South Asian Liberal supporters harassed
Display of noose, gallows at protest prompts Trudeau to cancel appearance at B.C. fundraiser
Trucks with horns blaring and a noose dangling from a handheld prop resembling a gallows were the backdrop of a protest outside of a Liberal party fundraiser in Surrey, B.C., on Tuesday night that grew so ugly Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was forced to cancel his appearance.
Tensions amid a group of protesters estimated at about four dozen escalated to the point where Royal Canadian Mounted Police decided it wasn’t safe for the prime minister to attend, the RCMP confirmed to the Star on Wednesday.
Trudeau did not enter the building, but later addressed the crowd of 140 for about three minutes via video link.
Speaking in Saskatoon on Wednesday afternoon, Trudeau told reporters that “hundreds of people, mostly racialized Canadians, came out to exercise their democratic right to support the political party that they believed in and were faced with harassment, racist insults, threats of violence.”
That freedom to engage in political party activity “should never be in question as it was last night and as we’re increasingly seeing across the country,” Trudeau said, echoing his video comments of the night before.
“Fundamental freedoms … need to be defended, need to be protected. Nobody should feel endangered or harassed because of their support for one political party or another. And that’s something that I think we all need to be vigilant about. And that’s certainly something that Canadians are looking at very carefully at all orders of government right now.”
In a statement to the Star, RCMP media relations spokesperson Stéphanie Dumoulin said a small group of protesters gathered outside of the banquet hall gates around 4:40 p.m., before the final event of the prime minister’s twoday tour in British Columbia.
“The number of protesters continued to grow in size and included with the protest were several cars, larger trucks and vehicles towing trailers that were travelling in a convoy style loop around the roadway,” she said. “Due (to) the size and composition of the protest group and for the safety of everyone in attendance, a decision was made that it was not safe for the prime minister to attend the location.”
Dumoulin said police remained on site “to ensure the safety of all parties involved. For security reasons, the RCMP doesn’t comment on specifics when it comes to security measures afforded to the prime minister.”
The Canadian Press reported that two speakers at the event said protesters hurled racial slurs at the mostly South Asian attendees entering a convention centre.
Braeden Caley, a former Liberal party strategist, tweeted a photograph he took at the event of a protester dressed in camouflage shorts and a ball cap, with the words “Trudeau” and “Treason” marked in black on the wooden post from which the noose dangled.
Caley, who now works for Canada 2020, a non-partisan think tank, tweeted: “A noose was brought to the door of an event with Canada’s Prime Minister last night. The escalating toxicity being stoked via the extreme-right this year is beyond dangerous. Threats and intimidation have no place in our democracy, full stop.”
Caley has attended hundreds of political events over the years, and “that’s just simply something I’ve never seen before,” he said in an interview.
According to a transcript of Trudeau’s remarks to the crowd on Tuesday night, the prime minister expressed concern about the intimidation of attendees.
Trudeau told the fundraiser, hosted by Surrey Centre MP Randeep Sarai and attended by members of the area’s large South Asian community including many Sikhs, that he was “sad” not to see “friends who I haven’t seen in a long (time) while we’ve all struggled through this COVID pandemic.
“All of you came out tonight to exercise your democratic rights to support a political party, to be part of building a better future,” Trudeau told them.
“And, no one should be intimidated, or should be stopped from exercising their democratic freedoms, because that’s what this country is all about.”
Defence Minister Anita Anand spoke as well, but The Canadian Press said a reporter in attendance was asked to leave.
In B.C. a day earlier, the prime minister faced hecklers at an event in Kamloops to mark the one-year anniversary of the discovery of unmarked burial sites of residential school children. Trudeau later said those protesters had a “right to be angry” about the ordeals suffered by Indigenous people.
Still, the level of vitriol that politicians are facing appears to be escalating.
A source told the Star there were no signs of other causes motivating the protesters Tuesday night in Surrey, and that most seemed to be in line with the so-called “Freedom Convoy” from earlier this year, which morphed into a broader anti-government, anti-Trudeau demonstration after starting as a protest against COVID-19 vaccination mandates and lockdowns.
In last summer’s federal election campaign, anti-vaccination protesters hurled gravel stones and insults at Trudeau in London, Ont.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh recently faced a crowd hurling racial slurs at him in Peterborough, but no charges were laid.