I appreciate the comments from my colleague Mr. Leardi from—

What a challenging debate to be part of in this Legislature—that we have to actually be doing this here in this august chamber, calling for the censure of one of our colleagues. Why? “From the river to the sea”—I’m uttering those words, but not as part of a protest or my belief; I’m uttering them as a repetition of what we’ve heard so many times and from the member from Hamilton Centre. You cannot utter those words, “From the river to the sea,” unless you are an anti-Semite, because those very words require that the nation of Israel disappear and, along with it, the Jewish state. So if you use those words in protest or for any other reason, you cannot call yourself anything but an anti-Semite.

Speaker, the member for Hamilton Centre is an anti-Semite. She can deny it. Her leader can deny it. But her life mission has shown that before she got here, she was an anti-Semite, and she has continued to practise that since being elected.

Speaker, there are anti-Semites among us everywhere in this country. Anti-Semitism is a cancer out there that seems to be part of almost every community, unfortunately and shamefully.

It’s our duty, in this Legislature, to root out and rid this province, this country, this world of all forms of hate, be they anti-Semitism, be they Islamophobia, be they homophobia or any other form of hate. It is our sworn duty to rid this world and therefore all parts of it from them and any other form of hate. But we don’t make—it’s not a requirement of citizenship or a requirement of living in this country or anywhere else or any part of this country. We know that it’s out there, and we see evidence of it every day. I don’t think there’s—I will speak more on it further in my remarks, I’m sure, if I have time.

We see so much evidence of anti-Semitism all around—and it’s daily. We’ll talk about our universities and how sad it is that the leaders of tomorrow believe that the Jewish state should be eliminated. Many of the leaders of tomorrow believe that, and they’re financed by the dues of other students.

Even if you hold those views, there’s one thing that I believe absolutely: that when you are sworn in here as a member of this chamber—there are only 124 of us who are honoured to serve the people of Ontario in this way, 124 out of approximately 15 million—

Interjection.

When you are sworn in here as a member, in my opinion, even if you are an anti-Semite, as the member has demonstrated repeatedly throughout her life, you check that at the door. Once you become a member here, you have to take on a different persona. You are a representative of this historic chamber. You no longer have the right to espouse your hateful views once you take a seat in this chamber, and you have to accept that as a condition of signing that oath, that you will relinquish your right, your privilege, to act in those ways any longer. It would appear to me that that is a reasonable restriction—if you want to call it that; I don’t even want to call it a “restriction.” It’s a reasonable compromise for accepting of the will of the people that you would represent them here.

But what does the member for Hamilton Centre do, as my colleague from Essex has pointed out? She used her first statements to politicize everything she does here through her own tainted lens. This could have been a great opportunity for the member from Hamilton Centre to actually show that there’s been some growth, not some deterioration and some further rot—that there was actually further growth since she became a member here and that she understands what our grave responsibility is to serve everyone and to protect every vulnerable person. But she chose to put out that vile tweet—I still call them “tweets.” I don’t know, do you still call them “tweets” or “X” or whatever? To put that out, and she was immediately called out for it.

There, Speaker, is where the big failure comes, because her leader called for her to withdraw that and apologize. What we got from the member for Hamilton Centre was this pitiful, pathetic, fake apology that I don’t believe for one minute had a scintilla of sincerity. It was done because her leader requested it, but the request included withdrawal and taking down of the original post. And, sadly, instead of the member from Hamilton Centre removing the post, the leader has turtled and gone into hiding on that issue—retreated to her cave, her burrow, whatever you want to call it—and doesn’t want to talk about it. In fact, the leader of the NDP shamefully, disgustingly, has said that members on this side of the House—and I’ll paraphrase it because I don’t have the exact quote in front of me—are trying to take away the rights of a Muslim woman to speak on behalf of her constituents. That’s a paraphrase. How shameful. On one hand, she’s saying this is a divisive thing. Yes, what has been done is tremendously divisive, and the way to bring people together is to have a full-throated apology for that. But no, she fosters greater division by making that kind of a statement.

This is not about Muslim or Jew. This is about hatred. This is about hatred and using the platform of you, as an MPP—the platform that we have as the privilege of sitting here. We would not have it otherwise, the platform that we have to get a message out. Whether correct or incorrect, it doesn’t matter; it’s our message to get out. So using this vehicle to espouse that kind of vitriolic hatred is wrong, and the right and just thing to do for this Legislature is to stand against it.

If we don’t stand against it today, we better not try to stand against it tomorrow. You don’t get a mulligan on these kinds of things. You must act, and you must act decisively. That’s exactly what our government is doing—acting, and acting decisively. You think it’s easy? I’m not saying that to you directly, Speaker. I mean that in the broad sense. No, it’s not easy when you have—only once in my tenure here did we call a member for censure, and that was the former member for Lanark–Frontenac–Kingston. It may have happened before me. It is a very rare step that is taken; indeed, one that is gut-wrenching to have to go through—to make that choice. We are now put in a position here in this chamber, here in our Parliament, that we must call a colleague to order for words that were both written and, on a repeated basis, spoken. This is not easy but is absolutely necessary.

What it has also shown—and this is truly regrettable—is the actions of the opposition in respect to this. They also could have done the right thing. Their leader could have stuck to her guns and said, “I’m sorry, but this is a condition”—and I will say this without any fear of being wrong, although everyone is entitled to an opinion. Should a member of this Progressive Conservative caucus have made statements either in writing or in any form of communications or media in a quantifiable way similar to those against any group, our leader, Premier Ford, would give you about 30 seconds to have an absolute and unequivocal apology issued or you’d find yourself—the door would be slammed on your backside, because you wouldn’t be a member of this caucus any longer. We couldn’t do anything about whether you sit in this chamber or not, but hopefully the people of Hamilton Centre have an opportunity to make a decision at some time as well—and hopefully in any riding, if that was the case, the people would make the right decision.

We live in a vast melting pot here in Canada, here in Ontario, where people from all over the world have come here because this is a bastion of freedom, of civil rights and privileges, and a place where freedom and freedom of speech reigns. But freedom of speech, as has been quoted by people a whole lot smarter than me, has its limitations, and when it either directly or indirectly calls for violence against others, then that privilege must be not only curtailed but removed. We do have laws with regard to hate crimes and hate speech in this country, but they tend to be pretty wishy-washy when it comes to anti-Semitism.

My father, as many people know—as everybody here would know by now because I’ve said it many times—was a World War II veteran who fought overseas. While he was not the division or the battalion that liberated places like Auschwitz and Treblinka, he understood absolutely the persecution that Jews had experienced in Nazi Germany and all around the world.

They lost their homeland—the homeland that was theirs, millennia ago. As a result of the Second World War and the absolute atrocities that were committed to Jewish people, the world rightfully—the free world and the new world, if you want to call it that, the post-Second-World-War world—decided that the Jewish people must have a homeland, and Israel was created. Ever since then, they have had to fight and battle and face tremendous discrimination in all corners of the world, but certainly in their corner of the world, where they are surrounded by hostiles. And then you wonder why Israel has felt it necessary to build a strong military to protect itself, because at any time of the day, of any time of a day, of any time of the week or the year, they could be subject to aggression.

This is what happened on October 7, Speaker. A terrorist attack of the most vile in nature, most abhorrent and hideous in nature, where young children were murdered and beheaded, women were raped, adults and children were killed and kidnapped. And Israel responded in the only way that it could. You have two choices: fight or flight. They have nowhere to go to. This is their homeland. There’s nowhere to go. They have to fight for it and they have to defend themselves when they’re faced with that kind of inhuman attack from the terrorists that make up Hamas.

And you will have the argument that, well, they shouldn’t be attacking back. But Hamas is a terrorist group that doesn’t care about human life, be it Jewish or Palestinian, so they set up their headquarters in apartment buildings, in hospitals, in schools. They have missile launchers among the people. They use their citizens. You see, Gaza is ruled by Hamas. Let’s be clear. They use their citizens as human shields and find them completely dispensable from the point of view of human life. They don’t care how many Palestinians are killed; they only care how many Jews they can kill. That’s the difference. The Jews, the Israelites don’t rush into the other countries and attack, but they’re constantly in a mode of defence. But when they are attacked, they must respond. They must respond.

I tell you, Speaker, that every drop of Palestinian blood that has been spilled in these last couple of weeks, almost, is on the hands of Hamas. They, because they don’t care about the loss of life, have put their citizens in grave danger, knowingly. Their actions were a deliberate attack, designed to kill as many Israeli Jews as possible. It wasn’t a defensive move; it was designed to inflict as much damage in a short period of time on as many Jewish citizens as possible.

And I tell you, Speaker, it’s the largest loss of human life among the Jewish people at any one time since the Holocaust. And we have a member of this chamber not only defending Hamas, but applauding them. How can we possibly do anything—

I appreciate the comments and the compliments from the member as well.

But, let’s be clear: It is apparent, maybe even obvious, that we’re going at this subject from two different points of view. Our absolute commitment as government—and you’ve heard the Premier rise in question period over and over and over again, as well as the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing and our House leader, and what they have said is, “We are going to build homes.” We’re not going to focus on something that the opposition wants to talk about and dig up and try to slow the process down. This is a crisis and what it needs, needs, needs is all hands on deck—everybody rowing in the same direction—because if we don’t fix this housing crisis, we are going to be in big trouble down the road. Let’s get together.

That’s why we’ve got to move to bring this housing supply up so that it can help to bring down all of those other costs and let those young people get a home within their budget.

I do want to say that when it comes to consultation with Indigenous communities, I have the utmost faith in our Minister of Indigenous Affairs. I don’t think that anybody has done more to forge a working, collaborative relationship with First Nations in our province ever in history than Minister Rickford. And that is something—