NDP candidates step down over social media posts
Toronto, Nova Scotia hopefuls resign after apologizing for antisemitic remarks
“Amid rising Jew-hatred in this country, all political parties and leaders must send a message, loud and clear, that antisemitism will not be tolerated in any shape or form.” JAIME KIRZNER-ROBERTS FRIENDS OF THE SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTRE
A Toronto NDP candidate who admitted to spreading a baseless theory about Israel and COVID-19 vaccines agreed to end her campaign Wednesday, less than a day after NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh stood by her in public remarks.
Sidney Coles, an equity consultant and former humanitarian aid worker, apologized Sunday for posting what she called “unsubstantiated theories about vaccine supply linked to Israel” on Twitter. But by Tuesday, with the story continuing to spread, it had become clear inside the party that an apology wouldn’t be enough.
“Our understanding is that there was internal pressure from party members, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, that Ms. Coles’s statement and the leader’s response to it were insufficient,” said Martin Sampson, the vice-president of communications at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA).
Coles, who was running in Toronto— St. Paul’s, was one of two NDP candidates to step aside on Wednesday. Dan Osborne, an 18-year-old running for the party in the Nova Scotia riding of Cumberland-Colchester, had apologized Sunday for making a joke about the Holocaust on a “mostly satire” Twitter account when he was 16.
“These two candidates have resigned and ended their campaigns. They have agreed to educate themselves further about antisemitism,” said NDP spokesperson George Soule in a statement Wednesday morning.
“New Democrats stand united against discrimination of all kinds. We are committed to taking lasting and meaningful steps toward ending prejudice and hatred in all its forms.”
The resignations, at this point, will have no effect on the actual ballots. The deadline to have names removed before the federal election has long since passed and millions of Canadians have already voted in advance polls.
Still, the CIJA applauded the move Wednesday. “Elected officials — and those vying for public office — must lead by example in our collective fight against hatred towards Jews,” CIJA president and CEO Shimon Koffler Fogel wrote in a statement. “It was right for Dan Osborne and Sidney Coles to resign and it is appropriate that they enrol in antisemitism training so they can learn about the serious damage antisemitism does to the fabric of our society. All Canadians of goodwill must work together to eradicate Jew hatred from Canada.”
The NDP leaned heavily on the CIJA’s acceptance and acknowledgment of Coles’ apology in the party’s initial response to the story. A party spokesman highlighted it in an email to the Star, and Singh brought it up unprompted when asked about the controversy Tuesday.
But on Wednesday, at a campaign stop in Essex, Ont., Singh was asked why, if an apology was good enough for him Tuesday, a resignation was necessary now.
“Well, it’s certainly right to apologize,” he said. “It’s always right to apologize. People, if they make mistakes, should apologize. That’s always the right thing to do. And in this case, they made a decision to go further than that and I support that decision. I think it was right, given the circumstances.”
The embarrassing NDP tweets came to light as part of what appeared to be a co-ordinated dump of opposition research by Liberal candidates in the final days of the campaign.
On Friday, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, a Toronto incumbent, tweeted out Islamophobic statements he alleged his Conservative opponent, Lisa Robinson, had made under an online pseudonym. (The Conservatives quickly turfed Robinson as a party candidate.)
On Sunday, Karina Gould, fighting for re-election in Burlington, posted about her opponent’s close ties to the gun industry. (“I AM the gun lobby,” Emily Brown wrote in one tweet.)
That same day, Rachel Bendayan, the Liberal candidate in Outremont, posted screenshots of Osborne and Coles’ tweets.
And on Monday, Han Dong, running in Don Valley North, sent out a racist meme allegedly shared by Michel Gauthier, the Conservative candidate in Pontiac.
The timing was almost certainly no coincidence. A key part of the Liberal strategy in most campaigns is to convince waffling centre-left voters that voting Liberal is the only way to keep the Conservative party from forming government.
To do that, the party needs to both paint the Conservatives as regressive on issues like guns, abortion and racism, while at the same time eroding confidence in Singh and the NDP as a credible alternative.
But in Coles’s case, the offending tweets were also seen and then disseminated by outraged Jewish organizations, including the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre. On Wednesday, the centre’s director of policy, Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, thanked Singh for “his leadership in ensuring” the two “stepped down and committed to participating in antisemitism education.”
(For the record, Singh insisted Wednesday that Coles and Osborne made that decision on their own.)
“Amid rising Jew-hatred in this country, all political parties and leaders must send a message, loud and clear, that antisemitism will not be tolerated in any shape or form,” Kirzner-Roberts said in a statement.
But for some voters, the resignations came too late. Susan Glickman, an author and former University of Toronto professor, had already voted for Coles before she read about her tweets Tuesday.
“I still vote NDP because I believe in the party’s domestic platform, though for many years the NDP has NOT been a safe space for Jews,” she wrote in an email to the party that same day. The email was later viewed by the Star. “The latest revelation of Anti-Semitism is, however, breaking my heart, because I voted in the advance polls with no knowledge that the person I trusted to work for me is so prejudiced that she tweets vile rumours and then admits she had NO EVIDENCE for the lies she spread.”
At his appearance Wednesday, Singh told reporters that the NDP is a party of inclusivity, where everyone should feel welcome. “Antisemitism is real,” he said. “We’re seeing a scary rise in antisemitism. And we are unequivocally opposed, and will confront it, and we’ll deal with it wherever it is . ... Those messages were completely unacceptable. And the right decision was made.”