TORONTO — Ontario's legislature began debate Wednesday on a Progressive Conservative motion that could lead to a New Democrat legislator effectively prevented from speaking in the House unless she apologizes again for a statement she made about the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Sarah Jama, who was elected earlier this year in a byelection in Hamilton Centre, published a written statement last week decrying "the generations long occupation of Palestine" without mentioning the attack on Israeli civilians by Hamas militants.
Condemnation came swiftly, particularly from Tories, and Jama posted an apology on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, but she did not retract the original statement.
The Progressive Conservatives have now put forward a motion to censure Jama, calling on the Speaker not to recognize her in the House — in order to ask a question or debate legislation — until she retracts and deletes her original statement and also apologizes in the legislature.
"The member's musings at any other time would still have been offensive and unacceptable for any elected representative of the people of Ontario, but to make them in association with a violent act of unrepentant and unprovoked terrorism is repugnant and intolerable to the greatest extent of those words," Government House Leader Paul Calandra said in debate.
NDP Leader Marit Stiles said the government is trying to muzzle a democratically elected member of provincial parliament even though she has already apologized.
The Tories are playing political games, Stiles said, using Jama as a way to distract from the fact that the RCMP is investigating the government's decision — which it has now reversed — to open parts of the protected Greenbelt lands for housing development.
"We're not going to allow this government to continue to do this, this distraction, deflection," she said Wednesday.
"This is a government that has their back up against a wall. They've shown that they will do absolutely anything and stoop to just the most disgusting actions and lowest lows in order to avoid the questions that the Official Opposition, the people of Ontario have about their land speculation grab."
The Tories note that not only has Jama not deleted her original statement, she has now pinned it so that it always appears as her top post on social media platform X. Stiles said she did not know what it meant to "pin" a post, but that Jama's apology posts clearly stated that she unequivocally condemned Hamas's attack on Israeli civilians.
The National Council of Canadian Muslims said Wednesday that actions such as the Progressive Conservatives calling for Jama's censure have real life consequences in the form of hatred directed at Muslims.
"We cannot use this horrific conflict where so much pain and trauma is being felt by everyone to score political points," Uthman Quick, the group's director of communications, said at a press conference.
"That is because we've seen that rhetoric escalates, and communities are made to bear the brunt of the backlash."
He said on his way to the press conference he received reports of multiple hijab-wearing Muslim women being spat on in Ontario and across the country.
"The temperature, the atmosphere, the environment, is it's untenable right now," he said, adding that his heart goes out to members of the Jewish community across Canada that are affected by the violence against civilians.
Jewish groups have strongly condemned Jama's statement, and the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies said her apology was too little, too late.
"Given her longstanding record of causing hurt and harm to the Jewish community in Hamilton Centre and beyond, we stand by our call for Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles to do the right thing and remove her from the Ontario NDP caucus," the group wrote in a statement last week.
Jama also faced criticism from Jewish groups during her successful byelection campaign in March, with B'nai Brith accusing her of being a "radical anti-Israel advocate."
She said the criticism centred around what she describes as standing up for Palestinian human rights and her association with student groups running "Israeli Apartheid week" on campus 10 years ago, which shouldn't be conflated with anti-Semitism.
Debate on the Tories' motion is likely to continue in the legislature next week. The Progressive Conservatives have a majority so it is set to pass, but the Speaker would not necessarily be bound to follow it, and could exercise his discretion to still allow Jama to speak.
The motion would not prevent her from voting or attending, though she has not been at the legislature this week. Stiles has said Jama has Palestinian family members and she is being given space to deal with family issues.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2023.
Allison Jones, The Canadian Press
