On a cold dawn of last January, Ahmad Islaih jolted awake with a loud banging at his door. It was 5:30 am when Toronto police arrived with an arrest warrant for the 26-year-old Canadian-Palestinian elementary school teacher.
He was immediately handcuffed and taken into custody. The officers rushed to his room, pulled open his drawers, tossed his mattress, confiscated his electronics and charged him with “public mischief” for taking part in a pro-Palestinian protest in Toronto two months back.
“Since October 7, 2023, we have made 90 arrests and laid 129 charges in total, related to Project Resolute demonstrations and protests,” said Deputy Police Chief Rob Johnson in January. Additionally, we have made a total of 197 arrests and laid 523 charges in relation to hate crimes.”
The charges laid against Ahmad are part of a broader crackdown under Project Resolute, a police initiative costing nearly $19.5 million led by Toronto’s hate crimes unit, launched in the wake of Israel’s war on Gaza. The project specifically targets protests and direct actions linked to the conflict.
“With the influx of funding that the police continued to receive, they have now got a wide range of tools to surveil activists,” said Rachelle Friesen, rights activist with Community Peacemaker Teams and Toronto Legal Support Committee, told The New Arab. “Project Resolute shows how Toronto Police Services (TPS), Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), and Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are all working together on this,” she continued.
Policing protests in Canada
The Hate Crime Working Group, working in tandem with Project Resolute, has become central to what activists describe as a campaign of targeted harassment of the Palestinian Solidarity Movement in Canada.
Legal and rights groups observed that, since the Working Group secured funding in November 2023, there has been a noticeable escalation in police tactics.
“They began raiding protesters’ homes, telling people to turn themselves in for attending demonstrations,” said Friesen. “We have seen arrests occur both during protests and days later.”
Yet, despite aggressive tactics, the legal outcomes suggest that most of the charges against demonstrators have resulted in withdrawals or full discharges, either conditionally or absolutely.
At the same time, accounts of police violence have begun to surface, adding another layer to what critics view as a systematic attempt to suppress dissent.
Katy Anderson, a PhD student at the University of Calgary, suffered a concussion during a campus protest after being struck on the head by a police shield. She was also reportedly kicked, pepper-sprayed and disoriented by a flash bang grenade that exploded nearby.
Multiple eyewitnesses, including Friesen, recount similar scenes of excessive force: officers charging into crowds without warning, striking demonstrators, and tailing them on subways or into public parks well after protests were concluded.
“It’s clearly about sending a message, creating fear among people,” Friesen said. “This isn’t about public safety. It’s about silencing opposition.”
Encampments under siege
The same playbook of intimidation and repression has been replicated across Canadian university campuses. The student-led encampments calling for solidarity with Gaza have been met with a mix of police force, institutional surveillance, and administrative crackdowns. Like in the US and UK, universities have weaponised antisemitism to silence pro-Palestinian speech.
“The Canadian state cannot deal with the truth that the Palestine Solidarity Movement brings forward. It strikes at the state’s very core and exposes its fraudulence,” Gur Tsabar, Tsabar, a member of Independent Jewish Voices Canada and spokesperson for the Jews Say No to Genocide Coalition told The New Arab. “That’s why we are witnessing such a tremendous amount of suppression, and it’s not slowing down anytime soon.”
From several universities, including Calgary, Edmonton and York, McGill, UBC, McMaster, Western, the University of Alberta, and the University of Toronto, authorities moved swiftly, often at the request of university administrations, to dismantle encampments, sometimes with riot squads, other times through escalating security measures.
At several campuses, police were deployed to break up demonstrations. Elsewhere, universities relied on campus security and private contractors to monitor students, document activities, and suppress organising efforts.
“We are at a point where Canada has turned into an authoritarian regime, with the police operating as its enforcement arm,” Gur said. “What we are witnessing is a steady loss of civil rights,” he continued.
The crackdown reached a new pitch on June 6, 2024, when McGill University, home to one of the country’s longest-standing encampments, and the University of Toronto sought and obtained a court injunction to forcibly remove protesters. Police arrived in full riot gear, pepper-sprayed students and arrested at least 15 people both on and off campus.
Despite the heavy-headed response, these encampments were overwhelmingly peaceful. Student organisers focused their efforts on demands for institutional transparency, divestment from weapons manufacturers complicit in Israel’s occupation, and the recognition of Palestinian human rights. The use of police tactics against the protesters has drawn widespread criticism.
Meanwhile, multiple campuses across the country witnessed similar events unfolding.
The right to protest peacefully in public speech on campuses is protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom and international law. The freedom to express opinions and freedom to assemble are core components of Canadian law and the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
However, the students were zip-tied and detained, fenced-off protest zones, RCMP surveillance drones, typically used for border monitoring, hovering above.
In many cases, student organisers were also targeted online through coordinated doxxing campaigns, heightening concerns about personal safety and digital harassment for demonstrating their support for Palestine.
“Most of the protests in Toronto, particularly since October 2023, have involved nonviolent civil disobedience. But there has been a clear continuous attempt by police and authorities to deliberately depict the protests as violent,” said Friesen.
Targeting dissent
In late November 2023, Activists had gathered outside Avarham Yoseph synagogue in Toronto to oppose an Israeli real estate fair, voicing concern over settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank.
Although the police on site described the demonstration as peaceful, posing no imminent threat to the synagogue or its congregation, within a few days, pro-Israel advocacy groups and some elected officials had transformed the narrative, portraying it as an act of intimidation targeting Jews at prayer.
And under Toronto’s proposed ‘Access to Social Infrastructure’ bylaw or “bubble zone” in debate, such a protest could be deemed unlawful, limiting demonstrations near certain public spaces, including religious spaces, hospitals. However, several other cities like Brampton, Vaughan, Hamilton, and Oakville have passed the bylaw.
“These bubble zones haven’t just legitimised the violent rhetoric directed at pro-Palestine protesters, but they have also shifted attention away from the real issue,” said Friesen. “People are out in the streets because Palestinians in Gaza are facing mass starvation, relentless bombing and genocide, and Canada is complicit in this. But instead of grappling with that, the focus is diverted.”
The bylaws introduce sweeping powers: fines of up to $100,000 for organising or participating in “nuisance demonstrations” near designated buildings, often with no clear definition of what constitutes a threat or intimidation. “These bylaws are not protecting the vulnerable—they’re shielding political power from accountability, and branding Palestinian voices as inherently threatening,” said Jamila Ewais, Lead Researcher at the Anti-Racism Program of the Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME).
Toronto is home to approximately 1,071 childcare centres, 1,407 places of worship and 1,194 schools, bringing a total number of sites impacted by the new bylaw to 3,937. Under the law, demonstrations are restricted within a 20-metre radius of these locations.
Although legal clinics across Ontario have warned that the bubble zone bylaws likely violate the Canadian Charter, which guarantees freedom of expression and assembly, several rights groups have launched lawsuits against the protest restrictions.
Still, many fear that the damage has already been done.
Aparajita Ghosh is a journalist based in Canada. She covers environmental justice, Indigenous rights, climate issues and social movements
Follow her on X: @_aparajitaghosh
