Canadian Parliamentarians Under Threat

"We continue to strongly recommend that constituency offices follow a 'locked door' policy. If an appointment with a constituent is necessary, Members or their employees should consider virtual meetings for the foreseeable future."

"There's been a significant increase in the last five years in harassment of our members of Parliament, mostly online, but also in person and at events and by significant [that means] probably in the tune of 700- to 800-percent increase."

"There's been a significant investment in my area in the last month to resource us up and keep our nose above the waterline and deal with the massive workload which we are now facing."

Sergeant-at-Arms Patrick McDonell

 

"Every time there's vandalism or my staff feels unsafe or threatened, I have to work with them to decide how we will continue to serve Davenport in a way that is safe."

We do not sign up for our families to be threatened, for people to protest in front of our personal houses."

"We don't sign up for our staff to feel unsafe and to not be able to do their jobs." 

Liberal MP Julie Dzerowicz

MP Julie Dzerowicz speaks with reporters in Ottawa about vandalism at her Toronto constituency office, on Wednesday, May 29, 2024. Photo by Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

Members of Parliament in Ottawa have been reminded by the House of Commons sergeant-at-arms that the chaotic situation that now prevails virtually everywhere in Canada -- with pro-Palestinian protest groups upending normalcy in their zeal to promote the isolation of Israel as an 'occupier' of Palestinian land, to condemn its very existence and to harass and threaten authorities at every level of government, from school boards to municipal offices upward to condemn Israel and relinquish any civil relations with the Jewish state -- that they must be alert to accompanying threats and violence by taking self-protective security measures.

To that end, Members of Parliament have been reminded in a reiteration of previous such cautions of late that doors to their offices should be kept locked, and face-to-face meetings with constituents in their constituency offices are to be avoided. This caution was contained in a memorandum distributed to all Members of Parliament. Early Tuesday in Toronto, Liberal MP Julie Dzerowicz's Davenport constituency office had been vandalized, the phrase "Rafah is burning, Toronto will too", left behind.

As far as she was concerned, the vandalism represented a threat, one she conveyed to the Toronto Police Service. "Toronto will burn", she stated, represented a threat. Since the October 7 Hamas atrocities in southern Israel she and her staff have felt decidedly unsafe, impacting her work as a Member of Parliament, heightened considerably by a number of vandalism attacks. MPs, she said, arrive on the job with the expectation that protests and difficult conversations will at times confront them. However, the current situation is extraordinary and frightening.

 

Sergeant-at-Arms McDonell serves as well as the House of Commons corporate security officer. He spoke of MPs being harassed online and in person, a situational threat that has multiplied exponentially over the course of the last five years. And according to Mr. McDonell, in 2019 his office had opened eight files related to threats received by Members of Parliament, while last year the number of opened files increased to 530. The spike in death threats goes beyond the harassment of members of Parliament.

The very numbers of cases that must be dealt with rose to such a worrying degree that his office brought more people on to deal with rising threats and to engage to work in close cooperation with local law enforcement. All parties in the House of Commons have been the recipient of threats and harassment -- on line in particular. Earlier this year Liberal MP Pam Damoff announced her intention not to run for re-election, citing threats and harassment moving her decision.

 

MP Pam Damoff: “People used to pop in all the time just to say hi, now we can’t do that.” Photo by Justin Tang/The Canadian Press/File

"Our office is now closed to the public, it's locked and unless people have made an appointment in advance, we don't let them in."

"People used to pop in all the time just to say hi, now we can't do that because sometimes people use that as a ruse to get into the office."

"They're the ones [her staff] that are there five days a week -- I'm not. I'm in Ottawa a lot of the time and they are subjected to such abuse. It's horrible."

"We don't talk about the impact on staff and people talk to them the same way they talk to me."

Liberal MP Pam Damoff

The elephant in the room is what is not being said. Which is to say, just who and what is behind these threats and ongoing harassment. Logically and realistically it is the same group that shoot live bullets at Jewish parochial schools, that set fire to synagogues and that vandalize Jewish-owned businesses. This kind of criminal lawlessness and promotion of antisemitism comes hand-in-hand with the presence of Palestinians who have migrated abroad and whose state of perpetual victimhood has given it allies among populations that harbour resentment against Jews.

The government whose MPs are now complaining that they didn't 'sign up' for threats against their families and their constituency staff is the very government whose leader, Justin Trudeau has once more proudly announced that Canada is prepared to virtuously practise humanitarian action by inviting more Palestinians from Gaza to seek haven in Canada, to join the thousands of Syrians who fled the murderous attacks of Alawite-Shia Bashar al-Assad against his own Sunni Syrian population to seek haven in Canada.

 

 

 

Note that Palestinians in particular have a well-earned reputation for violence and chaotic destabilization of any country they enter. Muslim countries particularly in the Middle East are loathe to give them haven with the full knowledge of how reliably unstable they are, with an  unwillingness to integrate into the surrounding community preferring to nurse their grievances and nurture new generations into their own state of aspirational martyrdom for the greater purpose of attempting to destroy Israel and establish a 'Palestinian' state on ancestral Judean geography.