Mr. Speaker, news broke today of another terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. More than 200 missiles were launched into Israel from Iran, with sirens sounding in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and in every major city across the country, as nearly an entire population sheltered in place. There is no better time than tonight to talk about the brutality of the Iranian regime, the most destabilizing force of evil in a region and a puppet master for the proxy armies that have wreaked havoc on millions of innocent people in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Iran and, of course, in Israel.
The attack appears far bigger than the last one in April, and it should be the clearest of indications that western values, peace and security, and the stability of the entire region are all at risk because of the fundamentalists who have for a generation taken Iran back into the Stone Age. Over the last number of weeks, they were deeply wounded, they were humiliated and they were finally weakened.
It should have been very simple to state unequivocally that Israel, especially on a day when millions were forced into shelters and innocent civilians were killed in a terrorist attack, had the right, the duty and the responsibility to defend itself. It should be easy to unequivocally state that this country should fight to eradicate terror. Instead, we have a foreign minister who is not just naive about terror but outside of her depth on almost every conversation since and before October 7. Quite frankly, it is humiliating for her and humiliating for the entire country.
Instead of giving a comment on fighting terror, her words were the following:
These attacks from Iran will only serve to further escalate in the region. That is why I have been in contact with my Israeli counterpart this morning. I have been in contact with many G7 foreign ministers, as well as Arab countries' foreign ministers.
This is a very dangerous time for the Middle East, and we need to make sure that this war stops.
She went on to tell reporters outside of this place:
We need to make sure that there is no escalation. Of course, Israel needs to be able to protect itself and that's why we'll continue to support its security and we'll support, of course, through the iron dome.
She continued:
At the same time, we need to make sure that parties sit down and the war stops, because we can see that what will happen (is)—there will be even further escalation, more innocent civilians including women and children dying. And that's what I said at the UN yesterday. We need this war to stop.
If we are to understand this, the minister's position now is that Israel can intercept hundreds of incoming ballistic missiles from Iran, but that is exactly where the defence stops. Israel just needs to accept that these attacks happen and that its technological superiority can continue to provide 100% coverage. She is unconcerned with the terror of Hamas and Hezbollah and the mullahs in Iran and only capable of repeating these talking points, which have received high praise from some in her caucus. They have received confusion from others, embarrassment from some. The minister was also thanked by Hamas, a terrorist organization that the country was once unequivocal about wanting to defeat.
She went on to talk about a ceasefire on the day of a major escalation from Tehran. As for her calls for the supposed 21-day ceasefire that the G7 and some Arab countries were touting last week, it is worthwhile to remember, because nobody has said it in the House, that this ceasefire negotiation did not include any of the belligerent actors involved, the ones responsible for the ongoing terror attacks. They themselves were not in the ceasefire talks. It was a ceasefire proposal that did not involve anyone who was actually fighting.
This is the minister who at the UN managed to offend even our most ardent allies of Canada with her inconsistent hum of moral equivalency, her incomprehensible message and the very fact that Canada, at the highest levels, speaks from both sides of its mouth. It is the same minister who, alongside the Minister for Mental Health, the member for York Centre, was proudly photographed caressing the hand of a prolific terrorist and Holocaust denier in the 19th year of his four-year mandate, who set up a martyrs' fund to reward those who killed Jews.
The member for York Centre demanded an apology from members of this House, and she will never get an apology from any member on this side given her dangerous, sanctimonious hypocrisy after she posed for pictures with terrorists instead of denouncing terror. I think her constituents deserve the apology, and I am almost certain that no apology will ever convince anyone from her riding to make her a member of Parliament again.
The Prime Minister came to Jewish communities after October 7. We are almost a year from that date. He and members of the Liberal Party stood tall and promised full support. He gave them his word. What have we seen since? We have seen protests targeting innocent people in Jewish neighbourhoods, Jewish businesses and Jewish places of worship.
They are not protesting Israel. They are not protesting the Government of Israel. They are not even protesting MP offices. They are intimidating Jews, complete with anti-Semitic slogans, flags, chants and banners, in neighbourhoods, in front of synagogues and in front of a seniors home right here in the nation's capital just last week. There was silence from MPs.
We have seen new lows in cancel culture, as Israeli authors and artists are deplatformed, as universities call for ideological purity to promote Hamas talking points, as IDF veterans are shamed and as the leader of one of Ontario's largest unions gets to keep his job while celebrating “resistance” in the Middle East. We all know what that means. His watermelon army of radicals enjoys impunity of the worst anti-Semitism that I have seen in my lifetime in any labour movement.
We have seen unprecedented acts of physical violence too. We have seen them at synagogues and schools in Toronto, synagogues and schools in Montreal, and cities from coast to coast, from Vancouver to Fredericton. This has gone beyond graffiti, which we have all unfortunately gotten used to. It has turned into firebombs. It has turned into bricks through buildings. It has turned into gunshots from guns.
Where has the Prime Minister gone? As the headlines pile up one after another and stories get more and more outrageous, there is nothing except silence and maybe, if we are lucky, the weakest of platitudes, with him trying to say something and nothing at all, all while anti-Semitic hate crimes doubled in less than a year. It is 2024 and they are up by 250%, and the Jewish community has suffered 70% of all religious-based hate crimes despite making up less than 2% of the population.
The Prime Minister is nowhere to be found. His foreign minister cannot muster a coherent thought. His ministers are terrified of giving even the most basic condemnation. That is on him. He and his government lack the courage to speak out unequivocally and denounce what is happening right now.
There is a lack of courage to take new measures to protect our country by truly banning the IRGC agents who are still here through Samidoun and by properly vetting those who have been caught right before they committed a terrorist attack, either right here in our country's biggest city or south of the border in New York. The government awarded citizenship to someone it arrested on terror charges.
The government lacks the courage to do the bare minimum, such as enforcing the laws in our Criminal Code, all while it denies security funding to the most vulnerable synagogues and community centres, with excuses of red tape or, frankly, incompetence. We have known for a long time that the Prime Minister and his MPs lack any conviction at all, but never has this lack of conviction been more costly and put more people at risk than right now.
The Prime Minister is playing politics because he is out of gas on everything else. He is playing politics with the gravest threat in the Middle East's security in a generation. He is playing politics with the biggest challenge to Canadian religious freedoms since the Holocaust. Let me tell members how he does it. He sends one group of MPs to say one thing to one community and sends another group of MPs to say something else to another community.
He gets members, like the ones for Mount Royal and Eglinton—Lawrence, to put out strongly worded tweets to say all the right things to try to cover up the failures at the top, while being shoved in a back corner of Parliament. Meanwhile, members like the one for Scarborough Centre call for an unequivocal embargo and actively parrot anti-Israel talking points. Two different MPs give two different messages to two different communities.
The Prime Minister sends ministers to denounce UNRWA and announce that the Liberals stopped Canadian funding, but then they quietly resume funding just months later with millions of tax dollars. They cannot even take a stand to condemn the immunity for UNRWA employees who participated in literal terrorism. Let us not forget their impeccable timing to reaffirm their unwavering support for UNRWA, just as UNRWA publicly admitted that Fateh Al Sharif, the Hamas leader in Lebanon, was also running an UNRWA school and heading its school union. He was just buried in Hamas regalia, in case anyone missed it.
At what point does the Liberal government move UNRWA from the willful ignorance column to the willing co-conspirator column and stop sending Canadian tax dollars that are funding terror? The Liberals are doing so because they lack the courage. Like I said, they lack the conviction to do what is right instead of doing what is popular.
They lack the fortitude to stand with our allies through fire and water instead of just freeloading as usual. They lack the moral clarity to stand with the Jewish community, not just when it is easy but also when it is difficult. There is a steep price to pay for this and for our reputation abroad as it continues to crumble in the face of another equivocation, another reversal and another backtrack.
We were once the country that took Juno Beach, that served in Korea and that brought peace to countless nations. We are the country now that cannot even honour its basic commitments and that sends a foreign minister who has a basic understanding of the threats in the region to any podium where the people in the audience are not questioning her own capacity and the words coming out of her own mouth.
It is a steep price to pay for those living in the Middle East as they continue to live under the thumb of oppressive regimes like Hamas and Hezbollah, as they continue to wait for their loved ones to come home and as they continue to yearn for peace and freedom. However, it is also a steep price to pay for the people living here in Canada.
It has not been this hard to be a Jewish Canadian for a very long time. How could it not be when one cannot hang a mezuzah on the door of their home or the door of their university dorm? Frankly, in almost every Jewish neighbourhood, that is happening. How could it not be hard when one cannot wear a kippah without being followed, verbally harassed or even spit on in this country? How could it not be when one goes to synagogue and finds out, again, that it has been vandalized? How could it not be when one sends their kids to a Jewish school and cannot trust that they are going to come home at the end of the day?
These are not just attacks against the Jewish community; they are attacks against everyone. When the inherent rights of religious freedom, speech, assembly or just plain dignity are denied to one group, it is very easy for people to deny them to another group. When we turn a blind eye to injustice happening here at home, it persists and it gets worse.
My parents came to this country for freedom, and I am so glad they did. Millions of others came to this country for freedom. However, if they saw the anti-Semitism here today, I wonder whether they would make that same decision, because it has been taking place in this country for far too long. It is not hyperbole; it is a real thing that is happening, and the other side better wake up.
I get emails from constituents telling me, “I want to stay in Canada, but I don't know if I can anymore.” They tell me that freedom, the very essence of our country, is in great peril. They are actually scared, in 2024, as Jews in this country. When we lose freedom, we lose something much bigger than ourselves. It is not too late to get it back, but it is going to take far more effort than the window dressing and the posturing that the government has put forward so far.
Since the members of the NDP have become unrecognizable in their pursuit of division in this country and their lack of respect for western democratic values, and since they are unable to muster even the courage to stand on the side of allies' broader requests to discuss the carnage in Lebanon, with barely a mention of Hezbollah, let us go through a timeline so they can join us in the real world.
October 7, 2023, was Hamas' attack on Israel, the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Hezbollah immediately escalated the aggression, launching more than 9,000 missiles, rockets and drones on northern Israel, which has been evacuated for the better part of a year. After doing the bidding of the terrorists, on July 27 an attack on Druze children by Hezbollah occurred in the northern Golan Heights. A rocket fired by Hezbollah struck a soccer field where children were playing; it killed twelve teenagers and injured dozens more.
In response to these attacks, Israel has now launched the largest military campaign against Hezbollah since 2006. The operation targets Hezbollah's military infrastructure, aiming to significantly degrade the group's capabilities. We used to be on the side of fighting terrorism, and in this part of the House, we still are.
That brings us to the elimination of one of the most prolific terrorists that ever was, ending a 30-year reign of terror when he dragged his country into one war after another. He was indiscriminate in his terror against Israelis, Americans and thousands of Lebanese and Syrians during his bloody rule, and he enjoyed very little support from his Arab neighbours, the Arab League, the U.S., the EU and Canada, which designated him and his group as terrorists.
To watch the flags fly in the streets without a peep from any member of the House is, frankly, unforgivable. To watch members of the House stand in rallies alongside Hezbollah flags is unforgivable. No one wants to see the loss of life anywhere; it is why we are here talking about this. However, it must be said in this debate that the rulers of Hamas and of Hezbollah, and the tyrants in Tehran, are the cornerstone of suffering, and they must come to an end.
The people of Lebanon, the people suffering in Gaza, the hostages still in the grips of the barbaric terror, and the brave Iranian people who have taken to the streets to weaken the regime should be the people we seek to fight for. This regime is responsible for stoning women in soccer fields and for throwing gay people off roofs. To watch members of Parliament line up at rallies where its flag is being flown is, frankly, unforgivable.
We should not be focused on appeasing the tyrants, not here and not anywhere. We should not be worried about placating the violent, spiteful mob of dictators, murderers and the forces of hatred in power in the Middle East. However, it is what this country has come to; that is what we are doing right now. It is a shame, and it will change the day we elect the member for Carleton as the next prime minister of this country.