The Giller Foundation has severed ties with primary sponsor Scotiabank following a lengthy campaign by activists calling for the organization to walk away from sponsors who invest in Israeli companies.
The foundation has not disclosed its reasons for terminating its partnership with Scotiabank, which played a significant role in increasing its renowned literary prize to $100,000. The move comes at a time when activists were criticizing the bank’s financial involvement with Elbit Systems, an Israeli firm that produces drone systems and other defence-related technologies.
“We are indebted to Scotiabank for their exceptional commitment over the past two decades,” Giller Foundation executive director Elana Rabinovitch said in an emailed statement. “Their support has helped transform the Giller Prize into one of the foremost literary awards in Canada, and we look forward to building on that legacy as we move into an exciting new era.”
Spokesperson Jacob Alvarado said the foundation would not “be making further comments on this issue” when asked if the decision was made in response to the bank’s investment in an Israeli company.
Scotiabank has said it would not be providing a statement on the matter.
One author has criticized the Giller Foundation’s decision, calling it a concession that will only strengthen the resolve of anti-Israel activists.
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“Dear Giller Prize, please stop lurching leftward to try and accommodate the ideologically captured, censorious, illiberal literary-activists,” Jewish novelist Hal Niedzviecki said in a social media post. “Nothing makes them stop, you will never be pure enough. Every sponsor is suspect. They are destroying the Canadian arts. Stand up to them.”
Best-selling author Ian Brodie also weighed in.
“Disappointing,” the University of Calgary professor wrote in a post on the X platform. “Scotiabank’s sponsorship of literary arts is admirable.”
A literary collective called CanLit has been at the forefront of a boycott campaign targeting the Giller Prize since November 2023. It was formed to support anti-Israel activists shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack against Israel.
CanLit credited its actions as key in the Giller Foundation’s decision to drop Scotiabank as a sponsor in an X post.
“This divestment is the result of boycotting authors pressuring the Giller,” CanLit said. “It will remain a permanent stain on the Prize’s legacy that its leadership fought this at every turn — through censorship, stonewalling and harassment campaigns against dissenting authors. The Giller can’t unring that bell.”
CanLit said it will continue to pressure the foundation to drop two other sponsors it sees as supporters of Israel: Indigo Books and the Azrieli Foundation.
The Azrieli Foundation is a Jewish-led philanthropy group that sponsors a number of groups and operates the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program.
CanLit accused both sponsors of “financing the ongoing oppression of Palestinians and silencing free expression in Canada.”
“One down, two to go,” the group added.
The Giller Prize was founded in 1994 by Jack Rabinovitch in honour of his deceased wife, journalist Doris Giller. Executive director Elana Rabinovitch is their daughter. The Giller Prize is awarded each year to a Canadian author.
