An Israeli-born Canadian woman was allegedly denied listing Israel as her place of birth on her Canadian passport at a Montreal passport office last Monday, according to the woman and her legal counsel, with staff insisting that the exclusion was part of a new federal policy.
Start-Up Nation Montreal founder Anastasia Zorchinsky said, in a Thursday Instagram video statement, that when she attempted to file a passport application, a Passports Canada employee told her that she could not put Israel alongside her birth city, Kfar Saba, due to the “political conflict.”
Zorchinsky told The Jerusalem Post that when she had demanded to know the policy that dictated this decision, the staff members then told her that she could, in fact, put Israel on her passport.
Carney and Canada's recognition of Palestine
However, as Zorchinsky detailed in her video statement, she was told by Passport Canada staff that, since Prime Minister Mark Carney had officially recognized a Palestinian state on September 21, there were some cities that were eligible to be labeled “Palestine,” including Nablus, Jenin, Ramallah, and Jerusalem.
The policy expressed to Zorchinsky was politically motivated and discriminatory, she said in the video.
“These are the clear consequences of the current government and leadership in power,” Zorchinsky said.
She told the Post that if someone else were in her position, they might not know how to deal with the situation, and it could result in them being denied the right to list their birthplace in their passport – with no legal basis.
Zorchinsky’s attorney, Neil Oberman, said on X/Twitter that he had contacted Service Canada’s Passport Program on Wednesday, demanding the disclosure of internal documents regarding passport nationality designation and a review into the legality of the provided explanations – and that his client had experienced discriminatory service based on her national origin.
“No law supports this. No regulation authorizes it. No democracy should tolerate it,” Oberman said on social media. “Passports are not political documents. They are instruments of identity and equality before the state. When administrative discretion crosses into discrimination, the rule of law itself is fractured. Canada must do better. Accountability starts with transparency and training.”
Passport Canada did not respond to inquiries from the Post, nor had any official bodies responded to Zorchinsky by Sunday evening.
“I’ll keep using my voice to defend democratic values that protect all of us – freedom, dignity, and fairness, and to push back, in every way I can, against the injustices that try to silence them,” Zorchinsky said on Sunday.