Letters: ‘We knew this was coming’

Re: Jew hate is a growing Canadian pastime. This is the result — Jesse Kline, Sept. 21

I write in despair for the Jewish community in Canada and around the world. In the attack on the Sons of Jacob Synagogue, Belleville Police Constable Jeff Smith was critically injured while stopping the attacker. I thank the Belleville police and Const. Smith deeply and wish him a full and speedy recovery.

In the immediate aftermath, many assumed the perpetrator must be a Muslim extremist or an Islamist. It turns out the alleged attacker was a local non-Muslim. Some will seize on this to claim that concerns about Islamist-inspired hate rallies are overblown. That conclusion is wrong. It is precisely because Islamist rallies that promote hate toward Jews are permitted on our streets and within Jewish neighbourhoods that they must be taken seriously. We simply cannot ignore these conditions that foster a nationwide atmosphere of antisemitism.

In addition to allowing demonstrations of overt antisemitism to continue unabated, hatred toward Canadian Jews has exploded because of the actions of our national government, which for the past decade has repeatedly acted with malice against the Jewish state. The result is a sustained atmosphere of Jew-hatred in which people like the Belleville shooter, or others, feel justified in becoming violent antisemites.

We knew this was coming.

Unless the Carney government stops demonizing Israel for defending itself in an existential war, and unless provincial and municipal authorities end the hate fests on our streets, more attacks will follow.

Howard C. Tenenbaum, Thornhill, Ont.

Once again we are confronted by an antisemitic incident that could have turned more deadly.

Once again politicians of all stripes, from local to national, are mouthing their outrage.

Kudos to the police who are doing their job.

This will continue until judges start handing out meaningful sentences.

And how about a bill that would require mandatory financial restitution for any deliberate damage caused by groups or single actors. Why should insurance companies — and ultimately the victims paying higher rates — foot the bill?

Anyone wilfully damaging property should have to pay the damages, no matter how long it takes.

And maybe those who are funding “demonstrations” will get tired of having to shell out to fix synagogue windows and doors, Jewish schools, community centres and businesses.

Warren Kinsella’s book, The Hidden Hand, which exposes who is behind the outbreak of antisemitism we are experiencing, should be required reading for all politicians of all levels.

Penina Honig, Toronto

Re: ‘Associate member’ or ‘unique alliance,’ Carney jets to EU in search of new and deeper ties — Christopher Nardi, Sept. 16

There’s a funny scene in the 1987 comedy Planes, Trains and Automobiles in which John Candy and Steve Martin are driving at night in the wrong direction on a freeway. The driver of a passing car frantically screams at them, “You’re going the wrong way.” But Candy and Martin pay no heed until they are almost obliterated by two huge transports going in the right direction.

By his “Back to Europe” pivot, Prime Minister Mark Carney is driving eastward in a world where the largest and fastest growing regional economy is westward — the Asia Pacific region. Western Canada — which looks west not east for the future — shouts, “You’re going the wrong way.” But will Mr. Carney listen? Not likely.

Preston Manning, Calgary

Re: Conservatives search for hope amid Mark Carney’s tide of good fortune, and find only stoicism — Stuart Thomson and Simon Tuck, Sept. 19

If Conservatives really want to form a government there is only one change that will lead them there, and that’s a change in leadership. Losing one’s own long-held safe riding seat, losing a federal election, losing MPs to another party, losing byelections, trailing miserably in preferred leadership polls etc, yet still believing that everything is somehow going to work out in the end, is rabbit-hole thinking. Blaming Donald Trump or the EU won’t change anything.

If the party doesn’t think a leadership change is important, just look across the aisle to what happened when a new leader arrived on the scene.

Douglas Cornish, Ottawa

I am fed up with the ridiculous criticism of Pierre Poilievre from within his own party. How about, for once, you show a united front for your leader? Or are all of you actually enjoying shooting yourselves in your collective foot?

Poilievre’s critics should be concentrating on the real problem: How can we free Canada from the grip of the federal Liberals and their leader Mark Carney, who incidentally, by his non-stop foreign travelling and disdain of Parliament, shows that he truly does not have a clue about, or perhaps does not care about, trying to solve the problems that plague Canada?

My bet is that long before the deadline date of his current contract, Carney will quit this job. But it would be far more rewarding if he could be defeated in an election. And that will only happen if the Opposition makes a united effort to pursue that aim.

Glynis Van Steen, Burlington, Ont.

Our Official Opposition, the Conservatives, need to stop hoping to find weaknesses in prime minister Mark Carney. Right now voters are blinded, just as they were blinded by glamorous Justin Trudeau. Conservatives also need to stop feeling like a failure because their party lost the past federal election. Never mind that political newcomer Carney was the former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. Voters can’t help loving a person who wears a halo. Voters who had thrown their hats into the ring with the Conservatives because they hated Justin Trudeau moved over to the Liberals because the Liberals had a new glamorous person to replace him with.

Instead of trying to dim the aura of our current prime minister, Conservatives should concentrate on the weaknesses of the Liberal government. Attention to the justice system is critical, as is the huge government bureaucracy paid for by our taxes on everything from soup to nuts. As well, the fact that our prime minister hasn’t told us the whole truth about Canada’s decision to withdraw from the tariff talks between the U.S. and Canada is a serious concern.

Leone Wright, Surrey, B.C.

Re: Jew hate is a growing Canadian pastime. This is the result — Jesse Kline, Sept. 21

As I was arriving at my synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and stood in line to be searched with metal detectors, it occurred to me that no other religious community has to undergo a search upon entering their place of worship.

Imagine going to church on Christmas and having to first be searched with metal detectors. Or imagine attending a Hindu temple or a mosque and being asked to open your handbag before being searched with metal detectors?

Why have we accepted this? Why have we allowed the hatred toward the Jewish community to be so great that our community members feel under threat in our own cities, in our schools and in our places of worship?

When will the federal, provincial and municipal governments take anti-Jewish hatred seriously and put an end to its rampant spread? When will our governments have the decency and the courage to stop the spread of the anti-Zionist rhetoric that is fuelling the spread of anti-Jewish sentiment? Would Christian communities be OK with such levels of threat against them?

Where is the outrage? When do we stand up and say “no!” to such hatred in our midst?

Kathy Schneider, Toronto

Re: Ontario teachers told they serve white supremacist system that must be destroyed — Tristin Hopper, Sept. 21

A long-retired history teacher, I was troubled by Tristin Hopper’s reporting on the message delivered to returning teachers at a school in York Region (north of Toronto), including the statement that “the institution of Education is an instrumental tool for maintaining and furthering the ideology of white supremacy.”

That was just one of 10 “anti-oppression” statements the teachers were asked to agree with, crafted by ideologically-driven virtue-signalling administrators arrogant enough to presume that they — pure in thought and deed — need to educate classroom teachers, all apparently in need of moral guidance and supervision to purge their colonist racist shortcomings.

There are none so blind as those who cannot see — who will not acknowledge — the very real problems that beset today’s teachers.

I do not know a single fellow retiree who would choose to teach today or a single currently-teaching acquaintance who would recommend the profession.

Now that is a message!

Brian Tuddenham, Cambridge, Ont.

Re: Repairing Trudeau’s salmon-industry sabotage is next on Carney’s agenda — John Ivison, Sept. 18

John Ivison calls the 2029 phase-out of open-net salmon farms “sabotage.” It is nothing of the kind. It is a reasonable requirement that an industry raising Atlantic salmon in Pacific waters contain its waste, parasites and disease risks, rather than release them into the migration routes of wild Pacific salmon.

Ottawa’s 2024 policy did not ban aquaculture. It gave open-net operators until June 30, 2029, to transition, while requiring new licences to use marine or land-based closed-containment systems. Existing licences were to carry stronger conditions for sea-lice management, reporting and monitoring during the transition. This is an orderly, time-limited plan — not an attack on an industry.

Ivison presents a choice between jobs and wild salmon. That framing ignores the subsidy embedded in open-net pens: private companies use public coastal waters to absorb and disperse biological waste and risk. When sea lice, pathogens or effluent leave a farm, the potential costs fall on wild fish, marine users and coastal communities — not solely on the operator.

Nor is this merely a dispute within individual territories. Some First Nations support continued open-net farming, and their rights, governance and economic priorities deserve respect. But wild salmon are migratory. Fish from one watershed travel through the territories and shared waters of many Nations; risks produced at one farm can extend far beyond its tenure.

More than 120 B.C. First Nations have called for open-net pens to be removed, while others support their continuation. That difference is precisely why Ottawa cannot allow the interests of a subset of farm-hosting Nations to determine the future of every Nation whose salmon migrate through those waters.

The Federal Court of Appeal has upheld the minister’s authority to refuse aquaculture licences on conservation grounds and to apply a precautionary approach where wild salmon face risk.

Prime Minister Mark Carney should reject the rhetoric of “sabotage” and affirm the 2029 transition. Canada has already provided a lengthy runway to adapt. The task now is to make the transition real, orderly and properly supported for workers, communities and Indigenous governments.

Wild salmon cannot afford another political delay.

Tony Allard, Chair, Wild Salmon Forever / Wild First

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