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TOP STORY
As radical anti-Israel rallies continue to be a feature of Canadian downtowns even in the wake of a Gazan ceasefire, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre proposed on Monday to begin deporting non-citizens participating in hate activities.
“We see on our own streets antisemitism guided by obscene woke ideologies that have led to an explosion in hate crimes,” Poilievre said in a brief address at the official Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony in Ottawa.
He then added, “we must not just condemn these things, we must take action against them.”
“We must deport from our country any temporary resident that is here on a permit or a visa that is carrying out violence or hate crimes on our soil.”
Ever since the October 7 Hamas-led terrorist attacks against Israel, Canada has been hit by hundreds of anti-Israel rallies, blockades, and other actions — many of them organized by a handful of openly anti-Zionist groups including Toronto4Palestine, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and student groups such as McGill University’s Students for Palestine’s Honour and Resistance.
Some of the rallies were initially celebratory, but they quickly shifted to calls for “ceasefire,” often with the claim that Israel was committing genocide.
Now that a Gazan ceasefire has been in place since Jan. 19, rallies have continued unabated, often with calls for Palestinian “resistance” to continue until Israel’s complete destruction.
“The fight isn’t over. In fact, it has just begun,” Toronto4Palestine said in a statement released in the wake of a ceasefire announcement.
In a social media post on Monday, Poilievre said Canada was “in a dark time of rampant antisemitism.” A Monday statement issued by the Conservative Party also vowed “to restore a Canada where Jews are able to live fearlessly and unapologetically Jewish lives.”
On Saturday, Toronto-based lawyer and protest watcher Caryma Sa’d posted video of one of her videographers being spit on by a woman in a keffiyeh and declaring, “F–king Zionist little pig.”
“He has never taken any public position on Israel or Jewish nationalism, and this woman is a stranger,” Sa’d wrote in a caption.
The alleged assault occurred outside the context of an anti-Israel rally. But on Tuesday, Toronto4Palestine advertised a “Ceasefire Today, Liberation Tomorrow” event in Mississauga, where attendees were invited to “strategize for the future of our liberation struggle in the far diaspora.”
In the final hours of a ceasefire deal being finalized, on Jan. 16 Toronto4Palestine also organized a “Gaza Will Rise” event outside Toronto’s Israeli consulate, which the group refers to as the “Zionist consulate.” Attendees were urged to “drive the struggle for liberation forward.”
The Montreal chapter of Palestinian Youth Movement marked the ceasefire with a “victory” rally through the city’s downtown behind a banner reading, “Ceasefire Today. Liberation Tomorrow.”
Video from a Montreal rally posted by the X account FactsMatter showed jubilant crowds blocking intersections, chanting in Arabic and lighting off smoke bombs, all under the gaze of police observers on bicycles.
“The bloodthirsty Zionists will stop at nothing to continue their evil and oppression,” reads an official Facebook post by Montreal4Palestine promoting a rally entitled “From Gaza to Jenin, Liberate All of Palestine” that was held Sunday. The event name is a call for Israel’s annihilation; Gaza and Jenin being on western and eastern sides of the country, respectively.
The X account Leviathan posted translated video of a Jan. 18 rally in Toronto where a speaker allegedly chanted in Arabic, “We don’t want to talk to Israel except with guns.”
The post was circulated by Independent MP Kevin Vuong, a frequent critic of the city’s anti-Israel demonstrations.
“Calling for gun violence against an identifiable group (Jews/Israelis) is public incitement of violence in contravention of S. 319 of the Criminal Code of Canada,” wrote Vuong. “Toronto and Canada must be governed by rule of law. Not mob rule.”
IN OTHER NEWS
The Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference released its final report today, and the main takeaway is that there are no “traitors” in the House of Commons as has been alleged. Treason is a very high bar in Canada: You have to cooperate in an armed insurrection against the Government of Canada, or you have to collaborate with an enemy at a time of war. So, the report does leave open the possibility that MPs had electoral assistance from foreign governments, or knowingly collaborated with foreign consulates. Nevertheless, Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue stressed that whatever foreign interference there’s been, Canadians should be careful not to have it “overblown.”
“Although there are a very small number of isolated cases where foreign interference may have had some impact on the outcome of a nomination contest or the result of an election in a given riding, there is no evidence to suggest that our institutions have been seriously affected by such interference or that parliamentarians owe their successful election to foreign entities.”
The NDP’s Charlie Angus has called on Elections Canada to investigate billionaire and Donald Trump ally Elon Musk as a potential agent of foreign interference. In a letter to the elections agency, Angus said Musk “serves as a pathway for Russian misinformation and the rise of hate and threats in Canada” and “could easily impact our electoral integrity.” There’s just one problem: Musk has Canadian citizenship via his mother, Maye. So Angus effectively seems to be asking Elections Canada to investigate a Canadian for having opinions about an election.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh appears to be walking back his pledge to immediately bring down the Trudeau government at the next available opportunity. Singh has said several times that no matter what the outcome of the Liberal leadership race, he’d be pushing for a non-confidence motion as soon as the House of Commons reconvenes in late March. But this week, he said he might keep them in power if they tabled a bill filled with monetary supports offered to counter Trump tariffs. “I will be voting against the government at the earliest opportunity. If the Liberals are serious, though, about a plan to support workers, call the opposition leaders together. Discuss that plan with us,” he said at a press availability.
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