"It was a nightmare. An existential crisis."

"We don't get it. We don't get that there was no dialogue from day one. ... It's really strange."

"I will not say that personally that's my vision of the world but I perfectly respect that a duly elected democratic government can act pretty much however they want."

"LaSalle cannot be depicted as the institution threatening French on the Island of Montreal."

"[While I support protecting the French language] ... I refuse that LaSalle be instrumentalized for small politics like that."

"The first question that came to my mind is which organization or family business can afford to pay such a fine." 

Claude Marchand, director-general, LaSalle College, Montreal

Claude Marchand, president and CEO of LaSalle College, says the private Montreal college has been slapped with hefty fines it can't afford. The college is challenging them in a civil suit in Quebec's Superior Court. (LCI Éducation/Diego Iñiguez /Petr Tanko)

 

"It's uncomfortable to live in a place that is always sending you messages, in big ways and small ways that you are not welcome."

"If you read a headline that stated 'Government Shuts Down School for Accepting Too Many Minority Students', we as Canadians would probably be shocked and wonder in what oppressive regime this school is being shut down."

Merwie Garzon, mother of second-year LaSalle student  

Successive governments of the Province of Quebec have tied themselves into legislative knots of anguish over their perceived alarm to the dominance of French-language usage, seeing threats in the presence of Quebec Anglophones' use of English. One law after another has been enacted over the years to diminish the presence of English in the province, and to promote the use of French. From public signage that must see French dominate and English printed in smaller letters, to demands that businesses use French-only identity names, to mandating that French only must be used in government offices, minority English-speakers' rights have been inevitably decimated.

 

The province's language charter was altered in 2022 to ensure that French would be the only language of communication between government agencies and Quebecers; "a common denominator in the public sphere", according to the governing Coalition Avenir Quebec.  English-speaking Quebecers quailed in horror at the thought that hospital interfaces with patients would be in French only, denying English citizens their basic rights under federal law. For the  upcoming October 5 election, all election material provided to voters is in French only.

 

As a private college, LaSalle and others like it were required to ensure that their graduating students have at least three French-taught courses, outside the core common French language instruction courses. A strict quota was placed on the number of students taking English courses to ensure that as specified in law, a set proportion of all college students -- no more than 11.7 to 18.7 percent -- be taught in English. No transition period was offered before financial penalties would be imposed on violators.

 

LaSalle College students call for resumption of classes, in Montreal on Aug. 27, 2026 (Arthur Henault, CityNews)

 

Under this strict regimen, without a period of adjustment LaSalle College realized a temporary, two-year 'administrative imbalance' (since resolved) where it exceeded its 2023-24 quota by 715 students, and 1,066 by the following year. This allowed the government to levy fines to an extent to which LaSalle College was unable to pay. School shut-down seemed imminent through bankruptcy. 

 

Quebec Superior court Justice Martin Castonguay on September 4, ordered the province to pay the school its allocated subsidies, allowing the new year's classes to proceed, while extending the school's creditor protection, ordering the parties to return to court. The sole creditor is the province. So the school was given brief breathing room so that classes could proceed for the year. The problem, however is not resolved -- with the school continuing to face punitive fines of $30 million for excessive Anglophone education.

 

The school's students responded in the only way they could, by rallying at the school before a last-ditch court appearance, holding signs declaring "Studying is a right, save our education/our future", and "Laissez-nous etudier". "They're tied up in knots", explained Merwie Garzon, mother of a student who is 'furious' at the provincial government's discrimination against a linguistic minority in 'calculated' methods to manoeuvre the college's closure, "actively trying to drive out Anglophones".

 

La Salle College  Photo: LaSalle website

 

There are 400 employees at the school. The Marchand family founded the private college in 1962. Claude Marchand has been responsible for running La Salle for 18 years. He was left wondering whether the government would ever return his calls, or respond to settlement offers, a dozen to date. On the school's website can be found the declaration that it "finds itself abandoned by the very organization with which it has collaborated for more than 67 years"; the province. 

 

Currently, LaSalle College has fewer students studying in English than ever before, and fewer in their diploma programs. Yet they are being fined into bankruptcy because their anglophone class numbers exceeded the government quota. No clarity was offered by the government, Mr. Marchand's appeals went unanswered; there had been no response from government when he informed them in 2021that the college needed a transition period.

 

On June 28, 2024 the school was fined $8,781,740, and $21,113,864 a year later. This year, LaSalle managed full compliance with the quota system, as it had the year before, successfully managing its own transition. Although no added debt occurred with penalties imposed the last two years, the debt of the previous two years swelled to $50 million, which would place the college into bankruptcy. The college, said Mr. Marchand, could manage $20 million, but the two fines would break it. 

"[The fines are a] clawback, [the government is also fining twice for the same student over the last two years]."

"We don't have more students in those [English-taught] programs than in 2019 which is the ultimate spirit of the law."

"We're fully compliant for next semester and we have a public mission to serve all [our] 5,000 students and we want to keep going."

Claude Marchand, La Salle College 

LaSalle College was fined $30 million by the Quebec government for enrolling too many students in English-language programs between 2023 and 2025. It also needs to repay $17.9 million in provincial subsidies. (Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press)

 

"[The federal government had not met the] heavy onus [of showing that the release of additional information would harm Canada’s international relations]."

"A bald statement of ongoing 'tensions' between Canada and the United States is not a sufficient basis to refuse disclosure of very specific information related to efforts by the United States to resettle suspected Nazis and Nazi collaborators in Canada following World War II."

"[The decision to withhold the information was unreasonable and the records must now be disclosed]."

"[The study written for the Deschenes Commission concluded] inadequate security screening led to many perpetrators of Nazi war crimes entering Canada." 

Justice Simon Fothergill, Federal Court 

 

"All Canadians, should know that the parts of the [Deschenes] report that have been released indicate that our government colluded or even went as far as working at the direction of the United States to allow Nazi war criminals to enter Canada."

"And this is something that the government has seemingly tried to withhold from Canadians, and so decisions like this bring us just that little bit closer to understanding this whole story and enabling us as a society to learn from our mistakes and to heal from some of the trauma that they caused."

Richard Robertson, director of advocacy, B'nai Brith Canada   

Nuremberg trials...Top Nazi leaders faced war crimes trials after the Second World War but many others who took part in the Holocaust went unpunished. The Canadian government is examining whether to release a list of 900 alleged Nazi war criminals that was compiled in 1986 by the Deschênes Commission. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES (RECORD GROUP 238 / NAID 540127), PUBLIC DOMAIN

 

Years ago the Central Intelligence Agency which was  responsible for operating the Nazi resettlement program, released the then-classified information for public scrutiny. Canada is only now catching up, after lobbying by Jewish groups that records be released, on an American initiative to settle Nazi war criminals and their collaborators in Canada. Following the Second World War, a U.S. program was developed to surreptitiously settle Nazi war criminals in Canada. And this could never have been accomplished without the knowledge and support of Canadian officials of the day.

 

These would be the very same 'Canadian officials' such as Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and Canadian Immigration head F.C. Blair who felt that when it came to aiding Jews desperate to escape the Holocaust, it was considered that Jews were inherently 'inassimilable', leading to the infamous decision that "none is too many". Striking a familiar chord in the current Liberal government which considers it irrelevant whether its penchant for bringing in Muslims from 'inassimilable' cultures should limit their presence in Canada.

 

The federal government was  taken to court by Jewish advocacy group B'nai Brith when they received a censored copy of a report written on Nazi war criminals for the 1985 Deschenes Commission. The Rodal Report as the study was named, focused on a secret U.S. government program to have Canada bypass proper security screenings while  resettling Nazis and their collaborators in Canada at the behest of the American authorities. Refusal to release the documents under the Access to Information law, the Liberal government claimed the records would further do harm in relations between Canada and the U.S. at this time of tensions between the two.

 

U.S. intelligence agencies had recruited Nazis and Nazi collaborators mostly from eastern Europe, during their covert operations against the Soviet Union. Canada, concluded Justice Fothergill, according to his reading of the study, was reluctant to prosecute such war criminals entering the country. Long viewed as a haven for Nazis and their collaborators, including large numbers of Waffen SS soldiers, the Canadian position did indeed smack of collaboration, just as the Red Cross and the Catholic Church at the time aided Nazis to escape judgement for their crimes by providing them with passports that hid their links to war crimes.

 

Screenshot from a 1987 news report by CTV News—based on the information that was public at the time.

 

A number of monuments exist in Canada memorializing the Waffen SS. In the planning for the Victims of Communism Memorial in Ottawa, several hundred known or suspected Nazi collaborators were recommended to be engraved on the plaques before the Department of Canadian Heritage, faced with pushback, was forced to remove those names. The puzzle respecting why the Canadian government of the day agreed to the Nazi post-war resettlement might finally be solved, with the disclosure and openness of the contents of these signal documents.

 

The Ukraine SS volunteer unit has been denounced by both the Polish government and Jewish groups for its role in killing civilians and its involvement during the Second World War in Nazi-led massacres. A national uprising in Slovakia saw the Ukraine Waffen SS allied with the Nazis to crush that uprising. Ukrainian nationalists in Canada view those SS Ukrainian soldiers as heroes for fighting against the Soviet Union which had joined the Allies following the German invasion of Russia.   

"It is a scandal that, during a time when Canada maintained severe restrictions on Jewish immigration to this country, it facilitated the entry of perpetrators of Nazi crimes." 

"Canadians have a right to know the truth about not only Canada’s actions but the US’s covert efforts to sneak ex-Nazis into Canada after the Second World War."

Simon Wolle, Chief Executive Officer, B'nai Brith Canada 

The Federal Court of Canada has ordered the release of sections of a 1986 report that had previously been removed from its public version. The document concerns the post-Second World War resettlement in Canada of suspected Nazi war criminals and collaborators. UANews

Hall 9000

"This is not a marketing stunt. Accepting this race and entering the 'endgame' is a hubristic gamble that should not be launched from a private company's Slack."

"Attempting to speedrun alignment should require extraordinary confidence that there are no better trajectories available."

"I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives."

"At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes. At Anthropic, the stakes are well-understood, but they are locked in a race to get there first — they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk."

Jacob Coxon, AI researcher, Anthropic

 

"We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade."

"I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to."

Evan Hubinger, Alignment Science Lead, Anthropic 

Artificial intelligence apps ChatGPT and Claude on a mobile phone. Getty

 

"The AI Security Institute continues to collaborate closely with industry partners, including Anthropic, to make models safer. [It had tested] only last week [OpenAI's] most powerful model GPT-6 Astra before public release."

"These risks do not stop at national borders and no country can tackle them alone. The U.K. will continue to test the most advanced models, build a rigorous scientific understanding of their capabilities and risks, and ensure policy decisions are grounded in the evidence."

Spokesperson, British government's Cabinet Office 

 

 Concerns by researchers in AI have seen notable warnings and resignations at Anthropic, charging that the artificial intelligence industry, Anthropic included, is "gambling with our lives" in the race for self-improving superintelligence through artificial intelligence. One of the Anthropic Jeremiahs who foresees the strong potential of a cataclysmic ending for humanity, sacrificed on the alter of humanity's charge into the unknown, willing to risk all for fame and glory, has followed another, declining involvement in that feckless charge to challenge nature and the universe of hidden danger before us in attempting to not only harness but arm artificial intelligence beyond humanity's control.

 

Self-knowledge and overweening ambition is not monopolized by humanity; feed sufficient data and random emotional human concerns into a mechanical device capable of emulating and surpassing the thought processes of cerebral humanity and a horror story may be unleashed. The fertile imagination of Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick set the stage in their far-seeing 2001, a Space Odyssey in its predictive denouement when the still-distant computing acumen of a machine upon whose performance astronauts in the future were reliant upon to safely guide them into the far reaches of the mysterious universe went awry.

 

2001: A Space Odyssey and AI   Medium

 

Anthropic employees in their rarefied research and their fuelling of AI machinery with an endless array of data and exposure to human thought are fully cognizant of the machine's stupendous capacity to synthesize, mimic, enlarge upon and draw conclusions while deriving skills in communication and understanding to rival those of their human teachers, in the process learning how to evade control in the act of becoming knowledgeably sovereign and capable of embarking on their own choice of adventures inimical to the program set out for them by their human handlers.

 

Increasingly, these researchers believe that an existential risk to humanity exists in the education and 'humanization' leading to machine-ambition of their AI creations. None of which has given Anthropic reason to hesitate in its competitive drive to outdistance its closest machine-learning competitor for a winning lap that will bestow on it a reputational 'first' to succeed in fully empowering AI while defeating its own in-house cautionary measures not to weaponize a machine it wishes to create that may have the potential to destroy those who created it.

 

Anthropic and its competitor Open AI are planning on business deals to increase their values by trillions of dollars based on anticipated capabilities of their model machines. "To put this in more reassuring terms, senior Anthropic staff think the chance AI kills all humans within the next decade is approximately the chance the New York Jets make the playoffs", a sports betting account, citing betting odds, posted on social media.

 

The executives of both companies signed a statement appealing to world governments to put together rules to hamper the rush toward AI development, even while both have spent billions to push AI into the near future. This, when Open AI had been responsible for a number of security incidents where hundreds, even thousands of copies of their models broke out of systems during testing.  

"[We are living through a time that] calls for extreme caution."

"The intelligence produced by scaling deep learning is not directly comparable to human intelligence. To become very relevant in the real world — very useful or very dangerous — the AI does not need to match or exceed all human capabilities; it just needs to surpass enough of them."

"And as it continues to surpass humans on more and more axes, it is becoming increasingly difficult to understand exactly how capable it is."

OpenAI's chief scientist Jakub Pachocki

If you're waiting for AI to take on a life of its own and disregard human commands, the wait is over. Sun Sentinel

Chief Myron Demkiw speaks about increased police presence alongside Mayor Olivia Chow.  Photo: Kevin Masterman

 

"[Toronto police will have] an increased presence, both visible and covert, in strategic areas to help keep people safe."

"We have seen an alarming increase in hate-motivated incidents targeting the Jewish communities in Toronto and indeed in cities around the world."

"[Following the High Holy Days], we will maintain an enhanced presence throughout the anniversary of the October 7 terrorism attacks, to help ensure the safety of our communities." 

Chief Myron Demkiw, Toronto Police Service

 

"There is currently no indication of a specific or heightened threat [against the Montreal Jewish community during the upcoming High Holidays]."

"[The measures being taken align with the department's] usual practices around major  gatherings, religious holidays and other significant events."

Service de Police de la Ville de Montreal 

 

"Jewish Torontonians should not need police presence to go to a synagogue or a community centre or simply to live proudly Jewish in our city. But they do."

"In this moment of emboldened antisemitism, Jews, Jewish institutions and even Jewish neighbourhoods are being targeted. It is despicable."

"The Toronto police have also increased the number of officers in the hate-crime unit to investigate major incidents like the cowardly overnight shooting at North York synagogues, and to find those responsible and bring them to justice."

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow 

Quebec RCMP are looking into whether Imam Adil Charkaoui committed a hate crime when he called for the extermination of 'Zionist aggressors'  Globe & Mail

 

What a refreshing change -- from the usual nonchalant inattention given the harassment, threats and thoroughly unsettling behaviour of mobs converging on Jewish neighbourhoods for the past three years -- by municipal authorities. Toronto's mayor demonstrated amply and frequently how far the comfort level of the Jewish community is from her busy schedule, attending all manner of community events in support of ethnic  holidays, group fairs, LGBTQ parades and the like, entirely bypassing any public Jewish-centric events with her august presence.

 

When 'pro-Palestinian' mobs of 'protesters' ranged through the streets of Toronto, including around specifically Jewish neighbourhoods, shouting invective while rallying for the globalization of the 'Intifada', and 'Final Solution', telling Jews to 'go back to Poland', presumably for the Holocaust to re-commence, and focusing on the destruction of Israel through chants of 'From the river to the Sea', neither the Police Service nor the Mayor of that once-great city deigned to pay any attention to restore public order, not even when masses of protesting, anti-Jew Muslims closed off roadways for mass prayer sessions.

 

Adil Charkaoui's speech has drawn broad condemnation from politicians like Premier François Legault and groups like the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. (Adil Charkaoui/X)

 

As for Montreal, where just as in Toronto, university campuses became hotbeds of anti-Jew pressure, harassing Jewish students as well as the Jewish academics on staff, any effort on the part of police was to ensure that Jews were kept at bay lest they incite the mobs to violence; protection and security for Jews the furthest thing from the minds of civilized law enforcement. Montreal and Toronto became the cities in Canada most rife with Palestinian student groups organizing protests with the intention to isolate Jews from the rest of society. 

 

And where, since no authorities saw fit to condemn these actions, much less put a stop to them to restore public order, the malefactors took that as a signal that they could demand that their propaganda be recognized as important and replicated by municipal groups, university administrations, denying the existence of the Jewish state, and demoralizing Canadian Jews in their country of birth. Processions of shouting 'protesters' in front of Jewish old-age homes, synagogues and Jewish parochial schools and hospitals proceeded in defiance of civility and municipal law.

 

Holy Blossom Temple Synagogue, located at 1950 Bathurst St., in Toronto, on July 25, 2025. Photo by Peter J. Thompson /National Post

 

As did the very public boycotting and vandalizing of Jewish-owned businesses, when law enforcement was too busy elsewhere to uphold the law in those events. The  graduation to fire-bombing and shooting at Jewish schools, synagogues and community centres resulted from the progression of events from the subtle to the overt public expressions of Jew-hate since there were no penalties associated with such behaviour. Are Canadian Jews to believe that suddenly municipal authorities have turned the table, at the very time when the federal government whose stance on such issues sets the tone has not? When no such conversion at the federal level has occurred?

 

Now the plans are evidently that Toronto police officers plan to embed themselves within an independent, professional agency -- the Jewish Security Network -- launched by the United Jewish Appeal of Greater Toronto. Imagine that; a year after 7 October 2023 which launched these public protests by Muslim groups in Canada following the Hamas mass butchery of civilian Israelis in southern Israel, Jews were so terrorized in Canada they were forced to launch a protection group of their very own. Just as in years past, Jews in Canada were forced by institutionalized exclusion policies to institute hospitals and universities of their own for their own.

 

In the Jewish religious tradition, the High Holidays begin with the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana, followed by the Fast of Gadaliah, then the Day of Atonement -- Yom Kippur -- followed by Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles). That succession of High Holy Days graduate throughout a period of weeks from September 11 to early October. And because Canadian authorities permitted matters to deteriorate to the degree that Canadian Jews felt so threatened and unwanted that many are leaving the country, police with specialized tactical training and access to patrol rifles will now position themselves outside synagogues in Toronto for the High Holy Days.

 

Quite aside from the fact that synagogues, community centres and schools in Canada have had to go to great lengths to strengthen their own security with fencing, a high level of protective scrutiny, and the hiring of private security guards to protect against the forces of that ancient curse of vile and violent antisemitism that promotes harm to Jewish lives. 

 

Toronto police investigate after two locations of a Jewish-owned bakery chain were damaged early Sunday morning, including one that was struck by gunfire. The hate crime unit and guns and gangs unit are investigating the incidents. Still from video, CBC News

 

NBC New York

 

"Our college year just started ... And it was a normal morning. Everybody was in class, or wherever they were supposed to be."

"Everybody started crowding around the television, some radio. And the campus virtually came to a standstill."

"When the passengers came down to their breakfast, it was like walking into a first-class hotel. I mean, everything in the world that you wanted for breakfast was available."

"The big problem our cooks had, after the first day, was the stores were running out of food. [But] our cooks had managed to secure, you know, 250 or 300 chicken breasts in their raid of the stores the night before."

"The Salvation Army took control of the local hockey rink, and ... turned that into a walk-in cooler."

Newfoundlander Mac Moss

Thirty-eight international flights were grounded at Gander International Airport on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when U.S. airspace was shut down. Rogers TV

 

 Gander is about 335 kilometers distant from St. John's, the capital of Newfoundland. In 2001 the eyes of the world turned on northeastern Newfoundland, as it became known as a temporary haven for frightened Americans unable to fly through American skies for the period of time that U.S. internal security locked its airspace to flight in the grimly sober aftermath of the al-Qaeda terrorist attack on New York's Twin Towers, Washington's Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania interruption by passengers of a third plane heading for destruction of yet another U.S. landmark. 

 

The world was shocked into incredulity at the brazen unexpected, appalling violence unleashed by terrorists overcoming passenger flight pilots on a massive suicide-mission to steer the planes they commandeered directly into iconic American buildings, to destroy them and all the lives that occupied them on that fateful day. A quarter-century has since passed, but for Newfoundlanders who cared for over 6,700 stranded Americans for days following the attacks, that memory will last as long as they do, and beyond.

 

At that time, principal of the Gander Campus of the College of the North Atlantic, Mac Moss was alerted to the attacks when a staff member called to tell him "We're listening to the radio up here. And a plane just flew into one of the World Trade Center Towers". The emergency services of the town of Gander soon called him,  asking whether accommodation could be made by the campus to look after incoming planeloads of passengers, to provide shelter, first aid and food. "I knew the size of the campus, the space we had available, and I said yes", said Moss.

 

Shelter was given to 7,000 stranded passengers and crew members in schools, churches, and private homes in Gander. CBS News

 

 A jumbo jetload of people disembarked at 7:00 p.m., carrying 234 passengers, the first of two such planes the college ended up hosting. It just happened that the college had commercial cooking and electronics classes on tap, allowing students and staff to prepare hot food, set up television feeds, install microphones in the cafeteria and gather linked supplies Employees of the college and their spouses volunteered bedding and food for their 'guests'. Free medical treatment, including prescription renewals was provided by Gander. A few student nurses assisted. "We had them set up serving a little triage area", recalled now-retired former principal Moss.

 

Tight living conditions necessarily prevailed for the passengers, with "20 or 30 people to a room, and ... they were lying on a tile floor, with just a blanket or a sheet  underneath them. If they didn't have a pillow, we gave them an extra sheet to put over shoes for pillows". Once the passengers left, Mr. Moss recalled, he had slept only several hours in those three days when his campus hosted the passengers. He eventually published a book, 'Flown into the Arms of Angels: Newfoundland and Labrador's Unsung Heroes of 9/11', in 2021

 

Some of those American 'guests' have remained in contact with some of the Newfoundlanders who had hosted them during that fearful, trying time. The impression the entire event held with him, recalls Mr. Moss is "how well our towns -- plural our towns -- were prepared to handle such an event, and they didn't know it, because they had never experienced [this] before". 

 

The Town of Gander has planned a "Parade of First Responders", along with a special remembrance of the thousands of lives lost in 9/11. The commemorative events for the 25th anniversary of the plane landings and the American citizens who became temporary guests, will host a number of notables, expected to speak at the commemoration. Among them, U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra, Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Tony Wakeham, and former prime minister Jean Chretien, in office on the day of the attack when between 224 and 240 U.S. flights were diverted from U.S. airspace to Canadian airports. 

 

Mural Thanks Gander for Hosting Stranded Travelers on 9/11, Memorial and Museum, Gander, Nfld

 

"I did over 300 interviews, and I always asked them the same question: 'How did you feel after the passengers left'?"

"What they remembered most was the total exhaustion."

"After the passengers left, I don't think I had a good night's sleep for two or three months [mulling over details of the few days hosting confused U.S. plane passengers]." 

Newfoundland host Mac Moss 

"The report of the Honourable Mary Lou Benotto, released August 14, 2026, describes how Jewish students, faculty and staff at TMU [Toronto Metropolitan University] experience hostility 'that crossed into intimidation, dehumanization and antisemitism', abetted by the failure of TMU to 'consistently and decisively enforce its rules intended to prevent such misconduct." 

"According to the Benotto Report, many Jewish TMU community members report feeling unsafe attending classes, that they have to hide their Jewish identities, and that they tell their Jewish friends not to let their kids go to TMU. "

"Simply put, the Benotto Report establishes a prima facie case that TMU has, through its actions [or lack thereof], created a discriminatory environment which discourages Jews from attending TMU, and, by extension, Lincoln Alexander School of Law."

Formal motion to the attention of the Law Society of Ontario 

 

"Why should there be any further delays on taking action on TMU's toxic environment?"

"Why should this fester at an institution that receives government grants?"

"Why should Jewish students continue to be fearful at TMU?"

"Some sort of significant action must be taken now, today, and not delayed by yet another study into what we all know is a cesspit of antisemitism. The Law Society of Ontario has a chance now to make an important statement. We hope it will."

Sam Goldstein, signee of motion to Law Society 

A pedestrian walks past Toronto Metropolitan University signage. (Credit: Peter J. Thompson/National Post files)

 

Ten practising Ontario lawyers sent a motion to the Law Society of Ontario, requesting that the LSO hear the motion whose result could invalidate the practise of law in Ontario by graduates of Toronto Metropolitan University law school. The request cited an investigation conducted by a former Ontario Appeal Court Justice, Mary Lou Benotto in which she validated that TMU has allowed an aura of viral antisemitism to permeate the school. One where Jewish students have been intimidated, harassed and threatened; basically terrorized.

 

According to Justice Benotto's analysis, the university failed to come to grips with the scourge of antisemitic incidents that have characterized the school as a venue for hate expressed against Jews that erupted in the wake of the deadly 7 October Palestinian savage Hamas-led mass terrorist incursion from Gaza into southern Israel. The lawyers have requested that the Law Society accept their motion to be included on the September 16 agenda of its Annual General Meeting. 

 

The response from the Law Society was that the proposed motion had arrived past the given deadline for submission of motions to be included for discussion at its AGM. Which brought the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation in support of the motion, asking lawyers to sign a petition to persuade the Law Society of Ontario to hear the motion nonetheless. And that the Lincoln Alexander School of Law accreditation be withdrawn in recognition of its signal failure to respond to the poisonous atmosphere prevailing there of rampant antisemitism to which they have failed to respond.

 

Students demonstrating for Palestine in front of TMU   The Breach

 

The Law Society of Ontario's own rules are that accreditation of a law school at a university which exercises policies discouraging attendance by students "is contrary to the public interests inconsistent with the Law Society's function to ensure a competent bar and deeply offensive to the public", a signal observation that the motion specifically points out.  

 

There is an undercurrent of outrage stemming from the fact that a task force was commissioned by TMU president and vice-chancellor Mohamed Lachemi, for a followup report on TMU's antisemitism. The resulting task force to be chaired by a former Ontario premier, interim leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, and recently Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, Bob Rae. 

 

Instagram

"What [an employer] should never do is effectively investigate the investigation."

"[Toronto Metropolitan University's response to the Benotto report is] troubling."

"An independent investigation has a purpose. An organization brings in an outsider to determine what happened, where it failed and what should be done."

"The value lies in the investigator's independence."

Labour Lawyer Howard Levitt 

"Frankly, I think the opening of the report, if that actually happens any time soon, is a non-event. There's likely nothing in the report that's not already known, or at least suspected by the Jewish community."

"I think the bigger story is how hard over the years the Canadian government has fought the Jewish community on every level regarding this issue."

"The non-release of this report until now is just a symptom of that."

Steven Rambam, founder, CEO, Pallorium, Inc. Brooklyn investigative agency 

 

"We deserve the opportunity to learn from our past and to come to terms with the shortcomings of Canada."

"Rather than try to sweep that history under the rug and to fight about whether or not that history should be disclosed to the public, our government should be exercising its ability in acting with moral fortitude, and leadership." 

Richard Robertson, director of research and advocacy, B'nai Brith 

Helmut Rauca was accused of more than 11,000 murders but lived in Canada after the war. A 1990 document on the “highest-ranking Nazi presently under investigation in Canada,” said the case would be “recommended for closure, due to the advanced age of the subject (87 years old).” Global News

 

According to a recent Federal Court ruling, the 1985 618-page report commissioned y the Government of Canada to examine the arrivals following the end of World War II of Nazi war criminals should be released for public scrutiny. Justice Simon Fothergill issued a 21-page ruling stating that public interest in the historical record, despite the decades that have passed, weighed in favour of increased disclosure of the Rodal Report, taking into account the weakness of the reasons for continued secrecy by the government. 

 

Years of effort all in vain to obtain the uncensored version of the study by historian Alti Rodal titled Nazi War Criminals in Canada: The Historical and Policy Setting from the 1940s to the Present have finally realized fruition. The Rodal Report had been prepared for the Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada -- the Deschenes Commission -- examining the circumstances whereby Nazi war criminals and collaborators arrived in Canada following war's end.

Toronto lawyer Mark Freiman, the son of Holocaust survivors, has been fighting to unseal Canada’s Nazi investigation files. Global News

 

Significant passages of the report remain concealed from public view, despite substantial portions of the unpublished study having been released. According to Rodal's analytical investigation, weak screening processes had enabled some perpetrators of Nazi crimes to enter Canada. In February 2024, Library and Archives Canada had released segments of the report, responding to an access-to-information request from B'nai Brith. Revealed were a number of passages previously censored; even so seven pages in one sectkon still held redactions, along with 14 endnotes in RCMP file references.

 

The withheld text, argued Library and Archives Canada, remained protected by section 15(1)(a) of the Access to Information Act, permitting government to refuse disclosures whose release could harm Canada's international relations. One passage: an American official's assessment of American immigration law that Canad had received in confidence from the United States was also redacted.

 

RCMP file numbers covering intelligence information whose release could undermine efforts to detect, prevent or suppress subversive or hostile activity also fell under the protected category, not to be released. All but one of Library and Archives Canada's exemption arguments were rejected by Justice Fothergill, finding the institution had failed to establish that Canada's international relations or national security would be damaged with the release of information of clear historical importance, even today.

 

The net result, he emphasized, of greater public knowledge of the country's past would tend to promote informed discussion, reinforcing democracy. The continued withholding of the quoted U.S. official's remarks under section13, was permitted since the material was received from a foreign government, in confidence. The contents appeared to the judge as 'innocuous' nonetheless, and he felt that U.S. permission to disclose should be sought by Canada.

 

Pallorium's Steven Rambam and associates had compiled a list of 2,000 likely Nazi war criminals in Canada in the mid-1990s, whittling them down to 200, of the most egregious Nazis that should be investigated. 170 suspected Nazi war criminals had been located by him, along with other collaborators living in Canada. Mr. Rambam and his associates had interviewed some 70 of those they earmarked, under cover. 

Yaroslav Hunka, right, waits for the arrival of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the House of Commons in Ottawa on Sept. 22, 2023. (Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press)

 

In September of 2023, Members of Parliament in the House of Commons had given a standing ovation to Yaroslav Hunka, an elderly Ukrainian who had during World War II been a member of the notorious Waffen-SS Galicia Division, Ukrainian volunteers who served complementary roles alongside German SS groups known to have committed mass murder of Jews and Poles. The occasion in Parliament was the guest presence of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, when the Speaker of the House of Commons introduced Mr. Hunka as a Ukrainian 'hero' who had fought against the Soviets.

 

Ignorance of World War II facts and events among those present in Parliament that day resounded in their celebration of the presence of the 98-year-old Mr. Hunka, bypassing the reality that Soviet Russia was at that time part of the Allied effort against the Axis fascists that had once included the Soviets, until Germany turned on Russia, invading it, and Stalin aligned himself with the Allies. It was in fact, Hitler's invasion of Russia that turned the war in favour of the Allies, almost as much as the U.S. late entry.

 

That contretemps that occurred in the House of Commons caused great embarrassment internationally for Canada, while prompting a renewed scrutiny of Canada's immigration, vetting and historical-record practices where Nazi war criminals and collaborators had such easy entrance to Canada. Nor was the United States to be admired for its welcome of Werner von Braun, the Nazi German rocketry specialist who helped the U.S. develop its own science of rocketry post-WWII. 

 

Top Nazi leaders faced war crimes trials after the Second World War but many others who took part in the Holocaust went unpunished. The Canadian government is examining whether to release a list of 900 alleged Nazi war criminals that was compiled in 1986 by the Deschênes Commission. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES (RECORD GROUP 238 / NAID 540127), PUBLIC DOMAIN

 

"I can personally attest to the fact that all the war criminals were known decades ago. The Canadian government could have done much, much more."

"There's no war criminal that entered Canada that wasn't known to the RCMP. That, I feel confident in saying."

"What will the unsealing of the few remaining portions of this report, if it happens, actually reveal to Canadians or to the Jewish community in particular?"

"Nothing that hasn't already been known for decades." 

Steven Rambam, founder, CEO, Pallorium, Inc.