Canadian doctors who served in Gaza call for arms embargo, sanctions against Israel

Palestinian women wait with their sick children for medical care in an overcrowded clinic in Gaza City, Wednesday, May 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehand Alshrafi)

OTTAWA — Canadian medical professionals who treated wounded Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are urging Ottawa to stop all military trade with Israel.

The doctors said Wednesday Canada’s current restrictions on arms exports to Israel aren’t good enough, and they alleged Canadian firms are still making military components being used in Gaza.

Israel has insisted for months that its military operations in Gaza are meant to stop the threat posed by Hamas, but it has faced a wave of international condemnation over the high civilian death count and its restrictions on aid, including food and medical supplies.

Orthopedic surgeon Deirdre Nunan told a Wednesday news conference on Parliament Hill she saw many patients with ghastly injuries during her five visits to Gaza -- including injuries consistent with drone strikes that were incurred during a ceasefire.

“As a surgeon, I cannot treat a genocide. As doctors, we cannot stop a famine. So we demand that the Canadian government take meaningful action,” the Saskatchewan doctor said.

She was joined at the press conference by other medical professionals from the group Doctors Against Genocide, which took part in a protest Wednesday at a major arms-industry trade show called CANSEC.

The group said companies represented at the trade show have built components deployed in Gaza and cited one Ottawa company that makes sensors used in fighter jets.

That’s despite Parliament’s vote in March 2024 to stop new arms permits for Israel and the federal Liberals stating that they paused existing permits to make sure Canadian components are not used in Gaza.

Canada has not said whether Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza and Prime Minister Mark Carney says it’s up to international tribunals to decide whether that is the case.

NDP MP Heather McPherson, who pushed for the arms export restrictions the Liberals adopted in part, said Carney has not significantly changed the approach to Israel the government took under his predecessor Justin Trudeau.

Carney joined his French and British counterparts in threatening “targeted sanctions” against Israel last week, while Foreign Minister Anita Anand said Israel is “using food as a political tool” in Gaza.

McPherson and the doctors are calling on Ottawa to ban military exports, sanction Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and suspend a bilateral trade agreement with Israel.

The Bloc Quebecois on Wednesday repeated its call for sanctions on Israeli officials, saying it’s the only measure that would get Netanyahu to respect international law.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said the Liberals should instead combat antisemitism in Canada and impose sanctions on Iran.

“It really is extremely unfair that Mr. Carney is targeting the democratic, Jewish state of Israel when, in fact, Hamas continues to hold hostages,” he told reporters Wednesday.

The Canadian Press has asked Global Affairs Canada for comment but has not yet received a response.

McPherson has drafted a motion, which she plans to table in the Commons with the support of Green Leader Elizabeth May, calling on Canada to formally recognize Palestinian statehood.

Liberal MPs who have vocally supported Palestinians said they were interested in reading the motion.

Montreal-based emergency and family physician Sarah Lalonde told Wednesday’s news conference she saw maimed Palestinian civilians who had no idea why they had been attacked by Israel.

She said that since she left Gaza, Israel bombed the hospital where she worked and her colleagues are growing more desperate.

“The nurses on the video call looked me in the eye and they said, ‘We’re starving,”’ she said.

Toronto physician Rizwan Minhas told the press conference he saw children with extreme burns that will impair them for life. He said that with international journalists barred from entering the territory, doctors are sometimes the only outside eyewitnesses to horrific events.

They speak for “the voices underneath the rubble, for the children bombed in their beds, for the doctors killed in their scrubs,” he said.

Ottawa primary-care physician Yipeng Ge compared Israel’s restrictions on food reaching Gazans to those enacted by the Canadian government against Indigenous peoples after Confederation.

“We’re witnessing in real time, live-streamed, the annihilation and extermination of an entire people,” he said.

“This is an entirely preventable famine imposed on the Palestinian people in Gaza by Israel and also its allies, who are withholding life-saving food, water and medical aid to an entire population.”

Earlier this month, a leading international authority on the severity of hunger crises known as the IPC said Gaza faces famine if Israel doesn’t stop blockading food shipments.

Israel insists the IPC is undercounting how much food is reaching Palestinians and claims critics are ignoring concerns about Hamas taking aid meant for civilians.

But the United Nations has echoed the IPC’s warning and says it’s inappropriate for Israel to take over the administration of aid from international non-partisan organizations.

Israeli military spokesman Nadav Shoshani claimed Wednesday that “international organizations are on a campaign ΓǪ against the country facilitating aid into Gaza. And worse -- it’s a campaign of disinformation serving terrorists.”

On Thursday, Canadian aid groups will take to Parliament Hill for a separate news conference calling for Ottawa to reject an aid-distribution system put in place by Israel and the U.S.

One of the groups, Human Concern International, says 17 Canadian-funded aid trucks are ready to deploy but have not been allowed to enter Gaza.

On Tuesday, Palestinians were required to line up in pens monitored by armed contractors, but they rushed a food-distribution site. Israeli troops opened fire, injuring dozens. On Wednesday, hundreds stormed a UN food warehouse in Gaza, and hospital officials said four died in the chaos.

The Israeli embassy in Ottawa defended aid distribution in the territory.

“Israel continues its consistent efforts to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza -- including food, medical supplies, and fuel -- while actively working to prevent the theft of this aid by Hamas,” the embassy wrote.

“Field reports ... indicate that Hamas continues to block civilian access to distribution points, imposes delays, and endangers the safety of both aid workers and civilians.”

The Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council, meanwhile, is calling on Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to fix the flaws in a program meant to resettle up to 5,000 people fleeing Gaza with family ties to Canada.

The group says that just 41 people have managed to leave the Gaza Strip through the program Ottawa launched in January 2024.

It says that Palestinians who managed to escape Gaza on their own are languishing in places like Cairo.

In January, the department said 645 people had arrived in Canada through this program, including those who found their own way out of the territory. IRCC did not provide more recent data by late afternoon Wednesday.

Hamas and affiliated militants attacked Israel in October 2023, killing 1,200 people, including civilians and soldiers, and taking 250 people hostage; 58 hostages have died or remain in captivity.

Gaza’s health ministry, which is controlled by Hamas, says more than 55,000 people have died during Israel’s offensive, including civilians and militants.

-- With files from Emilie Bergeron

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 28, 2025.