Open letter to Leslie Church, new MP for St. Paul’s. cc: PM Mark Carney

Dear Ms. Church,

Congratulations on your electoral win for the Liberal Party as Member of Parliament for the riding of Toronto- St. Paul’s in Canada’s recent April 28 federal election.

I understand it is normative for newly elected political representatives to reassure citizens that they will be representing ALL their constituents, even those who did not vote for them. Even though I voted for the losing Conservative candidate, I urgently seek reassurance from you that in Parliament, and in the Liberal party caucus, you will represent me, and thousands of fellow St. Paul’s voters, with regard to issues of paramount importance to the Jewish community.

I’ve been meaning to write you since the election, but was finally moved to action by an incident that just occurred right here in St. Paul’s. On the evening of May 27, during the “Abraham Global Peace Initiative” event featuring Israel’s former UN ambassador Gilad Erdan at Toronto’s famous Casa Loma, there was an anti-Israel demonstration, with protesters blocking the entrance, shouting insults, and intimidating attendees as they tried to enter the venue. Attendees were subjected to offensive gestures and called Nazis. Police noted assaults, threats, and disrespect toward both attendees and officers. Toronto Police arrested Kerry Gauer, 46, an administrative employee at University of Toronto, and charged her with mischief, interfering with property, assault, assault with a weapon, and wearing a disguise with intent. Vincent Tourangeau, 50, also of Toronto, was charged with assaulting a peace officer.

I have not heard from you. Will you be making a statement about this disturbing incident that happened right here in your riding?

Will you be following in Carolyn’s Liberal footsteps? Will you, like Carolyn, be in the Canada Israel Parliamentary Friendship Group? Will you, like Carolyn, be a Liberal Parliamentarian for Israel?

Unfortunately for the Jewish community, Dr. Bennet retired in January 2024, just as we began to see emerge PM Justin Trudeau‘s equivocal attitude towards Israel and the Jews.

In the immediate aftermath of October 7, Trudeau did condemn Hamas’ terror attacks, and said Canada “reaffirms its support for Israel’s right to defend itself”. He added: “To our Israeli friends,… The Government of Canada stands ready to support you – our support for the Israeli people is steadfast.” On October 9, 2023, at the huge rally held in Toronto’s Mel Lastman Square, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland addressed the crowd as the representative of the federal government. She said: “Let me state clearly and unequivocally that Canada stands with Israel”. She reaffirmed Canada’s support for Israel’s right to defend itself and called for the release of hostages.

But only a few weeks later, based only on claims by Hamas spokesmen, Trudeau all but accused Israel of firing a missile at a hospital. When it turned out it was a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad missile, aimed at civilians in Israel, but that had fallen short, Trudeau never apologized or explained. Nor did he condemn Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Contra to Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland’s statement, Trudeau’s support for Israel and Israel’s right to self-defense WAS equivocal. And there were Liberal MPs from other ridings who felt – unequivocally – that Israel does NOT have the right of self-defence, because Israel does not even have the right to exist.

Trudeau was equivocal not with just with respect to foreign policy, but even with respect to the Jewish community being under threat by mob demonstrations, campus encampments, cancellations, even violence. He always qualified condemnation of Antisemitism by pairing it with separate but equal condemnation of Islamophobia. As if rocks were being thrown through Toronto mosque windows, not synagogues; as if bullets were being shot at Toronto Muslim schools, not Jewish schools; as if unlawful anti-Palestinian encampments were being set up on Ontario college campuses.

In December 2024, I spoke for an hour with Carolyn Bennett, expressing my concerns. I worried that the Liberal Party caucus was being influenced by strident voices coming from MPs of ridings with large Muslim populations. Trudeau, in a minority government, had to bend to their will. Carolyn tried to assure me that not only the voice of MPs of riding with large Muslim populations were being heard at the cabinet table and in the caucus, but also the voice of MPs in ridings such as Mount Royal in Montreal, Eglinton-Lawrence, York Centre and Toronto-St. Paul’s, where Jewish presence is significant.

Will you be such a voice?

The overwhelming majority of Jews are strongly supportive of Israel‘s right to exist and to defend itself, and the right of Jews in Canada to be openly supportive of Israel, and pro-Zionist, which is not, thank goodness, a crime. Yet. There are, however, some in Canada who wish to make being pro-Zionist a hate crime, and who want to deflect legitimate criticism of Islamic jihadic terrorism behind the shield of “anti-Palestinian racism”.

Despite Carolyn’s assurances, I saw the situation deteriorate badly.

Though I was born here, graduated from UofT law school, and worked as a lawyer for 33 years, for the first time in my life I no longer feel safe or secure as a pro-Israel Canadian Jew. Which is to say a normative Jew, like perhaps 85% of Canadian Jews. Is a goal of this government to repair this serious rip in the Canadian multicultural social fabric? Or has the Liberal Party abandoned the Jews?

Here is how I see Canada today:

On University Avenue, in front of the Jewish-founded Mount Sinai Hospital where I was born, I saw masked mobs screaming and chanting “Intifada”, right in front of the polite Canadian sign that says “Hospital: Quiet”.

I saw the flagship bookstore chain of a Jewish-owned bookstore, and other Jewish-owned businesses vandalized. I saw rocks thrown through the windows of synagogues, bullets fired at the doors of Jewish schools.

And all that Trudeau would say is namby-pamby equivocal statements such as: “This is not who we are as Canadians”. But it actually begs the question. Who ARE we as Canadians today?

Over the past year and a half, I saw how the Jews, once a respected socially and culturally involved minority in Canada, has become a threatened and publicly despised minority. At the Giller Prize awards, at the double cancellation of the play The Runner, at the armed police that now have to be posted in front of every synagogue, every Jewish school and every Jewish public event in Toronto. In what was once Toronto the Good! Canadian Jews are concerned for their safety, and are being made fearful to publicly express their true beliefs, or publicly show their support for the Jewish state of Israel.

Is a society in which synagogues, Jewish schools and community centres need police protection against hostile Canadians the new face of multiculturalism in Canada?

The tipping point for me came in March 2024. The NDP, in a “support agreement” with Trudeau’s minority Liberals, had just one day when they could bring an “Opposition Motion” to Parliament. Instead of using it for what they claim is their primary interest, namely, standing up for working Canadians, pharmacare, etc. they attended Parliament wearing keffiyehs, appropriating the costume of pro-Palestinian anti-Israel activists, and advancing a one-sided anti-Israel motion. Unlike the Liberals, the NDP are not equivocal. They are stridently anti-Israel, accuse Israel of genocide, demand a unilateral cease-fire, wish to deny Israel the right to self-defence. To their shame, and the Jewish community’s deep consternation, the Liberals, instead of simply ordering their ranks to vote down the NDP‘s anti-Israel motion, tried to play both sides of the field. They watered down the resolution, but it still called to cease further transfer of arms to Israel. Only three brave Liberal MPs – Anthony Housefather, Marco Mendicino and Ben Carr – voted against.

That was the last straw for me. When (due to Carolyn Bennett’s resignation) the St. Paul’s by-election came in June 2024, I volunteered for Don Stewart‘s Conservative Party, went canvassing door-to-door on his behalf to bring out the vote on byelection day, and urged all my friends, neighbors, and family to support Don Stewart. I was thrilled that he won, and was hoping that this would send a message to the Liberals.

Unfortunately, that message may have gotten lost, as if the loss of St. Paul’s, for years a Liberal stronghold, was simply because Liberal voters couldn’t support the Liberals in this byelection because they were not in favor of Trudeau for other reasons, reasons which led Trudeau to resign in December 2024.

When the federal election came in April 2025, I once again supported the Conservatives, as did everybody I knew in the Jewish community, though certainly there were Jews for whom their concerns about the Jewish community and Israel was eclipsed by their preference for having Mark Carney as the Prime Minister in the face-off against Trump.

For me, however, and for many of my friends and family, we looked to Mark Carney to see what he said about Israel and the threatened position of Jews in Canadian civil society. We found his silence deafening. And then the cabinet appointment of Anita Anand as Foreign Minister brought further bad tidings. She was quick to criticize Israel’s actions, while not even mentioning Hamas’ role in the conflict, or stating as a goal the release of Israeli hostages.

So now I turn to you as my representative in the House of Commons, a member of the Liberal caucus from an important riding in central Toronto and ask: even though I did not vote for you, will you represent the concerns of St. Paul’s residents like myself, and thousands of others, for whom the safety and security of Israel, the Jewish state and the Jewish community here in Canada are of paramount concern?

I look forward to hearing from you in unequivocal terms.