Should consumers be told if so-called dream homes promoted for sale in a foreign country stand on land their government deems illegally occupied?
Six Canadians think so, and recently filed a complaint with their country’s Competition Bureau about Israeli real-estate roadshows targeting customers abroad. Some firms, the complainants say, deceptively tout properties in the occupied West Bank as if these were within Israel, obscuring legal, financial and other risks associated with the sales.
The complaint, a novel legal approach to the issue, follows protests over Israeli real-estate marketing tours in Canada, Britain and the United States in recent years. It comes as the Canadian government wrestles with how to respond to years of rapidly expanding Israeli settlement in the West Bank and the Israeli government’s failure to curb a rise in extremist settler violence.
About three million Palestinians and, as of now, about 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank, a territory Israel occupied in 1967 after a war with neighboring Arab states. Over the years, Israel has allowed settlers to build and expand the country’s hold on the territory, which some religious Jews consider part of a divinely promised homeland.
Much of the international community considers Israel’s occupation and settlement of the territory to be illegal under international law, a position Israel disputes.
In September, Canada joined Britain and France in announcing it will ban imports of goods from Israeli settlements to underscore the position that Israeli occupation of the West Bank is illegal and undermines prospects for peace and establishment of a Palestinian state.
The Canadian government in August “strongly” advised businesses against “economic and financial activities associated with Israeli settlements,” warning of “significant legal, financial and reputational risks” in view of the occupation’s illegality.
The recent Canadian complainants argue that the Canadian government’s statements and actions highlight the threat to consumers who may be exposed to deceptive marketing. Some sales pitches and materials, the complainants say, obfuscate important information, giving Canadians the impression that investing in homes in the occupied West Bank is indistinguishable from buying property within Israel’s internationally recognized borders.
“Given the possibility that future Canadian measures could extend to settlement real estate or related services,” their filing states, “the financial and legal consequences for Canadian consumers interested in purchasing Israeli real estate that may in reality be located in Israeli settlements could be grave and far-reaching.”
When the location of properties in the West Bank is obscured, and the implications of purchasing there are not made clear, “there’s so much at stake for the Canadian consumer,” said Emily Schaeffer Omer-Man, the executive director of Global Echo Litigation Center, one of the nonprofits behind the complaint.
It accuses real-estate firms marketing to foreigners of a “pattern of false and misleading representations,” echoing the condemnation that such roadshows have drawn on multiple continents but targeting the approach using competition law.
In England, about 100 lawmakers in June called for the cancellation of traveling Israeli real-estate events, calling them inconsistent with international law. In New York, dueling protests took place when such events were held in May, with some demonstrators objecting to and others defending the presentations. The various Israeli road shows have also generated demonstrations in New Jersey and California, as well as in Canada.
The six Canadians bringing the complaint, primarily from Palestinian and Jewish communities, want competition-law enforcers to scrutinize the websites and other marketing materials of several businesses in Israel and Canada that participated in events in Toronto and Montreal between 2024 and 2026, and to stop any ongoing obfuscation by these firms and others.
While five firms are specifically named, the filing argues that the tactics of these businesses — including mingling listings of properties within and outside of Israel proper or referring to homes in settlements as “in Israel” — are representative of a broader approach by some property promoters that puts Canadians in peril. The five named companies did not respond to requests for comment.
Any six adult residents of Canada can apply to the Competition Bureau for an inquiry into claims of anticompetitive activity, including accusations of misrepresentation to advance business interests. The bureau must launch a formal investigation if the request meets technical requirements, Rosalie Leblanc, a spokeswoman for the Competition Bureau, said in an email confirming receipt of the complaint. But she declined to provide details, citing confidentiality requirements.
Pierre Larouche, a competition law specialist and law professor at the University of Montreal who was not involved in the filing, said in an interview that the complaint takes a “clever” approach to a fraught issue, though it is not guaranteed to succeed. While the backdrop is obviously political, the claim that businesses may be misrepresenting critical information to consumers about property location is a relatively straightforward legal matter within the Competition Bureau’s remit, he said.
The recent challenge to West Bank real-estate promotions — filed on behalf of the parties by Global Echo Litigation Center and Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights — is reminiscent of a lengthy legal battle brought by one man in Canada in 2017 over wines produced in settlements in occupied territories that were sold as products “of Israel.”
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency ultimately ruled in 2022 that “Product of Israel” labels affixed to wines produced in illegal West Bank settlements were “false” and violated consumer protection law.
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