Singh urges Trudeau to act on systemic racism
Incident at Rideau Hall shows police operate on bias, NDP leader says
If the Rideau Hall intruder had been a person of colour, the outcome of last week’s events in Ottawa would have been very different, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said Wednesday.
Singh, speaking to reporters on Parliament Hill, said that incident, contrasted with others in recent weeks when police in Canada killed Indigenous people and people of colour during visits to check on their welfare, “reminds us all of how systemic racism is real.”
Military reservist and Manitoba business person Corey Hurren is in an Ottawa jail facing 22 charges for allegedly carrying weapons and making a threat against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Police say they arrested Hurren early on July 2, about 200 metres from Trudeau’s front door, after he allegedly rammed his pickup truck through gates at Rideau Hall and then ran with a loaded gun through the grounds toward Trudeau’s residence.
Police say they spoke to Hurren, who was still carrying at least one gun, for an hour and 42 minutes before he was arrested without anyone getting hurt.
Singh said he is thankful for the safety of Trudeau and his family — who were not home at the time — and said he sees the event as an episode of “domestic terrorism.”
And when asked if he thought there would not have been a peaceful end to the event if the suspect had been a person of colour, Singh said simply, “Yes.”
Singh mentioned Ejaz Choudry, a 62-year-old man who was shot by police in Mississauga on June 22, after his family called a non-emergency help line out of concern Choudry was not taking his medication. Choudry was diagnosed with schizophrenia, his family said after his death.
“That contrast — someone showed up to potentially kill the prime minister of Canada, or with weapons at his residence, and that person was arrested without any violence and you had a person who in his own home was killed,” Singh said. “That to me is what systemic racism in policing is all about, that difference.”
Other recent incidents involving police that ended in deaths include:
> Chantel Moore, 26, a First Nations woman who was shot and killed by police called to do a wellness check in Edmundston, N.B., on June 4;
> Rodney Levi, a 48-year-old First Nations man struggling with his mental health who was killed by police near Miramichi, N.B., on June 12;
> Regis Korchinski-Paquet, a 29-year-old Afro-Indigenous woman from Toronto who died after falling from a 24th-storey balcony while police were at the apartment for a family conflict that had left Korchinski-Paquet in distress on May 27.
Singh also said Trudeau needs to actually do something to address the issue of systemic racism within the RCMP. He said last fall, when images of Trudeau wearing blackface in multiple old photos emerged, Trudeau asked to be judged by his actions against racism.
Those actions, Singh said, have been nil. “The most he has done is a vague reference to body cameras,” Singh said.
Shortly after Singh’s remarks, Trudeau said his cabinet has set a work plan for the summer to take concrete steps to address systemic racism.