CUPE Ontario sponsoring 'Hands off Iran' rally outside U.S. consulate this Sunday
The Ontario chapter of the Canadian Union of Public Employees is sponsoring a demonstration outside the American consulate in Toronto in protest of support for Israel amid its ongoing efforts to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“Hands off Iran,” the advertisement for the Sunday event reads in all caps. Nearly a dozen sponsoring groups are listed on the poster alongside CUPE Ontario, including the Palestinian Youth Movement, an organization that has repeatedly expressed support for the October 7 Hamas invasion of Israel.
CUPE Ontario on Tuesday called the poster “an early unapproved draft version” and said a new poster was forthcoming. But the union’s decision to support the protest drew widespread criticism from provincial leaders and Jewish community groups.
“By supporting this protest, CUPE Ontario is siding with a regime — run by unelected mullahs — that tortures and kills dissidents, oppresses women and LGBTQ+ Iranians, persecutes minorities, and sponsors terrorism across the globe,” the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) general counsel Richard Marceau said in an email.
“In what world is this considered progressive? In backing Tehran’s theocracy, CUPE Ontario has aligned itself with the most extreme of the extremists.”
The poster was published on Instagram by the Palestinian Youth Movement and circulated by others on social media.
“In the past week, the Israeli occupation launched air strikes in Iran. We see this attack for what it is: a brazen attempt to escalate violence and undermine sovereignty in the region. From the Zionist occupation’s full blockade of the West Bank and starvation and genocide in Gaza, to U.S. claims of nuclear weapons, to (Prime Minister Mark) Carney’s failure to condemn the aggression, we stand against this coordinated imperialist attack on our region,” the Palestinian Youth Movement wrote on Instagram.
“We call for building and preserving unity in confronting Zionism.”
In its statement Tuesday, CUPE Ontario said it was simply joining with “other unions, labour organizations, and allies” in calling for peace.
“We are supporting the June 22 rally in Toronto to demand an end to war between Iran and Israel. This support is entirely consistent with CUPE Ontario’s long-standing role as an advocate for peace,” it said in a written statement.
B’nai Brith Canada, a national Jewish organization that runs an annual antisemitic tracker, questioned how the union was “standing in solidarity with terrorists and despots, whose ideology calls for the annihilation of Western civilization,” asking how it served “the best interest of Canadian workers?”
“The vast majority of the Western world acknowledges the existential threat posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran to global security,” the group wrote in a statement on X. “Yet, CUPE Ontario and Fred Hahn have chosen to side with the sanctioned regime and its terrorist henchmen the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
Ontario Minister of Labour, Training, Immigration and Skills Development David Piccini wrote on social media that he was not surprised by the announcement, but was “deeply sad to see CUPE Ontario funding this garbage!” The Conservative MPP added that union “members deserve better for their dues than sponsoring this,” calling it “shameful.”
Last week, Israel launched a series of air strikes across Iran aimed at the country’s nuclear infrastructure and military leadership. Negotiations between the United States and the Islamic Republic were scheduled for Sunday in Oman; however, President Donald Trump has since publicly criticized Iran for dragging its feet during the talks and failing to make a deal sooner.
For decades, the religious leadership of Iran has sought a path to an atomic weapon, collaborating with Russia, China, North Korea and Pakistan to advance its nuclear capabilities and ballistic missile program. The country has long been widely viewed as a state sponsor of terror, including by the Canadian and American governments, playing a pivotal role in training and equipping designated terror entities such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.
On several occasions, the political and religious leaders of Iran have called for the destruction of Israel. In 2005, then Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared, “Israel must be wiped off the map.” Ten years later, current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei vowed the Jewish state would not exist in “25 years” during a speech in Tehran.
In 2012, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons was a “red line.”
CUPE Ontario has faced increased scrutiny since the October 7 terrorist attacks, when union president Fred Hahn called the atrocities the “power of resistance.” He later issued an apology for his comments and said they were misconstrued by “bad faith actors with a divisive agenda,” but the union has remained opposed to Israel throughout its conflict with Iran’s proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis — and has encouraged members to attend anti-Israel vigils and rallies.
In November 2023, a group of Jewish members filed a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) alleging CUPE Ontario and Hahn “engaged in systemic discrimination against the complainants by promoting and engaging in antisemitism.” On Tuesday, one of the members, Carrie Silverberg, and the group’s attorney, Kathryn Marshall, told the Post in a written statement on behalf of Jewish union members in the complaint that they were “shocked and disgusted to see CUPE Ontario is proudly endorsing a ‘hands off Iran’ protest.”
“Despite being involved in active litigation from its own Jewish members, CUPE Ontario continues to show it doesn’t care and doubles down on its discriminatory actions,” they wrote.
In August 2024, dozens of union members called for Hahn’s resignation after he shared a video on his Facebook of an Olympic swimmer wearing a Star of David jumping off a diving board and turning into an exploding bomb.
“My intent was never to associate Jewish people with the violence enacted by the state of Israel. It remains my strongly held view that it is a terrible mistake, and anti-Semitic, to conflate abhorrent actions by the state of Israel with Jewish humanity or identity,” he later wrote in a Facebook post.
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