British Columbia’s Conservative leader, John Rustad, is calling for Premier David Eby to step down. The party also said that British Columbia’s Attorney General Niki Sharma’s lack of action is an unfair, politically motivated “double-standard” being applied by the NDP government on incidents of anti-Jewish hate speech and antisemitism.
“Attorney General Sharma has been missing-in-action on issues of antisemitism and Anti-Jewish hate,” said the Conservative Party of British Columbia in its press release posted to X on Thursday.
The call for resignation follows the revelation of rampant antisemitism within the NDP party exposed in a letter by MLA Selina Robinson to her former NDP colleagues.
Robinson was previously the postsecondary education minister but resigned at Eby’s request. The former minister is Jewish and had criticized the lack of Holocaust education among young people. The comments were subsequently condemned by anti-Israel activists who accused Robinson of anti-Palestinian racism.
Her constituency office was vandalized with antisemitic messages following the controversy. Some messages included “there is only one solution, intifada revolution,” “Zionism is Nazism,” “No Zionists aka Jewish supremacists, as our MLA.”
She told Eby that she didn’t want to resign but if he and the caucus wanted her to, she would not fight him on it.
Robinson’s letter called out several of her NDP colleagues for their apathy and lack of solidarity towards B.C.’s Jewish community and also for her colleague’s alleged antisemitism.
She had initially sent a group email to more than 35 MLAs, calling on them to join her in speaking at a vigil just days after the Oct. 7 attack. She received little response and said she was embarrassed at the turnout from her colleagues.
She highlighted in her letter that Aman Sign, the parliamentary secretary for the environment, and MLA Kartina Chen replied to her colleagues in the initial email chain. In their reply, they asked the government to make a public statement about the plight of Palestinians instead.
After watching Hamas terrorists celebrate the horrific murder of approximately 1,200 Jews, two of Robinson’s colleagues wanted to move quickly past what happened and “refocus government on a geopolitical conflict that has been going on for years,” she said.
“But it wasn’t their antisemitism that broke my heart. It was your silence to their antisemitism that hurt the most. Not a single one of you responded to their insensitive, disrespectful, and inappropriate email. No one. Your silence broke my heart that day. You abandoned me and my community that day,” she said.
Robinson said she plans on sitting as an independent in the B.C. legislature.
Conservative MLA Candidate for Victoria—Beacon Hill, Tim Thielmann, drafted a 26-page legal brief on the anti-Israel demonstrations taking place since the Oct. 7 massacres. Advanced copies have been provided to Police Chief Del Manek and Attorney General Sharma.
“The memo documents the ongoing violations of criminal laws by Victoria’s antisemitic extremists and the legal basis on which other blockades and hate speech have been successfully prosecuted,” said the Conservative Party of B.C.’s press release.
The documents included a decision from May 2023 from the B.C. Provincial Court, which upheld the constitutionality of RCMP arrests of old-growth protestors who had temporarily blocked traffic in Nanaimo.
In Victoria, anti-Israel demonstrators have marched through the streets illegally obstructing roads, praising Hamas, and shouting chants for “intifada,” according to the B.C. Conservative Party’s press release. No arrests have been made in relation to these protests. An anti-Israel demonstration in Vancouver last weekend blocked the Granville Street Bridge.
The B.C. Conservatives said that they have learned that Victoria’s Police Chief has, in a private meeting, pinned his department’s reluctance to make arrests on the unwillingness of Crown prosecutors to proceed with charges. The prosecutors report to the Attorney General.
The Conservatives said that they have been repeatedly calling on Premier Eby and Attorney General Sharma to act on extreme anti-Jewish hate speech by Victoria imam, Younus Kathrada, for months. Kathrada has called publicly for the “annihilation of the plunder Jews,” said the party.
Kathrada also praised Hamas martyrs and instructed children in his congregation to consider non-Muslims as the “enemies of Allah,” added the B.C. Conservatives’ press release.
Jewish leaders, Muslim leaders, and the public have all repeatedly denounced Kathrada since he began delivering hate sermons in 2018, but neither Sharma nor Eby have approved prosecutions during their respective terms, said the party.
“The Premier must resign,” concluded the party’s press release.
True North reached out to Premier David Eby and Attorney General Niki Sharma but received no response.
