Evasion, erasure and protest: Advocates work to ensure Palestinian solidarity remains an election issue

 

More than 330 federal election candidates support a five-point Palestine-solidarity platform, but only five in Newfoundland and Labrador have signed on

With the Canadian federal election days away, the issue of Israel’s ongoing occupation and genocide in Palestine has indelibly shaped the backdrop of the campaign. While tariffs and economic issues have dominated much of the mainstream media coverage, human rights advocates have been hard at work trying to force candidates to address the issue of Palestine. 

On April 12, solidarity rallies were held across the country, including one on Parliament Hill described as “massive” by CTV News. Two weeks earlier, on March 27, charges were dropped against members of the ‘Indigo 11’, a group of protestors who defaced a Toronto Indigo Books outlet in November 2023, in protest over Indigo CEO Heather Reisman’s support for the Israeli military. The protestors were arrested at their homes in violent police raids that sparked controversy and condemnation and triggered an ongoing boycott of Indigo bookstores.

Other advocates have focused efforts on targeting federal election candidates. A group calling itself Vote Palestine issued a five-point Palestine-solidarity platform and asked candidates to sign on to it. The campaign has been endorsed by dozens of organizations, ranging from Toronto Jewish Families to the Canadian Federation of Students and the Canadian Union of Public Employees. To date over 330 candidates in the federal election have signed on to the platform, including at least 19 Liberals and hundreds of NDP candidates. No Conservatives have endorsed the platform.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, only five candidates have endorsed the platform. They include three New Democrats—Mary Shortall (St. John’s East), Sarah Parsons (Long Range Mountains), and Darian Vincent (Central Newfoundland)—and two Green Party candidates (Otis Crandell in St. John’s East and Kaelem Tingate in Cape Spear).

Yet the ongoing genocide in Palestine has been conspicuously absent from mainstream media coverage. “I don’t think the mainstream media has prioritized the question of Palestine,” says Heidi Matthews, a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School whose research focuses on international law. She takes this as a sign that issues of national concern are being increasingly interpreted in isolationist terms by Canadians. “It’s quite dangerous to think of Canadian concerns only in terms of what happens at home,” she warns.

“Newfoundland’s specific colonial history and sense of itself as a people that has often faced various forms of neglect or oppression within a broader federal context should actually be a really important reason why Newfoundlanders should want to reflect on Canada’s role—and by extension, the role of Newfoundland—in the violations happening in Gaza,” she says.  (more...)

Evasion, erasure and protest: Advocates work to ensure Palestinian solidarity remains an election issue