1000 days of genocide: A story of Western immorality and Israeli inhumanity (Part 1/3)

The Gaza genocide has exposed the end of the post‑1945 human‑rights order, showing that international law for powerful states is applied selectively. 

By Fareed Khan
A version of this article can be found on Substack.

On July 3, 3036 the world will cross a threshold that should never exist—a thousand days of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. A thousand days of mass murder, starvation, displacement, cultural destruction, and the systematic annihilation of a people and society. A thousand days during which Western governments have not merely failed to stop the genocide, but have actively enabled it. A thousand days in which the mask of Western “humanity,” “values,” and “moral leadership” has fallen away, revealing a political order that has decided that Palestinians are less than human and that their lives are disposable.

For the better part of three years, the world has watched the destruction of Gaza unfold in real time. Every major human‑rights organization—Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, the International Federation for Human Rights and others—has documented patterns of killing, destruction, and dehumanizing rhetoric. Each eventually concluded that Israel’s actions meet the legal definition of genocide under the Genocide Convention. Prominent Israeli Holocaust scholars such as Omer Bartov, Amos Goldberg, and Raz Segal, affirmed the same. United Nations agencies have also repeatedly warned that Israel’s actions constituted genocide.

Yet despite overwhelming evidence, Canada and most of its allies refused to acknowledge the crime. Worse, they continued to supply Israel with weapons, diplomatic cover, and political legitimacy. The United States remained the primary enabler, but Canada, the UK, Germany, France, and others played indispensable supporting roles. Canada exploited a legislative loophole that allowed it to continue exporting weapons and components to Israel via the United States, even as Gaza’s hospitals, universities, refugee camps, and entire neighbourhoods were reduced to rubble.

Western governments have made the truth impossible to deny. Through both their actions and their refusals to act, they have effectively endorsed Israel’s project of erasing the Palestinian population of Gaza. Their persistent refusal to intervene anywhere in the occupied Palestinian territories—Gaza, the West Bank, or East Jerusalem—signals not neutrality or support for a two‑state compromise, but alignment with Israel’s long‑standing ambition to consolidate a “Greater Israel” cleansed of its Indigenous Palestinian population. For decades, Western leaders cloaked this alignment behind the language of a “two‑state solution,” a phrase repeated so often it became a diplomatic reflex rather than a genuine policy. In practice, it functioned as a convenient fiction—an empty slogan used to mask Western complicity in Israel’s expansionist, settler‑colonial agenda and to obscure the reality that their actions consistently advanced the very outcome they claimed to oppose.

A 78 year record of enabling Israeli impunity

If Western governments had ever truly intended to uphold international law, the UN Charter, or the Genocide Convention, they would have acted long before genocidal violence was initiated by Israel in the fall of 2023. Israel’s history since 1948 is a catalogue of violations of the very legal instruments the West claims to defend:

• Ethnic cleansing and mass displacement during the Nakba in 1948;
• Illegal settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem;
• Systematic apartheid, as documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem;
• Repeated wars on Gaza, each involving mass civilian casualties—in 2008–09, 2012, 2014, and the ongoing Gaza genocide since 2023;
• Targeting of journalists, medics, and children;
• Collective punishment, prohibited under the Geneva Conventions; and
• Annexation of occupied territory, which is illegal under the UN Charter.

For decades, Western governments responded with statements of “concern,” “regret,” or “alarm”—but never with meaningful action. No sanctions. No arms embargoes. No diplomatic isolation. No accountability.

This is not mere failure. It is deliberate policy.

The West’s unwavering support for Israel—political, military, economic, and ideological—created the conditions in which genocide could occur openly, livestreamed to the world, without consequence. In the process, the so-called “international rules‑based order” has been exposed as a selective system designed to protect Western allies and punish Western adversaries. Palestinians, like many non‑Western peoples, were never part of the moral universe that order claimed to defend.

The death of the responsibility to protect

After the genocides in Rwanda and Srebrenica, the UN adopted the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (R2P), committing states to intervene when mass atrocities occur. Gaza has proven that R2P is a hollow promise. If Western leaders possessed even a fraction of the humanity they claim, they would have invoked R2P the moment genocide was affirmed by the International Association of Genocide Scholars, UN agencies, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Israeli human‑rights groups, and leading Holocaust scholars.

Instead, Western governments did the opposite. They shielded Israel from accountability, vetoed UN ceasefire resolutions, and continued supplying weapons. The message to the world was unmistakable: Palestinian lives do not trigger Western moral obligations.

Canada’s Hypocrisy

Canada’s political class—under both the Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney governments—has perfected the art of moral posturing while enabling atrocity. Canadian leaders routinely describe Canada as a defender of human rights, a champion of the UN, and a guardian of the “rules‑based international order.” Yet Canada violated its legal obligations under the UN Charter and the Genocide Convention by refusing to take the actions required when genocide is occurring.

If Canada were truly committed to international law, it would have:

• Imposed a full arms embargo on Israel;
• Suspended the Canada–Israel Free Trade Agreement;
• Sanctioned Israeli political and military leaders responsible for genocidal acts;
• Supported South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justicde (ICJ), as NATO allies Belgium, Iceland, the Netherlands, Spain, Turkiye, along with 16 other countries have done;
• Expelled the Israeli ambassador and recalled Canada’s ambassador; and
• Launched universal‑jurisdiction prosecutions against top Israeli political and military officials.

These actions are not radical. They represent the bare minimum required under the principles of basic morality when genocide is unfolding. Yet Canada undertook none of them. Instead, it continued exporting weapons—often through loopholes—and hid behind symbolic gestures that carried no material consequence for Israel. Its belated, heavily conditioned “recognition” of Palestine, while welcomed, did nothing on the ground, offered no protection to Palestinians, and imposed no cost on Israel. Such gestures function as political theatre designed to placate public outrage while allowing Canada to maintain alignment with Israeli policy.

A Study in Racialized Morality

The clearest demonstration of Western hypocrisy is the contrast between the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Canada acted with speed and moral clarity: sanctions, diplomatic isolation, asset freezes, ICC support, and a unanimous parliamentary declaration of “genocide.” Yet when Israel began its genocide in Gaza, Canada imposed no sanctions, no arms embargo, no diplomatic isolation, no accountability mechanisms, and refused to acknowledge genocide at all.

The only difference between the two cases is the identity of the victims and the political alignment of the aggressors. Ukrainians are white, European, primarily Christian, and aligned with the West. Palestinians are Indigenous, Arab, Muslim, and colonized by a Western ally.

This is not diplomacy. It is the operationalization of a racial hierarchy—a worldview in which the rights, lives, and suffering of some peoples are treated as inherently more valuable than those of others.

A Thousand Days That Changed the World

As the world marks a thousand days of genocide in Gaza, something fundamental has shifted. The world has watched Western inhumanity and Israeli brutality exposed with a clarity that cannot be undone. The illusion of Western moral superiority—already eroding for years—has now collapsed entirely. The global South sees it. Millions across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas see it. Even within Israel, a small but courageous minority sees it.

This moment forces a reckoning. What does it mean for the future of the international system when the world’s most powerful democracies enable genocide? What does it reveal about the structures of law, morality, and global governance that were supposedly built to prevent such crimes? And what does it demand of nations like Canada, which helped make this atrocity possible?

The Gaza genocide has exposed the end of the post‑1945 human‑rights order. It has shown that accountability for powerful states is optional, that international law is applied selectively, and that the principles the West claims to uphold collapse the moment they conflict with geopolitical interests. A thousand days of genocide have laid bare a truth the world can no longer ignore: the system is broken, and those who enabled this crime must one day face a reckoning worthy of its scale.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved,

Zionism Is Canada’s Most-Successful Hate Movement

I don’t usually repost the writings in full written by others. But this article published on June 30, 2026 by Canadian journalist Davide Mastracci of the independent Canadian news outlet The Maple contends that Zionism has become Canada’s most successful and socially accepted form of hate motivated and supremacist politics. 

It argues that the ideology is inherently violent and colonial, and that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians—including Israel's actions in committing genocide in Gaza—is a direct expression of that ideology. In Canada, Mastracci says, Zionism is not fringe but fully mainstream, embedded in political culture, media institutions, and civil society.

He also focuses heavily on the Jewish Canadians, claiming that Zionism has eclipsed Judaism as a defining identity for many Jews. Citing polling and patterns of political mobilization, he argues that support for Israel among Jewish Canadians is unusually intense and unmatched by any other community’s alignment with a supremacist, extremist movement. Charitable funding, political organizing, and participation in Israel’s military by Canadian Jews are presented as evidence of deep ideological commitment.

Mastracci attempts to expose Zionism as a normalized form of hate and supremacy that enjoys protection from Canada’s political and media establishment. He warns that Zionism is “on the attack,” that criticism of it is often treated as bigotry, and that resisting it is a moral obligation. He tries to shift public understanding by reframing Zionism not as a Jewish national project but as a dangerous, state‑sanctioned ideology that demands scrutiny and opposition.

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© The Maple 2026. All Rights Reserved. 

Zionism Is Canada’s Most-Successful Hate Movement

The Jewish-supremacist ideology motivating genocide has widespread support among Canada’s elites.

by Davide Mastracci
June 30, 2026 
www.readthemaple.com/zionism-is-canadas-most-successful-hate-movement/

From its inception, Zionism has been a violent, colonial ideology.

The State of Israel, founded through decades of Zionist migration and anti-Palestinian violence, is a perfect distillation of Zionism, not a departure from it. Zionism is Israel’s state ideology.

In the 78 years since Israel’s creation, which was finalized in an organized and systemic ethnic cleansing campaign, Israel has terrorized its neighbours, swallowed up Palestinian land and devoured its inhabitants, and is committing a genocide to destroy the lives of those who remain.

Israel is an explicitly Jewish supremacist state, and perhaps the only one left in the world where supremacy is openly, proudly, and formally enshrined in law, and expanding in its scope.

There’s a range of opinions within Israel’s political leadership, but all factions believe in supremacy enforced through some level of violence.

In short: Zionism is a hateful ideology guiding a state that has committed the worst crimes of the 21st century in its name.

That Zionism is a state ideology doesn’t make it less hateful than if it were relegated to the fringes. Instead, it just means it has succeeded to the fullest extent.

This is undoubtedly true in Israel. It’s also true in Canada in a different way: Zionism has achieved more explicit, mainstream support than any other openly supremacist movement at this point in time.

Zionism And Jewish Canadians

Zionism is so rampant in Canada’s Jewish community that it has effectively become more important than Judaism, though many, if not most, Jewish Canadians say the two are actually one.

Many anti-Zionists dispute this assertion in theological terms, but I don’t care about these debates, in the same way that theological schisms in Christianity are of no interest to me outside of the odd late-night Wikipedia search.

What I am interested in, however, is examining how much of the community falls on each side. By this measure, it’s evident that anti-Zionists are losing the battle.

Nearly three years of genocide, involving some of the most depraved acts of violence and cruelty witnessed this century, has reduced the support Israel receives globally, with a recent poll finding it to be the “world’s most disliked country.” Mass support for Israel among Jewish Canadians, however, has persisted.

An assortment of polling of Jewish Canadians conducted between February 2024 and November 2025 has found:

·    94 per cent “support the existence of Israel as a Jewish state”;

·    84 per cent are “emotionally attached to Israel,” the highest level since the survey began in 2018;

·    71 per cent don’t believe Israel is committing genocide;

·    64 per cent believe it’s antisemitic to say Israel is committing genocide;

·    61 per cent oppose an arms embargo on Israel;

·    55 per cent categorize Israel’s actions in Gaza as either self-defence (34 per cent) or hostage return (21 per cent), compared to 24 per cent as either war crimes (10 per cent), ethnic cleansing (4 per cent), or genocide (10 per cent);

·    53 per cent disagree with the claim that “Canada should do more to protect civilians in Gaza”;

·    48 per cent (a plurality) believe Hamas is to blame for starvation in Gaza, while just 17 per cent blame Israel — another 13 per cent believe there was no famine or even widespread hunger;

·    1 per cent identify as anti-Zionists.

The survey that found 94 per cent effectively support Jewish supremacy in Israel also found that “only” 51 per cent explicitly identified as Zionists, which led some anti-Zionists to declare victory. They were wrong to do so. As I quipped in response to reporting on the survey: “‘Poll: Vast majority of Canadian whites say Canada has right to exist as a white state, but half don’t identify as racists.’”

In addition, the community:

·    is represented by and made up of explicitly Zionist organizations, from synagogues, to schools, to camps, to community groups;

·    is the largest sender of charitable donations from Canada to Israel (at least $1.7 billion in donations were sent from 2018 to 2024, and an examination of contributors per year reveals them to overwhelmingly be Jewish charities);

·    supplies a stream of members as soldiers willing to die and kill for the Jewish supremacist State of Israel, a pipeline unlike any other that exists among Canada’s hundreds of demographic groups.

In May, nearly three years into the genocide, an estimated record-breaking 60,000 people marched in Toronto’s annual pro-Israel walk. I view this with the same sort of scorn as the 1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden organized by the German American Bund, which drew more than 20,000 people.

One difference does stick out, though: unlike any other genocide before it, including the Holocaust, the Gaza genocide has been live-streamed since day one and broadcast to all of us.

This hasn’t shattered Jewish Canadian support for Israel. In fact, it has strengthened the support and emotional attachment of many, as seen in the open radicalization of some prominent Jewish figures.

Zionism And The Broader Establishment

It’s clear Zionism has wide support among Jewish Canadians, to an extent unrivalled by other communities relative to whatever form of extremism and supremacy may exist among them. ISIS, for example, was broadly reviled by Muslims globally, and they fought, killed, and died to defeat it.

But this level of support for Zionism among Jewish Canadians isn’t enough to call it the most successful hate movement in Canada. That claim becomes justified upon examining how Zionism is treated by Canada’s elite in politics, media and civil society.

In June 2025, Prime Minister Mark Carney called for the establishment of a “Zionist, if you will, Palestinian state,” which is about the same as urging German Jews be ruled by a new Nazi government after the Holocaust.

In March 2025, then-prime minister Justin Trudeau said, “No one in Canada should ever be afraid to call themselves a Zionist. I am a Zionist.”

Pierre Poilievre, the leader of Canada’s opposition party, said in an October 2024 statement: “We won’t bow to the radical, woke, anti-Zionist Jew haters. [...] We unapologetically stand with Israel through fire and water.” The party’s deputy leader has explicitly identified as a Zionist.

The federal government, seven provinces and at least 20 towns and cities have adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which, according to a federal handbook, classifies opposition to Zionism as antisemitism.

A Senate study released in December 2024 included among its recommendations that “it is unacceptable in Canadian society to target Zionists or to deny them fair and equitable access to public spaces for the sole reason that they are Zionists,” effectively calling for the treatment of Zionism, a political ideology, as a protected category.

This framing has also been pushed in lawsuits launched by Jewish students against universities and backed by major Jewish community organizations.

The editor-in-chief of the National Post, the flagship publication of Canada’s largest newspaper chain, stated in a 2024 email to subscribers: “I feel privileged to be editor-in-chief of the National Post right now, leading a paper that has been Zionist in its commentary since it was founded 25 years ago.”

The Globe and Mail, Canada’s only other national newspaper, recently published an article from the editorial board arguing that Carney should have declared himself to be a Zionist in a speech he gave at a Toronto synagogue.

A co-founder and former head of an organization dedicated to combating hate groups has described themselves as a Zionist and written that Zionism is essential to Jewish identity.

So, to sum it up...

Zionism is not condemned by those in power; it’s openly supported.

Prominent Zionists feel no pressure to conceal their ideology in the way proponents of supremacy usually do; they are encouraged to share it, and applauded when they do so.

Zionists aren’t seen as proponents of hate; they’re treated as a victimized group to be protected by limiting the freedoms of others.

Jewish Canadians aren’t expected to condemn Zionism or Israel in the way Muslims were for extremist forms of Islam; non-Jewish Canadians are expected to support or at least not oppose Zionism because it’s positioned as an essential part of Jewish identity.

If another hate movement took over almost an entire community, it would be treated as a serious problem; Zionism is often defended precisely because it’s so widespread among Jewish Canadians.

The past three years have increasingly turned Canadians against Israel. This has resulted in those in power using increasingly heavy-handed attempts, many of them successful, to protect Zionism.

Zionism is on the attack, not retreat.

Zionists are coming for any and all of us willing to oppose their ideology.

The fight continues.

© The Maple 2026. All Rights Reserved. 

Celebrating Canada Day: A rightward political drift, post 9/11, and sleepwalking towards a cliff (Part 2)

The convergence of Canada’s treatment of Indigenous peoples, the escalating attacks on residential school truth‑telling, and the vilification of pro‑Palestinian demonstrators reveals a political environment where dissent is increasingly criminalized and racialized communities are systematically targeted.

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack.

As Canadians get set to celebrate Canada Day tomorrow, we all need to demand an honest assessment of the country’s political trajectory. Since the post‑9/11 era, Canada has been drifting steadily to the right, reshaping its laws, institutions, and public discourse in ways that erode civil liberties, normalize racism and Islamophobia, and legitimize far‑right political views. Many Canadians, comforted by the belief that “it can’t happen here,” are sleepwalking Canada towards a cliff and the rest of us are doing little or nothing to stop it.

The post‑9/11 security climate marked a turning point. Under the banner of fighting terrorism, Canada expanded surveillance, strengthened security agencies, and introduced legislation that disproportionately targeted Muslims, Arabs, and other racialized communities. Islamophobia became embedded in policy and practice, with Muslim communities treated as suspect and their institutions subjected to heightened scrutiny. This securitized mindset has never fully receded, it has simply shifted targets and language.

Recent commentary has documented how Islamophobia and anti‑Palestinian racism have become entrenched at the highest levels of Canadian politics. One analysis of the appointment of MP Anthony Housefather as special advisor on antisemitism argues that his record of pushing anti‑Palestinian narratives reflects a government willing to appease pro‑Israel organizations while ignoring the surge in hate against Palestinians and Muslims. This is not an isolated incident; it reflects a broader pattern in which those who protest genocide are smeared, surveilled, and punished.

Since October 7, 2023, this pattern has intensified. Palestinians and their allies have been vilified as “terrorists” and “antisemitic” simply for opposing Israeli state violence and pointing out that it is committing genocide in Gaza. Pro‑Palestinian protesters have faced harassment, doxing, job loss, and political condemnation. It can be safely said that Palestinians are “the most persecuted people in the world today,” in light of the fact that Western leaders—including Canada’s—have seemingly shed their humanity towards Palestinians by treating their deaths at Israeli hands as acceptable collateral damage. The refusal of both the Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney governments to intervene to stop genocide, do nothing beyond issuing PR platitudes, even as polls show overwhelming Canadian opposition to current Canadian policy, exposes the gap between democratic rhetoric and actual practice.

This widening gap is where Canada’s rightward drift becomes most visible. When hundreds of thousands of Canadians march against the Gaza genocide and their leaders respond by continuing arms sales, diplomatic cover, and launching smear campaigns against protesters, democracy becomes a façade. A detailed analysis of Canada’s complicity in the Gaza genocide argues that successive governments have maintained military cooperation with Israel despite clear evidence of genocidal acts, thereby breaching both domestic and international legal obligations. This is not just foreign policy failure; it is moral bankruptcy.

At the same time, Canada’s right‑wing parties have moved further into territory that can only be described as quasi‑fascist. The Conservative Party under Pierre Poilievre has embraced rhetoric and talking points that mirror those of the Republican Party under Donald Trump—attacks on “woke” culture, demonization of refugees and immigrants, hostility toward journalists and academics, and a constant framing of political opponents as enemies of “real Canadians.” While the specifics differ, the underlying strategy is familiar—weaponize resentment, stoke cultural division, and present strongman politics as the solution to perceived chaos.

The People’s Party of Canada (PPC), led by Maxime Bernier, has played a crucial role in legitimizing far‑right discourse even without major electoral success. A 2021 analysis of the PPC argues that the party has normalized racist, xenophobic, and anti‑immigrant narratives, giving them a veneer of political respectability. By railing against “globalists,” attacking immigration, and flirting with conspiracy theories, the PPC has helped shift the narrative—making previously fringe ideas part of mainstream debate. Even if the PPC fails at the ballot box, its impact on political culture is undeniable.

This is how far‑right politics advances, not only through winning elections, but through changing what is considered acceptable to say in public. When parties like the PPC push fascist talking points—about “invasions,” “replacement,” or the supposed threat posed by racialized communities—they create space for larger parties to adopt softer versions of the same narratives. Over time, the centre of gravity moves rightward, and what once seemed extreme becomes ordinary.

Meanwhile, Canada’s media ecosystem has often amplified these shifts rather than resisting them. Right‑wing commentators and outlets have demonized pro‑Palestinian protesters, framed solidarity encampments as security threats, and echoed government talking points about “extremism” and “hate” against Jews, even though many Jews are part of the movement. Anti‑Palestinian racism and Islamophobia are not only present in political institutions, they are reproduced daily in Canada’s news media ecosystem, through coverage and opinion columns. Multiple published commentaries have argued that this media environment dehumanizes Palestinians and legitimizes state violence against them.

The convergence of Canada’s treatment of Indigenous peoples, the escalating attacks on residential school truth‑telling, and the vilification of pro‑Palestinian demonstrators reveals a political environment where dissent is increasingly criminalized and racialized communities are systematically targeted. The same forces that once justified the dispossession and dehumanization of Indigenous nations now rationalize contemporary efforts to suppress solidarity with Palestinians. Residential school denialism and anti‑Indigenous propaganda have become tools for undermining truth‑telling and defending the settler‑colonial status quo, while politicians, right‑wing media, and pro‑Israel advocacy networks deploy similar tactics to delegitimize pro‑Palestinian voices — branding them extremists, security threats, or enemies of “Canadian values.” In both cases, historical and ongoing state violence is obscured through narratives that portray marginalized communities as dangerous or suspect, and those who challenge official narratives as destabilizing forces. As a result, protests against genocide and colonialism are met with police crackdowns, university sanctions, employment terminations, and political condemnation, reinforcing a broader pattern in which far‑right narratives seep into mainstream discourse and the machinery of the state is mobilized to silence those who resist it.

Canadians often comfort themselves with the belief that “we’re not like the United States or the United Kingdom” and that what’s happening to their politics can’t happen here. But the trajectories are increasingly similar. In the US, the far right has captured The Republican Party and reshaped national politics around authoritarian impulses and racial resentment. In the UK, xenophobia and anti‑immigrant hysteria have become central pillars of political discourse, with far‑right groups exploiting economic instability and cultural anxiety. Canada is not immune because it is simply at an earlier stage of the same process.

As Canadians get set to mark Canada Day they must remember that a nation complicit in genocide cannot credibly celebrate itself as a force for good. When Canada continues to sell weapons to a state accused of genocide, refuses to support international legal efforts to hold that state accountable, and punishes those who protest its actions, it forfeits any claim to moral leadership. Silence is not neutrality—it is complicity.

Canada is at a crossroads. It can continue drifting down the path towards a right-wing, authoritarian future, with the scapegoating of racialized peoples, and moral abdication, or it can choose a different future. But that choice will not be made by politicians alone. It will be made by Canadians who decide whether to accept the drift or resist it.

Millions of Canadians will celebrate Canada Day tomorrow and they are free to do so. But if they celebrate without reflection, without reckoning, without pushing back against the rightward political drift that has been happening for years, they may find that the country they once celebrated no longer exists. And by then, it may be too late to turn back from the cliff.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Celebrating Canada Day: Colonial foundations and the myth of innocent celebrations (Part 1/2)

Canada is a settler‑colonial state which required the dispossession of Indigenous lands, the destruction of Indigenous societies, and the attempted erasure of Indigenous cultures and identities.

By Fareed Khan
A version of this article can be found on Substack.

In two days—July 1st—millions of Canadians will celebrate Canada Day. Yet few pause to ask what, exactly, is being celebrated. The familiar rituals—fireworks, barbecues, flags, and patriotic speeches—invite a comforting narrative of national unity and progress. But beneath this spectacle lies a reality that cannot be reconciled with easy patriotism—Canada was built on Indigenous genocide, white supremacy, and systemic racism. To celebrate Canada Day without acknowledging these foundations is to participate in a collective act of denial and an erasure of history.

Canada is a settler‑colonial state. Its creation required the dispossession of Indigenous lands, the destruction of Indigenous governance systems and societies, and the attempted erasure of Indigenous cultures and identities. Scholars of genocide and settler colonialism have long argued that colonization is not merely about land theft—it is about the destruction of peoples, laws, and ways of life. Residential schools, the Indian Act, forced relocations, the reserve system, and the criminalization of Indigenous ceremonies were not unfortunate mistakes. They were deliberate tools of a project aimed at eliminating Indigenous nations as self‑determining peoples, and as a result are today seen as acts of genocide.

In recent years, Canada has been forced to confront this history more directly. The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls concluded in 2019 that the violence inflicted on Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQ+ people amounts to “deliberate race, identity, and gender‑based genocide.” Parliament has acknowledged genocide in relation to residential schools, and political leaders have used the term publicly. Yet recognition without transformation is hollow. The structures that enabled genocide—policing, courts, resource extraction, child welfare systems—continue to produce what scholars call “multisided violence,” where state action and inaction normalize conditions in which Indigenous people can be harmed or killed with impunity.

Canada Day, in this context, becomes a ritual of denying this nation’s ugly history. It invites Canadians to celebrate this country without reckoning with the fact that its very existence depended on the destruction of Indigenous societies. Even when Canada Day events include acknowledgements of Indigenous peoples, the underlying narrative often remains one of progress and benevolence: that Canada has “learned from its past” and is now on a path of reconciliation. Yet the rise of residential school denialism and anti‑Indigenous politics on the far right shows that even the limited gains of truth‑telling are under attack.

Some communities have attempted to reshape Canada Day to reflect this reality. In Winnipeg, organizers renamed the main July 1st event “A New Day,” cancelled fireworks, and centred reflection on colonialism and residential schools rather than uncritical patriotism. Such efforts are important, but they remain exceptions. Across the country, the dominant message is still one of pride, promoting unity, and celebrating with a nationalistic fervour—often with only a brief, symbolic nod to Indigenous history and suffering.

The problem is not simply that Canada has a violent past. It is that this violence continues in the present. Indigenous communities still face disproportionate rates of poverty, incarceration, child apprehension, and police violence. Encampments of unhoused people—many of them Indigenous—are destroyed in the name of “public safety,” while solidarity encampments protesting genocide and colonialism are violently dismantled by police. The criminalization of poverty and dissent is not a deviation from Canadian values, it is a continuation of the logic that has always governed this country, one where some lives are expendable in the service of order and property.

Contemporary commentary has drawn connections between Canada’s colonial foundations and its foreign policy. One writer argues that Canada’s complicity in the Gaza genocide reflects a continuity between domestic colonial violence and international support for state violence abroad. The argument suggests that a nation built on genocide at home is predisposed to enable or excuse genocide elsewhere. This perspective reframes Canada Day not as a celebration of national virtue but as a reminder of unresolved injustice.

Canada’s self‑image as a human‑rights champion is fundamentally at odds with its record. A country that still struggles to provide clean drinking water to Indigenous communities, that has failed to implement the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and that remains complicit in ongoing violence against Indigenous women and girls cannot credibly claim to embody justice and equality. When Canadians gather on July 1st to celebrate “our values,” they are often celebrating an illusion.

This does not mean there is nothing worth preserving in Canada. There is beauty in its landscapes, richness in its diversity, and potential in its institutions. But potential is not achievement, and celebration is not owed—it is earned. A nation that has yet to fully acknowledge, let alone repair, the harms it has inflicted on Indigenous peoples has not earned the right to uncritical celebration.

Canada Day, then, should not be a day of simple celebration. It should be a day of reckoning. A day to ask, what does it mean to celebrate a country whose birth was a catastrophe for the peoples who already lived here? What does it mean to wave a flag that has flown over residential schools, police raids, and courtrooms where Indigenous rights are denied? What does it mean to celebrate a society that erased the original nations of this land?

On Wednesday, millions of Canadians will celebrate Canada Day. But if they do so without confronting the genocidal and white supremacist foundations of this country, they are not celebrating a mature democracy—they are participating in a collective act of denial. The question is not whether Canada can be celebrated. The question is whether it has done the work necessary to deserve celebration.

Until Canada fully acknowledges its genocidal past and present, and commits to dismantling the structures that sustain colonial violence, Canada Day should be less about fireworks and more about reflection. Less about pride and more about responsibility. Less about what Canada imagines itself to be and more about what it has actually done.

Only then—if ever—will Canada Day be something more than a ritual that papers over injustice with celebration of the red and white maple leaf.

Part 2 will follow tomorrow.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.