Normalizing Violent Antisemitism

"High levels of antisemitism have become a normalized feature in societies with large Jewish minorities."

"The data raise concern that a high level of antisemitic incidents is becoming a normalized reality." 

"The label of antisemitism is harsh and should be applied only after careful consideration and based on solid criteria."

"The peak in the number of incidents was recorded in the immediate aftermath of the 7 October attack, after which we began to see a downward trend. But unfortunately, that trend did not continue in 2025."  

Uriya Shavit, chief editor, Tel Aviv University annual report 

Survivor Saul Reichert, third from left, and his family light a candle at Toronto's Holocaust memorial event, April 13, 2026. (Credit: Shay Markowitz, for the Toronto Holocaust Museum)

"Offenders align with two main ideological orientations."

"They are predominantly Christian white supremacists or Muslims who apply antisemitism as a response to grievances about Middle Eastern political developments."

"[The] most worrying phenomenon [of the past year had been the] normalisation of antisemitic rhetoric in American political discourse."

"[US President Donald Trump had] tolerated, as no contemporary president has, deep-seated, loathsome antisemites within his camp, and continues to do so for cynical political reasons."

"The result is a new culture of everything-goes that is undermining the sense that Jews have had for decades that their future in America is secure."

Tel Aviv University annual report  

The attack at Sydney's Bondi Beach killed 15 members of the Jewish Community.  Getty Images

 

According to an annual study released on Monday, coinciding with the Shoah Day of Remembrance, 2025 distinguished itself as the most violent year in thirty, for Jews facing a resurgence of global antisemitism. The study pointed out that Canada, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy and Australia had all posted notable increases in antisemitic incidents reported in 2025. In the United States and France, irrespective of notable physical attacks on Jewish targets, the report found the number of antisemitic incidents there declined.

 

Violence against Jews saw a spike beginning after the  Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack in southern Israel when an estimated 6 thousand terrorists flooded across from Gaza into Israel, followed by ordinary Palestinian citizens, all of whom committed barbaric, sadistic acts of rape, torture, burning entire families alive in their homes, slaughtering over a thousand civilians, foreign farm workers, children and the elderly, while taking infants, their parents and grandparents, women and men hostage into Gaza.

When Israel mobilized the Israel Defense Forces to enter Gaza to search for Hamas leaders, their operatives, and those of Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, all involved in the heinous bloodshed, the world -- initially shocked at the carnage committed in Israel -- turned against Israeli reprisal against the terrorists, despite the military doing its utmost to spare civilian lives through pre-strike alerts and organized population moves out of harm's way.

A sign reading "Jewish Lives Should Matter, Too" is seen at the floral tributes area outside Bondi Pavilion in Sydney on Dec. 18, 2025, to honour victims of the Bondi Beach shooting. The attack at Bondi Beach on Dec.14 was one of the deadliest in Australian history. Photo by DAVID GRAY / AFP via Getty Images 

 

In Sydney, Australia, a Muslim father and son duo launched a deadly attack on Bondi Beach, killing 15 members of the Jewish community that had gathered in December to celebrate Hannukah. Two antisemitic attacks in the United States in Washington, D.C. and Colorado were mounted, while in Britain two people were murdered at a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur, the most sacred day in Judaism's High Holy Days.

 

Tel Aviv University's Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, alongside the Irwin Cotler Institute for Democracy, Human Rights and Justice annually release their report on antisemitism, coinciding with Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, the day that serves as a national memorial for the six million Jewish children, women and men whose lives were systematically obliterated in a state mechanism deployed to destroy Europe's Jews. 

 

An increase in antisemitic attacks resulting in physical harm is tracked annually to produce each year's report. This report found that 2025 represented the deadliest year for such attacks since 1994, when a Jewish community centre in Argentina (Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina),was bombed, where 85 people died and over 300 were wounded. A suicide-bombing attributed to Islamic Jihad/Hezbollah, the Islamic State of Iran's proxy terrorist groups in Lebanon. 

 

Since 2023, the incidents of viral antisemitism have soared, in comparison to those committed in 2022 Incidents that range from physical violence and vandalism to verbal threats and harassment on social media are all tracked by researchers who produce the final report. The report relies on statistics based on reports from police, national authorities, and local Jewish communities.

 

In Canada alone, to cite one country in isolation from others, the number of incidents rose from 6,219 committed in 2024, to 6,800 in 2025, representing a number over three times steeper than in 2022 -- pre-October 7's Palestinian terrorist horde attacking Israeli farming communities and a nearby musical festival where over 370 young festival-goers, men and women were raped and murdered. 

Some might question why the report failed to address the phenomenon of mass protests on the streets of Europe and North America by Palestinian and Muslim groups that immediately began accusing Israel of 'genocide' in its terrorist-seeking foray into Gaza, where masked, keffiyeh-clad 'protesters' issued threats against Israel and harassed, hounded and threatened diaspora-citizen Jews. Where in Canada, synagogues, Jewish parochial schools, and private businesses owned by Jews were vandalized and shot up.  

 

Rabbi Yossi Friedman speaks to people gathering at a flower memorial by the Bondi Pavilion at Bondi Beach on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, following Sunday’s shooting in Sydney, Australia. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

 

Call It What It Is: Antisemitism

"The Azrieli Foundation is a passive minority shareholders of the Azrieli Group. As a responsible investor, based on our knowledge and information, we can confirm that the Azrieli Group's activities are entirely within Israel's internationally recognized borders."

"I am particularly saddened that ongoing attempts to disparage the Foundation have impacted many of the artists, creators and organizations that we have supported over the years in Canada." 

Naomi Azrieli, Azrieli Foundation chair 

 

"[It's up to the Giller if it's] interested in rebuilding any sense of trust with writers and readers."

"We imagine some authors who have boycotted might submit their works again, and others might not."

CanLit Responds organizer Michael DeForge

Protesters gather in Toronto to demonstrate against the Giller Award ceremony in November 2024. (Eduardo Lima/The Canadian Press)

 

Once again pro-Palestinian propaganda groups that promulgate a version of  history and reality that is their very own perception, unreflective of reality, has succeeded in wearing down the sponsors of the Giller Prize group through a literary event boycott. Their mission is to wreak havoc within any group that hints of a relationship with Israel, portraying them as complicit in the suffering of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government.

 

That Palestinian leaders have for generations incited the Palestinian population to view Israel and Jews -indigenous to the land -- as enemies, as usurpers of Palestinian land, colonists who have no right to claim land as theirs, thus depriving the Palestinians of what is rightfully theirs, and in the process teaching their population from childhood forward that to desire martyrdom in the cause of achieving Palestinian statehood where Israel sits and beyond, is the greatest of aspirations in honour of the Islamic faith. That heroic status of martyrdom theirs, with the commission of murder of Jews.

 

This is the ideology of victimhood that supporters of the 'Palestinian cause' celebrate, support, and choose to harass and persecute Canadian Jews, their organizations and very presence in support of. That Israel exists on its own ancestral land, that Jews gratefully accepted a Partition Plan proffered by the United Nations and the Palestinians rejected that offer, is of no concern to Western apologists for Palestinian terrorism, who prefer to portray them as victims of Israeli 'occupation'. An 'occupation' necessitated by constant Palestinian lethal attacks, random or organized, on Jews in Israel.

 

The equivalent of the lethal attacks in the Middle East verbally now take place regularly in the West, with slanderous accusations of 'genocide' levelled against Israel and the IDF in its retaliation for the worst slaughter of Israelis carried out in southern Israel by terrorist groups from Gaza, led by Hamas. That would be the Hamas which, though on Canada's official terror list, is considered a liberating army by the persecutors of Canadian Jews and their organizations.

 

A prestigious Canadian literary prize halted its partnership with Scotiabank after nearly 20 authors pulled their books from consideration to protest the bank's investment in an Israeli defence contractor. CBC

 

CanLit Responds is one of those groups, proud of its efforts to demonize Israel and by extension any group or organization or individual in Canada with links to Israel. CanLit Responds, comprised of like-minded anti-Israel haters, a literary group of Canadian writers who have in the past benefited from association with the Giller Prize, blackballed the Giller to the point where it now announced no sponsorship ties to Scotiabank or the Azrieli Foundation, through an announcement from its executive director Elana Rabinovitch.

 

At the same time, Indigo Books, which has also been a target of pro-Palestinian groups for its charitable arm in Israel that offers higher educational opportunities for Israeli soldiers, foreign volunteers without family in the country, has been identified as well in the Giller announcement to the effect that it was never a sponsor, only a promotional partner, by highlighting Giller-prize authors on shelving displays highlighted in their stores. 

 

CanLit Responds claimed to represent hundreds of writers when they launched their boycott in 2024 over Giller sponsors' links to Israel. Scotiabank had been the naming sponsor of the $100,000 prize for two decades, but when protests surfaced in 2023 after the October 7 massacre of Israelis by Palestinian terrorists over its subsidiary's investment in an Israeli arms manufacturer, Scotiabank and the Giller Foundation delinked their association. 

 

That alone failed to satisfy the CanLit organizers who insisted that the boycott would remain in place as long as the Giller Prize was linked to either Indigo or the Azrieli Foundation, taking issue with Indigo's charity of scholarships for former IDF soldiers. Giller, responded Rabinovitch, "has never received money" from Indigo. Citing the Azrieli Foundation's connection to Israeli real estate company Azrieli Group, with minority holdings in Bank Leumi, it was also in the CanLit crosshairs.

 

It was later explained by Rabinovitch that the Azrieli Foundation's contract with the Giller ended in 2025. The foundation and prize continued to operate in 2025, she stated, with "a one-time 'bridge' gift and two smaller donations from individuals and foundations who wish to remain anonymous", allowing the Giller to carry on for the 2026 prize event.  

 

Pro-Palestinian activists are calling for a national day of action and boycott against businesses tied to Israel's actions in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Supporters of Israel call the movement antisemitic.

"The Azrieli Foundation remains deeply committed to supporting arts and culture in Canada and we are proud of our collaboration with the Giller Prize."

"It was not ended because of pressure from activist groups. In fact, we remain open to new opportunities to collaborate in the future." 

Heather Sherman 

Condemning War

"[The] delusion of omnipotence [that is fuelling the U.S.-Israel war in Iran must stop]."

"Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war!"

"[Praying for peace is a way to] break the demonic cycle of evil [to build instead the Kingdom of God where there are no swords, drones or] unjust profit."

"It is here that we find a bulwark against that delusion of omnipotence that surrounds us and is becoming increasingly unpredictable and aggressive."

"Even the holy Name of God, the God of life, is being dragged into discourses of death."

"[God] does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them. Even though you may make many prayers, I will not listen -- your hands are full of blood [Isaiah]." 

Pope Leo XIV

Pope Leo XIV presides over a prayer vigil and rosary for peace in St Peter's Basilica at the Vatican on 11 April. Photograph: Remo Casilli/Reuters

"They're two white guy boomers but they could not be any more different in their life experiences, in their values, in the way they have chosen to live those values."

"This is a very stark contrast, and I think an inflection point for American Christianity."

"There's no question about his [Pope Leo's] inflection and meaning. It removes any ambiguities."

Natalia Imperatori-Lee, theology professor, Fordham University

 

"For the last five centuries, the church has been involved in a project of helping develop strong international norms [including the Geneva Conventions in recent centuries]."

"It is a very long-standing tradition rooted in Scripture and theology and philosophy."

Professor William Barbieri, Catholic University  

The first American pope has taken to directly criticizing the American president over the war in Iran, when Pope Leo declared President Trump's "belligerence is truly unacceptable". Two polarized world views, one on the part of the 79-year-old U.S. President, the second a 70-year-old pontiff from Chicago. Coevals in time, sharing common cultural roots with distinct oppositional attitudes they bring to their positions of immense power and influence. 

 

Leo's opposition to the war in Iran, according to Catholic Church experts, reflects established church teachings, quite aside from the politics of the time. Speaking of an American administration in the 
White House with close links to conservative evangelical Protestantism which claims Trump's war on Iran is backed by heavenly endorsement. Americans were urged by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to pray for victory "in the name of Jesus Christ". As for President Trump, asked whether he felt God approved of the war, replied: "I do, because God is good -- because God is good and God wants to see people taken care of."

 

President Trump's response alludes to the plight of the Iranian people, held in thrall to a radical, fundamental tyranny of theocratic jihadists whose goal is conquest of mind and soul packaged into a submission to Islam as the only true religion, through the Shi'ite version specifically. A theocracy that has exemplified in its foundational belief in worldwide conversion to wipe all other religious devotion out of contention. Beginning with world Jewry and Israel, then on to Christianity, and Buddhism, Hinduism and others will fall into place, and be no more with conquest completed.

 

On its way to that conquest beginning with its own Iranian population almost a half-century ago, complete restraints on civil society; all forced to adhere to the version of Islam that demanded full obeisance in faith through complete surrender of self in the interests of the idolized Ruhollah Khomeini who took up the Prophet Mohammad's scimitar and wielded it with the passion of the celestially nominated. The Ayatollah who tasked the Islamic Republican Guard Corps with stifling the spirit of Iranians, who assigned the al Quds division the task of forming, training, arming and dispatching Shia terror militias on missions abroad.

 

Investing in them the full authority, under his unquestioned own to supervise uranium enrichment for use in nuclear technology, while perfecting the range and power of ballistic missiles capable of taking warheads vast distances. This is a nation dedicated to performing its obligations to the foremost directive for the faithful in the sacred scripts demanding non-stop jihad for full transformation from false gods to the only religious devotion recognizing the sole Divine Eminence. 

 

Iranians, women in particular, forced to appear in public only garbed in black all-encompassing garb, paid dearly for their transgressions of occasional passionate rejection of the demands for absence while present in their gender-obscuring garments that offered no protection from rape and murder at the behest of the authorities. Mass demonstrations of youth demanding freedom and liberty to live as human beings earned themselves the freedom to take the lethal brunt of the regime's response. Iran's vast oil wealth failed to trickle through to improving the civilian population's lives, but flowed extravagantly in support of terror.

 

What would be the Catholic Church's solution to a population of 93 million people in thrall to terror crying out for rescue from their ill fate?  What has Pope Leo to say of a nation whose leaders continuously threaten to eradicate the Jewish State of Israel from the Middle East, and which has exported its Jew-hate propaganda throughout Europe and North America? What has Pope Leo to say of Islamists in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America targeting Christians in faith to jihad? 

The Red Cross and the Vatican both helped thousands of Nazi war criminals and collaborators to escape after the second world war, according to a book that pulls together evidence from unpublished documents.

The Red Cross has previously acknowledged that its efforts to help refugees were used by Nazis because administrators were overwhelmed, but the research suggests the numbers were much higher than thought.

Gerald Steinacher, a research fellow at Harvard University, was given access to thousands of internal documents in the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The documents include Red Cross travel documents issued mistakenly to Nazis in the postwar chaos.

They throw light on how and why mass murderers such as Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele and Klaus Barbie and thousands of others evaded capture by the allies.

By comparing lists of wanted war criminals to travel documents, Steinacher says Britain and Canada alone inadvertently took in around 8,000 former Waffen-SS members in 1947, many on the basis of valid documents issued mistakenly.

The documents – which are discussed in Steinacher's book Nazis on the Run: How Hitler's henchmen fled justice – offer a significant insight into Vatican thinking, particularly, because its own archives beyond 1939 are still closed. The Vatican has consistently refused to comment.

Steinacher believes the Vatican's help was based on a hoped-for revival of European Christianity and dread of the Soviet Union. But through the Vatican Refugee Commission, war criminals were knowingly provided with false identities.

The Red Cross, overwhelmed by millions of refugees, relied substantially on Vatican references and the often cursory Allied military checks in issuing travel papers, known as 10.100s.

The Guardian 

SS officers at Auschwitz in 1944. From left: Richard Baer, who became the commandant of Auschwitz in May 1944, Josef Mengele, commandant of Birkenau Josef Kramer, hidden, and the former commandant of Auschwitz Rudolf Höss, foreground; the man on the right is unidentified. Photograph: AP

  

"What Pope Leo and Donald Trump have in common is they both lived through the postwar polarization [including the political upheaval of the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War]."

"In some ways he's [Leo] just like us, [someone] who understands where our domestic political crisis came from [unlike the Argentinian Francis] who did not fully understand the peculiarities of the United States [even as he offered implicit criticism]."

Professor Steven Millies, Catholic Theological Union, Chicago 

 

 

Canada's Liberal Government Ignoring Iranian Infiltration in Canada At our Peril

"[I was contacted by Ottawa police and] told if I don't delete my X posts where I say mosques in Occupied Iran are hubs of terrorism and should be bombed, I would be charged under the Criminal Code of Canada."

"So I deleted my posts." (April X post)

"We know that the Islamic Republic is incredibly vicious. They’ve been oppressing us for the last 47 years. And so we knew that the closer it gets to the end, the more vicious and more brutal the Islamic Republic is going to be. Despite all of this, Iranians are more determined than ever to overthrow the Islamic Republic. It’s literally now or never. It’s life or death. So we are right now in the middle of the Iranian revolution, and the fight is not over yet. We still have a long way to go, but Iranians are mobilized. They’re determined."

"We’re seeing millions of Iranians out in the streets chanting “Death to the dictator, Death to the Islamic Republic.” They’re also chanting, “this is the final battle. Pahlavi will return.” Pahlavi, of course, is his royal highness, the crown prince of Iran. And the reason that they’re calling for Pahlavi to return is because Pahlavi is the only person that Iranians trust to transition them from a totalitarian Islamic dictatorship into a functioning secular, democratic society."

"At the same time, we’re also seeing horrific footage of Islamic regime terrorists who are literally just opening fire, shooting into crowds of unarmed Iranians. But, we’re also seeing videos of Iranians who are fighting back. Some of them are using homemade Molotov cocktails. I don’t condone violence, but when you have a population that’s unarmed and being brutally murdered, this is how Iranians are fighting back. At this point, Iranians have nothing left to lose, and these are the true freedom fighters of the 21st century." (January 2026 interview)

"Mosques in occupied Iran are hubs of terrorism. Burn them down. Bomb them." (X)

Goldie Ghamarie, Iranian-Canadian activist, former Ontario MLA  

Goldie Ghamari, a prominent critic of the Iranian regime and former Ontario MPP, threatened with criminal charges over an X post that linked the IRGC to mosques in Iran. Ashley Fraser/Postmedia News

 

 Goldie Ghamari is credited for what she is, a passionate political activist who advocates for the downfall of the Islamic Republic of Iran's theocratic regime. A regime that has for far too long oppressed and persecuted Iranians, forcing them to submit to radical Islamist fundamentalism, completely altering the society pre-1979, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran from exile in France, to engineer the downfall of the Shah of Iran at a time when Iran, under the Shah's rule was a friend and ally of the West.

 

Under the Islamic Republic, all that the West stood for in democratic values was demonized by the theocracy which also made no secret of its plan to destroy another nation in the Middle East, the State of Israel. The regime's hostility to the United States was immediately illustrated when the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was seized by radical Islamist students, and 66 U.S. diplomatic staff were taken hostage in retaliation for the U.S. welcoming Shah Pahlavi for medical treatment and haven.

 

Under the Ayatollah and his ruling mullahs, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the scheme was laid for minority Shiites to form a pincer-like geographic move to challenge the primacy of the Arab Sunni majority in the Middle East through violent insurrection. Aryan Iran under the regime, was determined to become the driving political/cultural/religious/social force, using its oil wealth and the manipulation of Shiite fundamentalism to gain its goal of conquest.

 

That led to its al-Quds division of the IRGC forming Shiite-led militias trained, armed and loyal to the regime to act as its enforcement arms locally and abroad. In Lebanon the Hezbollah militia was formed, separate and apart of and a challenge to, the official Lebanese military. As was Islamic Jihad. Hamas, the governing group in Gaza, came under Iranian aegis as well, as did tribal Shiite militias in Iraq, prepared to do the Iranian regime's bidding. In Lebanon in the 1980s, Hezbollah introduced itself through suicide bombers who blew up a U.S. military base in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. marines. 

 

BREAKING

I just received a death threat by Islamic Regime-linked hacker group "Handala Hack Team" from the e-mail address: Handala_Team@outlook.com

"Death to Elica le Bon and Goldie Ghamari

 

The X post that Goldie Ghamari was ordered to take down by the Ottawa Police Service was accompanied by a video illustrating an IRGC rally taking place within a Tehran mosque. She was warned she would be charged under Section  319 of the Criminal Code if she failed to comply with the order. This, at a time in Canada when for the last three years mobs of pro-Hamas supporters surged through the streets of Ottawa accusing Israel of 'genocide' for striking back against Palestinian terrorists who slaughtered Jewish children, women and other civilians, in a rampage of rape and dismemberment and hostage-taking.

 

Despite that the protesters wearing masks and keffiyehs chanted hate messages and threats against Jews in Canada, police forces across the country did little to warn them against offending Canada's hate laws in their invective of hate, harassment and threats. An omission of public duty that reflected the federal Liberal government's own lack of responsible reaction, followed by provincial and municipal governments in turn, alongside the nation's police forces, as the marches went on week after week, proclaiming 'globalize the intifada', 'Final Solution', and 'Palestine will be free from the river to the sea'...all understood as threats against the existence of Israel.

 

Iran, through its minions that have infiltrated Canadian society, politics and academia, along with the Muslim Brotherhood and operatives of the regime's terrorist groups, has a malign presence in Canada, threatening the safety and security not only of Canadian Jews, but Iranian-Canadians who detest the Iranian regime and want their country freed from its malevolent tyranny. Goldie Ghamari is one of the leaders of those campaigning for the end of the Islamic Republic. The presence of Iranian proxies in Canada, of members of the IRGC, of the regime itself represents a danger to Canada, their presence ignored by government despite that they are on Canada's terrorist list.

 

Goldie Ghamari has made herself a public figure of great respect, appearing on U.S. cable news and Piers Morgan Uncensored. She has a Iranian affairs YouTube channel with hundreds of thousands subscribers. And she has been threatened by terrorist groups operating out of the North America with assassination. Threats she has relayed to police and with local authorities. An American-Iranian was also threatened with assassination by the same group. A $250,000 beheading bounty was posted for their assassination.

 

FBI Director Kash Patel responded to those threats where Canadian officials failed to: "This FBI will hunt down every actor behind these cowardly death threats and cyberattacks and will bring the full force of American law enforcement down on them", he stated in March. In Canada, Masood Masjoody, an anti-regime Canadian math professor of Iranian birth was was found murdered a month ago. Two Iranians now face charges of first-degree murder in his death.

 

Laptop and source code on the screen composing flag of Iran.

(photo credit: max.ku/Shutterstock)

 

 

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW)

"The record demonstrates that Mr. McCook's life trajectory has been shaped by systemic and intergenerational forces, including early removal from his family, family disruption associated with the legacy of residential schools, and the normalization of alcohol misuse within his social environment."

"These factors provide important context for understanding his background and inform the Court's assessment of proportionality and the appropriate balance between denunciation, deterrence, rehabilitation, and restraint."

Supreme Court of B.C. Justice Sandra Sukstorf

A person walks up the stairs of the Law Courts building, which is home to B.C. Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal, is seen in Vancouver, on Monday, January 12, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ethan Cairns

 

Once again, as has been the case since 2014 when the Supreme Court of Canada instituted the Gladue principles to direct judges to take into account specific backgrounds and systemic factors contributing to over-representation of Indigenous men and women in Canada's courts and prisons, a man who was originally charged with second-degree murder in the killing of his wife has received a beneficent reduced sentence for that murder, of significant proportions in terms of time behind bars. 

 

As a result, needless to say, the mother, the woman whose husband murdered her, received no benefit from the Gladue principles, leaving their two young children motherless in their remote Tsek'ehne First Nations community in northern B.C. The community where the couple, their two boys and their extended family live, is a dry community, which prohibits the transportation and possession of alcohol on its territory.  

 

That did not stop the couple from embarking on a long drive of 425 kilometres south to Mackenzie where they bought liquor to the tune of $600. On their drive home they began consuming the alcohol.  Once they arrived back in Kwadacha, the drinking continued. They drank all night and into the morning that followed, during which time McCook, 28, "consumed extreme quantities of alcohol over many hours and became profoundly intoxicated", stated Judge Sukstorf.  

"[When a police officer opened the passenger door to check on her], he observed that Ms. Poole had a visible facial wound, and upon closer examination, he concluded that she was deceased."

"[A post-mortem toxicology report measured her blood alcohol concentration at 0.281 grams per 100 millimetres], a level consistent with severe intoxication and significant cognitive and motor impairment."

Justice Sandra Sukstorf

Brent Angus McCook was “profoundly intoxicated” in the shooting of his wife, Rochelle Poole. (Tingey Injury Law Firm/Unsplash)

 

The binge was a 17-hour marathon for the two young parents, Brent McCook and Rochelle Poole, on January 24, 2023. Neighbours, witness to the unfolding event, testified that although it was noticed that McCook's state of inebriation was affecting his mood, added that the couple's relationship, in their opinion was without friction and "described their interactions as calm and affectionate". Those neighbours, it seems, were relatives on McCook's side.

 

Mid-morning of the day the killing occurred, the couple had embarked on a drive around town with two of McCook's cousins. Some time later, Jason McCook, hearing gunfire from his home two doors away from the couple's house, looked out and saw his cousin standing next to his truck, a rifle in his hands. Jason McCook approached his cousin Brent  until his cousin fired in his direction, causing him to retreat, another bullet following him. Jason called local the emergency response centre, then managed to subdue his cousin and take possession of the gun. 

 

"It was like no one was home, like the lights were on but no one was there", Jason testified in court. A number of officers and witnesses at the scene described the drunk man as "incoherent, erratic, confused, and severely impaired immediately before and after the event". Rochelle Poole, seated in the truck's front seat was thought to be in deep sleep following her heavy drinking bout. Her death was apparent only after the RCMP arrived.

 

It was determined by police that McCook was inside the family home when he first fired his rifle at the vehicle, the bullet hitting Pool's head. No evidence was found by police that McCook knew his wife was in the vehicle when he shot at it. Nor were they able to establish whether from standing inside the house he could see that his wife was seated in it. Defence counsel sought a sentence of five years. The Crown felt 16 years appropriate, arguing the fatal incident occurred within "a broader pattern of intimate partner violence ... rather than as an isolated event".

 

Supporting that contention was testimony from two witnesses, two of Poole's cousins who testified that she had made remarks of her husband's abuse. Poole once said, according to one of the cousins, something to the "effect that if she ever died, Mr. McCook would be the one who killed her". And though the judge thought this credible, she ruled Crown counsel failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this was an issue of intimate partner violence. A sentence of 7 years was appropriate, in her judgement.

 

Giving McCook a sentence of six years and nine months last month at the sentencing hearing in Prince George, McCook now has two years less six days to serve on his sentence, given credit for time served in custody awaiting trial and sentencing. Three years of probation and a lifetime ban on gun ownership.

 

 

"On the evidence before me, I am satisfied that the relationship between Ms. Poole and Mr. McCook was marked by alcohol-fuelled instability."

"The fact that the offence was committed against an intimate partner remains highly relevant to the sentencing analysis. However, the Crown has not established that the offence itself was the culmination of a pattern of intimate partner violence."

Justice Sandra Sukstorf 

 

Canada's Limp Recognition of Terrorist Groups

"By 2011, she [Charlotte Kates] helped to found Samidoun, which boasts chapters around the world and has the stated purpose of seeking “to achieve justice for Palestinian prisoners,” in Israeli detention through demonstrations and other public events. Earlier this year she travelled to Iran to accept a human rights award, where it also has a chapter."

"Many of the prisoners she advocates to be freed have links to “terrorism, assassinations and countless attacks against Israel,” according to Public Safety Canada."

"By listing a group as a terrorist entity, it becomes a crime to provide them with material support. Leading up to its listing, Kates’ organization had long sparked concern from political leaders and companies. One point, she told supporters they could only take paper cheques, in light of the restrictions placed on them."

Stephanie Taylor, National Post 

Almost a year-and-a-half after Samidoun was listed as a designated terrorist group in Canada, no move has yet been made by any government authority to disband their Canadian operations. For that period as well Samidoun retained charitable status with Revenue Canada, continuing to raise funds in Canada to be sent abroad to Hamas and to the PFLP where Samidoun's founder Charlotte Kate's husband, Palestinian Khaled Barakat is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Both husband and wife, incidentally, have Canadian citizenship. 

 

Anti-Israel protesters at a Samidoun-organized rally burn a Canadian flag outside the Vancouver Art Gallery on October 7, 2024. Photo by Jarryd Jaeger/X

 

"[It is completely unacceptable [that Samidoun remained a federally registered not-for-profit]."

"I have therefore directed government officials to urgently look at any and all options to formally dissolve Samidoun as well as any and all listed terrorist entities in Canada."

Melanie Joly, Industry Minister, September 2025  

Oops, big splash, but never carried through. Samidoun remains headquartered in Vancouver. Finally, Corporations Canada pulled Samidoun registration on March 27, stating that Samidoun, accused not only of advocating for violent terrorism, but of helping to fundraise for active Gazan terror groups, took action -- actually no, they did not. A statement on that very same day by the U.S. Department of the Treasury elaborated more fully, accusing Samidoun of exploiting the charitable sector to bankroll extremist violence. A "sham fundraiser whose efforts have supported terrorism".

 

Samidoun, advocating for Palestinian prisoners...Photo: Fatin al-Tamimi

 

Samidoun remained an active listing on Corporations Canada's official database, including a business number and names and addresses of three Samidoun directors. The listing eventually had a note appended to warn observers Corporations Canada was in the process of reviewing details of a terrorist organization, that any contact with the group might risk criminal prosecution. "It is a criminal offence for anyone in Canada ... to directly or indirectly provide property knowing that it will be used by or benefit a terrorist group", they alerted.

 

The registration remained active and only after a technical violation of the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act was resolved would their registration be wiped out. That violation seems to have been that Samidoun ceased submitting annual filings, following its terror designation; an oversight that was ultimately responsible for its being "dissolved for non-compliance". Really.

 

Since Samidoun's official federal terrorist designation none of its organizers have faced any charges. Co-founder Charlotte Kates remains free to enter and exit the country as she wishes. Despite the terror designation the Samidoun website and social media accounts remain active. On the website a statement appears that Samidoun intends to ignore the error designation, where Canada is referred to as a "settler-colonial state built on genocide". 

 

A screenshot of the Samidoun-led anti-Israel protest outside the Vancouver Art Gallery where Charlotte Kates was arrested, April 26, 2024. Photo by freepalestinetricitiesbc/Instagram

 

 

 

Nepotism By Any Other Name : Real and Perceived Conflict of Interest

"I am proactively applying a conflict of interest filter to Alto, a wholly owned subsidiary of the government of Canada."

"This measure is being implemented due to a personal connection to someone close to me in the organization, to safeguard against any real or perceived conflict of interest." 

Francois-Philippe Champagne letter to Mark Carney 

 

"This is a good situation, because we have the partner who can pursue her career."

"So we have to look at them as individuals. We need to have a system that will enable them to have those careers."

"There are rules, there are regulations and the minister of finance has followed those rules and regulations in notification of the ethics commissioner, in recusing himself from dealings with respect to Alto."  

"[This is a] really exciting project for Ontario, for Quebec and for the whole of Canada."

Prime Minister Mark Carney

 

"The prospect of a finance minister making decisions as part of the federal government's budgetary process which present distinct benefits and advantages for his partner and her employer — and acting and voting in Parliament to give those effect — is a very troubling development."

"An investigation is absolutely essential here, including to validate the existence and application of his unpublished — and only now revealed — 'conflict of interest filter' in addition to all of his parliamentary engagement on this matter."

Conservative ethics critic Michael Barrett 

A public consultation on the Alto project in Ottawa earlier this year was packed with displays. (Mathieu Deroy/Radio-Canada)

"From the outset, she disclosed her personal connection to the minister."

"The Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner was consulted proactively, and clear measures were put in place to prevent any real or perceived conflict."

"[Gaudet] is strictly focused on interactions with the federal public service [and ] is not involved with ministerial offices, including those of Transport or Finance."

Benoit Bourdeau, manager, media relations, Alto 

Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne released a letter written in September by him and addressed to the prime minister, in it vowing he would not participate in any decision relating to the government-backed organization tasked with the high-speed rail link proposal that would travel back and forth from Toronto to Quebec City. This is no casual undertaking. And there is no guarantee that it will be well-used, much less that it is even needed, with a price tag of $90 billion, which critics say with certainty will end up costing more, perhaps much more.

 

The issue at hand is that Minister Champagne's wife, Anne-Marie Gaudet, was hired as vice-president of the environment for Alto, back in August of 2025. Writing his intention to "proactively apply a conflict of interest filter", reflecting the fact that he has a "personal connection" with someone who works for Alto, as finance minister, Mr. Champagne produced a federal budget providing the organization with hundreds of millions of dollars. How this can be construed as 'no problem' as far as conflict of interests are concerned is baffling.

 

Prime Minister Mark Carney was asked whether Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne has a conflict of interest regarding his partner's role as a vice-president of Alto's high speed rail project. Carney said the minister is following the rules by notifying the ethics commissioner and recusing himself from Alto-related dealings.  Still from video/CBC

 

As finance minister, responsible for steering Canada's finances and budgetary allocations, with his wife deeply involved as a high-functioning employee who stands to benefit materially, her husband is in a position where he allocates government financing of tax money to an enterprise of no particular value to transporting people from Toronto to Quebec city, particularly when other alternatives by rail and air are already in existence. They cost less to operate, are already in operation, the cost of their use to the public is less than will be the case of a high-speed version, which promises to lop an hour off the current time.

 

Minister Champagne's wife Anne-Marie Gaudet has occupied senior roles in environmental assessment and in the transportation sector, including that of a senior role at the Port of Quebec. She is obviously well qualified to take up this position, or would be under circumstances other than being the wife of Canada's Minister of Finance; a clear and obvious issue of unethical decision-making on their part; husband and wife, despite being approved by the ethics commissioner and given a stamp of approval by the prime minister. Entirely inappropriate and inexcusable.

 

Yet Prime Minister Mark Carney sees nothing amiss in the situation, insisting that Mr. Champagne is following government ethics rules in recusing himself from the project. As finance minister disbursing immense sums of government (taxation) funding in the billions of dollars for a splashy infrastructure project, how can he not be involved in matters pertaining to the high-speed rail link? The very prospect is beyond ludicrous and epitomizes this government's penchant for evading basic ethics requirements to ensure public trust.

 

Alto, a wholly owned subsidiary of the federal government, means Champagne, through the filter, may not take part in any discussion, decisions or communications with government representatives on the high-speed rail project he is responsible for funding and in so doing, obviously supporting his wife's pecuniary interests in the process, and by extension, his own.   

 

Prime Minister Mark Carney says Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, pictured, has followed ethics rules. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

"Ethics screens should be banned because they are secretive smokescreens that are not independently enforced and do not prevent cabinet ministers and top government officials from participating in decision-making processes when they have a conflict of interest."

"[They] hide the fact that the office holder is participating even when they or their family members or friends can profit or benefit from the decision."

"That is clearly a secretive, closed-circle, unethical system that provides no evidence that Champagne actually recused himself from decisions concerning Alto." 

Duff Conacher, Democracy Watch