Last June “Dubai Ports World” contributed to a crackdown on protestors from a small Canadian town opposing the works of an Israeli shipping company. Garnering the attention of many global progressives, the news was followed by another scandal of Canadian-Emirati-Israeli partnership, which has lately been highlighted by Canadian media.
“Mondoweiss” reports that former Prime Minister Stephen Harper heads the advisory committee at “AWZ Ventures”, a Toronto-based, Israeli company that provides surveillance technology like facial-recognition and crowd-detection systems, in addition to services that offer real-time information on individuals.
Canadian media have also focused on the technology sold by this company to Emirates – a country of a troublesome human-rights record. Whether they meant it or not, media have disclosed a good deal of peculiar details on the company and its advisory council, including that former Mossad spies are now working for subsidiaries of the company. Notably, the woman running the company’s Emirates subsidiary turns out to be former diplomat and Representative of Canada to the Palestinian Authority Catherine Verrier-Fréchette.
In addition to promoting the sales of its technologies to Emirates, the Canadian Israeli company has announced it would be selling Israeli technologies to other Middle East countries like Saudi Arabia and others in North Africa. A lot of questions on the “neutrality” of Canadian foreign policy have been raised now that Verrier-Fréchette has turned from a Canadian diplomat to a senior cyber-security businesswoman. Notably, CSIS former Director Richard Fadden and former federal Conservative Minister Stockwell Day are working for the company, too.
“Mondoweiss” points out that Harper’s advisory board and tens of former spies will be promoting the Toronto-based Israeli company’s sales of cyber-security tech and Israeli surveillance to dictatorial Arab regimes. This disregards the evidences revealed concerning the misuse of such tech to target journalists and human-rights activists in the recent years.
The news, however, has prompted no reaction by human-rights or pro-democracy/ free media groups, probably lest they get attacked by Canada’s – particularly Toronto’s – Zionist lobby, which is known for chasing after every voice of journalism and of human rights and political activists that favour Palestinian rights and condemn the Israeli occupation and apartheid. It certainly is more complicated when it’s about multi-million-dollar, security-tech companies hiring highly-paid politicians and diplomats. Who dare come near the hornets’ nest?
The Editors
photo from https://canada.projectrozana.org/katherine-verrier-frechette*