Achi news desk-
Montreal MP Anthony Hauspater said Friday he will remain on the Liberal caucus, despite the intense anger he still feels over a motion passed by the House of Representatives last month.
The House Speaker has been pondering his next steps since the NDP-sponsored motion on the Israel-Hamas conflict passed with significant Liberal amendments on March 18.
“The adoption of the proposal and all the events leading up to it angered me as much as they angered most of the Jewish Canadians I interacted with,” Beit Av said in a written statement late Friday afternoon.
“But I also know that my core values ​​remain Liberal and after serious reflection I believe that my greatest value to Canadians is to remain on the committee to support the mainstream classical Liberal Party that I believe in.”
The head of the house said that he had had long talks with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in recent days and discussed what he called “a massive problem of anti-Semitism right now in Canada” and what the federal government should do to combat it.
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“There is no more important issue for the Jewish community at this point,” he said. “This problem needs to be addressed now.”
He said Trudeau asked him to work with him directly to address the problem, including regarding policing, anti-Semitism on university campuses and creating safe zones between protests and community buildings.
Trudeau’s office said that the prime minister has no statement on the decision of the leader of the House.
The Israel-Hamas conflict will reach six months on Sunday.
The leader of the House, who is Jewish, was among the most vocal MPs to condemn the pro-Palestinian protests, saying the protesters intimidated Canadian Jews and implied they were responsible for the actions of the Israeli government.
The original motion put forward by NDP MP Heather McPherson included a demand for Canada to “formally recognize the state of Palestine,” but did not contextualize it as part of a broader call for progress toward a two-state solution.
The father of the house, along with most major Canadian Jewish organizations, criticized the proposal as one-sided, saying it would reward Hamas for the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the conflict.
The NDP proposal has caused significant division among government MPs, even as high-level Liberals rewrote its wording with the New Democrats behind the scenes.
The government eventually proposed 14 key amendments, and all but three Liberal MPs, including the House Speaker, voted in favor. The conservatives voted against.
The final proposal was very close to Canada’s existing Middle East policy. It recognized a Palestinian state as part of the two-state solution within the Middle East peace process.
It also added language calling on Hamas to lay down its weapons, identifying it as a Canadian-registered terrorist organization and replacing language calling on Ottawa to “suspend all” military goods and technology with Israel with a paragraph calling on Canada to stop approving the transfer of “arms exports” to Israel.
The House leader said the revised proposal was better, but he still could not support it, and he expressed dismay that there was no time to discuss the last-minute changes.
He said he would have preferred the government to vote on what he called a flawed NDP proposal and simply introduce its own version later.
The House leader said that over the past two weeks he has heard from thousands of people, inside and outside his riding, and he knows his concerns about the proposal are “widely shared.”
But remaining on the committee allows him to continue advocating for the things he chose to defend, he said, including the Bill of Rights and Freedoms, fiscal prudence, a principled foreign policy and a properly funded military.
© 2024 The Canadian Press
