group through the substance of the report, and you may have local experts or advocates in your community to spotlight as well. Consider breakouts, a facilitated discussion, or participatory exercise to help engage your audience. Be sure to gather contact information of everyone who attends so you can follow up about future opportunities for action. | |
Escalate pressure on unresponsive MPs/Ministers
What? | How? | |
If you have | Write a personalized email to your MP | Send a personalized email to your MP – attaching the report, expressing your outrage at their inaction, and demanding that they publicly call on key Cabinet Ministers to a |
If you have 1-3 hours… | Meet with your MP and demand action | If you are able to secure a meeting with your MP, use the report as leverage. Express your grief over Israel’s genocide in Gaza and your outrage over Canada’s complicity. Force them to answer for the glaring contradiction between official government statements, and the material reality as documented with this evidence. See our mandate letter for the specific demands we have for MPs – ie. to publicly pressure key ministers about the actions needed to enact an actual arms embargo on Israel. |
Hold a pots and pans rally outside your MP’s office | Following a call from Bisan Owda, a journalist and activist on the ground in Gaza, communities across the globe have been staging powerful “pots and pans” demonstrations to protest Israel’s deadly siege which has brought Gaza to the brink of starvation. Bring a copy of the report to your MP’s office again, but this time disrupt business-as-usual by making some noise. Bring pots and pans, spoons to bang on them, and some friends to join you. | |
Poster all around your MP’s office | Postering can also be a targeted escalation. Print out some posters or design your own that call out your MP by name – or print out the report itself or newspaper coverage about it – and put them up (with wheatpaste or packing tape) all around the constituency office so that your MP and their staffers can’t miss them. | |
Bird-dog your MP | ‘Bird-dogging’ involves confronting politicians in public – you can push them on your demand, but also force them to either explicitly clarify their position to the public, or have to awkwardly dodge! You can often find MPs at summer BBQs, street festivals, fundraisers, etc so lurk their socials and be ready to seize opportunities. Hold up a sign or banner next to them (ex. “You Lied To Us”) , interrupt their speech from the crowd (ex. “Why is Canada still arming Israel?”), or ask them a pointed question 1:1 (ex. “A recent report shows that weapons never stopped flowing from Canada to Israel. Why have you been lying to us?” or “Canada shipped 175,000 bullets to Israel in April, facilitating its war crimes. What will it take for you to call for an actual embargo?” Be sure to document the interaction on camera and share it widely. | |
If you have a team and some capacity… | Organize a People’s Commission at your MP’s office | Organize a “People’s Commission” in order to unpack the ground-breaking new report together. Set up a row of tables surrounded by chairs on the sidewalk outside your MP’s office door. Invite your community to gather and study the new data, “expert witnesses” who can speak to facets of Israel’s genocide or Canada’s complicity in it, and your MP and their staffers who clearly need the education (and label an empty seat with their name to shame them if they don’t come). |
Organize pickets outside your MP’s office | Print out some signs and/or print some banners, highlighting alarming key facts from the report, calling for an arms embargo, or pushing back on the government’s lies. Organize your group or community to gather outside the MP’s office before it opens and stage a picket. You can chant, distribute flyers to passers-by, and speak to the report and demand for an arms embargo. A ‘soft’ picket means letting staff get to the office (though you should talk to them and give them a flyer or copy of the report!). A ‘hard’ picket means trying to not let people through and attempting to block access to the door for some period of time (Note: This kind of action may come with the risk of arrest. Be careful not to prevent people from leaving any building). | |
Resources
- Read the report: Exposing Canadian Military Exports to Israel
- Read/watch media coverage of the report: CBC (print), CBC (video), Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, Canadian Press, Democracy Now, Al Jazeera
- Download assets: Posters, flyers, graphics, and more
Reminders
- Our actions are most powerful when we do them collectively. Where possible, bring your friends and family along with you, leverage the communities and constituencies you are already part of, and plug into a local organization to join the movement for the long term.
- If you are organizing an action – from a phone zap on zoom to a postering run with a couple pals to a big rally – document thoroughly and tell the story of the action! Sharing photos and videos can inspire others to take up the same tactic, and help amplify the report and the demand nationally.
- If you want the press to cover your action, you have to invite them – look up which local reporters have covered Palestine protests before and send them a media advisory to invite them to report on your event.