Restaurant staff losing their jobs for cheering on a pro-Palestinian protest. A Palestinian Canadian journalist fired for her social media posts calling for a #freepalestine. Medical residents flagged to potential hiring committees for their support of Palestinians.
These are just some of the many instances across Canada in which employees and students have faced firings, suspensions or calls for them to not be hired based on their publicly stated political stance on the Israel-Hamas war. It's a trend that has been reported not just in Canada but also in the U.S. and Europe, and across various industries, including media, law, health care and the service sector.
According to three Ontario-based lawyers who spoke to CBC News, some employers and institutions have been quick to take action against employees or students, creating an environment in which many are afraid they will lose their jobs or face consequences to their education if they express a political stance in favour of one side — Palestinians — during this war.
"I can tell you personally, in the last month and a half, I've probably spoken with someone at least once a day [about this]," said Jackie Esmonde, a labour lawyer at Toronto-based firm Cavalluzzo Law. "They're not always cases that we take on, but we do have in the range of eight to 10 cases that we're actively working on at the moment.
"I'm not seeing people making what I would consider hate speech or discriminatory speech."
No kidding. I'm in my 30s, and being pro-Palestinian the last couple months has felt like the most dangerous-to-hold geopolitical opinion I've ever held. As a Canadian, I've never experienced anything like it.
Thank goodness the censure and censorship isn't as crazy as it was even a month ago.
Munye, who has worked at the college for seven years, told CBC the school did not specify to him which post needed removing. The last post on his account related to the war, made before he was put on paid leave, uses the phrase "From the river to the sea"
I mean I'd be worried for my job if I was calling for genocide. It's just common sense. Chanting genocidal slogans like "from the river to the see" is one of the dumbest moves you can make.
Say the second part, "Palestine will be free." But you don't want to - you want to cherry-pick parts of a saying in a propaganda effort to (squelch rational and compassionate speech and) promote a flimsy and patently preposterous idea that Palestinians are genocidal during a time when the IDF has killed 20,000 Palestinians in the last two months after decades of apartheid. Thankfully the number of people that hold the type of delusional beliefs you're espousing is steadily declining