Former Ajax mayor Steve Parish has been removed as the Ontario NDP candidate for Ajax, said NDP leader Andrea Horwath in a statement on Monday.
“The NDP’s vetting process gave us confidence that Mr. Parish does not hold antisemitic views,” said Horwath. “However, our party is committed to naming and correcting injustice, and vowing to do better — and as a candidate he has not met the mark.”
Horwath said Parish’s failure to denounce a decision to name a street in Ajax “after a high-ranking German officer in the Second World War” showed a failure to understand the harmfulness of the decision.
Horwath thanked NDP members, community members and Jewish leaders who met with her to discuss this issue. The NDP, she said, is committed to taking action to fight antisemitism.
“Our candidate team must be one that Ontario trusts to be leaders in the fight against antisemitism, and hate in all its forms — whether that’s in a synagogue in Texas or on the streets of Ottawa,” she said. “Today, that means acknowledging and apologizing for our own mistakes, committing to do better and moving forward.”
Jewish human rights organization B’nai Brith Canada thanked Horwath for removing Parish.
“Leader of @OntarioNDP @AndreaHorwath made the right decision to reject Steve Parish as a candidate for the party over his support for a naming a street in Ajax for a Nazi battleship captain,” said B’nai Brith Canada.
Parish defended keeping the name of Langsdorff Drive at an Ajax town council meeting in 2020 despite it being named after Nazi naval officer Hans Langsdorff.
Parish served as Ajax mayor from 1995 to 2018 and was in office when Langsdorff Drive was named.
He said at the 2020 meeting that “Hans Langsdorff was an officer of the German Navy and not a Nazi.”
Despite Parish’s claim, records show that Langsdorff deeply admired the Third Reich, writing in letters to his family, “I can now only prove by my death that the fighting services of the Third Reich are ready to die for the honour of the flag.” This officer said to a captured British soldier that former German chancellor Adolf Hitler was a “prophet, not a politician.”
