By Amy Chen, Vancouver
A giant banner hung outside Simcoe Grey MP Kellie Leitch’s constituency office at Hume and Pretty River Parkway in Collingwood is demanding the Conservative Party of Canada leadership candidate to resign for inciting hatred that led to the shooting at a Quebec City mosque that left six worshippers dead and five others critically injured.
“Hate puts us all at risk,” read the banner, which was removed on Wednesday morning, and went on to list the names of the six who were killed by the 27-year-old far-right extremist Alexandre Bissonnette, and urged Leitch to resign with the hashtag #notmymp.
“I was pleased to see this image of your office come out of my home town this morning,” her constituent Stewart Cornelisse who shared a photo of her banner said. “Resign and never show your demagogue, wannabe populist face in politics ever again.”
An unapologetic Leitch doubled down on her proposal to screen of immigrants for anti-Canadian values.
“What I’m talking about is a common sense policy. Having face-to-face interviews with each individual entering Canada, about Canadian values,” she said in an interview Wednesday morning on Global News’s The Morning Show. “For those of us that are here in Canada, Canadian citizens, we have laws that we expect to be enforced.”
Leitch’s statement earned the ire of many Canadians, who took to social media to point out to the surgeon-turned-politician who promised to bring Trump’s message to Canada that the attack was carried out by a born-and-raised Canadian, not an immigrant.
Leitch’s Facebook post on Monday condemning the attack was met with contempt as critics of the controversial former minister who once pushed for a hotline to report neighbours over “Barbaric Cultural Practices” accusing her of shedding crocodile tears.
“Last night people in Quebec City were murdered as they prayed,” her statement read. “This outrageous act of violence is an attack not just on those gathered in a house of worship but on the very fabric of Canadian society, on the values of freedom and tolerance. There is no excuse and no justification for this terrorist attack. I condemn the act, the people who carried it out, and any who might try to justify, rationalize, or support it unreservedly and in the harshest possible terms.”
“Ms Leitch. You can hide behind empty words of condolence,” the top response to her comment, by Beverley Cooper of Toronto, Ontario, read. “The fact is your desire to have immigrants screened for “Canadian Values” is the type of rhetoric that encourages hateful actions such as this. (just look at the comments on this page),”
“Who will decide what “Canadian Values” are?,” Cooper asked. “While you won’t admit it out loud…you are clearly targeting Muslims with your grandstanding. My grandmother came from Sweden and she was subjected to the same kind of hateful screening you would like to impose now. And people…be careful here when you start talking about “immigrants”. Almost all our ancestors were immigrants. I assume I will get a barrage of hate in response…because I can can already see the hateful comments being spewed here.”
“This is on you,” John Greenshields of Lethbridge, Alberta, responded. “This is a direct response to your hateful rhetoric about Canadian values. You own this. Don’t turn your coat now and expect us to forget. Traitor.”
[Photo Credit: Brendan Thomson/Facebook]
