Open Letter #3 to Leslie Church, MP Toronto-St. Paul’s |
As you know, I first wrote to you on June 2, 2025, in the days following your election as Liberal Member of Parliament for Toronto–St. Paul’s. In that letter, I did what newly elected representatives often invite their constituents to do: I introduced myself, congratulated you on your victory, and then told you plainly that I had not voted for you, but that I nevertheless hoped — and expected — that you would represent me and thousands of other St. Paul’s residents among whose paramount political concerns today are the rising forces aligned against the democratic Jewish state of Israel and what had been, until very recently, a flourishing Jewish community in Canada.
I recalled for you my long years of support for your parliamentary predecessor, Dr. Carolyn Bennett, who, though not Jewish herself, became one of the Jewish community’s staunchest political allies in Ottawa: chairing the Canada–Israel Parliamentary Friendship Group, leading delegations to Israel during the Second Intifada and the 2014 Gaza war, and serving as part of the Liberal Parliamentarians for Israel. My question to you then was simple but not easy: would you walk in Carolyn’s footsteps and be, from your seat in the Liberal caucus, a clear, principled voice for Israel’s right to exist and defend itself, and for the right of Canadian Jews to live openly as Jews and as Zionists without fear? Or would you be swept along by the growing influence of MPs from ridings where strident anti-Israel and anti-Zionist sentiment had become a powerful force in Liberal politics?
I pointed out the inconvenient and almost unspeakable political truth: that Toronto-St. Paul’s is one of only five electoral districts, among Canada’s 343 ridings, in which Jewish voters constitute at least 10% of the electorate, as opposed to the 24 ridings in which newly arrived Muslim Canadians constitute at least 10% of the electorate. A number of these ridings have elected Liberal MPs openly hostile to Israel, and to the Jewish Canadians who in their overwhelming majority support Israel. Therefore I suggested that as MP for Toronto-St. Paul’s you bore a certain responsibility to stand up for the Jewish community in a way that MPs from other ridings are not required. That first letter was not just about policy; it was about whether Jews in Canada, who once felt themselves a respected minority, could still trust the Liberal Party as a political home, or even as a reliable defender of their basic civil rights.
We met in your constituency office on July 10, 2025, and I deeply valued the opportunity to speak with you face to face. It was, genuinely, a good meeting.........