Canada's Plan to Take in Palestinians from Gaza Is a "PR Show," Families Say
The Temporary Residence Visa Program for Palestinians in Gaza with family ties in Canada was “seemingly designed to fail.”
TORONTO, CANADA - For nearly two years, Canadian citizen Najlaa Alzaanin, who lives and works in Halifax, has been trying to evacuate her family from Gaza to Canada under the government’s special visa program, but with no success and no action from government officials.
Alzaanin is especially worried for her mother who now lives in a tent in central Gaza, and she has been struggling with health complications due to her diabetes and lack of medication. The family was forced to flee Gaza City on foot last month amid Israel’s military offensive on the city, walking for 16 hours to reach Deir el-Balah. Most of Alzaanin’s 23 family members that she applied to evacuate to Canada are children: 11 of them are 12 years and younger. Two of the newborns have been at the hospital due to malnutrition. Her mother has lost around 50 pounds since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, and her condition has worsened with constant forced displacement and starvation.
Alzaanin’s mother and sister had already applied for the visitor visa and submitted their security biometrics in Cairo a week before Israel’s war on Gaza started in October 2023, as they had planned to travel to Canada to attend Alzaanin’s university graduation later in 2024.
When the Temporary Residence Visa Program (TRV) for Palestinians in Gaza with Canadian family ties was launched by the Canadian government in January 2024, Alzaanin then transferred their applications to the TRV program.
The TRV was initiated after Palestinian-Canadian citizens and permanent residents spent months advocating to bring their families to safety in Canada. The “special measures for extended family” program was initially capped at 1,000 applications, but later expanded to 5,000 individuals, which closed in March 2025 having received the maximum number of applications.
“Canada is not helping,” the 39-year-old told Drop Site News, speaking of her attempts to save her family. “There’s no progress,” Alzaanin added. “We already have people who have biometrics (fingerprints and ID registered). So, if this is the case [that they have met all visa requirements], why are you not evacuating them?”
The Gazan Canadians Families League advocacy group, one Alzaanin helped to establish, says the visa program is a complex process that discriminates against Palestinians. Other applicants have criticized the government for maintaining requirements that are impossible to complete in the besieged Gaza Strip, such as security biometrics, which even before the war were available only in Jerusalem or Cairo.
“It’s very hard—it’s very overwhelming, draining—to go through all this systematic racism, while I’m watching the genocide, the killing, the constant evacuation, or displacement. My family is being starved—all of this through my phone screen, [while] not being able to do anything to support them.”
Omar Mansour, founder of the advocacy group, said that the government has made exceptions to mandatory requirements in previous programs. For example, Canada waived its pre-arrival medical examinations for Ukrainians arriving during the Covid-19 pandemic, and this was done in huge numbers, as nearly a million visas were approved.
More than 900,000 applications were approved under the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel Program, with nearly 300,000 Ukrainians arriving in Canada over a span of two years, according to Amnesty International. In July, Amnesty International criticized Canada’s TRV program, saying “Palestinians have been treated with suspicion and delays, through a program seemingly designed to fail” and highlighted the “irreparable harm caused by Canada’s shifting and inconsistent application process, which has forcibly torn families apart and violated the very principles of humanitarian response.”
In a matter of weeks, Canada moved tens of thousands of Ukrainians to safety in Canada, with chartered flights and open work permits. By contrast, Amnesty International reported that, as of late July, only a few dozen families have arrived in Canada from Gaza under the TRV program.
“That tells you this government made this program as a PR show. They have no interest in facilitating the exit of any of our family members,” Mansour said. “You are not being treated as an equal citizen in Canada.”
Alzaanin said that “It’s only about Canada’s image. In the news and media, you hear that Canada created this program, but in reality, Canada did nothing to make this program succeed.”
The Public Relations of Government Assistance
For Mansour, the constant lobbying and advocacy for his family, and other Palestinians in Gaza, to be evacuated has taken a personal toll on himself. Since the war started, he lost his job, his relationship, and now is battling chronic anxiety and fatigue. “It’s not easy to do this full-time,” Mansour told Drop Site from Vancouver.
Under the program, Mansour had been trying to evacuate his sister who has cancer. Instead, she was evacuated by Rebuilding Alliance, a US-based NGO, to Egypt, where she is undergoing chemotherapy. Some Palestinians lost their eligibility for visas simply because they escaped to Egypt before the Canadian government sent them their unique identification code, to finalise their application. The ID codes were only created for the Gaza special program and were never used before in government-led evacuations, he said. Many remain stuck in Egypt.
“They keep creating layers and layers of bureaucracy for no reason,” Mansour said.
Omar’s 24-year-old brother Feras is dying due to a serious heart condition called Mobitz Type II, where his heart can stop without warning. He urgently needs pacemaker surgery that’s impossible to get in Gaza where the health care system has come under systematic attack by the Israeli military.
“They keep putting obstacles in this program: the condition to do biometrics. If you’ve made an emergency critical program to evacuate people and save lives, why not try to bring other alternatives or options for people?” Mansour asked.
Working with asylum seekers at a refugee clinic in Halifax, Alzaanin also said she witnessed the “double standards” when the Ukraine-Russia war broke out. “I saw how Canada responded, and how they rushed to bring them in, but when it comes to us Palestinians, no.”
More than 300 patients in need of critical medical attention have passed Canadian security clearance and eligibility, according to the Gazan Canadians Families League, but there is still no evacuation. More than 700 people have died, including almost 140 children, while waiting for medical evacuation since the war began, the World Health Organization says.
The application process is complicated, and requires Palestinians to even include the origin of every scar and injury on their body, a request that was never used before for other programs, Mansour said. If the applicants later end up with more scars or injuries not included in the original application, this may also invalidate their application.
Toronto immigration lawyer Debbie Rachlis who represents dozens of applicants under the program told Drop Site News that she has never seen this level of securitisation and scrutiny of applicants in all her professional years.
“There’s no way [this program] could ever work,” she said, noting that even her clients who submitted biometrics are still waiting to move forward with their visa status a year or more later.
The Gazan Canadians Families League says appeals to Canadian MPs and to Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab have gone unanswered. The advocacy group has been organizing sit-ins at IRCC offices in Vancouver, Toronto and Nova Scotia over the past few months, demanding the government to take action.
Alzaanin said she confronted Diab at a barbeque in July—to ask her why there have been very few evacuations. In a video posted on Instagram, Diab responded: “There is no Canadian military presence” in Gaza to evacuate them, before turning around and hurrying away. An email sent to Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab also did not receive a response.
Alzaanin has now resorted to working with lawyers to file a case to the federal court for her mother due to her medical condition. Alzaanin discovered that her mother and sister had initially passed the security check through an information request made with her lawyers. In February 2025, however, both were again placed under a security check for the second time for unknown reasons. “There is no excuse for delaying her application,” Alzaanin said.
“Canada should do the job, fulfill the promise that they made, save our families, and see us as humans. What Canada is doing makes us feel that we don’t matter—our families’ lives in Gaza also don’t matter to them. Stop being complicit in this genocide, either in a direct or indirect way.”
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Just another example of PEP. . . alas!
Agh! Probably a tonne of pro Israel types in government deliberately sabotaging the program. The scales have fallen from my eye regarding western anti-genocide / anti-holocaust / anti-apartheid values. It was all a lie.