In the last few weeks, news of the horrific attacks by Hamas against Israel shocked the world. As was expected, Israel responded aggressively against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. We aren’t going to get into the midst of that conflict on this podcast. That isn’t our beat. What is our beat however is local politicians. Namely how they have responded to the attacks in the Middle East. One MPP has waded into the highly politicized and contentious issue through a public statement affirming her support for the Palestinian people while at the same time ignoring the attacks against Israelis. By now, you realize we are talking about Hamilton Centre MPP, Sarah Jama.
Sarah Jama’s statement has drawn much criticism, in the way it omitted any reference to the attack on innocent Israeli lives. The response to it has been calls from her leader to issue a retraction and apology for the statement. To this date, she has not retracted the statement. As well, Premier Doug Ford has taken the extraordinary step of issuing a motion in the legislature to prohibit the Speaker from recognizing her in the chamber. Essentially silencing her voice as a representative of the people of Hamilton Centre. While Ms Jama’s point of view is indeed controversial it is a shocking step to bar her entirely from participating in the democratic process. At least that’s the view of our guest today.
Joey Coleman returns to the podcast today to discuss his opinion piece from his website The Public Record. In which he argues that the Ontario PC government is taking extreme and possibly dangerous measures to silence their opposition. That decision should be left to the citizens of Hamilton Centre at the next election. A link to his piece is below. We talk with him about his opinion as well as the greater risk to democratic norms and how the media is covering this.
**NOTE**: We recorded this episode prior to Monday’s announcement that Marit Stiles the NDP Leader was removing Sarah Jama from caucus.
This Episode is brought to you by Graham Agnew of Dominion Lending
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Nicholas Paul: sound editing.