The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), one of Canada’s most influential pro-Israel groups, is lobbying the federal government to expand the grounds by which Canadian citizenship can be revoked.
According to filings with the federal lobbyist registry, CIJA communicated with Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree, CSIS director Dan Rogers and Conservative MP Shuvaloy Majumdar between March and July.
The filings state that CIJA expressed:
“Continued support for revocation of citizenship in cases involving war crimes, crimes against humanity, terrorism, and extreme promotion of hate; strengthened screening to bar entry and deny citizenship to individuals who pose security threats or have ties to extremist or terrorist organizations; removal of individuals already in Canada who obtained status through false representation; establishment of a fast-track removal stream for high-risk individuals linked to foreign extremist organizations; accelerated removals for individuals convicted of violent crimes; and standalone immigration consequences for expressing support for listed terrorist entities, even in the absence of criminal convictions.”
Under the Citizenship Act, naturalized Canadians can have their citizenship revoked if they obtained that status through fraud or false representation, including by “concealing material circumstances” about past criminal convictions or associations with terrorist organizations.
In 2014, the Conservative government of Stephen Harper passed Bill C-24, which allowed the government to revoke the citizenship of naturalized Canadians convicted of treason, terrorism charges or espionage, and who also received prison sentences of certain lengths for those offences after they became citizens.
At the time, critics said the bill created two-tiers of Canadian citizenship, because citizens born in Canada enjoyed stronger legal protections than those who obtained that status through naturalization. Civil liberties groups launched a constitutional challenge against the changes in 2015.
In 2017, the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau removed Harper’s expanded provisions for revoking citizenship from the Citizenship Act.
It is not clear if CIJA wants the government to return to revoking citizenship for offences committed after naturalization. However, neither the current law nor Harper’s Bill C-24 allowed for citizenship to be revoked solely on the grounds of “extreme promotion of hate,” as called for in CIJA’s lobbying records.
The Maple emailed CIJA asking for more information about its communications with federal government officials, but did not receive any response.
Experts say CIJA’s demands would have troubling implications for the rights of naturalized Canadian citizens, especially those from Muslim and racialized communities.
Jouman El-Asmar, an immigration lawyer in Edmonton, told The Maple that CIJA’s lobbying records include calls for measures that go further than either Bill C-24 or the existing Citizenship Act.
“It seeks to add a new ground of revocation under the category of ‘extreme promotion of hate,’ an ambiguous and constantly evolving terminology,” she explained via email.
“Although the Supreme Court has narrowed down the definition of hatred to the concepts of detestation and vilification … it remains controversial when authorities use their discretion to seek to define actions as hate crimes or not.”
El-Asmar also flagged CIJA’s proposal that citizenship and entry into Canada should be denied to individuals who “have ties to extremist or terrorist organizations.”
She said the government’s designation of terrorist organizations is itself problematic because “it is highly dependent on political decisions, Canada’s foreign diplomatic relations, and ambiguous listing frameworks with overly broad definitions based on classified, ‘secret evidence,’ including the absence of adequate avenues for challenging listings and obtaining redress.”
El-Asmar pointed out that the Canadian government recently delisted the Al-Qaeda faction Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) as a terrorist organization after the group took power in Syria in December 2024.
She also highlighted concerns about what might constitute the legal threshold for “expressing support” for a terrorist organization, as this could also be subject to political lobbying from organizations that “seek to silence the freedom of expression of Canadians whom they don’t agree with or who rightly criticize and protest political decisions and events.”
CIJA’s proposal for the creation of “stand-alone immigration consequences” even in the absence of criminal convictions is particularly troublesome, El-Asmar said.
“Such a proposition totally goes against the core values of our liberal democracy; due process, procedural fairness and the rule of law.”
“Evidently, these proposals seek to expand arbitrary surveillance and impose dramatic penalties on Muslim, racialized, and marginalized communities, as these are the communities where you find the highest number of naturalized Canadians, and who already face disproportionate policing and systemic discrimination.”
In its meetings with Anandasangaree and Rogers, CIJA also called for a ministerial directive to “prioritize and intensify monitoring, intelligence collection, investigations, disruption, and enforcement against antisemitic and Islamist violent extremism, as well as against foreign actors seeking to sponsor or exploit protests in Canada.”
El-Asmar warned that CIJA’s proposals, if adopted, would create a further chilling effect and foster fear around free expression on issues that the government may disapprove of, particularly pro-Palestine advocacy.
These issues, El-Asmar said, mirror the same problems with Bill C-9, the “Combatting Hate Act,” which included restrictions on protests around religious and community buildings, and added a new “hate propaganda” offence to criminalize the display of symbols belonging to listed terrorist organizations.
CIJA and several other pro-Israel lobby groups supported Bill C-9 and called it “an important step forward” when it became law in June 2026.
A coalition of civil liberties organizations warned in October 2025 that Bill C-9 “creates new criminal laws that risk serious and unjustified infringements on Charter-protected fundamental freedoms, including the criminalization of peaceful protest.”
Mark Kersten, an expert in human rights and international law at the University of the Fraser Valley, said revoking citizenship from Canadians who engage in the activities listed in CIJA’s filing after they are naturalized would be “hugely problematic,” especially if those individuals were deported from Canada before being criminally prosecuted in a Canadian court.
Canadian immigration courts can make rulings based on the “balance of probabilities” rather than the much higher threshold of “beyond reasonable doubt” required in criminal courts.
The proposals would “put quite a lot of individuals at risk of having citizenship revoked,” he added. “Are these individuals proposing that Canadians convicted of, let’s say, terrorism, are supposed to be deported to some random third country?”
“It undermines the idea that we’re a sovereign state with rights and obligations.”
The Maple contacted Public Safety Canada for comment on CIJA’s lobbying, but did not receive any response.
