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Is this, at long last, the result of multiculturalism?

As Iran launched hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, our ally, what was happening in Canada?

In Toronto, the pro-Hamas cabal were firing off smoke grenades downtown.  Near Union Station, they celebrated Iran’s act of war.

“Iran has just launched drones towards Israel!” a man shouted over a loudspeaker.

And the crowd cheered. Loudly. They applauded. They looked deliriously happy.

Is this what multiculturalism has wrought?

For a long time, believing in multiculturalism did not render you a “Libtard” or a “Cultural Marxist” or any of the other things that often get said about those who believe in multiculturalism.

Because this writer’s political home was for many years the Liberal Party of Canada, I was a supporter  of multiculturalism.  

I believed in it, and I wasn’t alone. Many of us thought multiculturalism was a good thing. For card-carrying Liberals, in particular, multiculturalism was part of the catechism. We even put it in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in section 27.

The word defines itself. “Multiculturalism” is a policy that encourages people to preserve and promote the cultures from whence they come. It’s the opposite of the American “melting pot,” which encourages completely embracing the culture and values that define America, and none other.  (Canadians therefore had a tendency to like multiculturalism even more – because it wasn’t American.)

So, newcomers to Canada – whether they be immigrants, refugees or the Canada-born children of immigrants or refugees – were encouraged to preserve their unique cultural traditions here in Canada, wearing a keffiyeh and waving a Palestinian flag, if they wanted to. We were such believers in multiculturalism, in fact, we supported using government money to fund multiculturalism.

For years, we’ve done that, under successive Liberal, NDP and Conservative governments at all levels.  Some of the multicul projects government has funded caused scandals.

The formerly-governing BC Liberals, for example, were caught spending millions on multicultural events that, a leaked document showed, were actually designed to be “quick wins” for the party, and paid for by BC taxpayers. And that became the suspicion about multiculturalism, in fact: that it was about politics, not people.

In exchange for supporting multiculturalism – in exchange for funding it, too – the likes of me asked for just one thing in exchange: obey our laws. Be civil.  Embrace that most-Canadian of principles: peace, order and good government.

The vast majority did.  Newcomers did. The bargain was fair, you see: in exchange for Canadian citizenship, you will leave behind those beliefs and behaviors that disturb the peace. Which are probably the things you wanted to escape by coming to Canada in the first place.

All good. Fine. And then, something terrible happened.  Something beyond words.

In June 1985, Air India flight 182was blown out of the sky above the Atlantic Ocean.  The plane had started its journey in Canada, in Montreal. And everyone aboard – 329 innocent men, women and children – were slaughtered.  They were murdered.

They were murdered, serial investigations concluded, by some madmen who had come to Canada, and brought with them black hate in their hearts. They were Sikhs, but it wouldn’t have actually mattered if they were Catholics, Hindus or Seventh-Day Adventists. All that mattered is that they came to the multicultural paradise that is Canada, and they commenced the process of destroying that very ideal.

Others have followed in their foul wake. Others have come from other places and hacked away at the multicultural dream. By 2023, not much was left of it.

And then, on October 7, multiculturalism breathed its last. As word spread – as we learned that Hamas terrorists had invaded progressive farm communities in Israel, and raped and tortured and killed hundreds of innocents, and kidnapped scores more – something else happened, here in Canada.

In Mississauga, Ontario, people – newcomers to Canada, it seemed, but definitely people who do not deserve to call themselves Canadian – celebrated. At the intersection of Ridgeway Drive and Eglington in Mississauga, a large crowd of all ages gathered to celebrate the barbarity of October 7. They honked horns and cheered for Hamas’ mass-murder. They waved Palestinian flags. They handed out sweets.

It wasn’t a one-off. It wasn’t an outlier. In the days since, there have been many, many other such displays of inhumanity and cruelty, almost entirely aimed at Canada’s puny Jewish community.  There have been crimes, like firebombing of synagogues, and shootings at schools, and attacks on Jews.

But there have been other things, too, which don’t amount to crimes – but are specifically designed to make Jews feel just as unwelcome and isolated and terrified. Marches through their neighborhoods, epithets screamed at the elderly Jews who live there. Blocking access to hospitals that Jews support, chanting unsubtle calls for genocide and violent revolution. Demanding that references to Jewish traditions erased, and replaced by that of others.

And now, hundreds cheering on Iran’s attack on Israel. Right out in the open. Proudly.

Have these terrible things been done in the name of multiculturalism? No. But multiculturalism was naïve. It let its guard down. It persuaded us that every single newcomer would come here and treat every other culture with dignity and respect.

They didn’t. They haven’t. A minority, hearts of hate beating in their chests, came here to hate some more.

Well, multiculturalism was an experiment, and it was an experiment that hasn’t worked out.

We are, as the saying goes, a country of immigrants. That shouldn’t change.

But the ones who come here to spread hate?

It’s time to kick them out.

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You can’t assume anything in politics.

That’s a Tip O’Neill truism. He had lots of them. Thomas P. O’Neill was a Democrat, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives for a decade in the Reagan and Bush years. He was the guy who came up with “all politics is local” line, too. You’ve heard that one.

From my current distant perch, I decided to run a poll that would be wildly unscientific. No random sampling, no weighting of results. None of that.

I started with a safe assumption: Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party is poised to win the next federal general election. Big time. For most of this year, he’s been ahead by double digits in the polls – sometimes even edging close to 20 points ahead. That’s not just a win. That’s a Grit-dammerung massacre.

So, I polled the Conservatives who follow me on X, a place where conservatives are very active. I asked them what is motivating them to vote Conservative, and I gave them four options.

After two days, three thousand people responded. More votes are still coming in. But so far, here’s what they are saying about why they are voting Conservative:

• Anti-Trudeau: 20 per cent
• Pro-Poilievre: 11 per cent
• Both options, but more the first: 42 per cent
• Both options, but more the second: 27 per cent

I’ve given people a week to respond, so things may move around a bit. But from the debut of the “poll,” the numbers have been pretty consistent. The vast majority of Conservative vote depends on Justin Trudeau still being there.

You don’t have to be a political scientist to see the danger, here. A pretty big chunk of Conservative support is opposition to Trudeau, not support for Pierre Poilievre.

I did the little X survey because it’s what my gut had been telling me, and my political gut is always more accurate than any pollster, 20 times out of 20. It rarely steers me the wrong way.

So, if the “poll” and my gut are right, one very important question arises: what happens when Justin Trudeau goes, as I believe he will before the next election?

Well, for Tories, it could get a bit bouncy. It could get kind of bad, even.

Here’s why. In elections, most people are what we call low-information voters. They don’t have. a lot of time for political nonsense. They may know something about a party’s platform, and they may actually remember their local candidate’s name (unlikely, but possible). But most of the time, the leader is the thing that matters most. Who the leader is – how he or she is – affects vote choices more than anything else.

That’s why wild things happen when parties change leaders. Take a look at our recent history.

In 1993, I was Jean Chretien’s Special Assistant and ran his election war room. When Kim Campbell became Tory leader that Summer, she instantly became the most popular Prime Minister in the history of Canada.

Hard to believe, I know, given that we reduced her party to two seats. But after the Tory leadership race was over, Campbell was ahead of us Grits in virtually every poll – in the month of July 1993, by double-digits.

Her mistake was calling the election right away, before people got to know her. Which, ironically, was John Turner’s mistake, too (I helped run his youth campaign, and I know).

Turner became Liberal leader in the hot Summer of 1984. He immediately went ahead in the polls – again, in multiple polls, by as much as ten points. He wanted to call the election right away; my future boss, Chretien, counselled him to wait, to let Canadians get to know him. He didn’t wait. He got massacred by Brian Mulroney.

Another example: Michael Ignatieff. For a brief time, I advised him, too. When he cruelly fired all of my friends, the people who made him leader, I quit. That’s not how a real leader behaves.

But before all that, when he won the Liberal leadership with 97 per cent of the vote in Vancouver, Ignatieff, too, was consistently ahead. Every single poll, in the late Spring and early Summer of 2009, showed Ignatieff ahead of Stephen Harper. Not by double-digits, but by enough to win a possible majority. He and his new team ran a terrible campaign and ended up in third place.

Same with Justin Trudeau (sorry, Tories). As soon as he became Liberal leader in 2013, the polls went his way. And so on and so on.

The moral of the story: when you get a new leader, all bets are off. It ain’t called a honeymoon for nothing, folks.

If Trudeau goes (and he will), and if there’s a shiny new Liberal leader (and there will be), things will change.

Trust me (and Tip O’Neill): in politics, assumptions are really dangerous.

Don’t assume this one is in the bag, Team Tory. It ain’t.

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ST. ELIZABETH PARISH, JAMAICA – Jamaica wasn’t really the best place to see the eclipse on Monday.

For one thing, it’s way too far from what the scientists were calling “the totality,” which has an unsettling end-times feel to it (we’ll get back to that in an minute).  For another thing, nobody around here seemed to care.  No one was scrambling to find solar-eclipse-safe glasses on Amazon (where “Solar-Powered Adaptive 0.1s Photochromic Sports Polarized Sunglasses for Men” were available, in a limited offer, for $59.97).

But the nutbars sure cared, didn’t they?  Hoo boy.  It was the Super Bowl for conspiracy theorists, said Wired magazine, and it was.

On the Left and Right, too.  Conspiracy theorists are found at every stop on the ideological spectrum. The solar eclipse was a conspiracy theory bonanza for the Lefty and Righty crazies.

Here’s a sampling on the Right:

•    Sarah Huckabee Sanders (who used to work for Donald Trump, to the surprise of absolutely no one) is now the Governor of Arkansas (to the surprise of pretty much everyone).  She declared a state of emergency in the State of Arkansas because, well, we’re not sure.  Huckabee Sanders issued her executive order to make thousands available under the Governor’s Disaster Response and Recovery Fund.  “To defray program and administrative costs,” Huckabee Sanders’ government said.  She also put state crews on “standby,” because the moon was going in front of the sun for a couple minutes, and perhaps she expected some liberalism to break out.
•    Marjorie Taylor Greene, the MAGA Republican who previously opined on “Jewish space lasers” (more on them in a minute, too), said that the solar eclipse was a sign from God that America needed to repent. The eclipse and the recent mini-earthquake in New York State were “strong signs” of the need to atone for our sins, she wrote on X.  “I pray that our country listens.” At this point, we could point out that Taylor Greene’s husband filed for divorce citing her “multiple affairs,” but that would be mean, so we won’t.
•    Alex Jones, who is a pile of garbage disguised as a human, held an event on X Spaces to chat about “what the globalists have planned for the imminent total solar eclipse”. The word “globalists” is the word far-Rightists like Jones often use to refer to Jews.  In that vein, he went on, noting that the solar eclipse fell on a date on the Hebrew calendar where energy can be pushed into the new year to do “evil things.” That’s not all, said Jones, headlining one clip: “Major Events Surrounding The April 8th Solar Eclipse – Masonic rituals planned worldwide to usher in New World Order.”  Rituals.  Gotcha.

No to be outdone, insane people on the Left were prognosticating about the big day, too:

•    The Waterloo Catholic District School Board, for one, decided to make the eclipse day a “Professional Activity Day,” which seems to be neither professional nor active.  Their public school counterparts, however, said they’d still be in class, because it’d be a great day to learn about science and whatnot.  Outraged, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario – Waterloo Region said: ”We disagree with the decision!” Why? Well, kids could look up and see it and go blind if it’s a school day.  Nobody pointed out that the kids can look up at the sun while at home, too.  Why bother with science? Making stuff up is more fun!
•    Over on Reddit, someone using the name “wefellinloveinnyc” noted that the line of the 2017 and 2024 solar eclipses form a giant “X” over the New Madrid Fault Line in the Southwestern United States.  That means “an earthquake on the New Madrid Fault Line could be up to 20 times larger than an earthquake with a SoCal epicenter.” Lots of fatalities, wrote the Reddit correspondent. Because…well, just because.

Anyway.  All of these conspiracy theorists are nuttier than a fruit cake, of course, but most of them can usually be traced back to one thing that is serious: anti-Semitism.  Thus the fulminations about “Jewish space lasers,“ “globalists” and Hebraic calendars: if something goes wrong, it’s the Jews’ fault, say the crazies.

In his amazing book about same, Jewish Space Lasers, Mike Rothschild – who is Jewish, yes, and whose surname is another anti-Jewish conspiracy theory, yes – writes: “Almost all conspiracy theories are rooted in anti-Semitism, and almost all anti-Semitism is rooted in conspiracy theories. Jewish people will always be scapegoats for some people…In many ways, the story of conspiracy theories is the story of modern anti-Semitism. That is how inseparable they are.”

And, when anti-Semitism is now worse than it has been in any time since the Holocaust, a conspiracy theory or two about a solar eclipse is just what the crazies ordered. It’s icing on the conspiracy cake.

But when it’s all said and done do you know what the solar eclipse really, truly is?

It’s the moon blocking out the sun for a few minutes.

You’re welcome.

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Politicians can’t direct police. They can’t direct prosecutors.

But can they do indirectly what they can’t do directly?

They shouldn’t. And, in the case of two politicians who are members of the Toronto Police Services Board, they can try.

And they did.

In recent days, Toronto police have been attacked, physically, by the pro-Hamas mobs. Even though cops in Canada’s largest city have shown extreme restraint – sometimes to the point that some of us have been highly critical of them – they have still been attacked by those who hate the Jewish state.

Video evidence shows they’ve been speared with signs. They’ve been physically assaulted. And they’ve even had horse feces thrown at them.

Some of those crimes have resulted in arrests. Some are still the subject of active investigations.

And that doesn’t even include the other ongoing police investigations – the unsolved firebombing of a Jewish delicatessen, anti-Semitic vandalism and threats, and more.

So, with all of those criminal investigations still under way – with Toronto police themselves the actual victims of crimes – should elected members of the police board be issuing a letter to side with the haters, and against the police?

The answer is obvious. No. Never.

In their Code of Conduct,  Toronto police board members are required to act impartially, and never, ever interfere with police work. But two far-Left members of the board – Amber Morley and Lily Cheng – have seemingly done just that.

On Thursday night, Morley and Cheng issued an extraordinary statement along with four other Leftist city councillors. In it, they stated that those who protest against Israel and the Jewish community – in recent days, even by targeting synagogues for hate – “must be protected.”

In the middle of criminal investigations of attacks on Jews and the police, Cheng and Morley and the others said – in boldface print, no less – that what most of us regard as the Israel-hating mob must “be free to demonstrate and engage in protest.”

Nobody disputes anybody’s right to protest. That’s a constitutional right.

But should two Leftist city councillors – two councillors who have enormous power, setting the police service’s budget and its policies – make such a statement in the middle of ongoing criminal investigations?

No way. Never.

Their Code of Conduct forbids it, in multiple sections. It looks like they are interfering with police operations (section 2). That they are speaking on behalf of the board, when they shouldn’t (section 5). That they should not pick sides and should always act impartially (section 7).

That they should inspire public confidence – all of the public, not just some extremist members of the public (section 8). And on and on.

These two city councillors aren’t just warming seats. They have enormous power – one of which is picking the Chief of Police.

For them to issue that statement in the middle of ongoing police investigations is so, so wrong. It’d be like a judge offering an opinion about a defendant in the middle of a trial – before a decision has been reached. It’s just not done.

And, here, it is breaking the rules in a serious way.

Morley and Cheng need to resign  from the Toronto Police Services Board.

And if they won’t resign, they should be fired.

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Canada’s state-funded national broadcaster has a secretive committee to oversee the network’s reporting on Israel – presumably to provide balance.

But Jews who work at the CBC say the network’s coverage isn’t balanced. At all.

Said one: “It’s depressing, I am afraid to speak up because I hear stories about my colleagues getting reprimanded. I feel like I am bashing my head against the wall.”

Another: “Jewish journalists aren’t being listened to. When ideas are being pitched it falls on deaf ears. [Our] stories are being ignored.”

Now, the suggestion that Canada’s state-funded broadcaster has been less-than-fair to Israel, before and after the horrors of October 7, isn’t particularly news. CBC refuses to describe the terrorist group Hamas as terrorists; it routinely accepts unverified casualty counts that come from Hamas; and, to cite just one example, it has refused – unlike other major media organizations – to apologize for falsely accusing Israel of bombing a hospital in Gaza City and killing hundreds.

For most Jews, CBC’s ongoing coverage of Israel can be fairly described by the Honest Reporting watchdog: “CBC News provides one-sided smears of Israel.”

The notion that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation tilts against Israel isn’t news, as noted. But the revelation that there exists a covert internal group overseeing CBC’s coverage of Israel, and that stories that are critical of the anti-Israel side are being actively suppressed? That’s news.

Consider these appalling facts from Jews who work within CBC:

• CBC News Network has not put The IDF on the air since before 2024
• One anchor has been posting very anti-Israel posts on social media – behind a wall, so only a select few can see it
• There’s no tracking of CBC coverage on perspectives – nor who is being put on the air

Said one former senior CBC producer – who, like all the others, feared retribution for speaking out: “As a former CBC person,  I am deeply disappointed and troubled by the coverage of this war. It’s extremely one-sided and is only leading to more misinformation and hatred towards the Jewish community in Canada.

“The CBC was once the gold standard for journalism. However, those days are now gone – unless something radically changes within management.”

Asked for a comment about the shadowy “committee’s” work, CBC spokesperson Kerry Kelly admitted that it exists, which has not been publicly revealed before. Said Kelly: “We have a longstanding Middle East advisory committee created a few years ago to give CBC leadership recommendations about long-term coverage strategy in the region.”

When October 7 happened – when 1,200 men, women, children and babies were slaughtered, and 200 more taken hostage – CBC ramped up the work of the clandestine group. Said Kelly: “When coverage intensified in October, we put together a list of internal contacts (producers with extensive international experience) to provide editorial support if needed. Reporters and producers can choose to email them to ask questions or seek advice on day-to-day coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.”

Insisted Kelly: “They don’t review coverage.”

But how can the committee “provide advice” if they’re not in fact reviewing CBC coverage? And, for that matter, who is on the committee? What is their expertise? And what about suggestions that Jewish voices are disregarded, or non-existent on the committee?

Says Kelly: “We don’t have access to individual statistics on our staff’s religious or cultural identity, nor is that information we would share.”

She then goes to share what she says CBC management don’t have access to: “I can confirm the assertion that no one on the list belongs to the Jewish faith, or identifies as Jewish, is false on both accounts.”

Make sense to you? Me neither.

And nor does their coverage – which is, indeed, wildly unfair to those millions of viewers and listeners who support Israel and desperately want a balanced perspective. Will the taxpayer-funded ever get around to supplying that kind of balance?

Don’t hold your breath.

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Who are you going to call?

It’s not a Ghostbusters reference – although, the mission is similar: to defeat evil.

If you’re Jewish – or if you’re a supporter of Israel and the Jewish community – and you’re being harassed or attacked or vilified or threatened? Then you should call the Lawfare Project.

The Lawfare Project is based in New York City, but is led by a brilliant Canadian woman from Toronto.  It’s a team of more than 600 lawyers based in different countries, and created in 2010 to protect the civil and human rights of Jews everywhere.  It’s a pro bono effort – meaning, literally, “for the public good,” and at no cost, too.  Lawyers donate their time to fight for Jews facing anti-Semitism and hate.

And they’re very busy, these days.

Western democracies are presently in the midst of the worst surge in anti-Semitism since the Holocaust.  October 7 was the worst of it, of course, with 1,200 men, women, children and babies tortured and slaughtered in Israel by Hamas – and 200 taken hostage in Gaza, where more than 100 remain.

But since that terrible day, Jews around the globe have been targeted for the supposed sins of the Israeli government.  And, for some, “it’s become perfectly acceptable to project their hatred of a foreign government on Jews,” says Brooke Goldstein, the founder and executive director of the Lawfare Project.

Born and raised in Toronto, Goldstein went to McGill University in Montreal, then the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law in New York City.  She’s an extraordinary person, and is the granddaughter of a commander of a unit of Polish partisans who fought the Nazis in World War Two.  And she started the Lawfare Project after working as a film producer and an advocate for children’s rights.

The Lawfare Project essentially got its start with her 2011 book, Lawfare: The War Against Free Speech: A First Amendment Guide for Reporting in an Age of Islamist Lawfare. In it, Goldstein offers advice to journalists about how to protect themselves from Islamic extremists who increasingly use the law as a weapon to silence, or punish, those who dare to write about militant Islamists, terrorism – and their funding sources. (Full disclosure: this writer has been targeted by multiple legal actions by opponents of the Jewish state.)

“We fight those who use the legal system as a weapon of war,” says Goldstein from New York, where she is based. “You see this happening with Israel, right now – the bias, the horrific charges of genocide and apartheid, and so on. It’s the attempt to add a legal patina to a blood libel against Jews, and abuse the international legal system, to hinder the ability of Israel and other democracies to fight and defeat terrorism.”

That fight expresses itself in myriad ways, Goldstein, says.  At any given time, the Lawfare Project promotes civil rights by providing legal help to those who have been discriminated against.  It advocates for human rights by combatting extremism.  And, most off all, it fights “lawfare” – the abuse of legal institutions to destabilize democracy everywhere.  Not just Israel.

One of Goldstein’s partners is the affable senior counsel Gerard Filitti, who was also on the line from New York.  Told about this newspaper’s efforts to document how anti-Israel protesters and organizers are getting paid to show up – and how the money for that is often coming from outlaw states like Qatar and Iran – Filitti isn’t surprised.

Says he: “We currently have a lawsuit against Carnegie Mellon University [in Pittsburgh], which over the years have received more than $800 million (U.S.) from Qatar – and it is also a university where we have seen a dramatic increase in anti-Semitism on campus during that time period. We want to see if there is a connection between the anti-Semitism and the funding.”

In that case, the Lawfare Project is representing a Jewish student.  And, they stress, they want to hear from Jewish students in Canada – and Jewish non-students – who are being demonized for supporting the just and proper war on Hamas.  Or for just being Jewish.

“We are trying to see what this money is doing…because we are seeing so much money coming in, from Qatar especially.”

They are doing God’s work at the Lawfare Project – for Jews and Jewish allies alike.

Got a human rights issue?  Give them a call.  They might be able to help.

[Kinsella is a lawyer who is establishing a war room to combat the rise in anti-Semitism in Canada.]

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