Calls to boycott the Giller Prize have officially come to an end, organizers with CanLit Responds announced on Thursday.
The decision comes after confirmation that the Canadian book award is no longer sponsored by Scotiabank and the Azrieli Foundation, and is not receiving financial support from Indigo — all of which have faced criticism for their investments and complicity in Israel’s occupation of Palestine and genocide in Gaza.
The nation-wide boycott began in the summer of 2024, when dozens of authors pledged to withdraw their work from consideration for the Giller Prize. Eventually, the boycott amassed signatures from more than 500 Canadian authors and bookworkers, dealing a reputational blow to what was long considered one of the country’s most prestigious literary prizes.
In a press statement, CanLit Responds described the campaign as a success, signalling the close of a chapter in the larger struggle against “artwashing” of genocide and the role of arms funding in the Canadian arts sector.
“After more than one year of our boycott and more than two years of collective organizing, of the strategic withholding of our labour, and of our refusal to allow our work to launder the reputations of those who aid and abet the suffering of Palestinians, we have struck a material blow against the perpetration and enabling of Israel’s genocide,” the statement reads.
The statement also notes that in 2023, Scotiabank was the largest foreign shareholder in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer. Today, following immense pressure from CanLit Responds and other arts workers organizing in the No Arms In The Arts coalition, that stake has been reduced to zero.
Thea Lim, a Toronto-based author who was involved in the CanLit Responds campaign, describes the news as “a collective victory at a level that I never could have imagined when I first became involved.”
“Truly, I find it shocking and moving that by working together, we were able to achieve this,” she tells The Grind.
Lim, whose novel An Ocean of Minutes was nominated for the Giller in in 2018, describes the campaign’s success as an important lesson for Canadian artists, who so often feel financially precarious or culturally powerless. “It’s impossible to overstate how important this is as a model for what can happen when we stand together and when we say we don’t just have to take what we’re offered.”
Palestinian-Canadian author Ziyad Saadi tells The Grind that the boycott’s success “proves the power of collective action and solidarity.”
“I feel tremendous respect and gratitude for all the organizers who made this happen … and I’m especially grateful to the brave activists who protested at the 2023 Giller ceremony,” Saadi says. “They took a huge risk for the cause and suffered terrible consequences, and none of this would have been possible without them.”
Saadi adds that he hopes that the news will send a message to other arts and culture organizations. “Regardless of what happens next, though, I’d say that after two and a half years of non-stop genocide drowning so many of us in loss and despair, it’s refreshing to feel the respite of victory.”
How we got here
CanLit Responds was formed in late 2023 by authors and culture workers seeking to end arms funding in the arts. At first, the group’s efforts focused on the Giller Prize’s lead sponsorship with Scotiabank, an institution with hundreds of millions of dollars invested in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer.
The group was created after a group of protesters disrupted the 2023 Giller Prize Gala in Toronto. Midway through the ceremony, two protesters went up on stage, interrupting host Rick Mercer with signs that read “Scotiabank funds genocide.” Later on, another protester interrupted the event, shouting “Elbit Systems is supplying the Israeli military’s genocide against the Palestinian people.” Five people were arrested after the disruptions.
This protest galvanized organizers and others within the Canadian literary scene. In response to the arrests, CanLit Responds shared an open letter signed by thousands of authors and bookworkers calling for the charges against the protesters to be dropped.
By the summer of 2024, CanLit Responds expanded the scope of its efforts with the launch of Boycott Giller. The boycott called on authors to refuse to engage with the Giller or submit their work for consideration until the organization cut ties with not only Scotiabank, but also Indigo and the Azrieli Foundation.
Indigo, Canada’s largest bookstore, is controlled by CEO Heather Reisman and her husband Gerald Schwartz. Through their Gerald Schwartz & Heather Reisman Foundation, the two are the main funders of the HESEG Foundation, a charity that donates millions in scholarships which encourage foreigners (or “lone soldiers”) to join the Israeli military. Lori Shapiro previously told CBC Toronto that “HESEG in no way provides support for the IDF, operates exclusively for charitable purposes … and is and always has been fully compliant with Canadian laws.”
The Azrieli Foundation is the $2-billion charitable arm of the Azrieli Group, an Israeli real estate company with investments in banks that profit off of illegal settlements in Palestine. The Azrieli Foundation has also funded explicitly Zionist organizations, such as Honest Reporting Canada, which has led hundreds of campaigns targeting journalists, artists and educators speaking about Palestine (this author included).
The Azrieli Foundation maintains that it is an “apolitical, independent, public, Canadian foundation … and a wholly independent entity from the Azrieli Group.”
The Giller’s ongoing ties to these three organizations, the boycott letter stated, amounted to “artwashing,” and used Canadian literature to obscure their participation in genocide.
Under immense pressure from the CanLit Responds campaigns and other high profile authors, and following resignations by multiple prize jurors, the Giller Foundation ended its partnership with Scotiabank in February of 2025. By September 2025, crown prosecutors had dropped all criminal charges against those arrested at the 2023 gala.
From sponsors to private donors
The Giller Foundation has remained silent about its sponsorships with Indigo and the Azrieli Foundation, and did not reply to multiple requests for comment from The Grind.
In February, CanLit Responds organizers sent an email to the Giller Foundation’s executive director Elana Rabinovitch after both the Azrieli Foundation and Indigo were removed from the “Partners” page on the Giller’s website.
In the emails, viewed by The Grind, Rabinovitch stated that the Giller’s three-year funding contract with the Azrieli foundation ended at the end of 2025.
Rabinovitch also wrote that Indigo “has never been a sponsor” of the Giller, and has never provided the prize with funding. She added the company will continue to showcase Giller-nominated books in its stores as a “marketing partner.”
Rabinovitch’s email also stated that the Giller was able to operate the foundation and fund the prize “with a one-time ‘bridge’ gift and two smaller donations from individuals and foundations who wish to remain anonymous.”
The email added that those anonymous donations will allow the Giller Foundation to maintain operations throughout 2026.
In their statement, CanLit Responds organizers note that they will be watching closely to see who the Giller’s future donors are.
“We will not accept a return to a genocidal status quo,” the statement reads, citing Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestine, the U.S. and Israel-led war on Iran and Israel’s escalating violence in Lebanon.”
Since the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, where around 1,100 Israelis were killed, the Israeli military has killed more than 72,300 Palestinians in Gaza. In the West Bank, the Israeli military and settlers have also killed more than 1,100 Palestinians. Israel has killed at least 5,200 people in Lebanon as well.
“We expect the Giller to spend the months ahead of their 2026 prize gala scrambling to repair their damaged relationships. They’ve been dragged, reluctantly, into a cultural landscape where artists are confronting the entanglement of Zionist funding and the arts; of murderous corporate sponsors and family foundations hiding their direct support for Israel behind a charitable name.”
Authors look forward
Though she welcomes the news of the boycott’s success, Lim says she remains frustrated with the Giller Foundation’s lack of public transparency surrounding the prize’s funding.
“There have been so many attempts to open a public dialogue with (the foundation), especially since this campaign has taken place on such a public stage,” Lim says. “And there’s just been such an intense refusal to acknowledge or speak to these authors, even up to the point of refusing to let us know that they are no longer aligned with these sponsors who are invested in the occupation and genocide of Palestine, which is unacceptable to us.”
“That’s something that I will always remember and carry forward with me,” she adds.
Madeleine Thien, who won the Giller Prize in 2016 for her novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing, did not sign the CanLit Responds boycott, but has been an outspoken critic of the Giller’s partnership with Scotiabank, and has distanced herself from the prize.
Speaking to The Grind, Thien says she is “grateful to the writers and artists who, facing the horrors confronting us, chose collective action. They were told that their actions would change nothing and their words didn’t matter. But in a time of genocide how can we accept this as true?”
Despite changes to the funding model, Thien says she does not plan to engage with the foundation or the prize moving forward, citing the Giller Foundation’s leadership.
In 2024, Thien was among the authors who said they received inflammatory private emails from Rabinovitch over their criticism of the Giller, including accusations that the campaign to end the sponsorship with Scotiabank was motivated by antisemitism. In a statement provided to the Toronto Star, Rabinovitch said the emails were written “at a time of rising antisemitism with acts of hatred being directed not just at the Jewish community but at Palestinian-Canadians and many other communities too.”
“The behaviour of the Giller Prize and board,” Thien says, “and their attacks, in public and in private, on writers who criticized Scotiabank’s war profiteering was disturbing. Writers who submitted their books were asked to agree to certain conditions. I do not know the meaning of a literary prize that wants to celebrate writers only if they stay silent.”
“I don’t understand how any writer is supposed to feel safe in such a space, let alone a Palestinian writer.” — Ziyad Saadi
Saadi, too, says he does not plan to engage with the Giller moving forward, despite the boycott ending.
“Around the time of the 2024 ceremony, she attacked members of the CanLit community with mockery and smear campaigns simply because they had the audacity to speak out against the Giller’s complicity in genocide,” Saadi says. He also notes that Giller staff were reportedly involved in encouraging the police to arrest protesters at the 2023 gala — an allegation Rabinovitch denies. Rabinovitch did not respond to requests for comment for this article.
“I don’t understand how any writer is supposed to feel safe in such a space, let alone a Palestinian writer.”
David Bergen, who won the Giller Prize in 2005 for his novel The Time in Between, says he is not sure if he will submit his future books for consideration now that the boycott is over. For now, he simply wants to recognize the bravery of those who took a risk to support the campaign — especially the young writers who had the most to lose.
“The strength and tenacity of the collective was amazing,” he says. “Very brave people who were attacked and threatened and arrested and bullied but did not falter.”
UPDATE, April 11, 2026: The article was updated to provide previous comment from a spokesperson from the Gerald Schwartz & Heather Reisman Foundation.
