It is Now Easier for Qatar – and the Muslim Brotherhood – to Operate in Canada

This week, the federal government announced it is lifting the visa requirement for citizens of Qatar. The change was presented as a way to facilitate tourism, business, and student exchanges, and as a natural next step in a “modern” relationship.

Taken in isolation, it might look like a routine tweak to visa policy. In context, it should concern Canadians.

Qatar is not just a prosperous Gulf state with an airline and a gas surplus. For decades, its ruling family has been the most important state patron of the Muslim Brotherhood and its ideological offshoots. A significant body of research shows that Brotherhood thinkers have developed a long-term strategy aimed at reshaping institutions from within, using Western freedoms and legal protections to advance a deeply political program. This strategy is not primarily about high-profile acts of terrorism. It is about building networks: endowing academic centers, shaping curricula, funding civil-society organizations, influencing media and cultural institutions, and embedding sympathetic actors in key nodes of public life. Internal documents such as the Brotherhood’s “Explanatory Memorandum” describe this explicitly as a long-range program to weaken Western systems from within.

Qatar has been central to that effort. It has provided refuge, financing, and a powerful global media platform. It has poured billions of dollars into universities and institutions in the West, often with limited transparency about the purposes attached to that money. Analyses of foreign funding to American universities show Qatar as one of the largest state donors. Those same studies find a correlation between heavy funding from authoritarian states and elevated levels of antisemitic and anti-democratic agitation on campus.

None of this means every Qatari student or visitor is a security problem. But Qatar is not a neutral source of “people-to-people ties.” It is the foremost state sponsor of a political movement whose own documents frame Western democratic societies as something to be gradually transformed and ultimately replaced.

That is one half of the picture. The other half is Canada’s response – or more accurately, its lack of one.

Across the democratic world, governments have at least begun to grapple with the Muslim Brotherhood question. The United Kingdom, France, Austria, Germany, and others have commissioned inquiries, published threat assessments, or taken steps to limit Brotherhood-linked access to public platforms and funding. Several Muslim-majority states – including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia – have designated the Brotherhood a terrorist organization, arguing that it undermines social cohesion and distorts religion for political ends.

And this week, President Trump issued an Executive Order directing his administration to consider designating certain Brotherhood branches in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, or elsewhere as terrorist organizations. The Order requires the Secretary of State and Treasury Secretary to assess these chapters under US law and to recommend actions within a defined timeline. The move reflects a growing recognition in Washington that some elements of the Brotherhood clearly meet the legal threshold for terrorism, and that a structured, branch-based approach allows governments to target the most dangerous components while avoiding overbroad designations.

Canada, by contrast, has done none of this work. We have never undertaken a parliamentary or governmental study of the Brotherhood’s presence, ideology, or networks. We have not assessed how its strategic doctrines intersect with our institutions. We are not even having the conversation.

So today we find ourselves in a peculiar position: the leading state sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood has had its visa conditions eased by a government that has never seriously, at least publicly, examined what the Brotherhood is or what it wants. That is not prudent policy.

It is true that Canada has taken one important step. Bill C-70, which became law in June 2024, modernizes several tools for responding to foreign interference, including new intelligence-sharing provisions, updated criminal offenses, and a foreign influence transparency registry. These are meaningful improvements, particularly as they relate to political activities and covert influence.

But they are not a substitute for understanding the Brotherhood itself, nor do they close the gaps that allow authoritarian states to channel money and influence into Canadian institutions that fall outside electoral processes.

Three further moves are needed.

First, Parliament should launch a detailed, non-partisan study of the Muslim Brotherhood: its ideology, its strategic documents, its global networks, and any presence or influence in Canada. This is not about targeting Islam as a religion. It is about examining a political movement that many Muslim-majority countries regard as a security threat.

Second, Canada should review its relationship with Qatar in light of that analysis. This does not mean cutting ties or stigmatizing ordinary Qataris. It does mean treating Qatar as what it is: the principal state sponsor of a movement with objectives fundamentally at odds with liberal democratic governance. Visa policy should not be made without understanding that context.

Third, Canada should consider additional rules on foreign funding from hostile or authoritarian states into our non-profit sector, including universities, charities, think tanks, and advocacy organizations. Bill C-70 moves us part of the way on transparency in political activities, but we should be prepared to go further where funding comes from states engaged in ideological or strategic campaigns that run counter to Canadian values.

None of this requires panic. It requires recognizing that national security cannot be an afterthought in foreign and immigration policy. At a minimum, Canadians deserve to know that when our government makes it easier for citizens of Qatar to enter the country, it has first asked – and answered – the hard questions about the ideological projects Qatar has spent decades financing.