MP brushed off minorities, not me: Singh

OTTAWA — NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said he believes the gesture a Bloc Québécois MP made toward him wasn’t aimed at him personally, but dismissed the lives of Indigenous and Black people who have been victimized by police.

Singh said Bloc MP Alain Therrien made a brushing-off hand gesture after refusing the necessary unanimous consent for a motion he wanted to present Wednesday on systemic racism in the RCMP — a movement Singh described as “dismissive” and “the face of racism.”

The exchange was not captured on House of Commons cameras; Singh described the gesture in a news conference afterward.

“That gesture represents what racism is: that people don’t matter, that their lives don’t matter,” Singh said in an interview Thursday. “It was symbolic of what we’re up against when we’re trying to challenge systemic racism. Policing that has caused violence and death to Indigenous and Black people needs to stop and that’s why that gesture to me represented exactly what Indigenous, Black and racialized people feel every day — that they do not matter.”

Singh’s accusation that Therrien is a racist boiled over into a second day of tense exchanges in Ottawa Thursday as Bloc Québécois Leader YvesFrancois

Blanchet defended his MP and called the charge “stupefying” and misguided.

He also suggested he felt Singh’s remarks were aimed more broadly at his party, and he called for Singh to apologize for painting his party as discriminatory. He said the Bloc Québécois had been fielding accusations of racism on social media since Wednesday.

“Mr. Singh is a good person, I always thought that and I still think that. He somehow dropped the ball and I hope he will take it back,” Blanchet said.

House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota had barred Singh from returning to the chamber on Wednesday after the NDP refused to apologize.