Service Canada offers limited apology, 'no accountability' for telling Jewish Montrealer she couldn't name Israel as birth country

A Jewish Montreal woman says federal officials have offered her only a limited apology after passport office employees told her she could not indicate Israel as her country of birth because of “political conflict.” Anastasia Zorchinsky is a Canadian citizen but was born in Kfar Saba, in central Israel. However, she says Service Canada officials told her because of the “political conflict we cannot put Israel in your passport.” Alternatively, she was told she could have indicated her birth country as Palestine, and that Kfar Saba was one of several cities that was allegedly caught by this policy shift, including Jerusalem. She and her lawyer, Neil Oberman, suspect the episode stems from Prime Minister Mark Carney’s decision to recognize the state of Palestine.

Ultimately, officials at the passport office relented when she pushed back. And in a Nov. 29 Instagram post , she said she received her passport with Israel identified as her birth country.

Meanwhile, Oberman wrote a letter to the Montreal passport office and Service Canada on Nov. 12, ( posted to his Instagram ), seeking an explanation for what happened. The response received last week from  Cliff Groen , the chief operating officer for Service Canada was not forthcoming, says Oberman.

“While we appreciate the quick response,” Oberman told National Post in an interview on Wednesday, “it was an apology but not an apology. It did not offer an explanation.”

He suspects the quick reply was driven by the intense media attention Zorchinsky’s case has received, including the National Post and  The New York Times . (He is not publicly sharing Groen’s letter, he says, out of deference to the government.)

During the same interview with the Post, Zorchinsky emphasized her concern that “this doesn’t happen to anyone else. It’s abnormal. It’s not okay.” Moreover, she says, Groen’s response was “totally insufficient. This is why Neil and I decided to write a second letter.”

In the follow-up letter to Groen, dated Nov. 27 ( posted on Oberman’s LinkedIn account), Oberman notes that Groen stated passport staff “may have caused some confusion” and Service Canada must “regularly review” it’s operational tools.

Yet, he adds, Groen did not state why passport office staff “invented rationales having no basis in policy.”

And Oberman insists that issuing the new passport with the correct information does not excuse or explain staff conduct.

He renewed his demands for the policy/operational documents supporting the statements passport office staff made to Zorchinsky. Further, he stated that if such documents can’t be provided, then an explanation as to why needs to be forthcoming. He also requested confirmation of an internal review of the incident.

Finally, he intends to file complaints before the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the federal ombudperson if a substantive response is not provided by mid-December. He also threatened to file an application for judicial review before the Federal Court.

What happened to his client was not “merely a clerical mistake,” insists Oberman in a post on Instagram , adding, “It was the application of non-existent rules, delivered with confidence.”

Both Zorchinksy and Oberman point to the federal government’s decision to recognize Palestine as a state, without consultation with Canadians, as the potential source for such incidents. The move has given license to people with anti-Israel political views and Jewish people “have been suffering” as a result, says Oberman.

He adds that “this is not a Jewish issue. All Canadians have the right to government service” without the influence of geopolitics. 

He says Zorchinsky’s story has prompted other Canadians to share their experiences. They are “collecting and examining” them and considering whether further legal intervention may be sought in the future.

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