Canadian Friends tackle ‘hate crime’ rumours
Canadian Friends Service Committee concerned about recent declarations by the Canadian government
by Tara Craig
22nd May 2015
Canadian Quakers were mentioned in a recent Canadian Broadcasting Corporation report which stated that the country’s government ‘is signalling its intention to use hate crime laws against Canadian advocacy groups that encourage boycotts of Israel’.
A government minister subsequently called the story ‘ridiculous’, but the Canadian Friends Service Committee (CFSC) remains concerned at the lack of clarity around the government’s recent declaration of a ‘zero tolerance’ policy towards involvement in the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, it said in a statement.
CFSC wrote to the government earlier this year, after Canada signed an agreement with Israel in January that called BDS ‘the new face of anti-Semitism’.
