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.

Canada Day 2025: A time for reflection, not celebration

I cannot celebrate the birthday of what is supposedly one of the best countries in the world when Canada is complicit in Israel's genocide of Palestinians

By Fareed Khan 

On July 1, 2025, as Canadians draped themselves in red and white and gathered for fireworks and festivities, I found myself unable to join the chorus of celebration.

 

 

Fifty-seven years ago, as a young child newly arrived in Canada, I marked my first “Dominion Day” with a sense of wonder. Every year on this holiday my family would picnic on the Toronto Islands or at one of the city’s beaches, a ritual that defined my early Canada Days. As I grew older, the holiday evolved into gatherings with friends, often culminating in one of the spectacular fireworks displays across Toronto.

 

Back then, wearing a Canadian flag shirt felt like a proud declaration of belonging to a nation that stood for justice, compassion, and opportunity. But now, Canada Day feels hollow, a mere date on the calendar, overshadowed by a profound disillusionment with what this country has become.

 

My pride in Canada has waned over the decades, particularly in the last twenty years, as I’ve watched our leaders steer the nation down a path that betrays this nation's ideals. The Canada I once celebrated feels like a distant memory, replaced by a nation led by politicians who, in my view, exhibit a disturbing sociopathy. They violate their oaths of office and disregard the treaties and international conventions to which Canada is a signatory.

 

This betrayal has been most glaring in the past two years, as Canada’s complicity in the ongoing tragedy in Gaza has tarnished its reputation on the world stage. The genocide unfolding in Gaza—where over 63,000, including countless children, have been killed amid relentless violence—has been met with Canada’s tacit support while at the same time Canadian leaders uttering mealy mouthed platitudes claiming Canada opposes Israel's crimes.

 

Our government, through Canadian based Jewish charities and through public policy, has continued to fund and arm a nation committing what many, including myself, see as some of the gravest crimes against humanity since the Holocaust. This is not a distant historical event but a horror unfolding in real-time, documented on social media, often by the perpetrators themselves. Yet, when Canadians—Jewish or otherwise—dare to call out this complicity and demand accountability, they are smeared as “antisemitic.” Some have lost livelihoods for standing against genocide, a chilling reminder that dissent, even opposing genocide, in today’s Canada comes at a steep cost.

 

This is not the Canada I once knew, nor is it the Canada that millions still celebrate as one of the world’s best places to live. The irony is stark: a nation founded on the genocide of Indigenous peoples, rooted in racism and white supremacy, now finds itself entangled in another genocide of indigenous people thousands of miles away. The destruction of Indigenous societies in Canada’s past is a wound that remains unhealed, yet our leaders seem to have learned nothing, repeating history by enabling atrocities abroad, and running interference for the perpetrators. How can we celebrate a nation that, despite its virtues, is complicit in such profound moral failures?

 

Canada’s role in Gaza is not an isolated misstep but part of a broader erosion of the values I once associated with this country. The ideals of justice, equality, and compassion that I wrapped myself in alongside the Canadian flag feel betrayed. When I think of Canada Day now, I cannot ignore the blood on our hands—blood that stains the maple leaf as surely as it stains the conscience of those who remain silent.

 

While some may argue that Canada’s domestic achievements—its healthcare system, its multiculturalism, its relative stability—warrant celebration, these accomplishments ring hollow when our nation supports a state committing crimes that echo the worst of humanity’s past.The parallels to history are haunting. After the Holocaust, many claimed ignorance, insisting they didn’t know the extent of the atrocities. Today, there is no such excuse. The horrors in Gaza have been broadcast daily for more than 18 months, and they are undeniable and inescapable.

 

When this genocide finally ends, when the architects of these crimes face justice, and when Palestinians secure their right to a recognized nation, there will be those who will claim they opposed the violence all along. But silence in the face of such clear evidence is complicity, and Canada’s relative silence—its active support through selling arms to Israel and its diplomatic support—implicates us all.

 

This Canada Day, I did not celebrate. The threat of external challenges, like the spectre of Donald Trump's annexation threats, pales in comparison to the moral crisis within our borders. To celebrate would have been to ignore the cries of Palestinian children, the destruction of an entire society, and the stain on Canada’s soul. There are indeed good things about Canada—its natural beauty, its diverse communities, its potential for greatness—but these cannot overshadow the reality of our complicity in atrocities. Celebration is reserved for moments of triumph, for times when a nation lives up to its ideals. This year, Canada falls far short.

 

As Canadians, we must confront this uncomfortable truth. We cannot hide behind our historic reputation as a beacon of progress while our government enables a rogue, terrorist state’s crimes. Instead of fireworks and flag-waving, this Canada Day should have been a moment of reckoning when we demanded that our leaders end Canada’s support for Israel’s actions, honour the international conventions we’ve signed, and restore the moral integrity of this nation. Only then can we begin to rebuild a Canada worthy of celebration—one that stands for justice and humanity. Until that day, Canada Day will remain for me, just another day.

  

© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

OP-ED -- As we mark Canada Day, Canadians are waking up to the country’s racist reality

This Canada Day, we need to make a commitment to eliminate the cancer of racism from this country, so that we can eventually live up to our own hype about how great Canada is on July 1 in years to come.

By Fareed Khan
June 30, 2020

https://www.hilltimes.com/2020/06/30/as-we-mark-canada-day-canadians-are-waking-up-to-the-countrys-racist-reality/254962

GATINEAU, QUE.—Canada Day 2020 will be a national holiday that will be burned into the memory of Canadians young and old for many years to come for a couple of reasons.

To begin with, it will be the first Canada Day in living memory with no official celebrations taking place anywhere in the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all of which have been cancelled due to fears of transmitting the coronavirus at large public events.

However, the more important reason this Canada Day will be remembered is because of the great Canadian awakening that has occurred since the killing of George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer. Canadians from all walks of life have taken to the streets in anti-racism demonstrations from coast to coast to protest anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, and systemic racism. It’s as if Canadians of all backgrounds have awakened to the endemic racism in our society, and they have joined with Blacks, Indigenous people, and people of colour to call for action to address racial injustices.

The reality that Canada is built on a foundation of racism and Indigenous genocide is not a new revelation since there is extensive research documenting this. What does seem to be new is Canadians’ heightened awareness and desire to do something about it.

It is difficult to recall this level of attention being paid to racism in Canada, albeit there have been instances of media and public focus from time to time. Racism was one of the topics addressed in the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015. Hate and bigotry was on the public’s minds and the political agenda again when six Muslim men were murdered in a Québec City mosque by a white supremacist in January 2017. Attention was focused on racism again when old photos of Justin Trudeau in blackface and brownface came to light during the federal election last fall, and once more when Don Cherry ranted about immigrants not properly honouring veterans on Remembrance Day on his Hockey Night In Canada segment.

In each instance, there was a brief public, media, and political focus on issues of racism in Canada which subsequently faded. This time, however, it seems to be different, as the public engages in wider discussions about the racist foundations of Canadian society in the lead-up to Canada’s national holiday.

Racism was a factor in the policies of Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. The architect of the residential schools system said of Indigenous people, “Though he may learn to read and write, his habits, training and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write.”  His racism also was directed towards the Chinese, who he felt would create a “mongrel race” and threaten Canada’s “Aryan” character if allowed to immigrate.

Sir Wilfrid Laurier is also notable for his racist order in council in 1911 that prevented Blacks from immigrating to Canada. In addition, Laurier’s government is well-known for policies that blocked immigrants of Chinese, Japanese, and South Asian origin.

Sir Robert Borden was also on the list of overtly racist Canadian leaders.  He won the 1911 election on the strength of his xenophobic slogan, “A White Canada.”  It was also under Borden that the Komagata Maru incident occurred, when a ship filled with Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus was forced back out to sea by the Royal Canadian Navy from the port of Vancouver.

Canada’s racist policies continue today in various forms, including police treatment of Indigenous and racialized Canadians. They were instituted by leaders who have been celebrated for years as “great” Canadians. The recent protests have focused attention on Canadian racism, resulting in public calls for change.

On this Canada Day, occurring in the shadow of anti-racism protests, Canadians have to accept that, while better than most countries, Canada is not as great as it is made out to be given its racist history and institutions. This Canada Day, we need to make a commitment to eliminate the cancer of racism from this country, so that we can eventually live up to our own hype about how great Canada is on July 1 in years to come. 

Fareed Khan is founder and chair of the anti-racism activist group Canadians United Against Hate.

The Hill Times