While I was away: Antisemitism and Antizionism

2026/10/14 Leave a comment

Embarrassment of articles and commentary. My selection is by definition selec

Chris Selley: Avi Lewis embraces collective guilt for Jews, but never for Muslims

Valid critique:

…“Indeed, I’m old enough to remember the aftermath of 9/11, when New Democrats — and many others, particularly on the left — admonished us not to do to Muslims precisely what Lewis did to his fellow Jews. (The admonishment was often a bit much, but I fully agreed with the message and still do, no matter what group we’re talking about.)

One very common commentary trope back then was, “Well why can’t Muslims at least apologize for what was done in their name?” It was ugly and un-Canadian, and it rightly got called out. And now, a quarter-century later, Lewis is doing the same thing.

Anyway: By way of follow-up, Lewis bizarrely insisted that he had not held Jews collectively responsible for the wreck of Gaza … which he unambiguously had, including himself among the guilty.  He accused those criticizing him of being “partisan.” Lewis’s fellow travellers insisted, among other things, that Lewis’s critics were acting “in bad faith”— which is, ironically, a very bad-faith argument.

I also have to say I’m intrigued to know what Lewis imagines he or any other Jewish Canadian should have done to stop what he claims is an “ongoing genocide.” Does he have special powers we don’t know about? The anti-Israel rabble isn’t easily placated by empty statements of support and solidary from their politicians. They want Canada to Do Something, or at least be more virulently anti-Israel in its policies and messaging.

“People like Lewis rely on the notion that “criticizing Israel is not the same as criticizing Jews,” which I certainly agree with. But you don’t hear that argument so often nowadays. Protestors seem less and less interested in picking targets that we’re supposed to believe are extra-supportive of Israel. Once you start marching through Jewish-populated neighbourhoods, the argument is laughable. You don’t know who lives there. This is just pure harassment.

Does Lewis realize he’s inviting misery upon himself, for that matter? It’s not hard to imagine the rabble turning on him. They don’t care who he is, or who his father was, or where he sits on the political spectrum. They just want more Canadian politicians to say they hate Israel. And Lewis just made that quit a bit easier.

Lipstadt: Jews targeted by antisemitism need more than statements of sympathy from politicians

Yes, thoughts and prayers without meaningful action…:

… No, what has left me sick and tired are the pious sympathies and sincere regrets issued by government leaders, Prime Ministers (UK, Canada), Mayors (London, Manchester, New York), University presidents (worldwide) and so many others.  Their aides must have a file on their computers which they can expeditiously open when something happens.  Maybe it’s entitled: “Reactions to Attacks on Jews.”  They just need cut and paste from previous declarations.  Last year, in the wake of the Golders Green stabbing, this newspaper put those platitudes on its front page.  I was exhausted just reading them.   [“Our thoughts and prayers are with you”; “An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us”; “We stand with you.” And the one that I find most infuriating: “This hate has no place in our society.”  Has no place? It’s already here… and it’s thriving.]

Do I think leaders should condemn these acts?  Of course.  They must speak out unequivocally and expeditiously and with no contextual hesitations.  But those condemnations must be accompanied by action, including difficult actions, ones that might have political costs. Political leaders must be willing to name the source of these attacks, call them out specifically, and demand that the communities and political enclaves spit out the hate mongers who have taken refuge in their midst.

Leaders must do this even at the risk of losing votes. They must also recognise, as those in the United Kingdom, Canada, and France, among other places, have failed to do, that when their most energetic foreign policy actions are aimed at Israel, when they reward Hamas even when it has made no moves towards peace, the attackers are invigorated.  Despite being warned, as Foreign Secretary Miliband was by Chief Rabbi Mirvis and other Jewish leaders, that this singling out of Israel motivates attackers to harass, attack, and murder Jews worldwide, they ignore the warnings.

Why, my interlocutors ask me, is this happening now? In part because the haters know that there rarely are consequences for attacking Jews.  So please spare me your pious sympathies, sincere regrets, and worn-out protestations. I am not just sick and tired of them, I consider them – and you – to be hypocritical and self-serving.

I – together with so many others – have had enough.

Ambassador (ret.) Deborah E. Lipstadt is the former United States Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism and is currently Distinguished University Professor at Emory University.

Geist: A Definition That Meets the Moment: Federal Government Recognizes Antisemitism Includes Anti-Zionism

Geist has been a regular commentator on antisemitism and anti-zionism from the  Jewish mainstream perspective:

… Public Safety Canada released its summer progress report on the National Commitments to Combat Antisemitism yesterday, days after the Yom Kippur attack on the Sons of Jacob synagogue in Belleville. Most of the report tracks activities related to police training, funding programs, and provincial initiatives. But what makes the report consequential is the government’s clear recognition in a pair of statements that antisemitism includes anti-Zionism. The statements are sure to attract criticism in some quarters, but anti-Zionism is too often thinly veiled antisemitism, as if substituting the word Zionist for Jew renders the unacceptable acceptable. Given the rising antisemitic violence, culminating in this week’s terror attack, combatting antisemitism requires definitions that safeguard the Jewish community while remaining consistent with protecting freedom of expression. The government’s approach, which relies on a definition of antisemitism based on the lived reality of the Jewish community, does just that.

There is little doubt that the report’s references to anti-Zionism are deliberate. Both fall within Pillar One of the report that focuses on understanding antisemitism. The inclusion is how many in the Jewish community understand and experience antisemitism, facing threats that go to their longstanding beliefs and identity as Jews. For identifying antisemitism, it is that experience that matters, not the intent of the speaker. The report first states that the intended outcome of the pillar is that “Institutions across Canada have increased access to tools, guidance, and training to support the recognition, understanding and response to contemporary manifestations of antisemitism, including anti-Zionism, as outlined in the Canadian Handbook on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism.” The report says the definition and Handbook “will continue to serve as the foundation of the federal government’s engagement with Jewish communities and its work to fight antisemitism.” Second, in explaining why understanding antisemitism is important, it states:

Antisemitism, which includes anti-Zionism, is not always obvious. While some incidents involve explicit threats, violence, or hate speech, others may take the form of conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial, coded language, stereotypes, or the collective blaming of Jewish people. Recognizing antisemitism consistently is an essential first step toward responding effectively.

The two statements go out of their way to include anti-Zionism in their understanding of antisemitism, which the government rightly notes is essential to an effective response. The report also links antisemitism to national security, stating that “the Government of Canada recognizes that antisemitism can be a matter of national security” and describes antisemitism as “both an indicator and an accelerator of radicalization.” Given the events of the past week, the statements are both critical and self-evident.

Sucharov: Anti-Zionism and antisemitism should not be conflated

While I understand the formal distinctions between antisemitism and antizionism, in practice these have become largely meaningless in demonstrations and commentary. Both sides need to see the others as human and as victims, current and past. And just as debates over Zionism belong not only to Jews, debates over Islamism belong not only to Muslims:

… But I have come to realize that feeling attached to a place should not preclude one from questioning the material effects of a given state’s governing ideology. This shouldn’t be hard for Canadians to understand. Many of Canada’s most patriotic citizens regularly challenge the settler-colonial aspects of our country’s founding ideology. A full-throated call for reconciliation here within our borders is no different than demanding that the State of Israel grant everyone under its rule freedom, dignity and equality.

What’s more, on the very definition of the term Zionism, we are all too often talking past each other. A few years ago, I published the findings of a survey I had recently conducted of American Jews. There, I found that how Zionism is defined has a marked effect on whether respondents identify with the label or not. Specifically, when I presented respondents with a definition of Zionism as “the belief in privileging Jewish rights over non-Jewish rights in Israel,” support for Zionism plummeted. It was 72 per cent when Zionism was defined instead as support for a Jewish and democratic state, but only 10 per cent when I presented that first definition, which is one I know Palestinians have experienced at the hands of Zionism.

Decades after the late Palestinian intellectual, Edward Said, urged us to try to see “Zionism from the standpoint of its victims,” we must realize that debates over Zionism belong not only to Jews.

Geist: Ontario is Done Waiting for Universities to Act on Campus Antisemitism

Enforcement has always been the Achilles heel:

… Nolan Quinn, Ontario’s Minister of Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence, and Security, recently sent an unequivocal message that this isn’t good enough. He issued a revised directive that shifts the emphasis from policies to enforcement. This includes requiring universities to assert authority over student associations and groups, including investigating complaints against them. It also mandates proportionate security measures for campus events and time-and-place restrictions on protests, effectively establishing bubble zones with enforced perimeters around religious and cultural gathering places.

To address concerns about insufficient awareness among students and staff, the directive also requires universities to provide and actively promote training on prevalent forms of hate, developed and delivered with experts trusted by the affected communities. Furthermore, annual reports must now disclose complaint data by category and stage of completion, so universities can no longer hide antisemitism complaints behind a single total.

The directive also addresses the lack of confidence in campus complaints mechanisms. Recent studies, including the CASE report that surveyed 900 Jewish students on campuses across the country and the Benotto report on antisemitism at Toronto Metropolitan University, found that many students did not believe that reporting incidents would result in any action. The province will now require universities to check in with complainants at least every 30 days, until the case is resolved.

Most importantly, the new directive is backed by the threat of real penalties. It expressly puts operating and other provincial funding at risk for non-compliance. Since the prior directive failed to get some Ontario universities’ attention, the possibility of lost revenue might….

Finally, policies and requirements need deadlines. The new directive does not include a deadline for implementation, running the risk that recalcitrant universities will continue to drag their feet on antisemitism.

Tamkin: Mayor Mamdani’s antisemitism strategy doesn’t define antisemitism. That’s a good thing.

Thoughtful commentary on definitions:

Halfway through New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s strategy to combat antisemitism is a page labeled “definitions.” Rather than announce which definition of antisemitism the strategy will use, the page explains why the administration won’t be defining the term.

“Despite antisemitism’s persistent presence throughout history, scholars, community members and community leaders do not agree on certain aspects of what antisemitism is,” it reads. “New York City can and will leverage all of the tools at its disposal to combat antisemitism effectively without needing to adopt a definition for this specific form of hate.”

The strategy instead cites three prominent definitions: the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance or IHRA definition, the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, and the Nexus Document (in the interest of full disclosure,I am a fellow with the Nexus Task Force, though I was in no way involved in the writing of the definition). The strategy also alludes to other frameworks.

That it does not include a definition will be held up by some as proof that the Mamdani administration doesn’t take antisemitism seriously. In fact, the decision not to  select one definition shows that it is focused more on fixing the problem than prematurely picking just one method to solve it.

We do not need a definition to fight hatred. We do not have similar pushes to define, say, racism or sexism or xenophobia. The report itself makes the point that a definition is not “necessary useful” for the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism to do its work. “Every crime that may be bias motivated is investigated by the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force consistent with New York State law and applicable criminal statutes. Likewise, allegations of anti-Jewish discrimination reported to the New York City Commission on Human Rights are assessed under the City’s Human Rights Law.”

Moreover, what people who want one definition often mean is that they want antisemitism defined as including anti-Zionism, or that they want the administration in question to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which the Mamdani administration revoked when he came into office. The IHRA definition contains examples of antisemitism that are mostly about Israel and that include “Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation,” and “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

Critics (including me) have argued that the codification or singular embrace of IHRA threatens to restrict speech around Israel and US foreign policy.

Further, Israeli legal scholars Itamar Mann and Lihi Yona have argued that, in addition to potentially chilling speech about Israel, the push to codify or embrace this one definition is a push for a government-sanctioned understanding of what it is to be Jewish. “It restricts the freedom of Jews to define their own identity, limiting the ways in which Jewish beliefs, thought and activism can be expressed,” they wrote last year. It would be inappropriate for the Mamdani administration, or any government administration, to take it upon itself to decide what it means to be Jewish.

And insisting that our understanding of antisemitism always and only adhere to one definition is like insisting that we always and only use a hammer for home renovation. Sometimes that is useful; sometimes that can result in destroying your house.

There are times that IHRA may be useful in thinking through what is and is not antisemitic. But there may be times that it leads to overuse and political abuse of the term “antisemitism.” A person protesting Israel and not any other country may be applying a double standard; on the other hand, they may be holding Israel to account because they are an American taxpayer and Israel is the top recipient of US aid. By pairing IHRA with other definitions and frameworks, those in office are more, not less, informed and empowered to thoroughly think through how they’re tackling antisemitism.

That isn’t to say there’s nothing to criticize about the Mamdani administration’s strategy. Some might note that it’s heavier on principle than it is on specific policy; others, that it does not mention that, though anti-Zionism and protest of Israel are not inherently antisemitic, both can cross over into antisemitic rhetoric, vandalism, and even violence.

But they don’t need a definition to do any of that. And like the Biden administration’s 2023 national strategy on antisemitism (which also declined to pick one single definition), the Mamdani strategy takes a whole of government approach, stressing that Jews are New Yorkers and allowing them to live as full-fledged members of society safely is everyone’s responsibility, and that it will use the tools at its disposal to do that. You could just have a hammer, but why would you want that when you could also have a screwdriver, a wrench, and your own ingenuity and discernment?

Allen: Turning Hate into Empathy

Of the various commentaries by my former colleagues, I find Jon Allen’s the most balanced. His critique of the failure of multiculturalism to build bridges between communities engaged in foreign conflicts is not limited to Isreal/Palestine:

… Understanding the Israeli Palestinian conflict and its antecedents is complicated, but recognizing the death and destruction that it has produced on both sides shouldn’t have been. It is a sad testament to Canada’s strong multicultural traditions and previous examples where Jews, Christian and Muslims grieved with each other, that many mainstream Jewish and Muslim organizations, including clergy, were, for the most part, silent in the face of atrocities that occurred on both sides at the time….

Holding Multiple Truths

It seems clear, therefore, that post October 7, 2023, now three years later, far too many people, both here in Canada and in the region, continue to operate completely in their own lanes and root only for their own team. Many Jews and Arabs alike, wherever they may be, are simply unable to hold multiple truths in their heads at the same time. They are unable to see and empathize with the suffering and history of trauma that both sides have experienced.

But despite what some might honestly believe, this conflict has no simple good guys and bad guys. Israelis and Palestinians each view themselves as victims, each have real existential fears based in their recent histories, each have valid historical narratives that cannot easily be reconciled and, as noted, each are currently experiencing real and severe trauma. Finally, extremists on both sides, whether Hamas terrorists or the far-right government in power in Israel, bear much of the blame for where Israelis and Palestinians find themselves today and how they got here.

While Israelis and Palestinians are stuck in the middle of an ongoing conflict, Jews and Muslims in Canada are not. Perhaps it is time for both sides here to lower the rhetoric, stop the allegations of perfidy one against the other, and just for a moment try to understand the pain and fear that each are experiencing. Then, hopefully, the anti-Semitism, very real or perceived, and the anger of the Muslim community, sometimes justified and sometimes not, can be turned towards some reconciliation and mutual empathy.

October 7 vigils demonstrations 

Lederman: There’s nothing to praise about the Oct. 7 attacks. A Canadian literary journal disagrees

Indeed. But many left-leaning folks made similar mistakes over China (Jan Wong), Che Guevara, the Soviet Union etc, useful or useless idiots depending on one’s opinion:

… Over here in Canada, a new special issue of the online journal The Ex-Puritan looks at these events through a literary lens, with a special “Resistance & Hope” issue, guest-edited by writer Bahar Orang. It features Ms. Orang’s own poem, Flood.

“Praise the paragliders, their gentle ascension, their unbroken morning, and of course their triumphant descension, their feet touching down,” it begins. “Praise October.”

There’s a lot of praise in the poem – for “the fighters, whose courage nourishes the world.” For “their cunning, their patience, the tanks on fire, the enemy fleeing.” Also for missiles, “the recognitions written in blood on each one, the names carved already into your own flesh.”

I found this hard to read. But not nearly as difficult as other reading I’ve done about that day.

There is nothing poetic about “Silenced No More,” a report by the independent Civil Commission on Oct. 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children. The report was published in May. Canada’s Irwin Cotler is named as a principal contributor….

People are justifiably outraged about the sexual assault allegedly committed by seven men at Cornell University, known as the Cornell 7. Which makes the silence about the genital-burning, body-severing, gang-rapes of Oct. 7 even more outrageous. Not just the silence, but the denial. Erasure. Praise, even.

John Ivison: On the eve of pro-Hamas vigils, universities finally seem ready to tackle campus antisemitism

Finally: 

…The idea of national standards is not terrible, as long as they adopt the tougher options. For example, York University removed an anti-Israel encampment almost immediately, while other campuses, such as McGill, tolerated them. They quickly became the focal points for antisemitism.

Yet, as Justice Benotto concluded, while universities cannot resolve the conflict in the Middle East, or forge a consensus over competing historical narratives, they can establish clear behavioural recommendations and protect the rights of all members of the student and academic community.

“What the university can do is ensure that it has clear policies that are consistently enforced to ensure that people are behaving towards one another in the university environment in a way that’s conducive to higher education,” agreed Shack. “Ultimately, Jewish people in this country are going to be driven out of public institutions, and out of society, in a very scary way that we’ve seen in other countries throughout history and that no one would ever think possible in Canada.”

The argument against tighter rules against intimidation on campus is that it will stifle free expression.

But the right to free speech is always subject to boundaries.

Cary Kogan, a professor of psychology at the University of Ottawa who heads the Network of Engaged Canadian Academics, said that there is a sense in some faculties that academic freedom is a kind of “white magic that protects you from anything and everything.”

“But the right to experience and participate in an educational setting as a full member of a democratic society has to be balanced with the rights of academic freedom,” he said.

The solution is not that complicated. Expressly prohibit intimidation, harassment, discrimination and conduct that interferes with the rights of others, and impose disciplinary sanctions on those who broach those rules.

Criticism of Israel’s government is protected expression.

But anti-Zionism —  the libel that the Jewish collective, Israel, rather than the individual Jew, is uniquely evil — is not. And it is the normalization of anti-Zionism that is driving antisemitism in Canada.

Lederman: Are we on the verge of an exodus? In a hate-filled climate, Canadian Jews are weighing their options

Of note:

… In a thread about encountering protesters outside his Yom Kippur service in Toronto (where a former Israeli official was speaking), CBC journalist Neil Herland revealed that he has obtained an Austrian passport – his Holocaust-surviving father was from there – “in case Canada becomes unsafe for me as a Jew.”

Is that my next move: a Polish passport? Go back to Poland? Give the chanters what they wish?

Of course not. I’m not going anywhere. But if you had told me three years ago me that I would even be asking these questions; that I would travel to Oklahoma of all places to see how former Canadian Jews are living there, and where more want to join, I would have said: you’re crazy. Or you’re joking. We’re good at that, joking. And wandering.

“A line of decency has been crossed in our province,” said Ontario Solicitor General Michael Kerzner at the Belleville news conference about the synagogue attack.

Antisemitism is not simply a Jewish problem. It is a global problem, and right now, it is a serious Canadian problem. I knew the fallout from Oct. 7, 2023 would be bad, and it has been – catastrophic for Gazans, first and foremost. But this, in Canada, I did not expect.

I understand the impulse to leave. I don’t cast judgment on anyone trying to carve out better, safer lives for their families. But I’m with Mr. Farber. This country built us and we helped build this country. I’m going to fight for it. Despite the despondency, I hang onto the hope. I am not without a home. This land is my land.

The Missed Opportunity of NAZA 

Have not yet seen NAZA but valid point in terms of the opportunity for greater self-reflection:

… Abraham and Szor should be commended for making art that peels back the skin and shows us our darkest instincts: our ability to dissociate, to replace people with numbers, to ignore inconvenient suffering. They are now paying a high personal price for the film, subject not just to online hate (from the right, of course, but also from those on the left who boycott and reject any art made by Israelis, no matter how critical). Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to revoke their citizenship, and they will face very real death threats if and when they return to Israel after touring with the film. I’d like to say that the fact that they are displeasing people on both sides means, as the truism goes, that they are getting something right. But I can’t help feeling that they missed an opportunity.

NAZA is discomfiting, but it could have been even more so if it didn’t divert attention to a familiar and (for some) reassuring narrative about a fundamentally genocidal Israel. If Abraham and Szor had forced viewers to actually see themselves in those silhouetted people, to understand them as individuals, the shock of it might be even greater than imagining that the rest of us are made of purer stuff.

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While I was away: Antisemitism

2026/06/08 Leave a comment

Wide range of commentary on antisemitism and conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and the mixed reaction to PM Carney’s address to Jewish leaders. Making an address outside of the House of Commons never works, former PM Mulroney learned that with Italian Canadians, former PM Harper learned that with Sikh Canadians and PM Carney repeats those mistakes with Jewish Canadians.

And Carney should have been clearer on the extreme forms of anti-Zionism on display in Canadian cities and institutions that go far beyond legitimate criticism of the Israeli government policies and actions, particularly under the current Netanyahu government with extremist Jewish ministers in Cabinet and government:

Canada is being tested by a crisis of antisemitism, Carney says

… Mr. Carney’s speech, his first to focus on the topic of antisemitism, was met with polite praise from those in the audience, which included MPs, local and provincial politicians and religious leaders. He had faced pressure to speak in person directly about the issue.

But Jewish leaders criticized him for not addressing his government’s foreign policy toward Israel, which has included condemning the country’s conduct in Gaza and recognizing a Palestinian state – moves that some in the Jewish community have said further inflamed domestic tensions.

“When Canadian elected leaders publicly condemn Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, Jewish Canadians pay the price,” Holy Blossom’s Rabbi Yael Splansky said in recorded remarks played before Mr. Carney began speaking.

Globe editorial: The missing words in Mark Carney’s antisemitism speech

…What should he have said? That the problem is antizionism, a complete, anything-goes rejection of, and demonizing of, Israel’s existence. And that antizionism is manifesting itself on Canada’s streets and university campuses, in a complete, anything-goes rejection, and demonizing of, Jews.

This is where the Prime Minister’s courage failed him. Taking on the antizionists – the core of the problem – was not something this Liberal prime minister was prepared to do. He went into a synagogue before an invitation-only audience of 170 Jewish leaders and did not meet the moment. He didn’t mention Israel, despite his prepared remarks doing so – once. He was unable or unwilling to articulate what is behind the “scourge of antisemitism” that he rightly condemned….

Geist: Why Mark Carney’s Antisemitism Speech Did Not Meet the Moment

…Naming the crisis is only step one however, and on the parts that matter most, the speech missed the mark. Begin with where he chose to deliver it. Carney told his audience he was speaking in a synagogue but the address was for all Canadians. But a speech for all Canadians that frames antisemitism as a national problem belongs on the floor of the House of Commons, where Canadians are represented and where all MPs – whether or not they are Jewish or represent ridings with large Jewish populations – would have had to sit together and hear the need for the country to take responsibility for antisemitism. I’m happy to see Evan Solomon, Leslie Church, Anthony Housefather, Rachel Bendayan, and Ben Carr in attendance. But we need all MPs, particularly those who have said little about antisemitism since October 7th, to see this as their issue too. MPs from all perspectives sitting side-by-side only happens in the House of Commons, and it did not happen yesterday (as one rabbi noted, a speech in a synagogue was needed months ago in the immediate aftermath of the shootings).

Chris Selley: At a synagogue, Carney tells the wrong people to abandon their ethnic rivalries

…We’re lucky, and we have done a lot of things right, but we’re not special: You can’t ask people to bring their faith, culture, language and world view with them to Canada but leave any rivalries or grievances behind. That’s just not human nature. This insistence on combating dire situations with myth-making will eventually be a large part of the Liberals’ undoing. In the meantime, on the issue of antisemitism specifically, Carney’s government seems to have almost nothing to offer. And he offered it at a synagogue.

John Ivison: The crucial words Carney wouldn’t speak in his antisemitism speech

For my part, I felt that it was an unusually eloquent and heartfelt speech but that it fell short for a different reason: it failed to be honest about the cause of the corruption in the body politic.

“We welcome the peoples of the world, in all their diversity and splendour. We don’t welcome the world’s hatreds,” Carney said. “When you come to Canada, you bring your faith, your traditions, your language, your story but you leave behind your animosities.”

But that is not happening. Islamists arrive and are given permission to give vent to their ancient loathing by anarcho-socialists, and their naive campus enablers, who love Palestine but hate Canada, and despise Jews most of all.

The Montreal4Palestine group continues to defend the mock hanging of a man wearing a kippah last month, saying it was directed at a specific political figure (Israeli politician Itamar Ben-Gvir), not at Jews. Will it take a real lynching to convince the waverers that this is not legitimate freedom of expression?

Given the demographics, it is clear why the prime minister was ambiguous in laying the blame.

But, as Elie Wiesel learned in the death camps, neutrality helps the oppressor and silence encourages the tormentor.

The malignancy will continue to metastasize if we keep obscuring its source.

Tasha Kheiriddin: Mark Carney in denial over what’s behind antisemitism

…Citizenship is a two-way street. Newcomers have a responsibility to respect the laws and customs of the place they choose to call home. When they not only fail to embrace Canada’s basic values, but repudiate them, there must be consequences: fines, arrests, deprivation of liberty, and in the case of non-citizens, removal from the country. Let me be clear.

That’s what Carney should have said. Instead, he listed his government’s actions to date, including Bill C-9, the Combating Hate Law. He announced the creation of a Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality, and Inclusion, one of whose jobs will be to study antisemitism. It includes one lone Jewish member, former senator Marc Gold, and features Omar Alghabra, an MP who has been photographed numerous times in the company of Islamic extremists.

This is BS. Canada doesn’t need another council to study a problem that Carney described quite fully in his remarks. Canadian Jews need to feel safe in their homes and communities. And all of us need an end to denial, inaction and the toleration of hate.

Lederman: The Prime Minister addressed Canada’s antisemitism problem. Almost nobody was satisfied

… Canada’s Jewish community, like any community, is not homogenous. There are always going to be differences of opinion. Some of the criticism is fair, but the knee-jerk sneering at the Prime Minister’s acknowledgment of Jewish Canadian pain – and his call for the rest of the country to step up – is disappointing and unproductive. The speech was not a hollow gesture, but a meaningful promise to act.

The speech, in fact, was the action. Or an action, at least.

“No Jewish Canadian should ever have to wonder whether the government sees this clearly,” said AI Minister Evan Solomon, who is Jewish. “We do. We see it, we acknowledge it, we are acting on it.”

Canada’s leader is asking the country to come together to oppose antisemitism. This should be commended, not condemned. The response to that plea tells the story of a country divided.

Stephens: Hatred of Israel and the Degradation of the West

…How is it that hatred of one country can wind up doing more damage to the haters than the hated?

All prejudice, mindless or deliberate, is mind-warping; obsessive prejudice, of the kind Israel disproportionately attracts, is even more so. There are today millions of people around the world who, with considerable media and academic assistance, have convinced themselves that the major, if not sole, cause of injustice in the Middle East and even the world is Israel’s occupation of parts of the West Bank and Gaza.

As a result, this obsession has contributed to the relative neglect of the region’s other fundamental problems, above all the abiding grip of authoritarian politics in places like Cairo and Ankara and totalitarian religious fundamentalism in Gaza and Tehran. When was the last time you heard of an American campus protest against the treatment of Kurds by Turkey (a NATO ally and longtime beneficiary of U.S. security guarantees), or the genocide in Sudan?

Why is this year’s arts biennale in Venice being roiled by the inclusion of Israel, but not of China? Why has the recent report detailing the extensive documentation of systematic use of rape and sexual torture by Hamas and its collaborators received little attention?

These aren’t just questions of hypocrisy or double standards. They are evidence of minds that have lost the capacity to think dispassionately and critically. What we should really be worried about isn’t the future of Israel; it’s the fate of the West.

Moral judgments should be made about Israel according to the same standards by which we judge other countries faced with similar circumstances. It’s when Israel is demanded to be a saint — and then, as it invariably falls short, is damned as the worst sinner — that we lose our sense of perspective and proportion.

Jack Mintz: Australia’s response to antisemitism puts Canada to shame

…Dave Rich, a leading British academic on antisemitism, concluded that labelling Zionism as a form of western colonialism is used to demonize, exclude and attack Jewish people and supporters of Israel. He also argued that claiming that Israelis are just like the Nazis in practising genocide undermines the importance of the Holocaust in defining antisemitism.

This all-encompassing approach in Australia should be carefully reviewed by the Carney government. It is not just a matter of a government’s responsibility towards security. It is also an issue of social cohesion.

Like Australia, intimidating demonstrations that dehumanize Jews has led to an increase in antisemitic attacks in Canada. Reported and unreported antisemitic acts are frequent, totalling 567 per month in 2025 alone, according to B’nai Brith Canada’s annual audit of antisemitic incidents.

The Carney government should not wait for a Bondi-like terror incident before acting to curb antisemitism. So far, its effort is deficient.

Lederman: The San Diego mosque shooting is a profoundly 2026 tragedy

….What drives a 17- and 18-year-old to this kind of hatred? To end people’s lives, and then their own? Mr. Clark was about to graduate from high school. 

Consider everything we’re learning about the manosphere – misogynistic, hateful, homophobic, antisemitic, and somehow very attractive to many young men. 

A spark – caused by a bad day, a fateful encounter, who knows what – sends these kids to dark corners of the internet. Their hateful curiosity is reinforced by algorithms that continue to serve up vile ideas. These algorithms are designed to maximize engagement – and, for the social-media companies, profits. It’s all happening in the combustible environment of the divisive politics of the day, where hateful rhetoric has become the norm, not just from blabbermouth commentators, but politicians, all the way up to the U.S. President. 

In the aftermath of this tragedy, far-right Trump ally Laura Loomer posted: “The shooting in California took place at a jihadi mosque known for its hate preachers.” She wrote that it was “likely planned by Muslims” and the U.S. Islamic lobby. There are too many people who will believe her own hate-filled misinformation, uncritically.

Beyond the grief of this incident, there is an urgent need to address this emergency. We are in a confirmation-biased, hate-fuelled misinformation crisis. Wherever these two young men – boys, really – have been taught to hate like this, others are there too, lurking, reading, learning at the knees of influencers, extremist pundits, hateful politicians. The consequences, as we have seen too many times, can be deadly.

Polansky: Despair is not an option

…The perceptive reader will have noted that none of these measures requires special privileges or carve-outs for Jews or any other minority group. Moreover, all of these recommendations apply widely to problems of governance across the country. This is precisely the point. The observable social decline described here afflicts Jews acutely but not exclusively.

Similarly, the older dispensation of Canadian liberalism, now in need of restoration, allowed Jews to flourish along with other Canadians. Another way to put it is that improving the worsening situation of Canadian Jews will entail making much-needed corrections to the country as such. This is not incidental.

Against this proactive view is a growing (and largely online) sentiment, bolstered by a combination of unfavourable demographic trends and ugly news stories, that Canada is finished for Jews, and they should begin looking elsewhere. This, in fact, echoes much of the pessimism one increasingly finds among non-Jewish Canadians of all stripes about the trajectory of their country.

The French novelist Michel Houellebecq famously wrote “there is no Israel for me.” That there is an Israel (or, potentially, a Florida) for Canadian Jews should not change their calculus. By any historical measure, Canada has done quite well by them (and vice versa). They owe something to their country, and if nothing else, they owe it to their ancestors, who braved far worse to get here, to stay and fight. Canadians in general should do likewise. In this, as in other matters, they may find common cause in repairing their country’s weakening institutions.

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Chris Selley: Upset about the state of Canada? Why not pretend it’s better? [non-deportation of immigrants accused of sexual abuse]

2025/12/04 Leave a comment

Agree, risk of losing immigration status should not be a “get out of jail” card except in extremely rare circumstances:

Again in theory, that should include a 47-year-old non-citizen, living in Bradford, Ont., who recently pleaded guilty to various charges with respect to sexually abusing a young girl — including once when he was on bail for charges of sexually abusing the same girl, whom he reportedly impregnated twice when she was no older than 13. News outlet BarrieToday reports the accused was at one point during his trial “permitted an adjournment to explore the effect his eventual guilty pleas would have on his immigration status.”

Which is, obviously, insane.

Because this is Canada, however, and we can’t ever let anything be simple, the 47-year-old’s immigration status has become something of a controversy in Ottawa.

I don’t have empirical data before me, but I suspect deportation would not strike most Canadians as an intemperate or unjust punishment for Mr. 47-year-old Child-Impregnator from Bradford. It’s neither lenient nor draconian; it’s just common sense. It’s pretty hard to get a six-month sentence in this country, after all. The absolutely vast majority of Canadians, regardless of where they’re born, manage to avoid imprisonment for their entire lives, and they hardly even have to break a sweat avoiding it. I think that’s a reasonable expectation of immigrants as well.

Alas, some of us don’t like this rule, or at least we feel honour-bound not to like it. It’s just so terribly unfancy, if not downright American-style. Judges and Liberals seem to suffer from this disproportionately. So what judges have been doing, in certain cases, is discounting the sentences non-permanent residents are handed, rather than bringing those immigration consequences down upon an offender’s and his family’s heads.

This has been widely reported. It’s not some kind of conspiracy theory. But some of us seem to have great trouble admitting it (perhaps because it’s so obviously inappropriate). In August, Radio-Canada ran an article headlined “Conservatives say the justice system favours non-citizens. Experts disagree.” Only Radio-Canada’s experts didn’t actually disagree; they mostly just seemed to object to the notion that one sentence might be compared to another to begin with, as opposed to each being considered a standalone, perfectly honed diamond of wisdom.

When (a judge) is considering a sentence, they can’t be blind to the fact that this person is not a naturalized Canadian, is still an immigrant and therefore will have additional consequences as a result of the sentence,” a Toronto immigration lawyer told Radio-Canada — which was, of course, the whole question, and it’s not a rhetorical one. Can judges be blind to that? Should they?

The Conservatives, led by immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner, want to make a law that says no: Judges wouldn’t be allowed to consider immigration consequences in handing down sentences, such as against that creep from Bradford, Ont. In the unlikely event I were advising the Liberals, I would suggest agreeing to support that law as quickly and enthusiastically as possible….

Source: Chris Selley: Upset about the state of Canada? Why not pretend it’s better?

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Chris Selley: What Canada can learn from two years of anti-Israel protests

2025/10/17 Leave a comment

Fair points. The citizenship guide does have a reference to imported conflicts: “Some Canadians immigrate from places where they have experienced warfare or conflict. Such experiences do not justify bringing to Canada violent, extreme or hateful prejudices.:

…But we still can lay down some markers about what’s acceptable protest and what isn’t — maybe in the citizenship guide, which is supposed to apply to everyone (not just immigrants). Two principles we could articulate:

Canada is, by design, a land of free expression, including protest, which we treat generously. But at some juncture, having made your point, you have to bugger off from the middle of the road and let people go about their lives. Blocking the road is, after all, illegal. Letting you do it for your cause is a courtesy, not a right. 

If people want to leave homeland conflicts behind, it’s none of your business, even if you share a homeland and think they’re letting the home side down. 

If you target a business for protest because it’s owned by someone who has a different opinion about your homeland, you will be shunned and hooted at unapologetically. 

Meanwhile, Canadian politicians need to take a very long, very hard look at how our police forces conduct their business. Like the Ottawa occupiers before them, the anti-Israel mob has taken outrageous advantage of Canadian police forces’ slavish dedication to de-escalation as the only goal that matters

Source: Chris Selley: What Canada can learn from two years of anti-Israel protests

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Chris Selley: ‘Birthright citizenship’ is an outdated concept

2025/10/11 Leave a comment

More commentary on birthright citizenship:

…The Liberals say they’re not interested in changing the law — though they didn’t freak out and call everyone racist for even raising the subject, as you might expect them to. (Is it possible they can … learn?) And it’s difficult to imagine this issue ever floating to the top of the pile, even with a Conservative government in power.

But in the absence of legislative action, as with so many files, we could commit to start collecting relevant data about the birth tourism and non-resident birth phenomenon.

Statistics Canada reports that in 2024, 1,610 people gave birth in Canada who did not reside here. That’s the number usually quoted in reference to “birth tourism” — but does it include people on temporary visas, like students and temporary foreign workers? Those aren’t necessarily abuses of any system; people do shag, regardless of their immigration status, and sometimes those people do get pregnant.

When I inquired of Statistics Canada about this, I got an intensely Canadian answer. “The mother’s residency status is typically determined based on the information she provides on the birth registration form. However, the specific requirements and procedures may vary by jurisdiction,” a spokesperson explained. “Since this is self-reported, we can’t tell from the data whether someone is a temporary resident or not.”

Could we at least do better than that? Is that too much to ask — to know the scope of the problem that we’re probably not going to solve?

Source: Chris Selley: ‘Birthright citizenship’ is an outdated concept

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ICYMI – Chris Selley: Canada’s refugee system — and the world’s — is overdue for an overhaul

2025/07/22 Leave a comment

About 70 percent of refugees already live close to their country of origin but makes sense for Canada to support seeking refuge in neighbouring countries:

…The simple fact is, Canada is not equipped to handle as many refugee claims as we currently accept. If we were, there wouldn’t be African migrants sleeping on Toronto sidewalks. There wouldn’t have been 281,000 pending asylum cases as of March 31.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government is certainly aware of the issue. Bill C-2 proposes a one-year deadline after arriving in Canada for claiming asylum — so people with expired or revoked visas couldn’t apply, for example — and to eliminate a loophole in the Safe Third Country Agreement that allows illegal border-crossers who evade capture for two weeks to apply for asylum nevertheless.

Both are entirely reasonable. But the current issue of The Economist, cover headline “Scrap the refugee system,” suggests the sort of wholesale changes to the global refugee system that I have been arguing for forever. It’s interesting not so much as a piece of journalism as it is to know that liberal (and Liberal) policymakers very much tend to read The Economist.

“About 123 million people have been displaced by conflict, disaster or persecution. … All these people have a right to seek safety,” the magazine’s editorial observes. “But ‘safety’ does not mean access to a rich country’s labour market. Indeed, resettlement in rich countries will never be more than a tiny part of the solution.”

The goal, the august organ argues, should be for refugees to receive asylum closer to home — ideally in culturally and linguistically similar countries whose population will tend to be more sympathetic. For the money that rich countries spend processing everyone who manages to make it to their shores — who are generally by definition not the world’s most imperilled or downtrodden, else they wouldn’t be able to get here — they could help vastly more people to safety, even if not First World prosperity. (The latter was never the goal of the current system.)

This is an idea that would require multilateral co-operation to achieve full bloom, of course. But many First World countries are far more hostile to asylum-seekers, if not immigrants in general, than Canada is. If Canada significantly restricted refugee claims made on Canadian soil, and instead refocused its efforts on helping people find refuge closer to home, it would set a useful example — not least because we have been so welcoming, to a fault, in the past.

Source: Chris Selley: Canada’s refugee system — and the world’s — is overdue for an overhaul

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Chris Selley: Liberals wrap much-needed refugee reform in a terrible privacy-invading package

2025/06/06 Leave a comment

Another commentary arguing C-2 asylum provisions are reasonable:

…This sure looks like an attempt to leverage Trumpian mayhem for the same purposes. It will and should be fought on those grounds.

It’s especially unfortunate because Bill C-2 also proposes to inject some relatively hardhearted sanity into our perennially out-of-control refugee system — changes that by rights would be debated on their own, without invoking Donald Trump’s name every 30 seconds, because these problems are not at all of the president’s making. For example, Bill C-2 proposes a one-year deadline for being in Canada, after which you won’t be able to apply for asylum, which is a clear response to the number of temporary residents trying to hang on in Canada using the refugee system. And it proposes expanding the Safe Third Country Agreement such that anyone crossing illegally from the U.S. would be ineligible to claim asylum, no matter how long they lie low upon arrival.

These are reasonable measures, completely in keeping with countries with far better human-rights records than Canada’s. Someone doesn’t just suddenly remember being persecuted after a year of not mentioning it. The principle of seeking asylum in the first technically safe country you arrive in may be unrealistic: no one willing to risk their lives for a better life in the United States or Canada is likely to settle on Mexico, considering the ordeals most refugees from Central America have already been through. But when a country like Canada accepts hundreds of refugee claims a year from the U.S and Europe, you know things have been taken to an extreme….

…Refugee advocates will argue, reasonably enough, that the solution for a self-styled humanitarian beacon like Canada would be to devote enough resources to the refugee-determination system such that we could adjudicate them quickly and efficiently. But no government ever, ever does that. We have a backlog of 280,825 asylum claims — roughly 0.7 per cent of the Canadian population.

Something has to give. And that something has absolutely nothing to do with Canadians’ IP addresses.

Source: Chris Selley: Liberals wrap much-needed refugee reform in a terrible privacy-invading package

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Chris Selley: One Ontario party’s against cancelling Canadian historic figures. It’s not Conservatives

2025/02/15 Leave a comment

Of note:

Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie is not a fan of the Toronto District School Board’s (TDSB) push to rename three schools. These are the ones currently bearing the accursed names of our first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald; of Scottish abolitionist Henry Dundas (of whom John Graves Simcoe, founder of Toronto, was a great fan; and of Egerton Ryerson, the crusading early supporter of public education in Upper Canada (who introduced school boards to the province, ironically enough).

“(President) Trump’s trade war reminds us why Canadian pride matters,” Crombie said in a statement, when I asked her about it. “Our history isn’t perfect, but we should learn from it — not rewrite it. (Conservative Leader Doug) Ford dodges tough conversations. I won’t. I’m proud of Canada.”

Ford hasn’t said anything about the plans to change the names, though the Canadian Institute of History Education is pressing him to. It’s leading a well-argued pushback against this typically slapdash and insulting decision, which (per the TDSB) is “based on the potential impact that these names may have on students and staff based on colonial history, anti-indigenous racism and their connection to systems of oppression.”

Note: “potential impact” they “may have.” In other words, no one asked for this. Rather, unelected educrats are doing it in the name (if not on the backs of) minority students who might well be far more interested in and respectful of actual Canadian history than the people running the schools are.

I asked Team Bonnie about this because she had already gone to bat for Macdonald earlier in the campaign, or at least for his woebegone statue at Queen’s Park. Designed by Hamilton MacCarthy, erected in 1894, it currently lives inside a plywood box for fear that unveiling it would lead to it being vandalized — as it was in 2020, necessitating repairs that the general public still hasn’t laid eyes upon. (Attacking statues is still technically illegal, for the record, but evidently only in the way that jaywalking is technically illegal.)

“Somebody should show some leadership,” Crombie told the Toronto Sun last month saying she was opposed to boxing up the statue. “Make a decision and deal with it.”…

Source: Chris Selley: One Ontario party’s against cancelling Canadian historic figures. It’s not Conservatives

Filed under Historical Recognition, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Chris Selley: Liberals gave anti-Israel protesters everything, but they’re still paying for it

2025/01/22 Leave a comment

Sadly accurate:

…The response to Sunday’s gong show has mostly been the same dispiriting, meaningless platitudes we’ve been hearing since October 2023. Adjectives are deployed: “outrageous,” “intolerable,” “un-Canadian,” even “illegal.” But to no end.

“It’s good to protest,” Freeland burbled at her campaign launch, which is an odd thing to say when lunatics are protesting you for not doing something that you couldn’t and can’t. “But it is not OK to stop others from speaking,” Freeland continued.

She’ll get no argument from me on that point … except that it clearly is OK, to the extent that no one ever suffers any consequences for doing it. It’s also not OK to protest Jewish neighbourhoods because they’re Jewish, or businesses because they’re owned by Jews. It’s not OK to fly an antisemitic terrorist organization’s flag. It’s not remotely OK, indeed it’s a national scandal, that many Jewish Canadians are very understandably scared.

But here we are. And no one in charge, or auditioning to be in charge, seems to have anything halfway resembling a plan, strategy or solution to deal with this thuggery.

Source: Chris Selley: Liberals gave anti-Israel protesters everything, but they’re still paying for it

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Chris Selley: Liberals’ failed citizenship bill will soon be the Conservatives’ problem

2025/01/14 Leave a comment

Conservatives should simply introduce a bill similar to C-71 but requiring the residency requirement be met within a five-year period as per permanent residents:

There is much for conservatives to celebrate about the death of the Liberals’ legislative agenda, which is one of the chief effects of proroguing Parliament: Every government bill in progress “cease(s) to exist,” as the House of Commons’ procedural website puts it, and would in theory have to start at square one once Parliament returns on March 24. In practice, of course, the only real order of business then will be bringing down the government. It is an ex-legislative agenda.

The death of Bill C-71, however, which would have amended the Citizenship Act with respect to so-called “second-generation-born-abroad” children of Canadian citizens, is potentially a serious problem. It’s at the very least a problem, and it’s one the Conservatives need a plan to solve starting on Day One.

I’ll try to explain the issue as simply as I can.

Once upon a time, Canadian citizenship could be passed down through the generations essentially forever: So long as you were a Canadian citizen, no matter how much time (if any) you had spent here, your children had an automatic birthright to citizenship. The Harper government changed the law in 2009: People who were born as Canadian citizens in other countries could no longer pass on citizenship to any of their children who were also born abroad.

The law has produced some maddening and very sad situations, which I have written about in the past. But most cases are probably more like my friends Tim and Emily’s — not disastrous, just arbitrary and pointless.

Tim and Emily were both born in Canada as Canadian citizens; both were raised and educated in Canada. They moved to Dubai for a few years to work, as tens of thousands of Canadians do, and had their daughter Tina there. Tina automatically became a Canadian citizen. They then moved back to Canada, where their son Mike was born. (These aren’t their real names.)

Were Mike to have a daughter in Dubai in the future, she would automatically be Canadian. Were Tina to have a daughter in Dubai in the future, she would not automatically be Canadian, because she would be the “second generation born abroad.”

(Bizarrely, Tina has lesser rights in this respect than a naturalized citizen. If you immigrate to Canada and become a citizen, the Citizenship Act considers you to have been born in Canada for the purposes of passing on citizenship.)

In December 2023, Justice Jasmine Akbarali of the Ontario Superior Court struck down this rule, which lives in a single section of the Citizenship Act, as unconstitutional. She gave the government six months to craft a legislative remedy.

That remedy was Bill C-71, which allowed people like Tina  to pass on citizenship to children born abroad so long as they could demonstrate a “substantial connection” to Canada — namely having spent 1,095 days in the country over the previous five years. It’s exactly what we require immigrants to demonstrate before they can receive citizenship. It seemed reasonable enough to constitutional lawyer Sujit Choudhry, who represented the applicants at the Ontario Superior Court.

“We thought that was fair. It was simple, it was equitable. It’s a rule that (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) administers every day in relation to permanent residents who are naturalizing,” says Choudhry.

For some reason the Liberals decided to go much further. Most notably, Bill C-71 grants “citizenship by descent (to) all persons who were born outside Canada … to a parent who was a citizen” before the new law took effect. That’s an awful lot of people with the stroke of a pen — no one really knows how many; last month, the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated 115,000 — at a time when people want more control over immigration, not less. It also doesn’t cut off at the second generation: Third and fourth generations born abroad could receive citizenship if a parent could demonstrate this substantial connection.

The Liberals having lost any ability to govern, Justice Akbarali granted the government three extensions to her original six-month deadline. The third she granted “reluctantly,” emphasizing her displeasure at the government’s lack of “legislative diligence” but noting that “the interests of the public will be negatively affected if (her ruling) comes into force without replacement legislation in place.”

And there, for the Conservatives, is the rub. If the section of the Citizenship Act that Akbarali struck down simply disappears with nothing to replace it, we wouldn’t return to the status quo circa 2022. We would return to the status quo circa 2008: unlimited hereditary citizenship, which no one wants or is asking for.

“Allowing (my ruling) to take effect without replacement legislation would … result in … an unknowable number of people becoming automatic Canadian citizens,” Akbarali wrote.

That third extension expires on March 19, before Parliament could even theoretically get back to work on the file. In light of that, and of Akbarali’s previously stated concerns, odds are the government will ask for and receive another extension. But all that does is punt the ball to Pierre Poilievre’s first citizenship minister, who most certainly will not want to be seen opening the floodgates to any real or perceived “citizens of convenience.”

My impression of the Conservatives on this file is that they don’t want to be seen supporting what could be viewed as more generous citizenship laws. They want citizenship to have more value, not less, both practically and philosophically — and I’m all for that. But there is nothing remotely unpatriotic about working abroad for a few years, even if you happen to have been born abroad while your parents did the same. And it doesn’t bolster the value of citizenship to make life difficult for people who follow this very common life path.

The Liberals were most of the way to a perfectly reasonable remedy. The Conservatives should adopt the “substantial connection” test as their own, probably with a cutoff at the second generation, ditch the weird blanket citizenship-grant, pass it quickly and move on to tougher issues.

Source: Chris Selley: Liberals’ failed citizenship bill will soon be the Conservatives’ problem

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