After several arrests at a pro-Palestinian campus protest, Canada’s minister of diversity, inclusion and persons with disabilities, Kamal Khera, says it’s time “to bring the temperature down in this country.”
“As a government, we will always protect the Charter of Rights, freedom of expression and peaceful protest and assembly. But that must not cross the line,” Khera told Mercedes Stephenson in an interview on The West Block.
Jewish students held a news conference on Parliament Hill last Wednesday and testified before a House of Commons committee that post-secondary institutions are failing to protect them against antisemitism.
Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian demonstrators — protesting Israel’s offensive in Gaza — accuse universities of muzzling free speech.
As the conflict rages, encampments have popped up at campuses from British Columbia to Newfoundland, with students demanding their universities cut ties with Israeli companies and institutions.
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On Thursday, police in riot gear arrested multiple protesters at the University of Calgary, less than a day after the encampment went up.
The university’s president Ed McCauley said demonstrators received a trespass notice but refused to leave.
Video posted on social media showed officers tearing down makeshift fences and clashing with protesters.
“Unfortunately, counter-protesters showed up — also putting themselves in violation of our policies and in a trespass situation,” McCauley said in a statement.
“The situation very quickly devolved into shoving, projectiles being thrown at officers and — ultimately — flashbangs and arrests.”
When it comes to the nationwide protests, Khera says “local authorities are very much engaged in their jurisdiction in this matter” and it’s up to them to decide how to respond.
“As a government, we will always protect the Charter of Rights,” she added.
But Alberta Premier Danielle Smith took a sharper position, saying universities are on private property and the school’s administration needs to ensure the situation doesn’t get out of control.
“I’m glad that the University of Calgary made the decision that they did,” Smith said at a news conference in Calgary Friday.
Smith made her comments the same day Canada abstained from a United Nations vote aimed at formally recognizing Palestinian statehood.
The U.N. General Assembly voted by a wide margin to grant new “rights and privileges” to the Palestinians and called on the Security Council to reconsider its request to become the 194th member of the United Nations.
The vote reflected growing support for full Palestinian membership in the United Nations, with many countries expressing outrage at the rising death toll in Gaza.
Israeli forces are pushing deeper into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, in an operation Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly calls “unacceptable.” Joly warned the offensive will have catastrophic consequences for the 1.3 million Gazans trapped inside Rafah.
According to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict.
Hamas’s attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, left 1,200 people dead. Another 250 were taken hostage.
—with files from the Canadian and Associated Press