IMMEDIATE RELEASE
23 April 2026
Canada — On March 24, 2026, advocates and legal experts submitted a request for investigation to the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Section of the Department of Justice Canada regarding Metrontario Investments Limited and its affiliated corporations (Metrontario). The submission outlines their complicity in the commission of war crimes associated with illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory and in the occupied Syrian Golan. Collectively, we refer to these as the Occupied Territories. Submitting parties included Just Peace Advocates, Al-Haq, Palestinian Canadian Congress, Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, Michael Lynk, Alex Neve, Ardi Imseis, Heidi Matthews, Lisa Loader, Nicholas Pope, and Jonathan Kuttab.
Metrontario was added to the UN database of business enterprises involved in illegal settlement activities in September 2025. It was listed due to its “use of natural resources, in particular water and land, for business purposes.” Currently, Metrontario is the only Canadian company included of the total 158 companies.
In 2018, Who Profits, an independent research center, reported that Metrontario conducted various activities in illegal settlements:
- Built a cycling path in Mount Hermon, located in the occupied Syrian Golan and stabilized a strip of land for the Israeli Ministry of Defence on the wall surrounding Gaza (AnyWay Solutions);
- Operated distribution points for its products in the illegal Gush Etzion settlement and the illegal Ariel settlement in the occupied West Bank (Seakura Sea for Life);
- Built housing units in occupied East Jerusalem including 128 units in French Hill, 122 units in Har Homa, and 32 units in Pisgat Ze-ev (CIM Lustigman);
- Built the ‘Judea and Samaria District Police Headquarters’ in the illegal Maaleh Adumim settlement in the occupied West Bank (CIM Lustigman);
- Planned 14,000 housing units in a new illegal settlement of Ein Yael or Givat Yael, in the Palestinian village in Al-Walajah in the occupied West Bank (Yael Hill Ltd., a subsidiary of CIM Lustigman);
- Built 300 housing units in the illegal settlement neighborhood of French Hill (Somwood Constructions).
Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories are illegal and their establishment, maintenance and expansion constitutes acts which amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, including inter alia forced displacement, transfer in, appropriation, destruction of property, and persecution and apartheid.
The International Court of Justice has twice affirmed the illegality of the settlements, first in 2004 and again in 2024. In its 2024 Advisory Opinion, the Court specifically affirmed that Israel “is under an obligation to cease immediately all new settlement activities, and to evacuate all settlers from the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
The Court further found that “all States are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by the continued presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” This plainly implicates Canada’s obligations to see to it that legal or natural persons under its jurisdiction do nothing to aid or assist Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including through the illegal Israeli settlement of the territory. Officially, Canada does not recognize permanent Israeli control over territories occupied in 1967 (the Syrian Golan, West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip). Further, Canada has implemented the Rome Statute in its entirety through the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act and the Fourth Geneva Convention through the Geneva Conventions Act.
Based on the evidence and its recent inclusion in the UN Database, Metrontario must be investigated for complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity. But that is not all. Metrontario has other Canadian connections.
As identified by Howe and Sylvestre in a 2021 article, there is a network of “anchor foundations” that are “tied to the root family fortunes of wealthy Toronto-based real estate corporations.” One of these foundations is the Nathan and Lily Silver Family Foundation (“Silver Foundation”). Howe and Sylvestre identified a significant overlap in their board of director membership. These private “anchor foundations” provide significant funds to “burner charities” — short-lived entities that appear to simply move as much money out of Canada as possible, resulting in tens of millions of charitable funds “having claimed to have moved into Israel with no discernible purpose or charitable activity attached.” They also support “war crimes conduits” — a Canadian charity that fundraises for another organization, without direct control over it, resulting in “settlement expansion, Palestinian dispossession ,and financial and material support for the Israeli military.”
The Nathan and Lily Silver Foundation funds Canadian charities that are directing funds to illegal settlements and the Israeli military. Of the top 20 recipients of Silver Foundation funds between 2013-2024, at least 13 are implicated in the Canada to Israel charity pipeline. This includes the United Jewish Appeal of Greater Toronto ($3,139,900),United Israel Appeal of Canada Inc ($2,854,225), Mizrachi ($1,379,950), and Moral Arc Foundation — previously the Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada — ($797,900). Through its own funds, the Silver Foundation is financing the Canada to Israel charity pipeline, as outlined inCBC The Fifth’s Estate.
Member states have an obligation to remove the ability of corporate and charitable actors – registered within their states – from deriving financial gain from the occupation.
With respect to non-profit or non-governmental organizations, States must carefully review any organization that is financially or politically supporting the unlawful occupation. States shall not give support to these organizations, for example through allowing the organization to have tax-exempt status or providing tax deductibility for donations to the organization and must ensure that financial contributions to support the unlawful occupation, including settlements and settlers, cease (paras 30-31).
The Canada Revenue Agency must take seriously the state responsibility in this regard (as well as under Article 1 of the Fourth Geneva Convention), and ensure, as the regulator, that funds are not being sent that are supporting the illegal occupation, apartheid, or genocide.
Contact
Just Peace Advocates, info@justpeaceadvocates.ca
Additional Facts
- The UN Database was initially released in 2020 (A/HRC/43/71) after a report from the independent international fact-finding mission to investigate the implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the occupied Palestinian territory.
- Metrontario Investment Limited’s subsidiaries include Silwell Developments, CIM Lustigman Enterprises & Construction, Somwood Management and Administration, Regal Park Homes, Metrontario Financial Corp, Century Investments, Isotopia Molecular Imaging, Ro’im Olam, Seakura Products, and AnyWay Solid Environmental Solutions.
- The Nathan and Lily Silver Foundation has also provided significant support for burner charities and war crimes conduits. It funded 5 of the 7 revoked charities identified by Howe and Sylvestre, for a total of $2,377,040 or 11% of all Silver Foundation funds in the last 11 years.
