Group Sending Canadian Right-Wing Media Personalities on Free Trips to Israel Quietly Funded by the Israeli Government

A Canadian-based pro-Israel group that has been organizing trips to Israel for Canadian right-wing media personalities and influencers was quietly approved for funds worth nearly $175,000 CAD by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs last year, a source of funding the organization has not previously disclosed.

The Exigent Foundation, a non-profit organization co-founded by Toronto businessman Larry Maher, former Canadian ambassador to Israel Vivian Bercovici and Conservative Party insider Georgeanne Burke, was launched in 2024 with a professed mission to counter what it describes as a “surge of leftist and Islamist extremism following the October 7th Massacre.”

It pursues this mission, the group explains, primarily by organizing “educational trips” to Israel for “media, corporate leadership, academics and key policymakers” in Canada.

“We will finance educational trips to the middle east with intensive programs tailored to the interests and knowledge of the group,” the organization states, explaining elsewhere that it aims to turn participants into “agents of change” equipped to reinforce pro-Israel narratives in Canada.

Since 2024, the Exigent Foundation has organized a number of “fact-finding” trips with guest lists featuring a who’s who of right-wing Canadian media personalities and social media influencers, including several names from the National Post and Toronto Sun, as well as others from right-wing alternative media outlets like Juno News, True North, the Western Standard, the Post Millennial, as well as the pro-Israel pressure group Honest Reporting Canada.

The guest list for one of the group’s earliest trips in January 2024 saw National Post editor-in-chief Rob Roberts and columnist Terry Glavin along with Toronto Sun editor-in-chief Adrienne Batra and columnist Brian Lilley.

Photo: (L-R) Terry Glavin, Larry Maher, Rob Roberts, Shakib Shanan, Adrienne Batra, Brian Lilley (Larry Maher, X.com)

While participants on such trips sometimes identify the Exigent Foundation as their travel sponsor, at least two recent trips in October and November 2025 appear to have been primarily funded by the Israeli government.

According to Hebrew-language government documents unearthed by PressProgress, the Exigent Foundation was approved for government funding last fall following a special request from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ “public diplomacy” directorate — an arm of the ministry devoted to shaping “public perception of Israel.”

“The Ministerial Exemption Committee approves the request of the Public Diplomacy Division to enter into an engagement with a supplier in Canada, The Exigent Foundation, for the purpose of organizing delegations of opinion leaders from Canada who will visit Israel, including tours, meetings, and promotion of public diplomacy objectives,” according to a translation of the document produced by a professional translator retained by PressProgress.

“The Foundation will organize two delegations of 10 participants each (20 participants in total) for a visit to Israel,” the document elaborates. “The duration of each delegation’s stay will be approximately one week, with the aim of bringing Canadian influencers and policymakers to Israel in order to become directly familiar with the Israeli reality.”

Israel’s foreign ministry justified its financial “cooperation with the Exigent Foundation” on the basis that it is a “Canadian organization with access to influential audiences and experience in developing effective public diplomacy approaches.”

The ministry document indicates the Exigent Foundation was authorized to receive up to $128,800 USD, approximately equivalent to $175,000 CAD, to organize two trips in October and November 2025.

Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs procurement document

Neither the Exigent Foundation nor its CEO, Larry Maher, responded to several requests for comment from PressProgress about the procurement document. Questions directed to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its embassy in Ottawa about the funding arrangement also went unanswered.

The document itself specifies no names of influencers or policymakers selected to participate in the trips, but suggests the first would involve “influencers from the ‘Iranian Justice Collective’ (Canada)” while the second involved a “VIP delegation” of “former senior officials from the Canadian security establishment.”

The Iranian Justice Collective (IJC), an Iranian-Canadian diaspora group advocating for a “secular, democratic political system” in Iran, counts Macdonald-Laurier Institute fellow Kaveh Shahrooz and human rights activist Nazanin Afshin-Jam as the group’s key spokespersons – Afshin-Jam is the spouse of former Conservative foreign affairs minister Peter MacKay, who also serves as an official adviser for the group.

In response to questions about the Israeli government document, the IJC confirmed to PressProgress that “several members of the IJC” had indeed been invited to travel to Israel by the Exigent Foundation, however, those plans fell through “due to scheduling conflicts and logistical issues.”

“We believe that traveling to Israel to speak with different stakeholders is very important,” the IJC added, noting they were “grateful to the Exigent Foundation for offering our members that opportunity.”

The trip that Exigent ran in October 2025 instead featured second-string right-wing media personalities, including names from the Western Standard, True North and a contributor to the National Post.

Images: Cory Morgan of the Western Standard and Melanie Bennet of True North Wire (X.com)

It is unclear what, if anything, those media personalities and influencers knew or understood about their sponsor’s financial relationship with the Israeli government.

Cory Morgan, a Western Standard columnist who took part in the October 2025 trip and wrote about his experience for the Epoch Times, has identified the Exigent Foundation as the sponsor of his trip but has made no mention foreign government funding. Morgan did not respond to requests for comment from PressProgress.

Likewise, Melanie Bennet, a vlogger with the right-wing outlet True North Wire and an associated website called Juno News, would not comment on the group’s funding but instead questioned the existence of the documents cited in this story. Bennet later posted a screenshot on social media of the questions posed to her, warning her followers that PressProgress would soon be “doing a journalism” about her.

Another participant, Scott Taylor, who is the publisher of the military-focused magazine Esprit de Corps, expressed surprise upon learning of the Exigent Foundation’s relationship with the Israeli government.

“I was at no time (until now) aware of the fact that the Israeli government provided funding,” Taylor told PressProgress. “I was under the impression that Jewish Canadians were the donors.”

Taylor, one of a few participants on the trip who was not a right-wing media personality or influencer, said he originally connected with the Exigent Foundation through Mike Fegelman, executive director of the pro-Israel pressure group Honest Reporting Canada, whom Taylor met in relation to Canada’s House of Commons giving a standing ovation to Nazi war veteran Yaroslav Hunka in 2023.

“Having reported from conflict zones for over 35 years, I have come to realize that you are only seeing things from one side at a time,” Taylor said, adding he has “yet to be invited into Gaza and I daresay I’m a little old to attempt such a venture.”

Another trip organized by Exigent in November focused on influential voices shaping public discourse surrounding Canadian defence and national security. The list of names for that delegation included retired high-ranking generals and other defence and national security officials, including:

• General (ret.) Jonathan Vance, Canada’s former Chief of Defence Staff;
• Vice-Admiral (ret.) Mark Norman, formerly Canada’s Vice-Chief of Defence Staff and second in command of the Royal Canadian Navy;
• Stephen Rigby, former National Security Adviser to Stephen Harper, who was later appointed CEO of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation;

Exigent’s November delegation was accompanied by Kevin Vuong, a former independent Canadian MP who now serves as a fellow at the right-wing Macdonald-Laurier Institute think tank.

Images: Larry Maher (LinkedIn)

The foreign ministry document also shines a light on big budget line items, including decadent per diems and other enticing perks for participants on the week-long state-sponsored junkets.

In addition to roundtrip airfare valued at $6,000 USD (approximately over $8,000 CAD), the document shows Canadian media personalities and influencers would be treated to accommodations at five-star hotels and luxury resorts budgeted at a rate of $630 USD ($850 CAD) per person per night, with Israeli taxpayers footing the bill for around half that tab.

Each participant would also be given meals and drinks valued at $220 USD ($300 CAD) per day through a busy schedule of sight-seeing tours, explanatory lectures and meetings with Israeli government officials.

The foreign ministry’s approved itinerary indicated participants would be taken on a tour of Israel that included stops at the I24 news station in Tel Aviv, the headquarters of the Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems in Haifa, a tech hub in Yokneam, a number of sites of religious significance as well as several locations associated with Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attacks.

“Following their visit, the participants will return with knowledge and personal confidence that will enable them to challenge misinformation and encourage more balanced discourse about Israel in their respective fields of work,” the foreign ministry document states.

Neither Israel’s foreign ministry nor its Ottawa embassy responded to questions about whether they have provided funding for any other trips organized by the Exigent Foundation.

Images: Meet and Greet poster and other photos of Sharren Haskel’s 2024 Canadian tour (LinkedIn)

One familiar face that makes recurring appearances on Exigent Foundation trips and related events is Israel’s deputy  foreign minister Sharren Haskel, a Canadian-born member of the Knesset with the right-wing New Hope Party, who has been a political ally of Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Gideon Sa’ar.

Haskel, whom Exigent Foundation co-founder Larry Maher refers to as a “true friend and patriot,” has made headlines and caused diplomatic rows in recent years after secretly filming British parliamentarians and later refusing to condemn an Israeli government invite to far-right British influencer Tommy Robinson (who was in the country around the same time as Exigent’s own influencer trip in October 2025).

In 2024, Exigent Foundation hosted Haskel on a Canadian tour where the group convening meetings with Conservative MPs in Ottawa. The Exigent Foundation later co-hosted a virtual event with Haskel and Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman with the help of Visegrád24, a far-right Eastern European media aggregator.

(The Exigent Foundation and Visegrád24 would later co-host another virtual event with Israeli diaspora affairs minister Amichai Chikli alongside a former Trump administration official and a Macdonald-Laurier Institute fellow. Chikli hosted a controversial conference featuring European far-right leaders in 2025.)

Haskel’s 2024 Canadian tour also featured a Toronto “meet and greet” with the Israeli Consul General that was sponsored by the Exigent Foundation, where Haskel railed against “media deception” and “biased reporting by Western networks,” claiming Western media had “perverted the truth” about Israel and its actions in Gaza.

Images: Larry Maher (LinkedIn, X.com) Sharren Haskel (X.com)

Both Israel and Gazan health authorities now agree over 70,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel following Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attacks, which itself left over 1,000 Israelis dead. A United Nations commission of inquiry has concluded Israel’s response constitutes genocide.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is currently subject to an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in the Hague on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity relating to Israel’s military actions in Gaza. (Netanyahu is also facing unrelated corruption charges at home.)

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has publicly stated Canada will arrest Netanyahu for war crimes if the Israeli prime minister steps foot on Canadian soil.

Read a translated copy of the Israeli foreign ministry document outlining its funding arrangement with the Exigent Foundation here: