Speaker silences Poilievre for a day after he accused foreign minister of pandering to Hamas

Speaker Greg Fergus announced on Tuesday that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre would be barred from speaking in the House of Commons for the remainder of the day after he refused to retract his assertion that Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly is pandering to Hamas.

During question period on Monday, Poilievre challenged Joly to condemn what he referred to as "genocidal chants from hateful mobs" at recent protests regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza. Following some of the rallies, police have initiated investigations into alleged hate speech and have made charges in certain cases.

Joly acknowledged the one-year anniversary of Hamas's devastating attack on Israel in a prepared statement, saying, "We stand with Jewish people." When Poilievre pressed her again on the antisemitic chants, Justice Minister Arif Virani replied, "What we stand up against, absolutely, is the amount of hatred that we have seen."

Poilievre expressed that Joly should have taken a stronger stance against the rhetoric at these protests, stating, "I gave the foreign affairs minister two opportunities to condemn the increasingly common and terrifying antisemitic chants we hear in the streets, such as 'Israel will soon be gone' and 'There is only one solution! Intifada, revolution!' Twice she refused to condemn those remarks. She continues to pander to Hamas supporters and the Liberal Party as part of her leadership campaign rather than doing her job."

In his ruling, Fergus referred to a previous incident involving Liberal MP Yvan Baker, who had claimed that Poilievre's Conservatives were connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin, stating, "The Putin wing has taken over the Conservative Party." Baker was prohibited from speaking in the Commons due to that statement, and Fergus asserted that he had to apply the same policy to Poilievre for linking Joly to "an odious regime" without remorse.

Fergus remarked in French, "When the leader of the Opposition was himself the subject of unparliamentary language, members of his caucus took great offence. I am sure members can appreciate that I must do the same in the present circumstances."

While citing Baker's case as a precedent, Fergus lifted the speaking ban on him effective Wednesday. Poilievre will also be permitted to speak then.

Speaking to CBC News Network's Power & Politics, Baker criticized the Speaker's decision, describing it as a "double-standard" and expressing disappointment that Poilievre did not face the same penalty he did.

Fergus stated that it is his responsibility to determine what constitutes unparliamentary language in the chamber and warned that MPs who disregard his authority could have a "corrosive effect on our discussions. This undermines the important work done by the House." He added that Poilievre, being an experienced MP, should be aware of the rules, emphasizing, "His actions must be exercised within the existing boundaries of parliamentary decorum."

A spokesperson for Poilievre labeled Fergus a "Liberal Speaker" who is "showing his partisan bias and trying to censor questions of his party." After the Speaker's ruling, Poilievre asserted that it is Joly who should apologize for what he deemed an inadequate condemnation of antisemitism. "A foreign affairs minister in Canada should find it very easy to condemn those kinds of remarks, but she didn't, because she's pandering politically," Poilievre stated.

He also called on the government to "ban" Samidoun, a group he accused of being a front for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is designated as a terrorist entity under Canadian law. Poilievre alleged that members of Samidoun have praised the October 7 attacks and shouted slogans such as "death to Canada, death to the United States and death to Israel" at recent protests in Canada.

Charlotte Kates, Samidoun's international co-ordinator, was arrested in a Vancouver hate-crime investigation earlier this year after she referred to the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas as "heroic and brave." The organization also characterized the attack, which resulted in approximately 1,200 deaths, mostly civilians, as "a legitimate military operation."

Liberal MP Jennifer O'Connell, the parliamentary secretary to the minister of public safety, announced that the government has referred the listing of Samidoun as a terrorist entity to "our national security advisers and asked for an emergency and urgent review."

In response to Poilievre's accusations of being lenient on antisemitism, Joly stated that she would not accept lessons from him on the matter, labeling his stance as "the height of hypocrisy." She criticized Poilievre for failing to condemn Nazi symbols displayed during the 2022 anti-vaccine mandate trucker convoy and pointed out that he visited a convoy camp associated with Diagolon, an extremist group known for its racist and antisemitic rhetoric. Joly also noted that Poilievre did not reprimand Conservative MPs who met with a far-right German politician accused of downplaying Nazi crimes. "Clearly what we're seeing is that Pierre Poilievre is all about double standards and he's all about himself and his own political games," she said. "Ultimately, he's unfit to govern this country."

In turn, Poilievre charged that the Liberals have not done enough to combat antisemitism, citing a rise in anti-Jewish hate crimes and incidents even before the October 7 attack and the ensuing Israeli response. He attributed some of the anti-Israel sentiment at recent protests to the Liberal government's border policies, asserting that "nine years of Trudeau's radical ideology" and "reckless destruction of our border security, letting in two ISIS terrorists" might be responsible for the "division, violence, hate, danger and antisemitism."