The AGO would have been swarmed with pro-Palestinian protesters even if Trudeau had just dropped by to see the Keith Haring exhibition
I realized something interesting over the weekend as I watched International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen try in vain, like a bewildered tourist, to find a way to enter the Art Gallery of Ontario. Hussen, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the great-and-good of Italian-Canadian society were to fete visiting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the AGO, but a few dozen pro-Palestinian supporters managed to block the entrances enough to scupper the whole event.
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What I realized was that even after a solid decade, at least, of considering Canada’s politics and many of its institutions fundamentally and possibly irredeemably unserious — from our Supreme Court to our National Hockey League franchises — I was still capable of being embarrassed on my country’s behalf.
Meloni is a G7 leader. We should be able to host a dinner for her without risk of it being shut down by a few dozen people protesting something that has next-to-nothing to do with Canada or Italy. Other G7 leaders might reasonably argue that’s something like a prerequisite for membership.
“At least it was only Italy,” I found myself chuckling ruefully. And Meloni specifically is not my cup of coffee, with her record of flattering Italian history’s fascists and her antediluvian attitudes towards same-sex unions and parenting. Were Meloni not a current G7 leader, she’s the sort of politician Liberals would excoriate Stephen Harper for shaking hands with, never mind throwing her an arty shindig.
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But that’s false comfort, of course. Canada, a tumbleweed nation in the desert of world affairs, can’t afford to make such judgments about more important, more serious countries like Italy. And just about any world leader heading to the AGO on Saturday night, save perhaps the leaders of Hamas itself, would have faced the same basic situation. Trudeau is worthy of cancellation all by himself, by the protesters’ logic, on account of his quixotic, semi-consistent insistence that Israel has a right to exist.
The Toronto Police Service (TPS) says it did not advise Trudeau to cancel the event. The TPS says many attendees were already inside, and that it had guaranteed VIPs safe passage through the fray. It’s tough to know what to make of that, but if you were the prime minister’s security detail — any prime minister’s, I mean — would you trust today’s TPS to play any role in his or her safety? I sure wouldn’t.
On Saturday, at a protest outside a synagogue north of Toronto, a woman was caught dead to rights, on video, striking a York Regional Police officer. She was apprehended by said police officer and other police officers, which I think we can all agree is a reasonable and predictable response to striking a police officer … but then the assembled chanting rabble convinced the police to let her go.
I carry no water for police in general, or Toronto’s or Ontario’s in particular. I have, though, defended their general commitment to de-escalating rather than cracking down on potentially violent situations. But that particular catch-and-release scenario was wince-inducing. At the end of the day, none of us wants a police force that can be literally harangued into letting stuff slide.
For many conservative-minded Canadians, Saturday’s abject capitulation to the rabble was a notable data point in an already well-established narrative about the pro-Palestinian protesters, about policing, about the general decline of Canada under Trudeau. I feel that here more than I usually do. But Trudeau doesn’t control Ontario’s famously hands-off police forces. Premier Doug Ford does that, to the alarmingly limited extent any politician does, but the peculiar nature of Canadian politics and media means he never has to answer for it.
My biggest takeaway from this latest humiliation is a bit different. It’s this: How could Trudeau and his office possibly have foreseen any other outcome? The AGO would have been swarmed with pro-Palestinian protesters even if Trudeau had just dropped by to see the Keith Haring exhibit. Had Hamas not massacred 1,200 people on Oct. 7 last year, triggering a predictably remorseless response from Israel, self-styled anti-fascists would probably have shown up to protest Meloni’s presence. And the only predictable response from Toronto police would have been to let them shut down the event. That’s what they do.
How utterly out of touch does a prime minister, and the people around him, have to be to have thought this would go off without a hitch?
National Post
cselley@postmedia.com
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