Elana Rabinovitch, executive director of the Giller Foundation, which awards the Giller Prize, says the foundation has ended its partnership with Scotiabank.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
The Giller Foundation and Scotiabank have ended their decades-long partnership, the organization shared in an exclusive statement to The Globe and Mail on Monday morning.
According to the statement, the partnership is over as of today, Feb. 3, 2025.
“As this chapter comes to a close, the Giller Foundation expresses its deep gratitude for Scotiabank’s unwavering support and dedication to Canadian literature,” reads the statement, adding that the Foundation will now “explore new opportunities and collaborations.”
The Giller Foundation administers The Giller Prize, Canada’s most lucrative literary prize for fiction, which awards $100,000 to its winner and $10,000 to each of its shortlisted authors annually. The prize was founded in 1994 by philanthropist Jack Rabinivotch.
Elana Rabinovitch, executive director of the Giller Foundation, praised the bank for its “exceptional commitment over the past two decades,” in the statement. adding that the Giller Foundation looks to “build on that legacy” as it enters this next chapter of advocacy for Canadian writing.
In a separate email to the Globe, Rabinovitch said that “following discussions, Scotiabank and The Giller Foundation agreed that the best path forward was an early end to the partnership.” She did not offer further reasons for the separation.
The Giller Prize has been under fire since late 2023, when protesters stormed the stage at its annual gala with signs that read “Scotiabank Funds Genocide.” Scotiabank subsidiary 1832 Asset Management was at that point the biggest international investor in Elbit Systems Ltd., Israel’s most prominent publicly traded arms company.
At the time, Israel was a month and a half into its retaliation to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack that killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel and saw 250 kidnapped; since then, Gaza’s health authority has said more than 47,000 Gazans have been killed.
About 2,000 people, many from the publishing industry, signed a letter in support of the demonstrators. Though the Scotiabank subsidiary has been gradually reducing its stake in Elbit Systems, it still holds a disproportionate amount compared to other Canadian banks, and the Giller Prize spent much of 2024 facing pushback over its ties to the bank.
More than three dozen eligible authors withdrew their latest books for consideration for the 2024 Giller Prize. Alongside eight past nominees and winners, they called on the Giller Foundation in July to cut ties with numerous other organizations “who are directly invested in Israel’s occupation of Palestine.” Prize juror Dinaw Mengestu said that day that he would leave the jury.
The list included Canada’s biggest bookstore operator, Indigo, which is controlled by Gerald Schwartz and Heather Reisman, who founded the HESEG Foundation – which funds scholarships for foreign soldiers with the Israel Defense Forces.
The day the July letter was released, Rabinovitch said in a statement that it would remain with Scotiabank, and that its sponsorship contract with the bank ended after the 2025 prize.
