House debate featured memorable moments
Highlights from Monday’s vote on NDP motion
Monday was certainly not the finest hour of the Canadian House of Commons. Amid any number of pressing domestic crises requiring Parliamentary attention, the NDP forced a lengthy debate over a non-binding motion for Canada to recognize a Palestinian state.
The NDP didn’t get what they wanted. The Liberals deleted the clause calling for Palestinian statehood, and a majority of MPS passed a watered-down motion calling vaguely for a “just and lasting peace.”
But that only happened after hours of back-andforth, which frequently strayed into the ridiculous. Below, some of the highlights from one of the more ignominious debates from the Commons.
❚ The motion’s main backer began her speech with a quote from a notorious pro-terror antisemite.
The motion was tabled by Heather Mcpherson, the NDP MP for Edmonton-strathcona. She began her speech with a quote from the Gazan poet Refaat Alareer.
“Mr. Speaker, ‘If I must die, you must live to tell my story.’ Those are the words of Refaat Alareer, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on December 6,” said Mcpherson.
Alareer was indeed killed on Dec. 6 and had published a 2011 poem anticipating such a fate entitled If I Must Die. But his other statements — particularly those in the weeks before his death — are much less eloquent. When revelations surfaced of Israeli babies burned to death on Oct. 7, Alareer asked in a social media post if it was done “with or without baking powder.”
In the years leading up to the Oct. 7 attacks, Alareer’s social media was replete with open calls for violence and comparisons of Israelis to Nazis. “No form, act, or means of Palestinian resistance whatsoever is terror,” he wrote in July 2021.
❚ The motion uncritically cites casualty data from Hamas.
One of the introductory clauses of the NDP’S motion states that “the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 30,000, with 70 per cent of the victims women and children.” That number comes from the Gaza Ministry of Health, an organization wholly controlled by Hamas.
The Ministry of Health has never differentiated between civilian and combatant deaths. What’s more, there’s good evidence that the figures are falsified. A statistical analysis published in Tablet Magazine noted casualty figures are rising at a suspiciously consistent rate of about 270 per day.
“This regularity is almost surely not real . ... There should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less,” it read.
Liberal MP Anthony Housefather would gently hint in his own address to the House of Commons that the NDP was uncritically entering Hamas figures into the Parliamentary record.
“The honourable member mentioned the figure of 30,000 from the Hamas Ministry of Health, but I do not know how accurate that is,” he said.
Mcpherson would also weirdly claim that Hamas — which has been the autocratic ruler of Gaza since 2007 — doesn’t actually have any political power. “Hamas is a terrorist organization and it is not the government of Gaza,” she said.
❚ The NDP caucus dressed up for the occasion.
Props are forbidden in the House of Commons. But several members of the NDP were able to skirt the rule by wearing keffiyeh, a type of scarf first popularized by Palestinian nationalist Yasser Arafat as a symbol of violent resistance against Israel.
During the final vote, a scattering of keffiyeh could be seen in the NDP benches, including on Mcpherson and fellow Edmonton NDPER Blake Desjarlais.
Hamilton NDP MP Matthew Green — who has occasionally been a keynote speaker at rallies organized by the extremist group Toronto4palestine — wore a keffiyeh and lifted his fist into the air when voting “aye.”
❚ Jagmeet Singh falsely claimed the motion “forced” the Trudeau government’s hand on foreign policy.
Although the NDP failed in their bid to have MPS back a motion to recognize a Palestinian state, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh would trumpet the motion as an unbridled victory. In a post to X, he wrote that his MPS had “forced the Liberals” to, among other things, “stop selling arms to the Israeli (government)” and “support the … (International Court of Justice).”
For starters, both of those things were already Trudeau government policy (although the claim of selling “arms” is tenuous, since Canadian military exports to Israel were already non-lethal). Second, the motion didn’t “force” anything, since even in its unamended form it had always been intended as a non-binding motion.
❚ The Conservatives accused the NDP of attempting to “reward” murderers and kidnappers.
The Tories rolled out two MPS to make the case against the motion. The first was Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong, who said Conservatives support a “two-state solution” and the “aspirations of the Palestinian people to have their own state” — but that such things cannot be responsibly obtained “just by a declaration.”
Conservative Deputy Leader Melissa Lantsman was much blunter in her assessment of what the NDP was trying to do.
“The motion is about a vote to reward the murder, rape and kidnapping of Israelis, and the motion is deeply irresponsible for Parliament,” she said, calling it a “blind sellout to the forces of evil at home and abroad.”
❚ MPS did think to point out how pointless this all was.
Liberal MP Leah Roy asked Mcpherson to explain how a “non-binding motion in the House of Commons of Canada” would have any impact on “alleviating the suffering” of Gazans.
To this, Mcpherson replied that Roy obviously wanted children to die.
“What the member is suggesting is that children around the world should die, should be killed, should starve to death and that the Canadian Parliament should not act,” she said.