The Perplexing Problem That is Peter Hoekstra

"It has really sent a signal of alarm here that the ambassador may be coming a bit too close to what the general population deems acceptable."

"The message, I think, has been received at the other end."

"Other than the satisfaction of seeing results, superficially, I would not think that, looking at it the day after and the day after that ... I'm not sure that there would be much to gain."

"Maybe one feels good by expelling an ambassador but what happens the day after?"

Anne Leahy, former Canadian ambassador to Russia

 

"That career diplomat [alternative] would probably not have the access to key people in the Trump administration because they weren't appointed by President Trump."

"Given the damage that's been done, you do need to have someone who is an expert on U.S.-Canada relations, who's well-respected on both sides of the border, to take up that role."

"[And that message is] that Pete Hoekstra is not the right person for this job."

"At this point, it needs to be the Trump administration to withdraw him." 

Andrew Hale, fellow, Advancing American Freedom, Washington 

U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra takes part in the PNWER (Pacific Northwest Economic Region) Annual Summit, in Edmonton Monday July 20, 2026. Photo by David Bloom /Postmedia

 

The American Ambassador to Canada under the Trump administration has been called out for his role in exacerbating to a degree the already-strained relations between the U.S. and Canada, over issues relating to the imposition of steep trade tariffs under the pretense of 'unfair trade practices' on the part of Canada, taking advantage of the United States, Canada's largest-by-far trade partner, and mutual-defense ally. A citizen-led list of signatures in support of having Ambassador Hoekstra removed from Canada has gained steam. A quarter-of-a-million Canadians have so far signed the petition.

 

Apart from the imposition of steep tariffs, President Donald Trump's oft-repeated jibes of Canada becoming the '51st state' have left Canadians with a feeling of deep resentment. Ambassador Hoekstra's penchant for making light of it, and his puzzlement over Canadians' growing hostility toward the White House he serves has failed to endear him to Canadians. Once the petition has been closed to accepting new signees in several months' time, it will  be presented to Parliament for consideration.

 

Canada's Green Party leader, Elizabeth May was quick to sponsor the petition, offering in her official role as a Member of Parliament, to table it. Ms. May knows the unlikelihood of the petition being passed with unanimity, much less the unpalatable likelihood of Prime Minister Carney agreeing to seek the Ambassador's expulsion. His own relationship with Donald J. Trump is rather on the spontaneously prickly side, and no action that he can take to further distance President Trump's good graces toward Canada would be a wise move.

 

Arguing that Washington should nonetheless recall Ambassador Hoekstra from Canada, and with little expectation that Canada would pursue the Ambassador's expulsion, Andrew Hale feels that sufficient damage has been done to the relationship of two nations coexisting with the longest border in the world as friends and cooperative partners economically and politically. Petition e-7531, drafted by Calgary resident Lelanne Walker, calls on Ottawa to declare the Ambassador persona non grata.

 

Once the petition is presented to Parliament ,a 45 day period within which he government must respond would take place. In Mr. Hoekstra's absence, should the situation develop to that end, the Embassy could be left in charge of a charge d'affaires; the embassy's deputy chief of mission who would be a career State Department officer. According to Mr. Hale, that could leave Ottawa minus an envoy with political access of a presidential appointee.

 

Former Canadian ambassador to Russia, Anne Leahey, who was herself in the position of being declared persona non grata in 1988, suggests allowing the petition to speak for itself; a public message sent to emphasize Canadians' displeasure with the blunt performance of a man purporting not to be a diplomat, but assigned to that role, nonetheless. 

 

Colin Robertson, on the other hand, as another former Canadian diplomat, believes that Mr. Hoekstra serves his purpose, whether or not he listens to Canadians to relay their views to the White House. Believing that an ambassador who can reflect the President's views, is an important conduit for both Canada and the United States.   

"It goes way beyond that [the aggressive advocacy by a U.S. ambassador]. It is Trumpian. We've never had an ambassador like Hoestra." 

"I think he probably ... can pick up the phone and get through too the chief of staff and cabinet officials."

"What I don't know is how much he's transmitting our message.  I don't see evidence of that."

"I think it's more important that we have him here so we know we have an accurate read whenever we need it on where the administration is coming from."

Colin Robertson, vice-president, Canadian Global Affairs Institute 

Pete Hoekstra is seen campaigning for U.S. President Donald Trump in November 2024. The U.S. ambassador's comments about Canada, including on the possibility of becoming the 51st state, have caused tens of thousands of Canadians to call for him to be expelled. (Rebecca Cook/Reuters)

Tactical Surrender: World Professional Association for Transgender Health

"WPATH [World Professional Association for Transgender Health] now agrees that pediatric transgender medicine is marked by 'medical and scientific uncertainty."

"Yet for years, WPATH presented its guidelines as an  unquestionable medical standard of care."

"The social and scientific costs of questioning their recommendations were steep and could be career-ending."

"For 10+ years doctors have been told WPATH's is the only way." 

Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) 

 

"SEGM's characterization of WPATH's legal position is a clear misrepresentation of an established legal distinction by the courts."

"[Our dedication to our mission and the served patient population] remains unwavering."

"[We are a nonprofit] dedicated to promoting science-based medical care, education, research and public policy in transgender health." 

"[Our Standards of Care] articulate a professional consensus about the psychiatric, psychological, medical and surgical management of transgender people."

"That transgender health care is an area of intense medical debate does not entitle Plaintiffs to prevent individuals and organizations like WPATH from free speech aimed at contributing to that debate."

"Many governments and organizations, including New Zealand, Canada, and some U.S. States and the American Academy of Pediatrics, agree that the evidence supports SOC-8 [Standards of Care-8 updated by WPATH]." 

World Professional Association for Transgender Health

 

"Parents have been told that the WPATH approach is not optional, but medically necessary and lifesaving."

"[WPATH] has aggressively promoted that approach, including by suppressing and stigmatizing alternatives. I think it's disingenuous at best for WPATH to now frame its recommendations as merely one opinion in a legitimate debate."

Leor Sapir senior fellow, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research 

 

 

Within the throes of a legal battle with the Trump administration, the U.S. transgender health organization appears to have made a shift of significance in its guidelines; the very guidelines that platform gender-care policies in North America. According to a new legal filing, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health now claims that its guidance to doctors represents one area in a matter of "intense medical debate". 

 

The organization has brought forward a dismissal of lawsuit motion that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission brought against WPATH, by now claiming that its Standards of Care that have been so influential up to the present are not in fact presented as "assertions of fact, but rather opinions" ,that have been based on cited scientific studies.

 

WPATH claims its opinions are "non-actionable", protected by the First Amendment; that it is doctors who have based their decision-making on WPATH's guidelines who are in point of fact the bearers of "independent responsibility for their own advice", according to the legal filing by WPATH. In response, the organization's critics regard these arguments as a "remarkable humbling in attitude". 

 

They are, in essence, shrugging off their own responsibility in presenting their guidelines as the final word in response to gender dysphoria. Their having framed those guidelines as a matter of dire necessity to respect the confused gender choices made by underage children meriting instant responses of pediatric decision making in hormone-arresting maturation of pre-puberty adolescents and even 'corrective' surgeries now rests on the consciences of the doctors responding to the authority of their original guidelines. 

"[WPATH] went to great lengths to convince insurance companies, doctors and parents that its standard of care was the 'settled science'."

"And now it's claiming that the standard of care is worth no more than a student essay in a high school newspaper."

Andrew Ferguson, chair, U.S. Federal Trade Commission  

The initial development of WPATH's guidelines in its Standards of Care date from 1979. A recent 2022 update was signed off by over 100 co-authors. Guidelines for gender-affirming care in Canada have been driven in alignment with WPATH recommendations. In its position statement in support of an affirming approach to care, the Canadian Paediatric Society refers to the recommendations within SOC-8. Those are recommendations described as internationally accepted standards of care. A chapter dedicated to adolescents states the "medical necessity of treatment and care is clearly recognized for the many people who experience dissonance between their sex assigned at birth and their gender identity". 

WPATH describes itself as a non-profit "dedicated to promoting science-based medical care, education, research and public policy in transgender health." Photo by Adobe Stock

In the original document WPATH offers “suggested minimum ages” for a number of irreversible surgical procedures for minors, such as: 

 14+ years old for cross-sex hormones 

 15+ years old for double mastectomies 

 16+ years old for breast implants, facial feminisation surgery 

 17+ years old for metoidioplasty, orchiectomy, vaginoplasty, hysterectomy, fronto-orbital     remodelling  

18+ years old for phalloplasty.  

The decision to remove all age requirements (apart from the phalloplasty) was taken despite there being no new evidence to support that recommendation. 

Genspect 

 

Britain's National Health Service took the initiative to question its own earlier position that the effects of puberty blockers are wholly reversible. Doctors, SOC-8 adherents are now advised, may decide to depart from WPATH's guidance in reflection of a patient's "unique anatomic, social or psychological situation", led by a research study  or other reasons. "These departures should be recognized as such, explained to the patient and documented for quality patient care and legal protection."

 

The Federal Trade Commission's lawsuit (along with Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas) claims that WPATH made "false, misleading or unsubstantiated" statements regarding the necessity, effectiveness and safety of puberty blockers, hormones, and sex-change surgeries. WPATH asserts, in seeking to squash the complaint that the "core deceptive statements" have no  presence in SOC-8 and thus were paraphrased from other quotes based on citations by the group quoted in published research.

 

According to WPATH, the deceptive statements are "non-actionable opinions about subjects and scientific uncertainty", reads the WPATH motion, in that the plaintiffs "fail to allege a single deceptive statement by WPATH, much less a statement to consumers". "SOC-8 does not tell doctors what to say, much less how to mislead". "Plaintiffs", they go on, "seek to brand one side of scientific debate as 'deceptive' without even considering the science". 

 

The evidence is of such low certainty, it is impossible to determine whether the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in children and teens help or harm, according to Canadian researchers who last year published two major reviews. For its part, WPATH claims the Federal Trade Commission and other plaintiffs are "attempting to insert themselves in the middle of this medical debate and silence those with whom they disagree".  

"All clinical guideline recommendations are evidence informed, but opinion based."

"The guidelines for hypertension, for diabetes, for Crohn's disease. Pick a disease, pick a clinical scenario, pick a preventative health issue."

"An 'opinion' in this context does not imply ill-considered loose thoughts or brain droppings, but specifically refers to a genuinely subjective judgement that cannot be proven true or false and thus cannot be sanctioned merely because he government disagrees with it."

"[However, a legitimate debate is to be had over whether WPATH's opinions are supported by the evidence]."

Dr. Laura Targownik, professor of medicine, University of Toronto 

 

Toronto Metropolitan University -- What's Your Plan of Action?!!

"Freedom of speech is not an unlimited right. It carries corresponding responsibilities toward others in the university community, and conduct that interferes with the ability of others to speak or participate in lawful university activities falls outside its protection."

"First, the misconception that protest rights exist without corresponding responsibilities. The frequent narrative is that protestors are sanctioned because they are protesting not because of their conduct. Nothing could be further from the truth. The protected right is peaceful protest, not violence or the threat of violence, both of which must be met with zero tolerance."

"Second is the misconception that discriminatory, intimidating and harassing words and conduct are protected. The University has both a legal and institutional responsibility to protect students, faculty and staff from intimidation, discrimination and harassment."

External Metropolitan University review 

 

"Promoting dialogue is not neutral."

"As Zionism continues to collapse, 'dialogue' initiatives have already become an intentional strategy of pro-Israel activists who are seeking to normalize Israel during an unprecedented period of its belatedly recognized abnormality as a modern settler colonial -- and thus, genocidal state".

Professor Joshua Sealy-Harrington, Windsor law school 

Students make their way around the renamed Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), formerly known as Ryerson University in Toronto. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette 

 

Critical Race Theory/DEI informs Professor Sealy-Harrington of the jaundiced view he must take, as a 'progressive', enlightened liberal of the very existence of the State of Israel. That Jews are indigenous to the Middle East, a history that predates the emergence of Islam by thousands of years, and that Israel is Judea reborn on its ancestral land, is an easily-dismissed reality that historical records attest to. Reality and history are both inconveniences in the analytical conclusions of Critical Race Theory and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, sturdily embraced throughout the academic world and certainly in Canadian universities.

 

And it is faculty of the ilk of Professor Sealy-Harrington whose unreconstructed views of Jews and their proper place in the world who teach their politicized view of history and reality, corrupted into a twisted version that fits their visceral, instinctual antisemitic pathology to university students in the ongoing process of producing other academics among the greater university-educated population who will carry on their hateful fiction denigrating the Jewish state and by extension diaspora Jews with the contempt thought fitting to their appearance within polite society.

 

The outward manifestation of this concerted verbal-political pogrom, building a consensus of agreement among the willing and those previously inducted into the Jew-hate pathology is open condemnation and isolation of Jewish students at Canadian universities, alongside their stricken Jewish professors whose ability to defend themselves against the larger numbers of Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian students and faculty whom the past several decades has seen swelling their presence through open invitation of Canada's Liberal-led governments from immigrants, refugees and migrants emanating from traditional Jew-hating cultures in North Africa and the Middle East.

reported classroom statements that minimize the Holocaust, describe academic power as rooted in “Jewish supremacism”, and imply that violence against Jewish children is acceptable if their parents are perceived to support Israel

the use of red inverted triangles, a symbol used to mark targets, posted over photos of Jewish student leaders

spoiled milk thrown at Jewish students and spitting directed at others

a lecturer who no longer wears a Star of David necklace for fear of physical assault

Shabbat dinners that now require security risk assessments

redefining Zionism “exclusively through pejorative or demonizing frameworks that leave little room for the perspectives of Jews for whom Zionism forms part of their identity”

Michael Geist 

TMU RCC 2024Feb by Aknell4, via Wikimedia Commons

  

Toronto Metropolitan University, faced with criticism that it is one of the worst Canadian universities that tolerates and oversees a disruptive, antisemitic atmosphere that focuses on slandering Israel and permits an ongoing harassment and persecution campaign led by Students for Justice in Palestine that targets Jewish students, with university staff on board with the campaign that makes teaching life for Jewish faculty one of heads-down and in both cases imposing an atmosphere of enforced withdrawal from many aspects of university life, commissioned an external review.

 

That review, purportedly to inform the university administration just where, when and how they failed to rise to the occasion of ensuring that all of its faculty, staff and student body felt equally respected, their dignity upheld, the atmosphere in which they worked and studied would be conducive to their learning experience that would lead to a future within the greater company of the Canadian identity. Former Justice Mary Lou Benotto and Margot Finley were commissioned to examine the manner of the university's management of an infamously increasing campus conflict.

 

That conflict encompasses the conflicting presence of politically-directed antagonists that drew Jewish students and faculty in conflict with Palestinians over the legitimacy of Israel and the respected place of Canadian Jews in the world of academia where leftist-progressivism has changed the character of universities from institutions of higher learning with its focus on exposure to the nuances of history, culture, traditions and experience in science, the humanities, Canada's legal system, and the arts. These verities of exposure to a sound education were subverted to political leftism superimposed over all else.

 

To the extent that Jewish faculty and staff withdrawing from campus life, leery of presenting themselves publicly as Jewish, to speak in public about Israel or growing antisemitism impacting their profession and their lives. Of students feeling the discomfort of being singled out because of their inheritance as examples of colonial Zionist oppressors. The effect of which was to make these students want to make themselves invisible to the larger critical mass of the student body and the professoriate that often singled them out for inappropriate comments during classes. 

 

On receipt of the review, the university has decided to strike a committee to study the report. None of what is contained in the report can conceivably be regarded as new information never before seen or heard about by an aware administration. Sufficiently aware that it recognized a need to do something, and that something at first hand was to commission the very review that validated all the wrongs already known of. The university that found it quite appropriate to slough off criticism by claiming the atmosphere that strictured Jewish staff and students was not of its making, must now face the reality that its lack of action made it possible. 

 

TMU students join pro-Palestine demonstrations in Toronto for International Day of Action

(SAMMY KOGAN/THE EYEOPENER)

 

"The Benotto report does not declare that TMU has constructively dismissed anyone. That was not its mandate. But that is precisely why TMU's lawyers should be reading it very carefully. The report supplies evidence. Testimony. Institutional admissions. And it supplies something employers rarely receive before litigation begins: a warning."

"A constructive dismissal lawsuit would ultimately require a court to decide whether the circumstances amounted to a fundamental breach of the employment relationship."

"There is a profound difference between an employee saying 'I disagree with what is happening here' and an employee saying, 'I can no longer safely identify who I am or be safe in this environment'."

"The first is workplace disagreement. The second is a workplace crisis."

Howard Levitt, Ontario labour lawyer, Levitt LLP 

The Palestinian Hounds From Hell

Students were injured when an off-campus gathering organized by a Jewish group at Toronto Metropolitan University was broken into by anti-Israel protesters on Nov. 5, 2025. Photo by Ernest Doroszuk / Postmedia/File

 

"I will tell anyone, with great sorrow, anyone in the Jewish community, not to have their children apply to TMU. Can you imagine that? I love this university and I've worked here for [over a decade]."

"It's given me my entire professional life. Now I tell friends not to let their children go here because they'll be harassed and mistreated and bullied and potentially assaulted."

"And I say Send them to McGill, or Western, or U of T, or to the U.S. or somewhere else'. They are all better."

Unnamed tenured Toronto Metropolitan University professor  

If, as the anonymous and obviously disturbed professor states, those other Canadian universities where attendance for Jewish students is preferential to that of the former Ryerson Collegiate Institute -- now Toronto Metropolitan University -- that improvement would be strictly marginal. The truth is all academic institutions in Canada, to greater or lesser degree have been  hijacked by Critical Race Theoried-DEI constructs of social progressivism. They all host student bodies and faculty hostile to Israel and dismissive of Jewish identity that equates with Zionism. Selecting any one of them is holding to a low standard of approval. 

"Some administrators and University leaders expressed concern that certain faculty members may be encouraging, incentivizing, or intensifying student activism in ways they viewed as inappropriate or inconsistent with professional boundaries."

"[This review] was also given multiple examples of statements reportedly made in classrooms, faculty-led seminars and educational spaces that many Jewish participants experienced as antisemitic, dehumanizing, or normalizing hostility toward Jewish people."

"Administrators, some faculty, Jewish student and faculty representatives, and event organizers frequently described conduct they experienced as crossing from protest into intimidation, harassment, or attempts to silence participation."

"Interviewees in this group pointed to repeated event disruptions, aggressive confrontations, social media targeting, doxxing, hostile language, and personal accusations directed at identifiable individuals."

TMU Report 

Former Ontario Appeal Court Justice Mary Lou Benotto has recently released her report on the simmering antisemitism that has turned Toronto Metropolitan University into a hellhole for Jewish students and faculty members. The report lists such incidents taking place as that of Jewish students being spat on, sour milk thrown at them; intimidation, harassment, threats. Leaving them living in trepidation over attending the university in pursuing their academic education within the confines of a university failing to come to grips with antisemitism's scourge of the civil social contract. 

 

Some of the statements sufficiently notable to be included in the Benotto review included denial of or minimizing the Holocaust (that Adolf Hitler was guilty of 'discrimination', not conducting a genocide). Statements such as "academic power is rooted in Jewish supremacism" which needs to be "rooted out of academia", as well as holding discussions relating to "how much violence we are willing to engage in". 

 

The inmates that have contrived control of the asylum just happen to be students and faculty members of Palestinian Arab, Muslim origin, bolstered by a large contingent of pro-Palestinian participants whose intrinsic hatred of Jews has given them a common denominator of identification of the world's conflicts summed up by volunteering Israel and diaspora Jews living in the world community as the cause and focus of world strife. Yet the report makes note that these same vectors of rampant antisemitism expressed fear, exclusion and marginalization; so very typical of the permanent self-imposed state of victimization of Palestinians.

On Feb. 23, an unidentified person threw an open carton of past-dated milk at a group of Jews and Israelis participating in a student tabling event at Toronto Metropolitan University for Students Supporting Israel in partnership with StandWithUs Canada. Photo by Handout/Ethan

 

"Several described grief and trauma connected to events in Gaza, frustration with institutional neutrality, and concern that criticism of Israel was too readily conflated with antisemitism", notes the report. This is the fixed mindset of Palestinians with their visceral hatred that is so uniquely communicated like the disease it is, to others receptive of the message of Jew-as-agent of evil. Wherever Palestinians settle in through their scattering out of the Territories, they simmer and fester and violently lash out in aggravated frustration over their lot as the world's permanent victims. This is the reason that no country in the Middle East allows them space. But the West does, out of pity for their plaintive mewlings.

 

At the university, that pattern played itself out, with senior university administrators followed, filmed, verbally abused, and violently assaulted. "Protesters repeatedly followed the University President to the parking garage and surrounded his vehicle and then posted a video of the event with disparaging remarks", noted the report. Senior university administrators, including the president vice-provost and chief financial officers were featured in posters placed around the university campus along with the phrase: "Wanted for Genocide".

 

The Benotto review was initially an investigation into several incidents -- where in September of 2025 Students for Justice in Palestine disrupted a Democracy Forum event featuring AI Minister Evan Solomon, shouting "war criminal" and "baby killer", causing the event's cancellation. It is the very Liberal government of which Solomon is a Minister that contrived their entry as immigrants, refugees and migrants into Canada. Two months later the same group pushed and shoved into an off-campus meeting of a Students Supporting Israel speaking event featuring an IDF serviceman, forcing that meeting also to be cancelled. 

 

The report's introduction notes "The Review is based on the foundational principle that universities are meant to foster inquiry, debate, and democratic engagement". The report made it clear that those behind the pro-Palestinian/anti-Jewish protests were so vehemently incensed with the  university, with the presence of Jews in any capacity, that no debate and discussion could ever be possible. 

 

"TMU effectively permitted a 'heckler's veto' whereby the threat of disruption determines who is permitted to speak." The review morphed into "a broader institutional issue: a deeply polarized campus environment shaped by the aftermath of October 7, 2023, and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Review concludes that the two incidents under review were symptoms of a deteriorating campus climate that, absent decisive institutional action are likely to recur". The university, pointed out former Justice Mary Lou Benotto, has the tools required within its Code of Conduct. The solution lies in a "consistent and principled" enforcement.

 

In response to a recent report, Toronto Metropolitan University president Mohamed Lachemi announced the launch of a task force on campus expression, antisemitism and community safety. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)

 

The Subjective Politicisation of Canadian Universities

"It's been 21 years since I attended the first 'Israeli Apartheid Week' at the University of Toronto. Since then, I have been on the front lines witnessing countless demonstrations, anti-Israel speakers and even the now infamous 'boycott, divestment and sanctions' campaigns promulgating hate against the Jewish state and Jewish students. The situation has only gotten worse for our children."

"Who would have thought that the Palestinian flag would make an acceptable appearance at some graduation ceremonies this past spring?"

"The consequences of these sobering statistics are transforming how Jewish students live and learn as they and their parents worry for their safety, given the report's finding that 22 percent have experienced some sort of physical violence."

Avi Abraham Benlolo, CEO, The Abraham Global Peace Initiative 

Arab Israelis make up: 22% of Israel's population   David Jacobs, X

 

Jewish-Canadian students are preparing to return to their university studies for the 2026 school year. The past three years, since October 7, 2023, academic attendance has taught Jewish students, all the way from elementary school, up to high school and post-secondary institutions that they are very special indeed. They are the only minority group in Canada that has been exposed to raw hate, from their teachers, through an altered curriculum, and from their non-Jewish classmates. School trustees rather than focus on academic performance and excellence in the role of schools in teaching a new Canadian generation have been involved in identity politics. School administrations wanly reject antisemitism, but not without pairing it with 'Islamophobia'.

 

What no one seems to want to mention is that these waves of torrid hate toward Jews long kept under wraps within the civilized society Canada once prided itself on being, has been unleashed by Palestinian students with support from the larger Canadian Muslim population involved in the slander of Israel and the none-too-subtle harassment of Canada's Jewish population, with an especial focus on the most vulnerable; the children of Canada's Jewish community. A community dwarfed in size by the presence of a much larger Muslim population which over the last decade has grown enormously through immigration, refugee intake and acceptance of illegal migrants. 

 

For three years and counting, Jewish students and Jewish faculty members of universities across Canada have had to cope with campus encampments dedicated to validating, supporting and mounting campaigns addressed to maligning, belittling, isolating the presence of Jews on campus as dread and unforgivable 'Zionists' who support the right of Jews to favour and defend the Jewish homeland of Israel, the Jewish state reborn on its ancient ancestral geographic footprint in the Middle East. 

 

A sign is seen urging the university's pension plan to divest from companies that do business with Israel, at the encampment set up at the University of Toronto in May 2024. Photo by Jesse Kline/National Post

• A professor wrote that we need to kill all Zionists, that she had worked with them and saw how evil they were.
• I was told by a professor, in class, in the middle of the lecture, that Jews belong in Poland and need to go back.
• I faced extreme pressure from other student organizations to release a statement against Zionism in my position as president of the (redacted) student union, and had my name placed on a list circulating on and off campus as a 'known Zionist'.
• Professor assigned us to listen to a podcast that discussed how Zionism was similar to Nazism, which was  unrelated to the course.
• I was harassed online ... She went as far as spamming my art page for five days straight, sending me radical reels, calling my elderly family 'killers'.
• Residents at my on-campus residence started rumours about me that I am a child killer, white supremacist, racist, and Zionist, all because these people found out that I was Jewish.
• Jews were described as greedy for money in a lecture.
• In a course that had nothing to do with Israel, my professor spent three weeks talking about Gaza and the creation of the State of Israel. He never mentioned the Holocaust as a precursor to its founding, repeatedly calling the state a 'Zionist political project'.
• When discussing characters in a book, my professor described one character by saying that 'based on his last name, he is clearly Jewish and probably has a hooked nose'.
• Working in my labs, I have had people refuse to work with me due to my Jewish identity and purposely try to mess up my data.
• Several faculty members in my program minimized the Holocaust or used it to condemn the Israeli response immediately after October 7.
• Shortly after October 7, I told my PhD supervisor that I did not feel safe on campus and she replied: 'Well, you should see the other side'.
• A member of my anti-racism research lab at the university minimized the impact of the Holocaust while the other lab members remained silent. For example, she said: 'The Holocaust was not the first time gas chambers were used. They were first used against Indigenous peoples in Canada.' When I raised this with my research supervisor, now tenured, her reaction was to protect the student responsible. For example, she said: 'What happens in the lab stays in the lab'.

National Post Staff 

"Over the past few weeks, CAUT has become aware of a number of disturbing cases in which university administrations have limited or suppressed debate on controversial issues. Whether it is banning posters or noisy demonstrations, we believe such heavy-handed actions constitute a clear threat to the purpose of post-secondary education."
"Not surprisingly, the failures involve bitterly contentious issues. One is Middle East politics. Last month Carleton University and the University of Ottawa banned a student organization poster for Israeli Apartheid Week because the universities felt it too provocative. The poster, by noted political cartoonist Carlos Latuff, shows a stylized Israeli warplane firing a missile at a child holding a teddy bear and standing on ground emblazoned with the word “Gaza.” York University has gone even farther, invoking a noise policy to justify handing club suspensions and fines to student organizations that held counter-protests for and against Israeli government policies."
"In invoking the need to be “respectful” and “civil” and to avoid “provo­cation,” too many universities are suppres­sing free speech and freedom of expression. Some universities are even stretching to invoke hu­man rights’ codes to justify suppression when these codes typically address the right to be free from discrimination in employment and in access to services and accommodations and are not meant to silence cam­pus discussion and debate."
"Our institutions must remember the integrity of their central mission, which is so aptly described in the University of Toronto’s statement of institutional purpose: that “within the unique university context, the most crucial of all human rights are the rights of freedom of speech, academic freedom and freedom of research,” and affirms that “these rights are meaningless unless they entail the right to raise deeply disturbing questions and provocative challenges to the cherished beliefs of society at large and of the university itself.”"
"The statement concludes: “It is this human right to radical, critical teaching and research with which the University has a duty above all to be concerned; for there is no one else, no other institution and no other office, in our modern liberal democracy, which is the custodian of this most precious and vulnerable right of the liberated human spirit.” "

The Canadian Association of University Teachers 

 

 

Montreal Jewish Community's 'Apartheid/Genocide/Israel Challenge

"For the City of Montreal to weigh into this conflict would be inappropriate and exacerbate tensions between communities."

"It is not in the city's purview to dictate foreign policy for its residents, as our federal leaders are elected to do that, and no other elected officials are charged with that mandate."

"[Projet Montreal is guilty of] explosive falsehoods [in labelling Israel an] apartheid [regime and accusing its government of] genocide. [Its motion contains] calculated lies and extreme characterizations." 

B'nai Brith Canada 

 

"This is an issue for all Montrealers."

"It's inappropriate for [the City of Montreal] to weigh in on an issue that has nothing to do with everyday Montrealers ... City councillors are elected to run the city, rather than be distracted by things that are lies and dishonest and not factually correct."

"Every single Montrealer should be concerned about this." 

"Jews are facing extreme hostility based on fallacies about apartheid and genocide in a country on the other side of the world."

"Just bringing [the motion up increases the concern for our safety." 

B'nai Brith Canada regional director for Quebec, Paola Samuel 

 

"This is an important message that we are putting in the motion: That we're against antisemitsm, that we're against Islamophobia -- any kind of discrimination and racism."

Projet Montreal Leader Ericka Alneus  

B’nai Brith Canada has written an open letter in response to a Projet Montreal motion due to be tabled on Aug. 24. Photo by Evan Buhler /Montreal Gazette

 

 

A motion by opposition party Projet Montreal to cut institutional ties with the State of Israel, has been placed before Montreal's city council. Introduced on June 4th, the motion calls on city council to "recognize and denounce the apartheid regime in Palestine and the genocide being perpetrated there, and affirm solidarity with Palestinians and other civilian victims of hostilities in the Middle East."

 

 

 

Suspending institutional ties with Israel would be carried out by not inviting state representatives to official events held at city hall "until Israel returns to its internationally recognized borders, ceases its violations of the rights of the Palestinian people, and ends its violations of international law." Set to be presented on June 15 originally, the motion was pushed to August 24, following Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada removing it from the agenda.

 

Mayor Ferrada had proposed an alternative text, the Declaration for Civil Peace, Intercultural Dialogue and Living Together, with the intent of recognizing the plight of all civilians in armed conflicts. Under the council's procedural rules the amendment had not been submitted in advance, and thus carried no force as an act of the city. In response to which B'nai Brith asked the administration to table it properly on August 24, "so that councillors have something to vote for". 

 

The correlation between conflict in the Middle East and resultant increases in antisemitism was highlighted in B'nai Brith's letter. Statistics Canada data indicated that incidents targeting Jewish people peaked at 959 in 2023, the very year of the October 7 Hamas attack in southern Israel. The 788 incidents  of last year represented 60 percent greater incident occurrences than the 492 reported by police in 2021. 

 

"The community feels vulnerable. You don't feel unsafe every day walking down the street, but you do feel like you have to be careful who you talk to and if you're going to be honest about how you feel", observed B'nai Brith Canada's Quebec regional director Paola Samuel. 

 

Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada is joined by Projet Montréal city councillor Ericka Alneus, left, and Montreal North borough mayor Christine Black, at City Hall in Montreal Monday, June 15, 2026. Photo by John Mahoney /Montreal Gazette

 

"[Projet Montreal is being] deceitful and inflammatory [in conflating Israel with Apartheid South Africa as part of the motion."

"Canada has rejected the view that Israel's actions constitute apartheid."

"The war in the Middle East is highly polarizing, impacting Jewish Canadians, Israelis, Palestinians, Muslims, Iranians, and others who call this city their home." 

"All have powerful emotions and beliefs about the past three years."

"Montreal must be a place for each and every one of us."

B'nai Brith Canada 

How Well is Canada Led by its New Economics Expert PM Mark Carney?

"It's hard to imagine why an unelected senator should be travelling anywhere outside of the country on taxpayers' dime, so Gagne billing taxpayers almost $1million to fly around the world is completely unacceptable."

"Prime Minister Mark Carney needs to hold Gagne accountable and make sure senators aren't globe-trotting on the taxpayer credit card." 

Franco Terrazzano, Canadian Taxpayers Federation 

 

"Despite their current prevalence in Canada, research has consistently shown that corporate welfare is largely wasteful and generally fails to achieve its stated goals."

Alex Whalen, director, Atlantic Canada Prosperity Initiative, Fraser Institute

 

"[According to a newly published study by the Fraser Institute, corporate subsidies are unfair to businesses that don't receive them, with research showing] there is little connection between sustained, widespread economic growth or job creation and corporate subsidies."

"[Several studies offer various conclusions around the] wasteful nature [of corporate subsidies, including the incentive for firms to lobby government instead of delivering better services]."

Fraser Institute

Senate Speaker Raymonde Gagné    Courtesy of the Senate of Canada

 

Between 2007 and 2015, according to data, spending on subsidies to Canadian businesses (corporate welfare) increased from $22.2 billion to $25.1 billion; 23.8 percent. That increase rose to 44.2 percent from 2014 to 2019. By 2024 the figure was $87.7 billion, tripling and more, the 2015 figure. "Corporate welfare" is defined by the Fraser Institute as payments from government to private businesses intended to achieve specific objectives that are not payments for goods or services rendered". Rather they are paid with an economic objective; to boost a particular industry or to achieve job growth.

 

When accounting for inflation and population, the study found that spending on subsidies increased in every province and at the federal level between 2015 and 2024. Years that coincide with the ruling governing tenure of the Liberal Party, first under PM Justin Trudeau, no economic wizard he, and followed by the former Governor of the Bank of England, internationally renowned economic wizard, who left the Exchequer in a bit of a ruinous state. 

 

Mr. Carney's recent sovereign wealth fund, the Canada Strong Fund, patterned on the one he installed in Britain and generally viewed as a failure, faces criticism from Conservative thinkers for its role in helping the government of Canada to hand out more "corporate welfare", from a fund that as it happens, operates with government-borrowed money. 

 

 

 

In other areas where government appointees have felt entitled to lavish taxpayer funds on personal vanity travels, Canada's recent-past Governor General Mary Simon led the way on entitlements. From rather too-ample clothing allowances, to out-of-this world costs of on-board travel sumptuous catering and reservations at sky-high pricey hotel accommodations, Mary Simon taught the Canadian public just how grand entitlements were for her.

"Taxpayers caught the governor general billing us thousands on absurdly extravagant and expensive trips that she should never have taken in the first place."

"Taxpayers forced the governor general to cut spending following a scandal that included multiple committee testimonies and reports calling for spending restraint. But the governor general hiked travel costs once she thought taxpayers and members of Parliament weren’t looking."

"Now it’s time for MPs to take responsibility and cut wasteful spending at Rideau Hall."

Franco Terrazzano, CTF federal director 

Now it's Raymonde Gagne's turn; she and her entourage billed taxpayers $875,677 on  14 international trips since May of 2023 when she was appointed speaker of the Senate by former PM Justin Trudeau. Since records fail to include costs of her more recent trips to Chile, Tunisia and the Netherlands, total costs of her international trips will total much higher. 

 

Records for her most recent trip of a "courtesy call" by Senator Gagne to Horii Iwao, state minister for Foreign affairs, Japan, turned out to be a 45 minute visit. Yet her entourage included three fellow senators along with two Parliamentary staff and Madam Gagne's husband. That trip alone was $107,594. "If Gagne wants to make a courtesy call to a Japanese politician, then she should pick up the phone instead of billing taxpayers six figures. In what world is it acceptable for an unelected senator to bill taxpayers thousands of dollars for meals and receptions?" queried Franco Terrazzano.

King Charles III receives Canada's Speaker of the Senate Raymonde Gagné during an audience at Buckingham Palace on March 12, 2025. Photo by Aaron Chown /Getty Images

 

A trip to Spain and the United Kingdom including an audience with King Charles III, cost a total of $105,156; the entourage including three other senators, Gagne's spouse, and two staffers in March of 2025. Senator Gagne and seven others took a trip in 2024 to New Zealand for "business calls" in Rotorus, Christchurch and Wellington, for a total cost of $118,965. Senator Gagne posed for a photograph with the mayor of Rotorus Lakes, a popular tourist destination.

 

Senator Gagne, who speaks of her love of travelling, took in Switzerland, France, the United States, Belgium, Brazil Romania, the Czech Republic and South Africa. She had visited 30 counties and almost every continent.  

"A friend encouraged me to travel and I decided to visit the Galapagos Islands with her. As a biology teacher, I have always been fascinated by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. I had read his book and attended exhibitions on the subject. This trip was an important step for me because I felt the need to keep exploring. I couldn't stay stagnant. It was a pivotal moment, [after the death of her first husband]."

"My current partner also likes to travel, and we have explored India and Japan together. These are countries that are completely different from what we are used to. I cherish those experiences." 

Speaker of the Senate Raymonde Gagne

 

"If senators aren't going to represent anyone but themselves then they need to not represent anyone for a lot less money."

Franco Terrazzano, Canadian Taxpayers Federation 

The Canadian delegation at Rotorua Lakes Council, including HW Tania Tapsell, Mayor. Photo by Office of the Clerk

 

GazaGenoLIE

"The term 'genocide', along with other international legal terms, has been deliberately and systematically hijacked, redefined, inverted and weaponized to demonize, delegitimize, and apply double standards to 'the Jews' among nations."

"This well-orchestrated campaign to spread a modern blood libel accusing Israel of 'genocide' began before any Israeli response to Hamas' genocidal war crimes and crimes against humanity of October 7." 

Michal Cotler Wunsh, CEO, International Legal Forum  

Gaza GenoLIE logo.  (photo credit: Courtesy)

 

A campaign has been launched naming itself the "Gaza GenoLIE", supported by over 35 organizations worldwide in a campaign they have joined for the purpose of debunking "Hamas genocidal propaganda" surrounding the war in Gaza. Organizations beside the International Legal Forum include the Anti-Defamation League, the Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and the World Jewish Congress. 

 

The claims of genocide were initiated on October 8, 2023, a day following the invasion of southern Israel from Gaza by Palestinian terrorist groups led by Hamas, when 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilian, were slaughtered. A somewhat precipitate accusation, given the reality that Israel's ground operation into Gaza began on October 27. 

 

According to Amnesty International, a number of United Nations bodies and other international groups --their investigations have uncovered evidence that they claim validates the assertions that Israel committed genocide during the Gaza War. Bearing in mind that these very organizations are anything but neutral with respect to their accusations against the Jewish state. 

 

For its part, Israel has repeatedly explained that its military has gone to extraordinary lengths that no other country in a war situation has ever committed to, in striving to limit civilian casualties. This is a war where it is well proven that Palestinian terrorist groups consider the Palestinian public expendable to their plans of attacking Israel and preparing for the response by using their civilian population as shields.

 

People take part in the National March for Palestine - hands off Gaza, a pro-Palestinian protest calling for the government to ''end the genocide and stop arming Israel'', in London, Britain, January 31, 2026. (credit: REUTERS/Jack Taylor)

 

There is a double purpose in that tried-and-true strategy; the first being that using human shields results in the actual terrorists having the protection of soft bodies, and the second that those civilians -- all the better when women and particularly children are killed in the line of battle -- are welcome fodder for public relations campaigns that move the hearts and minds of Western democracies.

 

While acknowledging that some 70,000 people have perished in the war situation deliberately created by Hamas schemes to not only lethally assault Israeli civilian populations -- but to successfully sketch out a scenario naively believed in the West amenable to having its latent simmering antisemitism aroused by the accusations of Israeli 'genocide' against the forever-victims of Palestine -- their terrorist leaders celebrate scoring in their campaign of slander and isolation of Jews from the rest of society. 

 

According to the Gaza GenoLIE website, its purpose is that of an educational initiative relating to the "generated and orchestrated genocide lie promoted by anti-Zionist and antisemitic networks in the United States, Europe and around the world". The campaign argues the most crucial element in claims of genocide is the word "intent"; the 1948 Genocide Convention drafted following the Holocaust refers to certain acts inclusive of killing, causing serious harm, inflicting destructive conditions of life, committed "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such."

 

A Toronto pedestrian walks past signage stating "End The Genocide In Gaza" as a truck with digital displays of the Israeli citizens taken hostage by Hamas terrorists with signage stating "Bring Them Home" drives by back in November 2023. (Photo Peter J. Thompson/National Post)

 

The convention, they contend, asks whether the perpetrator acted for the specific goal of destroying a protected group. Israel, they argue, waged war to dismantle Hamas and bring the release of the Israeli hostages; the civilian death toll a consequence of urban combat against an enemy that "purposely and cynically embed(ed) itself among its own population."

 

The war Israel fought was to target Hamas, not the Palestinians. When, on October 8, Israel declared war, four aims were made clear: recover the hostages; dismantle Hamas's military capacity; remove Hamas as Gaza's governing authority; ensure Gaza could never again carry out such a horrendous attack.

 

Israel, moreover, issued evacuation warnings in advance of military operations, dropped millions of Arabic-language leaflets and placed tens of millions of phone calls, texts, and recorded messages in Arabic to urge civilians to leave identified combat zones. "None of the aims reference Palestinians. They refer to an armed terror organization -- its fighters, weapons, and rule." 

 

List of all 40 organizations involved in the campaign.

 

"[Hamas's claim of Israel's 'genocide' against Palestinians threatens foundational principles of law by hijacking the term genocide to spread] a modern blood libel [in accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinian people]." 

Michal Cotler Wunsch