QUESTION PERIOD — Public Safety
Anti-Semitism
February 13, 2024
Senator Gold, members of your government have been very quick to condemn certain aspects of the war between Israel and Hamas, including your Minister of Foreign Affairs running to social media to wrongfully accuse Israel of an attack at Al-Shifa Hospital — an accusation she has yet to correct.
Last night in Toronto, pro-Hamas protesters descended on Mount Sinai Hospital — a hospital that, I remind you, two Jewish women founded because Jewish doctors were not allowed to practise medicine in this country once upon a time.
These protesters jumped over barricades, climbing scaffolds, waving giant flags and yelling anti-Semitic slurs. They even harassed an employee trying to leave the hospital by stopping her car and demanding that she sound her horn in support of their protest.
Despite a federal law in this country protecting against such actions at our hospitals, nobody — yet — from your government has condemned this action. When will the government start applying laws in this country?
I’m going to answer in two parts. The demonstrations — though this is a free country, and people can demonstrate as they did outside the Prime Minister’s Office, and as they do outside my apartment in Montreal every week — are disturbing. To target a hospital and to harass anybody, regardless of the cause, this government and I find it very regrettable — one could use harsher words. That’s the first part.
The second part is that it is not the federal government that enforces the law. When I passed by from a cabinet committee meeting on Monday — and I passed along Wellington Street to come to the Senate for a sitting on Monday — and I heard the demonstrations outside the Prime Minister’s Office, with slogans being chanted that come straight from the Hamas charter, you can understand, as a proud Jew and as a Zionist, it shook me to my core. But it is not the federal government that has a responsibility to determine whether or not laws have been broken, much less to support them.
Again, colleagues, at a time when communities across this country — mine, Arab and Muslim communities, and all Canadians — are struggling and suffering with the tragedies that are going on, to be blaming the government for something that touches all of us, I think, is regrettable. I encourage you to continue to ask appropriate questions in this place, and I will answer them all with your indulgence, Your Honour. But let’s not play politics. There are people dying. There are people suffering, and there are communities that are hurting. So let’s understand the constitutional division of powers on the administration of justice. At the very least, we as senators and legislators should know that much.
Senator Gold, we’re all for freedom, but we’re not for anarchy and hate, and, last I checked, we want from our Prime Minister — the guardian of these laws — to provide leadership.
Your government is also quick to condemn action against places of worship unless those places of worship are churches. Another church was attacked this weekend with clear video showing someone attempted to set it ablaze. The silence from your government is deafening, and the question is why. Why is your government quick to show solidarity with certain attacks of hate on religious institutions, and when it comes to churches in this country, we don’t hear a word from this government? Or is it, again, not your responsibility to apply the law?
Attacks against places of worship are deplorable and ought to be condemned. Again, I think this government’s record in standing up for freedom of religion and for the right of communities to live in peace stands on its own. Again, it is not illegitimate to question the acts of government, but, in this particular case, I think this government deplores all actions of hate against any institution, whether of learning, health care or worship.
