Ottawa is sending another $100 million to Palestinians without knowing where the money will be spent

Over the years, Canadian tax dollars earmarked for Palestinians have helped pay the salaries of Palestinians implicated in the October 7 terrorist attacks, and others found to be working in high-level positions for Hamas.

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They’ve probably helped fund an infamous “martyr’s fund” that compensated the families of terrorists killed in attacks on Israelis.

And throughout, Canadian tax money helped pay for the textbooks and curricula teaching Palestinian children to seek the eradication of Israel by any means necessary.

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In all these instances, the Government of Canada assured skeptics that the money would not support terrorism, would not fund extremism and would be used exclusively for education and basic needs.

And as Canada once again authorizes its latest $100 million outlay for Palestinians, the pledges are the same. This new round of cash, wrote the Prime Minister’s Office, is destined only for “humanitarian assistance” or “peace and stabilisation.”

By the government’s own accounting, that makes a total of $600 million that Canada has transferred to Gaza since the Palestinian-led terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023.

That works out to about $15 in Palestinian transfers per Canadian. Or, $20 for each of Canada’s approximately 30 million tax filers.

It also means that Gaza remains consistently within the top 10 recipients of Canadian foreign aid, outstripping recipients such as Nigeria or South Sudan, both of which are dealing with active humanitarian and refugee crises.

In the 2024/2025 fiscal year, for instance, Gaza was given $167 million in Canadian aid, higher than any other recipient save Haiti, Ethiopia and Ukraine.

Of all the millions Ottawa has earmarked for Palestinians, it’s the outlays for UNRWA – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency – that have received the most scrutiny.

In 2010, the then Conservative government of Stephen Harper suspended Canadian aid to UNRWA, citing the agency’s close ties to terrorist groups such as Hamas. The funding was restored in 2016 by the government of then prime minister Justin Trudeau.

As such, Canadian tax money was flowing to UNRWA at the time of the October 7 terrorist attacks, which the agency has since acknowledged likely involved employees on their payroll.

In the summer of 2024, the UNRWA fired nine employees, saying an investigation by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services showed they “may have been involved in the attacks of 7 October.”

In June, the UNRWA fired 70 more employees who have been accused by Israel of Hamas linkages. Although in an official statement, the agency said “the dismissal of the staff is not part of a disciplinary process and does not constitute in any way a validation of the claims made against them.”

In 2024, an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon killed Fathi al-Sharif, whom Hamas would confirm as one of its senior operatives in the country. Al-Sharif had not only been principal of a UNRWA school right up until 2023, but he had been head of Lebanon’s UNRWA teachers union.

A scan of al-Sharif’s social media by the group UN Watch also found photos of him attending Hamas events and inviting known Hamas leaders to his school.

The Israel Defence Forces have claimed that their intelligence links as many as 450 UNRWA employees to Gazan terrorist organizations such as Hamas.

In 2024, the IDF released security footage from October 7 showing two men loading the body of a murdered Israeli civilian into an SUV. “These Hamas terrorists were also employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East,” read an accompanying caption.

Even before reports of UNRWA links to the perpetrators of October 7, UNRWA schools were well-known for featuring course materials glorifying terrorism and the violent destruction of Israel.

In April 2023 – just a few months prior to the October 7 attacks – the German magazine Bild published an investigation into UNRWA course materials, finding encouragements to pursue jihad, and even an exercise casually referring to an arson attack on an Israeli bus as a “barbecue.”

And yet, as all of this was going on, Government of Canada statements framed UNRWA as an agency with staunch controls against extremism.

“Canada and UNRWA share concerns about the threat of terrorism, including within the context of the United Nations’ firm commitment to counter terrorism,” reads Global Affairs’ official agreement with the agency, signed in 2017.

The document added that UNRWA was “taking all possible measures” to ensure Canadian government money would not “provide assistance to, or otherwise support, terrorists or terrorist organizations.”

Canada’s latest round of $100 million also includes transfers to the Palestinian Authority, the de facto civil government for Palestinians living in the West Bank.

It was the Palestinian Authority that Carney recognized as the official Palestinian government in his September 2025 recognition of Palestine as a state.

One condition of that recognition was that the PA had to suspend an infamous program providing pensions to Palestinian terrorists – a program that would have been active throughout years of Canadian aid funding, including the first tranches of the $600 million paid out since October 7.

Branded by Israel as the “pay for slay” program, the Palestinian Authority Martyrs Fund guarantees financial support for anyone jailed or killed in the course of carrying out an act of “resistance,” including murders of Israelis.

According to a 2017 analysis by the U.S.-based Modern War Institute, the PA’s own “Amended Palestinian Prisoners Law No. 19” explicitly lays out a pension system for any Palestinian deemed to have participated “in the struggle against the occupation.”

That year, the fund cost US$300 million, representing up to eight per cent of the Palestinian Authority’s budget.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas promised in February 2025 to abolish the martyr’s fund.

Although, just eight months later, a report by Euronews said the European Commission – another major financial supporter of the Palestinian Authority – was suspicious that so-called “pay for slay” payments were still getting through, albeit by different channels.

As the EU Commission stated in a public statement in November 2025, “we understand that a recent payment has been made to the families of prisoners, based on a previous scheme. We profoundly regret this decision, as this seems to go against prior announcements.”

Canada’s latest $100 million includes $20 million for “peace and stabilisation initiatives,” such as training and equipping law enforcement employed by the Palestinian Authority.

Although, in previous dispersals of Palestinian aid, Canada has boasted that its funds are uniquely free of strings or conditions.

“Canada’s humanitarian assistance funding is largely flexible and unearmarked,” wrote Global Affairs Canada in June, the last time Ottawa approved $100 million for Palestine.

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