Speaker silences Poilievre for a day after he accused foreign minister of pandering to Hamas
Poilievre's refusal to withdraw charged language is having a 'corrosive effect on our discussions': Speaker
Speaker Greg Fergus ruled Tuesday that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre won't be allowed to speak in the House of Commons for the rest of the day after he refused to withdraw his claim that Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly is pandering to Hamas.
In question period Monday, Poilievre asked Joly to condemn what he called "genocidal chants from hateful mobs" during recent protests over the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza. Police have opened investigations into alleged hate speech following some rallies and charges have been laid in some cases.
Joly, reading from a prepared statement, recognized the one-year anniversary of Hamas's brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel and said, "We stand with Jewish people."
Poilievre again asked about the antisemitic chants. Justice Minister Arif Virani responded: "What we stand up against, absolutely, is the amount of hatred that we have seen."
Poilievre then told the House of Commons Joly should have taken a more definitive stand against the rhetoric heard at these protests.
"I gave the foreign affairs minister two opportunities to condemn the increasingly common and terrifying antisemitic chants we hear in the streets, such as 'Israel will soon be gone' and 'There is only one solution! Intifada, revolution!' " he said.
"Twice she refused to condemn those remarks. She continues to pander to Hamas supporters and the Liberal Party as part of her leadership campaign rather than doing her job."
Speaker cites Liberal MP case as precedent
Joly protested Poilievre's remarks and Fergus agreed Tuesday that Poilievre was out of line.
In his ruling on the matter, Fergus cited Liberal MP Yvan Baker claiming earlier this year that Poilievre's Conservatives were somehow linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"The Putin wing has taken over the Conservative Party," Baker said, after the Conservatives voted against a bill dealing with a Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement.
Baker was barred from speaking in the Commons over that incident. Fergus said he must apply the same policy to Poilievre after he linked Joly to "an odious regime" and was unrepentant about it.
"When the leader of the Opposition was himself the subject of unparliamentary language, members of his caucus took great offence," Fergus said in French. "I am sure members can appreciate that I must do the same in the present circumstances."
While citing the Baker case as precedent, Fergus said he was lifting the ban on that Toronto MP effective Wednesday. Poilievre will also be able to speak then as well.
Speaking to CBC News Network's Power & Politics, Baker said the Speaker wasn't being fair and called Tuesday's ruling a "double-standard."
"I'm disappointed with the ruling that Greg Fergus made about Pierre Poilievre today," Baker told host David Cochrane.
"Poilievre should have at least faced the same penalty that I did, which would be he would not be allowed to speak in the House until he apologized."
Unparliamentary language has 'corrosive effect'
Fergus said he is tasked with deciding what is considered unparliamentary language in the chamber and MPs who ignore his authority can have a "corrosive effect on our discussions. This undermines the important work done by the House."
Fergus said Poilievre is an experienced MP and should know the rules.
"His actions must be exercised within the existing boundaries of parliamentary decorum," he said.
A spokesperson for Poilievre called Fergus a "Liberal Speaker" who is "showing his partisan bias and trying to censor questions of his party."
Speaking to reporters on Parliament Hill Tuesday after the Speaker's ruling, Poilievre said it's Joly who should apologize for what he described as a insufficiently forceful condemnation of antisemitism.
"A foreign affairs minister in Canada should find it very easy to condemn those kinds of remarks but she didn't, because she's pandering politically," Poilievre said.
Poilievre asks government to 'ban' Samidoun
He also urged the government to "ban" Samidoun, a group he accused of being a front for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terrorist entity under Canadian law.
He said members of Samidoun have glorified the Oct. 7 attacks and shouted slogans like "death to Canada, death to the United States and death to Israel" at recent protests in this country.
Samidoun's international co-ordinator Charlotte Kates was arrested in a Vancouver hate-crime investigation earlier this year after she praised the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas as "heroic and brave."
Samidoun also posted a statement that called the attack — which killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians — "a legitimate military operation."
Liberal MP Jennifer O'Connell, the parliamentary secretary to the minister of public safety, said the government has referred listing Samidoun as a terrorist entity to "our national security advisers and asked for an emergency and urgent review."
Joly fired back at Poilievre's suggestion she's been soft on antisemitism, saying she won't take lessons from him on the issue. She said it's the "height of hypocrisy" for him to accuse her of ignoring anti-Jewish hate.
She said Poilievre still hasn't condemned Nazi symbols seen during the 2022 anti-vaccine mandate trucker convoy.
She also said Poilievre was seen visiting a convoy camp where there was iconography associated with Diagolon, an extremist group that uses virulent racist and antisemitic rhetoric.
Poilievre also did not reprimand Conservative MPs who met with a far-right German politician who has been accused of downplaying Nazi crimes, Joly said.
"Clearly what we're seeing is that Pierre Poilievre is all about double standards and he's all about himself and his own political games," she said. "Ultimately, he's unfit to govern this country."
Poilievre, in turn, accused the Liberals of doing too little to combat antisemitism and said the number of anti-Jewish hate crimes and incidents was rising even before the Oct. 7 attack and the subsequent Israeli response.
He said the Liberal government's border policies may explain why there's been such an anti-Israel tinge to some of the recent protests in this country.
He said "nine years of Trudeau's radical ideology" and the government's "reckless destruction of our border security, letting in two ISIS terrorists" may be to blame for "division, violence, hate, danger and antisemitism."
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