Israeli companies misled Canadians about West Bank real estate, complaint alleges
A group of lawyers and civil society members have filed a complaint with the Competition Bureau over Israeli real estate events in Toronto and Montreal, alleging that illegal properties were marketed to Canadians under false pretences.
The complaint alleges at least four Israeli real estate companies and one Canadian marketing firm promoted properties in occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank while misleading consumers to believe they were in Israel.
The Competition Bureau says it will review the complaint filed by Global Echo Litigation Center and the Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights and determine if an investigation into the companies is warranted.
James Yap, president of the lawyers' association and a Windsor university law professor, said Canadians who may have purchased West Bank properties could be opening themselves up to serious legal consequences under international law, such as complicity in war crimes.
Canada and much of the international community have long held that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal and an obstacle to peace in the Middle East.
The territory has been occupied by Israel since 1967, but settlement activity has significantly increased since the onset of the latest war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and displaced most of Gaza's two million residents.
Ottawa advised Canadian businesses in August to avoid engaging with Israeli settlements, warning that failing to do so could open them up to legal and financial risk.
“The Canadian government talks a lot about upholding international law,” Yap said. “We have our prime minister bemoaning the deterioration of the international rules-based order. They condemn the settlements as illegal. They talk about taking steps, taking action. This is a chance for the Canadian government to actually take action.”
The complaint, filed on behalf of six Canadians, compiles photos, social media posts and promotional materials of condo projects in the occupied West Bank being marketed at various real estate events from 2024 to 2026.
One photo of an Israeli real estate company’s booth at the 2024 Great Israeli Real Estate Event in Montreal suggests the company promoted condo projects in Ma'ale Adumim and Adam, two Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, alongside Israeli real estate.
The company’s booth advertised the developments with the message of finding one’s “dream home in Israel.”
Another company’s booth at the same 2024 event advertised it as “your real estate agency in Jerusalem” while listing the locations of four Israeli settlements in the West Bank and two Israeli cities. The company is more explicit on its website, stating that its homes in West Bank settlements in Efrat, Mitzpe Yericho and Ma’ale Adumim are in Israel.
A Canadian marketing firm that helps North Americans buy Israeli real estate similarly lists a West Bank condo development as being in Israel on its website but it used more ambiguous language at a real estate event in Toronto.
The firm promoted a condo project in the Givat HaMatos settlement, located in East Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank, at the 2026 Israel Real Estate Briefing in Toronto with the tagline “own a piece of Jerusalem.”
The lawyers behind the complaint to the Competition Bureau argue the ambiguity isn’t enough to absolve the companies.
Under Canadian law, courts use a “general impression” test to determine if an advertisement is false or misleading. If an ad is literally true but omits essential information that would influence a consumer’s behaviour, it could violate the Competition Act.
The lawyers argue that by promoting these properties at events titled the Great Israeli Real Estate Event and the Israeli Real Estate Briefing, and omitting mention of their true location in internationally-contested territories, the real estate companies misled Canadians.
Ariel Katz, a competition law expert who reviewed the complaint but was not involved in its filing, said he finds the evidence compelling, but couldn’t say if the Competition Bureau would be likely to launch an inquiry.
“This is a highly politically charged topic, right? So whatever decision they make, they might be under enormous pressure,” Katz said.
Israel contends that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are not illegal because of Jewish people’s historic connection to the land.
While the complaint deals with allegations of false advertising, Katz said the West Bank properties that were allegedly promoted at the events are considered illegal under international law, and Ottawa could ban the marketing of such properties altogether.
The lawyers behind the complaint say they’re leaving the door open for future legal action that could target the illegality of the properties themselves.
The Canadian Press asked Global Affairs Canada if the sale of West Bank property is illegal in Canada and whether Canadians could be legally liable if they purchased such property but did not receive an answer before publication.
Emily Schaeffer Omer-Man, founder of Global Echo Litigation Center, said her law firm has been monitoring a “circuit” of Israeli real estate events in the United States, United Kingdom, France and other countries.
She said the complaint before the Competition Bureau gives Canada a chance to “pave the way” for other countries to follow suit in cracking down on these kinds of sales.
Marlee Wasser, one of the complainants, said she’s a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and sees the sale of Israeli settlement property in Canada as normalizing genocide in the West Bank, where Israeli settlers have attacked and displaced Palestinians.
She added that protests outside Israeli real estate events have been used to justify restricting peoples’ right to protest in Canada.
The mayor of Vaughan, Ont., proposed a bubble zone bylaw – which ultimately passed – restricting protests near places of worship, schools and hospitals shortly after protesters demonstrated outside a local synagogue where an Israeli real estate event was being held in 2024.
For Basel Adra, an Oscar award-winning documentarian and community engagement manager at Global Echo Litigation Center, the complaint before the Competition Bureau is a chance for Canada to do “what’s right.”
The Palestinian filmmaker of “No Other Land,” a documentary about the destruction of a West Bank community, says there’s daily construction in the West Bank, building homes and roads for Israeli settlers.
While he’s never personally seen a Canadian settler in the West Bank, Adra said there are settlers from all over the world, especially America, in Israeli communities in the region.
Adra said he’s been attacked by settlers several times, and last week a group of settlers invaded his family’s land and cut down olive trees.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in June there was an average of six settler attacks on Palestinian communities in the West Bank each day of 2026 thus far that caused casualties or property damage, higher than any other year on record.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2026.
By Kathryn Mannie | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
Thunder Bay's next mayor will have to grapple with homelessness, housing crisis
Candidates vying to lead one of northern Ontario's largest municipalities agree that public safety, homelessness and aging infrastructure will have to be among the top priorities for Thunder Bay's next council.
Nine candidates are competing to replace long-serving mayor and former member of Parliament Ken Boshcoff, who is retiring from municipal politics. He was first elected councillor in 1979 and served two stints as mayor, first from 1997 to 2003 then again in 2022.
Trevor Giertuga, who's running for mayor after serving as city councillor since 2000, said the rise in crime and homelessness is the main challenge facing the city. If elected, he said he would increase police resources and build more housing.
"I would like to see us return back to neighbourhood policing with more boots on the ground in the areas, so we could target high-risk areas or high-crime areas," he said, noting that Thunder Bay used to have a crime prevention council whose members included Indigenous leaders, business owners and others in the community.
Statistics Canada's crime severity index, based on police-reported data, for Thunder Bay increased 18 per cent from 2024 to 2025. The Thunder Bay police website shows the city's crime severity index has been higher than both provincial and national averages from 2020 to 2024.
The District of Thunder Bay’s Social Services Administration Board estimated in an August report that there were 1,129 homeless people in the city by the end of last year and that at least 58 per cent of them identified as Indigenous.
Earlier this month, the city's long-awaited temporary shelter village with 80 private cabins and shared washroom and kitchen facilities welcomed its first residents. But Giertuga said the city needs more permanent housing instead of temporary solutions to homelessness.
"The village has opened and although I was opposed to it, we're in it now, so it's a matter of making sure it's run properly," he said, adding that the $12.5 million spent on the project should have gone toward permanent housing.
Moe Comuzzi, a real estate broker with extensive business experience who is also running for mayor, said the temporary village is a well thought out project and she would be committed to moving it forward if elected.
"It gives people dignity and the opportunity to have a nice, warm, safe place to help them," she said. "Whether or not they need services for mental health and addictions, the services will be there for them ... or whether they're just waiting for an affordable home that takes a little bit of time to build."
Comuzzi said building more housing and infrastructure is part of the goal to attract more investment and growth, as the city is an economic hub in northern Ontario.
"Industry, small business, and mining, critical minerals — I mean the opportunities are endless," she said.
Giertuga said he would also focus on increasing the city's tax base to avoid steep rate hikes for residents. He said Thunder Bay has a $30-million infrastructure funding gap and city council has been raising the capital budget by five per cent a year to make that gap smaller.
But he said promising to freeze property taxes is not realistic.
"Other candidates have put forward a tax freeze for 2027 and I ask, 'then how, where, are we going to get the money or what services are we prepared to cut?'"
Comuzzi also said a tax freeze is not feasible.
"Everybody's feeling the pinch at the grocery store and at the gas station. Businesses are feeling that stress too. So, growing Thunder Bay for all of us is the right step in the right direction," she said.
Since Thunder Bay is a regional service hub in northern Ontario, Giertuga said he would also advocate for more federal and provincial funding to help the city serve people from nearby communities.
"We have 30,000 people in the city that are not on our census that have come from outlying communities, and not just unhoused people, people coming for cancer treatment, people coming for other medical treatment, people coming for all sorts of different reasons," he said.
For mayoral candidate Volker Kromm, a project manager and business leader, the rise in poverty is a key issue.
"These last couple of years, we've seen a steady decline and such an increase in the effects of poverty on the streets and the drug culture and the cost of living and the whole of the affordability issue," he said.
"The poverty is growing, there aren't enough jobs. In some cases, there isn't the training available, and these people can't afford to live here because there aren't enough affordable houses, so they end up on the streets."
Thunder Bay's 10-year housing and homelessness plan says getting enough affordable housing will continue to be a problem since the average cost of building a single new unit is $450,000 and "the available funding does not stretch far."
Kromm said the city needs to better co-ordinate with federal and provincial government agencies and other groups that help homeless people and those struggling with addiction.
"We have a lot of great social service organizations ... They're doing the best that they can, but they work separate," he said.
Lindsay Martin, executive director of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Northwestern Ontario, said her organization supports homeless women and gender-diverse people, including those who struggle with substance use and mental health issues, but has never had much contact with or support from the city.
"A lot of NGOs, or non-for-profits or charitable organizations, they rely on community, they rely on government funding, and the municipality doesn't necessarily step in to support organizations like Elizabeth Fry Society," she said.
"It would be good if they started to co-ordinate with work that's already being done and support it in that way."
Martin said the next city council should advocate for more support from the province to address issues that lead to homelessness, such as lack of affordable housing and mental health care.
"Without housing, folks are out there struggling ... temperatures drop to -35 here at times, and that's a death sentence for people who are unhoused in our community," she said.
Peter Diedrich, a mayoral candidate who worked for decades in telecom, technology and venture capital consulting, agreed that more co-ordination with higher levels of government is key to addressing long-standing issues in Thunder Bay.
"The role of a new mayor and a new council is to actually make that co-ordination process work and work flawlessly," he said.
"It's not just a municipal problem. Much of the funding and resources need to be coming from provincial and federal sources, and I don't think that I should go as mayor without a good plan. I don't want to go and beg for money."
Diedrich said collaboration with the province is part of his goal to build more housing, have 90 per cent fewer homeless people and zero tent encampments in Thunder Bay in four years. He criticized the previous administration for allowing designated encampment sites in parks, "where children are playing with their families."
Kromm said a lot of people he met during the election campaign expressed disappointment and frustration about the work of previous city councils.
"I was shocked a little bit at the lack of enthusiasm that people have for the municipal election," he said.
"When I'm knocking on doors, they say, 'Oh, I guess we'll have to sit down and kind of take a look at the issues,'" Kromm said. "If they're a business or a homeowner that's been affected by some of the homelessness or the crime issues, then they're keenly engaged, but still, it's a fairly small percentage of people that are responding."
The city said a total of 9.52 per cent of eligible voters, or more than 8,700, cast their ballots in advance as of Thursday morning. The overall turnout in Thunder Bay's 2022 election was 43 per cent.
Kromm said people need to pay closer attention to what the candidates are saying.
"Take a look at the councillors, take a look at their skill sets, what do they bring to the table?" he said. "If you vote on name recognition, you're going to get what you've always had."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2026.
By Maan Alhmidi | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
Affordability measures, consumer protection legislation coming: Alberta government
Alberta's government says it has a suite of legislation coming this fall to protect Albertans, their pocketbooks and their personal information.
Government house leader Joseph Schow says the province will soon table new bills to lower the cost of auto insurance and give Albertans new protections when it comes to their utility bills.
Schow says Premier Danielle Smith's government is also working on new consumer protection rules around ticket resales and used vehicles.
He also says the government will introduce stronger protections around the development of artificial intelligence data centres.
The Opposition NDP says the government is missing a real plan for affordability and health care.
The legislature is set to resume on Tuesday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2026.
By Jack Farrell | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.