The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) is a Zionist registered lobby group that counts “rebuilding the Canada-Israel partnership” as one of its top priorities.
CIJA states that it “educates Canadians about the important role that the people and land of Israel play in Jewish life and identity with the objectives of deepening Canadians’ understanding about the Jewish community and, to the benefit of Canadians and Israelis alike, strengthening ties between Canada and Israel.”
The organization has taken MPs on sponsored trips to Israel in the past, and currently lobbies them as well as other members of government.
Its lobby goals have included:
- making it easier for the Canadian government to revoke citizenship;
- training law enforcement officials to identify alleged hate speech using the IHRA definition of antisemitism;
- Canada-Israel military cooperation;
- Canada not resuming diplomatic relations with Iran;
- additional funding for police hate-crime units;
- intensifying the monitoring done by RCMP and CSIS.
A review of Canada’s lobby registry on September 29 revealed that CIJA had lobbied at least 61 MPs by that point, some of them on multiple occasions.
Here the MPs, along with their constituency, province and party, and the number of times CIJA lobbied them.
There are usually delays between when lobbying happens and when it’s posted to the registry, meaning the numbers in this chart may be undercounts.
Here are some other articles The Maple has published about CIJA and its lobbying efforts.
Davide Mastracci
Davide Mastracci
Alex Cosh
