"It was brutal, and a real shock to see firsthand, these glass doors and windows shattered, and glass laying all over the place."

"The most heartbreaking part of all? Most of the response was, not feeling surprised. They told me: 'We believed we were respected and admired, and we believed people wanted us here, and this is what it's come to."

"I believe that any one of our citizens, any one of our residents who is under pressure and beleaguered and targeted consistently deserves to have support and protection."

"I want to remind everyone that they're not alone. These are words I've said so many times now since October 7, 2023."

"I think the first and most important thing is that I've tried, and my colleagues have tried to be there, to show up, to show solidarity and to deliver a consistent message from October 7, all the way through."

"We are only one part of the solution, and we do need the other levels of government to step up and respond in a similar fashion. And they haven't always done it. They certainly haven't done it consistently."

Vaughan Mayor Steven Del Duca

Vaughan Mayor Steven Del Duca in Vaughan, Ontario.  Photo by Ernest Doroszuk,Toronto Sun 

 

The mayor of Vaughan, a suburb of the City of Toronto, spoke before a congregation of hundreds of Jewish residents in the wake of a targeted gunfire attack at the Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto synagogue. At the sanctuary podium the mayor explained what had happened to Jewish worshippers who had arrived that morning, not knowing that their synagogue had been sprayed by bullets in the earlier morning hours. 

 

This, at a time when another synagogue in Toronto, Shaarei Shomayim, was also that very same evening hit by bullets, following an earlier March 2nd attack on Toronto's Temple Emanu El synagogue. In the city of Vaughn with its 350,000 population, 15,000 identify as people of the Jewish faith. The city of Vaughn, in complete contrast to Toronto, had held a city hall vigil for the two Bibas family infants murdered in Hamas custody along with their mother. 

 

The Canadian flag flew at half-mast following the October 7 massacre in Israel. Mayor Del Duca's municipality was the first in the country to introduce a "Bubble Zone" bylaw that prohibits demonstrations from taking place within 100 metres of a place of worship, hospitals and daycare facilities. A result of two back-to-back "large scale" synagogue protests that took place in 2024, described by the mayor as "really ugly". 

 

People carry a Palestinian flag during a rally in front of City Hall in Toronto, Ontario, Canada October 9, 2023.   (photo credit: REUTERS/Kyaw Soe Oo)

 

Mayor Del Duca sent a message to the federal government where he called for "more action coming from the federal government", giving special mention to former and present prime ministers of  Canada, Justin Trudeau and his successor Mark Carney, neither of whom have exerted themselves to use existing laws under the Criminal Code to take steps to ensure the safety and security of Canadian Jews against a flood of 'pro-Palestinian', 'pro-Hamas' organized hate fests threatening the existence of the state of Israel and by extension Jews everywhere as they called to 'globalize the Intifada' and for that infamous 'Final Solution'. 

 

The Canada of their birth, the Canada of not so long ago is no longer the Canada that people of Jewish origin who are Canadian citizens recognize and love. This very Liberal party that has governed the country for over a decade is responsible for an influx of immigrants, refugees and migrants from the Middle East and North Africa bringing with them their customs and values, their history and religious devotion, their customs and laws utterly at variance with those of Canada itself. And among those customs is a rabid form of Jew-hate that festers and boils over into the wider Canadian society.

 

The Canadian government that engineered this wholesale change in the meaning of Canadian identity and values under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has chosen to abrogate its primary duties of equality and justice in the greater interests of garnering votes among a now-large demographic against a far more modest-in-number group that has been left to its own devices to shelter itself from raging discrimination, racism, threats and violence. The Canada so beloved of its Jewish population has vanished.

 

As anti-Israel protesters resort to antisemitic taunts and display blatantly antisemitic signs in a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood, police say they will “consult” the attorney general about potential “promotion of hatred” offences. Juno News

 

"I want to make it clear: this can't be the occasional social media post: but through your language through your internal meetings with law enforcement, with intelligence officials. You make it abundantly clear that this can't happen, and it's got to stop."

"And you give directions to your ministers, whether it's your minister of public safety or your minister of justice and the attorney general of Canada, whoever it happens to be."

"You have these discussions at cabinet and in caucus, and you make it crystal clear, including to your caucus members. And you tell us all the measures you're taking."

"I have yet to see that kind of forceful language or behaviour or policies being adopted. What I've heard, both informally and on the public record, is a lot of process talk."

"[Some Liberal Members of Parliament have] said absolutely outrageous things, and they are not in the least interested in protecting the Jewish community. A lot of officials on all levels [won't call out Jew-hatred in the] hope it all goes away [or that they are] too busy counting votes, rather than standing up for Canadian values."

"They seem to have lost the ability to make moral or ethical judgments."

"[It must be stated publicly that it's wrong to protest] fully masked, aggressive, and clearly trying to intimidate people, in an area that you happen to know is a largely Jewish neighbourhood. [A generation ago] this would not have been even questioned."

Vaughn Mayor Steven Del Duca