Carney's CBSA goes full Trump on 95-year old pro-Palestinian scholar

Canada Detained This Legal Scholar En Route To Palestine Conference - Richard Falk and Hilal Elver were detained for approximately three hours at Pearson airport by CBSA (CBC reports almost four hours). Excerpts from The Maple:

Richard Falk, a prominent international legal scholar and former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, was invited to Ottawa last week to speak at a “people’s tribunal” on Canadian complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

A longtime advocate for Palestinian human rights, Falk is no stranger to hostility from Israel and its allies against his work. But what he and his wife and fellow scholar Hilal Elver experienced upon their arrival at Toronto Pearson Airport on November 13 was a first.

The couple were detained and questioned by Canadian border agents for approximately three hours. One immigration officer told Falk that he needed to determine whether or not Falk posed a national security threat to Canada.

November 13 also happened to be Falk’s ninety-fifth birthday.

Eventually, Falk and Elver were released and continued their journey to the conference in Ottawa.

From the CBC article:

Asked about the incident, a Canada Border Services Agency spokesperson said they could not comment on specific cases, citing privacy legislation, but went on to say that all travellers entering Canada are subject to “secondary inspection.”

“This is a normal part of the cross-border process and should not be viewed as any indication of wrongdoing,” the spokesperson said.

“There are many reasons why a border services officer may determine that an individual, or the goods they are carrying, require further processing or inspection.”

But based on the questions he was asked, Falk said he suspects he was detained because of his participation in the event. Falk was there to speak about the relevance of international law in the Israel-Gaza conflict.

“It's disappointing that Canada — after having acknowledged Palestinian statehood — would take such a hostile attitude toward a very forthright conference that really explained to a public, that hasn't been so well-informed, the nature of the objections to what Israel has been doing,” he said.

“One expects Canada to be a model of free speech and liberal democracy and it's not as bad as the U.S., but it's not as good as I would hope.”