Canadian workers' free speech fears persist two years after Israel-Hamas war began

Free-speech advocates and legal experts largely agree with that assessment, while others, including pro-Israel organizations and those that track antisemitism, say employers have the right to discipline employees who breach their policies.

As the war in Gaza eases amid a fragile ceasefire, advocates warn that a chill on sharing opinions about the conflict, especially criticisms of Israel, is here to stay. 

“I think there’ll be a strong opposition to any of those kinds of expressions as there were before. So, I’m not sure how much is going to change,” said James L. Turk, the director of the Centre for Freedom of Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University. 

“I’m not optimistic at all.”

In June, York Region paramedic Katherine Grzejszczak was terminated after she left a comment on her union’s Facebook post that called for a demonstration against Israel when the country was engaged in tit-for-tat military strikes against Iran. 

She said attending a protest or calling for one is a right that should be respected in Canada as a free society. 

“But sadly, I think the events of the last two years and the way people have been persecuted, including loss of employment, shows that we actually don’t have those freedoms,” she said. 

Grzejszczak, whose case has been referred to arbitration, said she has nothing against the Jewish community in Canada. 

“It is criticism of a state,” she said. “It is not criticism of people who practice the Jewish faith.”

The war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostage. 

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip has killed more than 69,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials. 

A UN commission of inquiry found in a September report that Israel was committing a genocide in the territory – a conclusion Israel has rejected as biased and unverified. 

In Ottawa, Yipeng Ge was suspended from his medical residency at the University of Ottawa over social-media posts that called Israel a “settler” colonial and “apartheid” state in November 2023.

Ge said in an interview he was quickly reinstated “without any disciplinary action” after an investigation found his posts were not unprofessional. The university’s school of epidemiology and public health said on social media at the time that it was “thrilled” to welcome him back.

But he said he resigned after the school refused to offer him an apology or recognize anti-Palestinian racism in the institution. Ge said he also has filed a human-rights complaint against the university.

The University of Ottawa did not respond to a request for comment about the resignation and the human-rights complaint. 

Ge said he spent a week in Gaza as a volunteer medic last year.

“I saw children that were just skin and bones, that were forcibly starved because of the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip,” he said.

“Israel is committing a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Just because that is uncomfortable for some people, it’s not an excuse to not talk about it or confront it.”

The Canadian Press also spoke to a Toronto District School Board teacher who was investigated and suspended over a social-media post critical of Israel, and asked that their name not be published out of fear of retribution.

The teacher said it was a “very isolating experience” that provoked anxiety in others. “The impact is that it makes myself and other teachers afraid to speak about anything that we could see as unjust.”

The TDSB said it cannot comment on how many teachers it has disciplined or share the results of investigations it has conducted. 

The war has “unleashed a global crisis of freedom of expression,” according to last year’s report by the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression.  

South of the border in the United States, President Donald Trump’s administration has threatened to withhold funding from universities over rising antisemitism on campuses, a move critics say is aimed at silencing those who speak out against Israeli actions. 

In Canada, advocates say the exact number of people penalized for expressing their opinion about the war in Gaza is hard to know. They say while Charter rights have mostly been respected, a culture of fear has taken hold. 

“One of the effects of the polarization around Israel is it does have a chilling effect on lots of people. Lots of people just will not express a view because they don’t want to get attacked,” said Turk, the Centre for Freedom of Expression director. 

“And there’s some supporters of Israel who feel they’ll be attacked. I mean, it really is polarized in our society and so, as with many other polarizing issues, a lot of people just get silent.”

He added he believes criticism of Israeli policies is being conflated with criticism of the Jewish community as “a deliberate attempt to silence people.”

Richard Robertson, director of research and advocacy at B’nai Brith Canada, said while his organization played no role in the termination of Grzejszczak and temporary suspension of Ge, it supports the decisions.

“Our freedoms are not absolute and simply because somebody wishes to express a view on a geopolitical issue does not mean that they are given a carte blanche exemption to ignore their professional obligations and responsibilities, nor does it give them a right to infringe upon the rights of others,” said Robertson in a phone interview. 

He said his organization has recorded a more than 124-per-cent increase in antisemitic incidents in 2024 compared to 2022. 

An increase in crimes connected to hatred toward both Jewish and Muslim people has been well-documented since the start of the war.  

In November 2023, chain restaurant Moxies fired four employees after they cheered for a pro-Palestinian protest in downtown Toronto. 

Robertson said his organization raised the concern with Moxies because they participated “while they were actively on shift,” thus violating the terms of their employment.

He added there have been “numerous accounts” of doctors, academics, and other professionals facing “ramifications” for expressing their support of the Israeli government, advocating for the release of hostages or decrying Hamas, though he did not offer a specific example. 

The Centre for Israeli and Jewish Affairs referred The Canadian Press to two Jewish advocacy groups, the Network of Engaged Canadian Academics and the Jewish Medical Association of Ontario, in an effort to identify people who had such experiences. The former could not be reached for comment, while the latter agreed to set up an interview with a member of the association but did not make anyone available before publication time. 

Nancy M. Shapiro, an employment legal expert who volunteers for the legal task force at CIJA, said Charter rights are aimed at protecting citizens against government overreach and don’t provide “blanket immunity” in private workplaces.

“Employers must tolerate a range of political views, but they also have a legal duty to maintain harassment-free, safe workplaces,” she said in a written statement.

She added employers have the right to take “proportionate disciplinary steps” if an employee engages in “discriminatory or intimidating behaviour toward colleagues” or creates a “poisoned” work environment.

“Saying otherwise would let ideology be used as a shield for conduct that inflicts psychological harm on coworkers and undermines inclusion in the workplace,” she added. 

Jackie Esmonde, a Toronto-based labour lawyer, said while employers can establish policies to make sure a workplace is free of harassment and discrimination, and can discipline or even terminate employees who violate those terms, they have to be “reasonable.”

“To suggest that criticizing Israel, using terms like genocide in your social media off-duty – to suggest that is a breach of a code of conduct is where I think the problem lies,” she said.

Esmonde said she has been seeing what she calls the “weaponization of professionalism in order to silence people.” 

Despite the “big price” they can pay, many workers decide to continue speaking out because they know they have a good chance to successfully overturn their employers’ decisions to penalize them, she said. 

“I see workers not backing down or apologizing for criticizing Israel, for substantiating the criticisms that they’re making,” she said, noting many back up their comments with findings from the UN and other international groups.

“It’s rarely a week goes by where we’re not contacted by somebody who is facing discipline, termination for pro-Palestinian speech.”

Anaïs Bussières McNicoll, director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s fundamental freedoms program, said opinions that do not incite violence or use hate speech shouldn’t be silenced. 

She said the CCLA is aware of an increase in cases where employees were fired after sharing opinions online.

“In order to live in a truly free and democratic society, people need to be able to express their thoughts, opinions and beliefs, including in public,” she said. 

“They have the presumptive constitutional right to do so, including in a way that may be offensive or unpopular, even humiliating or repugnant.”

Richard Moon, an emeritus professor of law at the University of Windsor, said Canadian regulations have a very strict definition of what amounts to hate speech, which is a public and wilful promotion of hatred targeting identifiable groups. 

“They have interpreted the scope of it very narrowly, so that it extends only to very extreme forms of expression,” said Moon. Criticism of a state’s actions does not fit the definition, he said.

“There have been many, many complaints about antisemitic speech occurring at protests and amounting to hate speech, and most of these complaints, I think, have not been well-founded.”

Despite the high-profile examples of penalization, advocates nonetheless shared a measure of faith that Canada is performing better than the U.S. when it comes to protecting speech. 

That’s a fair point, Moon suggested.

“I don’t think we have failed abysmally,” he said. “I think there are many, many examples that free speech, despite many people being upset by what was said, nevertheless was protected.”