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Poilievre’s Vancouver Synagogue Visit Is Raising Concerns

The planned speech and photo op leaves some members troubled by the leader's refusal to take questions.

Jen St. Denis 30 Jan 2025The Tyee

Jen St. Denis is a reporter with The Tyee.

Some members of a Vancouver synagogue say they have questions they’d like to ask Pierre Poilievre when the federal Conservative leader comes to visit their community Sunday.

But while Poilievre will make a speech and have a photo op, questions from the congregation won’t be allowed.

Jesse Samuels is part of the synagogue’s queer group, Kehilateinu. She’s dismayed that Poilievre won’t take questions about his stance on rights for transgender people. Poilievre recently said “I’m not aware of any other genders than man and woman” when asked about President Donald Trump’s reversal of rights for transgender people.

Jenny Laing, another member of Kehilateinu who is a lesbian and has a trans daughter, said she objects to Poilievre speaking at the synagogue altogether and plans to protest the event.

Laing said Poilievre should not be campaigning at the synagogue.

“Our synagogue has opened this place of prayer to a man who said that ‘it's time for Canadians to put aside race, this obsession with race that wokeism has reinserted,’” Laing said. “A man who said he was only aware of two genders, when a reasonable number of people who come to that synagogue are people of colour, people who are not gender binary.”

Samuels said she also expects that some members of the congregation would have questions about the Conservative party’s promises to fight antisemitism against the backdrop of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack against Israel, the subsequent war in Gaza and Canadian protests against Israel’s actions.

There’s also the issue of Poilievre’s recent comments in support of Elon Musk, the tech CEO who poured more than $277 million into Trump’s election campaign and has written social media posts in favour of Poilievre.

At Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, Musk was condemned for making a Nazi salute. He responded on X by making a series of puns on various Nazi leaders’ names.

“I think that for a lot of us in the Jewish community, especially in the past year, it can feel a bit like you're sort of being passed around like a political football,” Samuels said.

“You have people on the left going ‘We're the best’ and people on the right going ‘No, we're the best.’ Well, are any of you actually talking to us?”

“This is another scenario like that, in which he does not intend to talk to us.”

According to email correspondence shared with The Tyee by a member of the congregation, Temple Sholom’s rabbi, Dan Moskovitz, said he asked for a question-and-answer format similar to a 2015 visit to the synagogue with Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, but Poilievre’s team denied his request.

Poilievre also denied Moskovitz’s request to livestream the visit, according to the email.

Neither Moskovitz nor the Conservative party responded to requests for comment for this story.

Poilievre has made frequent appearances at places of worship across Canada, and the party has taken a strong stance supporting Israel’s “right to defend itself” against Hamas following the Oct. 7 attack in which 1,200 people were killed and 250 were imprisoned in Gaza as hostages.

In response to the attack, Israel launched a military assault on Gaza lasting more than a year. Israel’s heavy bombardment of civilian areas, throttling of humanitarian aid, displacement of civilians and high civilian death toll have led international organizations to conclude that it has committed ethnic cleansing or genocide. More than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza.

Canadian politicians have faced pressure from various communities to take positions on the issue. In 2024, Poilievre did not visit mosques during Ramadan after the National Council of Canadian Muslims released an open letter. The letter called on politicians not to attend mosques unless they were prepared to condemn crimes being committed by Israeli soldiers, support a ceasefire, oppose sending weapons to Israel and support the rights of people who want to protest Israel’s actions.

Following pro-Palestinian protest camps at Canadian universities in 2024 that sparked concerns about antisemitic messages or symbols displayed at some protests, Poilievre promised to cut federal funding to universities that “spread antisemitism or make Jews feel unsafe and uncomfortable on their campuses.”

When separate reports on antisemitism and Islamophobia were tabled this December by a parliamentary committee in response to the protests, Conservative MPs voted against recognizing anti-Palestinian racism as a distinct form of discrimination.

Laing said it’s important to acknowledge that antisemitism is on the rise in Canada and causing fear in Jewish communities.

But she said the Conservatives’ stance has sidelined “huge swaths” of people and said “that their issues are unimportant because they are people of colour, because they are Muslim, because they are Palestinian.”

“The Conservative party has decided that not only will they support Israel, but that they will vehemently be anti-Palestinian,” Laing said. “And as a Jew, I believe that all people are deserving of dignity and life and freedom from fear.”

Samuels said there is concern in Vancouver’s Jewish community about antisemitic symbols or messages at pro-Palestinian protests: “The fact that there are people in this country that are actively promoting a hateful rhetoric against Jews under the guise of being pro-Palestinian,” she said.

But when politicians focus on cracking down on protests, she said, “it feels like a talking point rather than a real agenda that will have steps forward that will genuinely create a safer country for Jews to live in.”

Laing also wants to hear more from Poilievre about his support of Musk.

Musk has made social media posts supporting Poilievre and has mocked current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In response to a Jan. 9 question about whether Poilievre would accept Musk’s endorsement, the Conservative leader said he’d like to persuade Musk to open Tesla plants in Canada.

Poilievre has not yet commented on Musk’s behaviour, including the Nazi salute and jokes about Nazi leaders’ names and an appearance at an Alternative for Germany rally. The far-right party, also referred to as the AfD, is considered extremist in Germany.

Laing has been paying attention to Musk’s recent activities. She pointed out that at the AfD rally, Musk said Germans need to “move beyond” guilt over the Nazi period of the country’s history.

“Elon Musk said that, and yet [Poilievre] is all, ‘I'm here to support the Jews and I'm here to support Israel,’ looking for money and backing” as an election campaign approaches, Laing said.  [Tyee]

Read more: Federal Politics

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