Montreal MP, Jewish group condemn antisemitic poster telling him to ‘get out of Canada’

A Montreal MP is speaking out after he was the target of a poster loaded with antisemitic references that he says is offensive to the entire Jewish community.

The poster bears two swastikas and named Mount Royal MP Anthony Housefather, telling him to “get out of Canada.”

“The main thing for me was being told to leave my country, being told to leave the country I was born in, my parents were born in, my grandparents were born in, and generations of my family were born in and helped contribute to,” he said in an interview.

Housefather says at least a dozen of these posters popped up in the Mile End neighbourhood and the borough of Outremont.

“This is just publicly disgusting in the sense that antisemitism is directed at me personally, but also at the entire jewish community,” he said.

“Everybody who agrees with me, which is the vast majority, are being told we have no place in our country by the person who wrote this poster.”

But this is not the only recent incident involving a swastika.

On social media, people have been calling out what happened at the Kehal Israel Cemetery in Dollard-des-Ormeaux.

The photos show stones on top of a tombstone in the shape of a swastika.

Jewish advocacy group B’nai Brith is outraged. The organization’s Quebec regional director, Hank Topas, said he believes these kinds of incidents will continue as long as people aren’t held accountable.

It’s the increasing sight of swastikas that has many in the Jewish community feeling deeply troubled.

For years, Corey Fleischer has been cleaning up hateful graffiti and he says, sadly, he’s busier than ever.

“Within the last year, the increase of swastika graffiti itself is probably up 300 to 400 per cent,” he told CTV News.

“In this city alone, I’d say that 90-95 per cent of the phone calls that we got, not only standing here in Montreal, but once again around the world, is directed towards antisemitism.”

B’nai Brith and Housefather say at a time when there are so many hateful messages, they want the city to take the issue more seriously.

CTV News reached out to Bochra Manaï, Montreal’s commissioner for the fight against racism, but she declined an interview request.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Valérie Plante administration said they are against all forms of antisemitism and suggested CTV News contact Montreal police.

Police said the posters targeting Housefather are being looked into by its hate crime unit.

“Our dear city government … does not clamp down on any of it. So it is on a ramp up. Nothing is being stopped,” Topas said of the city’s response to anti-Jewish hate.

Despite being targeted publicly and directly, Housefather says he wants those who posted the hateful sign to know he and his community will not be intimidated.