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November 26, 2024 - 10:00am
The fallout from a riot in Montreal on Friday afternoon has reverberated across the Canadian news landscape in the days since, with citizens and politicians reacting to the chaos and disturbing signs of overt antisemitism from the event. Though the violence was speedily quelled and widely condemned, questions remain about the state of Canada’s multicultural society and whether it can withstand the mounting internal and external pressures on its integrity and cohesion.
As a routine Nato Parliamentary Assembly meeting took place in the city’s Palais des Congrès, demonstrators gathered around the venue carrying Palestinian and Russian flags, as well as signs with anti-Nato and anti-Israel messages. Participants made a show of burning an effigy of Benjamin Netanyahu, just as Canada joined several other Western nations in signalling support for a controversial International Criminal Court arrest warrant for the Israeli leader.
Coming on the heels of similarly motivated political disturbances at campuses across Quebec last week (advertised by organisers as a coordinated anti-Zionist “strike”), the Friday protest escalated into a violent riot once participants began throwing objects at police, smashing windows, and setting two nearby vehicles ablaze. Soon after, Montreal police announced a number of arrests. Meanwhile, photos of a woman later revealed to be the owner of a coffee shop in the city’s Jewish General Hospital making a Nazi salute and uttering threats about “the final solution” circulated on social media the following day. Antisemitic threats and incidents have reportedly increased by over 600% in Canada since 7 October last year.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was quick to denounce the “hatred and violence” as “appalling” on social media, but he was also heavily criticised for appearing at a Taylor Swift concert in Toronto the same night. The images of the PM exchanging friendship bracelets with fellow Swifties as the riot took place in Montreal prompted comparisons to Nero, further confirmation to critics of his deeply unserious approach to what could prove to be the unravelling of Canada’s once-celebrated multicultural mosaic. In his own reaction to the event, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre minced no words in attributing blame directly to Trudeau: “You act surprised. We are reaping what you sowed.”
The same social media channels also featured defenders of the Prime Minister, who pointed out that he was simply “a dad enjoying a night out with his daughter”. Others argued for a more level-headed perspective, comparing the riot to past instances of violence by “window smashing anarchists” naturally inclined to cause havoc at high-level meetings.
But the fact is that the Montreal riot has taken place in the context of rising social tensions across Canada along the lines of race, ethnicity, ideology, and religion, with comparable flare-ups happening in other cities and provinces over various issues. It cannot be viewed in isolation from these broader trends. And while it has become easy to pin all the blame on the Prime Minister and his “post-national” vision, as Poilievre likes to do, the true challenge for him and others will be in finding positive and substantive ways to stitch Canadian society, including citizens from many of the same affected communities, back together again. Until then, Canadians can expect incidents like this to occur with greater frequency and intensity.
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SubscribeWriting from Canada here. The author of this article assumes it is possible to “stitch Canadian society, including citizens from many of the same affected communities, back together again”. We have let in so many people who hate everything Canada stands for that I am not sure there is a way to stitch Canadian society back together. I have had to walk through some of the “pro-Palestine” protests, and as far as I can tell, they are just a front for antisemitism and hate of all Western values. A lot of these people are foreign students (the primary way that we have allowed our immigration problem to balloon) so maybe rather than suggesting that we need to stitch people together, the author might want to consider 1. returning lawbreakers to their country of origin, and 2. halting the flow of people who hate Canada.
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I’m in UK, but from my childhood experience of living there regard Canada with immense fondness and respect. It’s a huge sadness to see our two countries sinking into the swamps of extremism and irrationality.
On the bright side: Go Leafs!
Agree with the first paragraph, never mind the Leafs, only old men remember when they won their last Stanley cup.
Same here, but at least Poilievre is on the October horizon.
Western fools like Trudeau have spent so much time bragging about and defending the righteous wonder of their multicultural ideology that they don’t even realize the entire project is now under the control of Islamists and born-again communists.
Canada’s points-based immigration system, originally meant to bring in the best and brightest, is in a shambles. Latest stats say one in five immigrants eventually leave Canada. Current processing time for migrant applications is almost four years. Migrants and asylum seekers languish on the public dime. Employers can’t find workers.
Happy ending side note. The Adolph-saluting coffeeshop woman was identified as a Second Cup franchise owner. Her franchise agreement was cancelled the next day. So at least one corporate entity isn’t playing along.
You could write the very same comment about Australia. I can’t believe what’s happening down here.
Or pretty much anywhere in Europe (except Poland and Hungary).
Most of Eastern Europe is sane (in this particular respect).
They do, however, have some of their own insanities in some of these countries. 45 years living under totalitarian Communist dictatorship in the Soviet Empire leaves some scars. There are still plenty of people brought up under fake Soviet history and brainwashing.
Of course, all these countries have lost population to Western EU countries since joining the EU and it’s no coincidence that they aren’t usually first choice for illegal immigrants coming to Europe – they’re just on the transit routes.
Trudeau is the perfect example of what is currently wrong with Western leaders.
It’s like they’re all clones – Trudeau, Starmer, Scholz, Harris, anyone in the SNP. It’s weird.
Like I’ve been saying. They’re basically representatives of a cadre of neoliberal intellectuals and ultra rich aristocrats whose stated aim is and always was to unite the world under neoliberal capitalism with a series of bureaucratic alphabet organizations run by “experts” substituting for a representative government and the US military/NATO as global enforcer. Many of them truly believe in that vision, so strongly that they will not abandon it even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it’s falling apart. Ultimately, these true believers are just running out the clock. It has become increasingly clear that they’re on the wrong side of history. They’re under attack by populist movements from within and by a return to great power competition from without, and they haven’t had an answer for either one.
Trudeau and Scholz will fall in the next couple of years. Harris’s political career is already in ruins. Given her abrasive personality, she has no future in television/media. Her best hope is that a Democrat wins the white house at some point in the future and appoints her as a judge. Macron seems to have seen which way the wind is blowing and is changing his tune, something I wouldn’t have expected a few years ago, but I have to give him credit for at least knowing when to flee a sinking ship. Starmer is only in his position because it turns out both parties were internationalist and mostly opposed to Brexit, thus neither of them was prepared or had any plan to execute the people’s will. The Tories just happened to be holding the live grenade when it went off. The people will sour on Starmer soon enough I’ll wager.
It’s terrifying. Who is directing all of this? What is the end game? Appears they are working diligently to destroy western nations, their culture, identities and economies as quickly and effectively as possible.
What are you so scared of, dearie?
People like you.
It’s easy to understand the conspiracists. There must be something to the similarity in policies and failures throughout the world. It wouldn’t surprise me that the one constant among these leaders is their University experience. If we looked closely into it I think we’d find that they were all involved in the same activities while at University. And of course, because they place so much value and credibility on their experience and degrees they give that same credibility to others who also have degrees and then they themselves hire similar types. So in a way it is what the conspiracists claim; a cabal of like minded thinkers that regularly meet and make policy in what is virtually a closed shop.
Multiculturalism. Chickens. Home. Roost.
Simples.
The truth is even more simple than that….we don’t really see people of other religions or regions doing this except for one…
Including foxes self-identifying as chickens.
NATO member Turkey has been bombing the Kurds in Northern Syria for years, and with particular intensity in the last month, cutting water and electricity off to more than a million civilians.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c79zj7rz3l4o
So when NATO is convening in Montreal, what is more natural than that the progressive left would demonstrate violently against …
Israel.
Turkey is NATO’s all time leader in ‘just look the other way’ moments and hold your nose handshakes. They’ve been getting away with murder, often literally, for decades because NATO really really really wants to control the Black Sea straits. Nothing new here.
The realpolitik reasons for keeping Turkey in NATO are not in dispute. But it’s just that the progressive leftist demonstrators aren’t traditionally know for taking realpolitik considerations into account, rather the opposite. That’s why their ignoring the crimes of Turkey in Rojava and focusing rather on Israel (NOT a NATO member state) reeks of hypocrisy. But as you said, nothing new here either.
We are reaping what you sowed is exactly right. This didn’t happen by accident. People have seen who and what Trudeau is. He’ll seize the money of truckers but let jihadis run wild. When you import people who are hostile to the native culture, it’s not going to go well.
Writing from Québec here. For years, countless people here have warned that a too fast-paced immigration would brew social problems and dissolve both French and English cultures. We were pointing at the immigrations policies, not the immigrants as people — who, by the way, also suffer from this disorganized influx of people and the lack of following services. We we called racist, xenophobic, bigots, etc., and then, here we are. Québec has shouldered the brunt of the massive and illegal, post-Trump election immigration in 2017. Other provinces (apart from Ontario, to a certain extent) refused to take them.
I’m glad Canadians finally opened their eyes. Once again, this is not against immigrants as people: most of them try their best to be part of the society that welcomed them. This is against the ideological folly of multiculturalism and the immaturity of a former drama teacher that became Prime Minister only because of his father’s legacy.
His father’s legacy is rolling blackouts in Cuba.
I’ve never liked Castro nor any of his offspring. How did this chappie ever become Prime Minister. Canadians !
Political Nepobabe – just enough downsteam good will from his Dad being PM and a weak opposition until last couple of years.
Actually there is some suggestion that Trudeau is Castro’s illegitimate son – google it! The photos are quite striking!
No
Simple. By losing the last election – smaller popular vote than the Conservatives but won 1/3 more seats !
The Cuckolding of the Canadian Mind.
Like all good, liberal, open bordered globalists who fail to deliver for their actual voters of long standing – housing, jobs, education that doesn’t involve Woke Religion, Trudeau is going to be annihilated at the next general election.
I doubt it will be as bad as the previous Conservatives dissolution in 1993 but it will be like the Tories here.
Trudeau joins Call Me Dave and Macron at having ‘better things to do’ whilst the city is in flames.
What is it about Taylor Swift concerts and western leaders?
What is it about Taylor Swift concerts and western leaders?
Or adult males.
‘I am going with my daughter’
Fine. Do it.
I am taking the piss.
He’s clearly been spending a lot of time in Cafe Nero.
There is no stitching this back together. The brainless Canadian populace has spent too many years mesmerized by JT’s shiny baubles of social justice and multicultural virtue to realize that he was dismantling the foundation of our nation while they were distracted. It’s now too late, save for a course of action that most would find extremely unpalatable.
That it has been done at all is disheartening. That we the taxpayer have been forced to fund the dismantling of our society is gut-wrenching.
Worse still, we have imported the third-worlds problems to our own backyard, and unlike our southern neighbours, we have no legal provision that allows us to protect ourselves and our property from these troglodytes without becoming entangled in a long, costly legal defense that would bankrupt most.
It’s a disaster that Trudeau and team masterfully facilitated at the behest of his globalist leaders. I’ve got to give Starmer credit – the destruction that took Trudeau years to accomplish is getting done at lightspeed in the UK.
None of this will end well.
Nothing ever ends well, it just ends
We are not going anywhere until the careerist leaders of all our institutions are cured of the mind virus described by Gad Saad. This virus is turbo boosted by Canadian politeness and self righteousness. The two tier enforcement inspired by CRT has to stop along with our preoccupation with not causing offence. Our dependence and our deference to government needs to be scaled back too, with more emphasis on individual responsibility and initiative. It is a generational problem.
I remember thinking to myself in the early 90s that the more virtous/righteous/’moral high ground’ the nation (at that time Canada, Sweden) the faster they would be dissolved by hubris. This is about the time that Blair’s govt, without any obligation to do so, opened the UK to free EU movement. Whatever else, the end result (and things will get much worse) have been obvious for most of my (middle aged) life.
You could at least get the basic facts right.
You’d still be talking nonsense but at least your facts would be correct!
Oh dear, Poo Fash is having another meltdown. How many Tiktok videos of yourself have you posted sobbing in your car?
My guess is that Trump’s proposed tariffs on imports from Canada would be slashed if Trudeau was replaced as PM.
Yes, when Poilievre comes in. Not for a replacement lefty.
“And while it has become easy to pin all the blame on the Prime Minister…”
This worries me. In Canada they blame Trudeau, in the UK they blame Starmer. Does this mean that Trudeau and Starmer can be sacrificed and all will be well. Of course, they will be sacrificed.
Good. I’m a Canadian and I say sacrifice him, because his government’s incompetent. A competent team is waiting in the wings, and really, any change will be an improvement, because forget ideology, Mr Trudeau’s about as good at governing as my gerbil and I don’t own a gerbil.
A different government won’t magically make everything fine, but just getting in some adults with working brain cells will make things so much better.
Unfortunately, that’s what many who voted Labour at our recent election thought they were doing, but were disabused of that notion in quick order.
I expect Starmer may have been on the phone to Trudeau with “advice” on how to quell rioting (of whichever political flavour) but given Trudeau’s behaviour towards his own citizens during Covid, advice might seem unnecessary. Let’s see if he can react the same way towards those peddling hate rather than just trying to protect their own bodies and livelihoods.
I have family in Vaudreuille, at the edge of Montreal. They like Trudeau for two reasons – his father and he speaks French well. It seems to me that this French/English thing is more important than anything else in Canada.
It IS more important than anything – to French Canadians. The rest of us are either just irritated at the much-longer French print on all retail goods, or cowed by the state media into thinking French = good/Anglo = bad.
I see your point completely because I live in a place with a minority language – about 21% of people in Wales speak a ‘few words of Welsh’. About 5% say they read Welsh. (2021 census). But Welsh rules the public life.
I have visited Montréal three times for extended periods of time and it is clear that the language is one of the most important things in life to the Quebecois. I did a two-week tour of Quebec state and stayed in places where English was not spoken. One night I stayed in Saguenay and that night the hotel had a karaoke competition. Of course, the songs were in French and we just sat there and listened. Then suddenly they played The Green Green Grass of Home – for us of course. This is by a Welsh singer, Tom Jones.
The other point about Quebec is that has a long history of inviting people outside to come and settle. 150 years ago they encouraged immigration by giving people land and seed to sow. This is part of the culture. It is definitely part of Canada and maybe that is why somebody like Trudeau is still popular.
Speaking Quebecois is very different from speaking French well.
I think the Aztecs had the right idea. Just keep sacrificing people until something good happens.
God, if we only had a Poilievre here. Absolutely zero tolerance for bullsh*t from anybody. The man’s a joy to watch.
Pollievre will solve the Trudeau problem, but he too is dependent on the diaspora vote and will approach the immigration file with kids gloves, making no meaningful change.
And like his party-mate at the provincial level, he has made clear that he wants to ‘build the homes’, and he will neuter lower levels of government (and by extension the constituent) of their ability to resist having their towns, villages and farmland paved over with franchised-filled plazas and carbon-copy subdivisions.
Pollievre is nothing more than the cleaner end of the same t**d.
Joy is a slight exaggeration
A lot of this is the toxic effects of DEI on society. The Trudeau government has funded and pushed DEI everywhere. It is literally just race based tribalism. So we have the spectacle of student from India claiming we are racists if we expect them to leave Canada at the end of their studies.
I’m just looking over the 2021 Canadian federal election results. This is quite astonishing:
Liberal Party 32.62% vote share 160 seats
Conservative Party 33.74% vote share 119 seats
So the Liberals lost the popular vote and somehow came out with 1/3 more seats than the Conservatives.
Funnily, I’ve not heard this reported before. And yet, had Trump narrowly lost the popular vote in the US (he won by 50.0% to 48.4% – 2.5 million votes – not widely reported either), we’d never have heard the end of how anti-democratic it all was. [US House results still not finalised 2 weeks on – still counting 3 districts !].
Yes. Also, the map of Liberal ridings won in 2021 matches, generally, the three biggest cities in Canada. Added to this were ridings in Quebec and Atlantic Canada which have fairly low populations but still count as electoral seats (because history). The Liberal party is quite good at campaigning, and they usually concentrate on these ridings. It works for them.
That’s the problem with a parliamentary system with 4 or 5 parties in an election. One party can win with a small percentage of the vote. I like the French system where they have a 2nd round of votes
A more extreme version of this happened here in the UK, where the conservative Reform Party won 5 seats while polling 4.1m votes, while Labour won 412 seats with 9.7m votes and the LibDems won 72 seats with 3.5m votes.
“Meanwhile, photos of a woman later revealed to be the owner of a coffee shop in the city’s Jewish General Hospital making a Nazi salute and uttering threats about “the final solution” circulated on social media the following day.”
.
Sorry, that’s a mistake. She’s Arab. Check again, please:
https://x.com/jace2020/status/1860530933184487925
.
PS. BTW, this is how Queer-fascism looks like
The article didn’t say she was Jewish just that she ran a coffee shop in the Jewish hospital.
What you said is a typical manipulation
Seems that unlike the old saying that we follow America, we are almost in step with Canada. Assisted dying or Maid as it’s called there accounting for 3.4% of all deaths, our wonderful leaders watching Taylor Swift – no doubt freebies in return for blue light escorts, and Antisemetic, anti western, anti cultural Palestinian apologists rioting while the worlds great and good sign up yo the lunatic ICC bull!
JT is by far the worst prime minister in my life time, and I’ve been around for a while, I remember when the Leafs won their last Stanley cup. A bigger farce is not possible.
Trudeau like Blair in the UK is the worst thing that happened to Canada
I’m surprised at the haste with which you deleted my comment about the true nationality of a woman giving a Nazi salute. Following Starmer?
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