Some 1,000 people gathered in Ottawa from April 9 to 12 for a conference of the Canada Strong and Free Network, which is celebrating its 20th year and is devoted to “limited government, free enterprise, individual responsibility and a more robust civil society.”
The event, whose theme was “from ideas to action,” featured nine keynote addresses, including from former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison; Alberta premier Danielle Smith; The Free Press founder and editor Bari Weiss; Hungarian deputy state secretary Márton Ugrósdy; and Chad Wolf, executive vice president of the America First Policy Institute and a former acting U.S. secretary of homeland security.
Amir Epstein, co-founder and director of the Toronto Jewish civil rights organization Tafsik, attended the event. He told JNS that he opted to set up a booth for Tafsik this year after hearing Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative Party leader, speak at last year’s event about threats against Jews.
He hoped the booth would “educate people and explain to people what’s going on” in terms of Jew-hatred, he told JNS. He noticed that passersby “stood with us very openly, and they support us,” he said.
After a panel on “Canada’s energy advantage and independence,” roughly 15 people approached Epstein to discuss how they could support Israel, he told JNS.
Those who lean or align with conservatives are likeliest in the current political environment to “understand how we’re suffering,” he told JNS. “They’re not giving lip service.”
“It’s not a presentation. It’s authentic,” he said. “When the cameras aren’t on, they’re all coming up to me, telling me how awful they feel and asking what they can do to help.”
Casey Babb, a senior fellow at the MacDonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa, told JNS that the conference “just happened to have a number of clear-eyed, decent people using common sense to guide their thinking.”
“When I think of people like Bari Weiss or Gen. Rick Hillier, I don’t think of partisan politics,” he said. (Hillier is a retired general and former Canadian Defence Staff chief.)
“I think of people who are able to see through the noise, the drums, the screaming, the chanting and the hatred, and deliver rational and informed thoughts on major issues, such as Israel’s war with Hamas,” Babb told JNS.
Weiss, editor of The Free Press, told attendees that cowardice and naiveté were to blame for Jew-hatred proliferating in the United States. Many believed incorrectly that the hatred would simply “burn out” over time.
“The ideas that people encounter and marinate in during the most formative years of their intellectual life don’t just get checked at the door when they get their diploma,” she said. Students “are not being raised by parents who tell them that Hamas is good. They’re learning it in their classes. That’s a crucial thing to understand.”
She noted that students can be disciplined for misgendering someone in an “era of microaggressions,” while terror supporters get a free pass.
Weiss told attendees that she is hopeful with the new administration in Washington and the possibility of adding Saudi Arabia to the Abraham Accords and destroying the “tentacles” of the Iranian regime.
“I think there’s a huge window of opportunity right now,” she said.
Hillier told the audience that every Canadian should worry “about what is going to happen to our nation if this hatred continues, because it will rip us apart as a country.”
He told people to speak up against those who say that “Israel is at fault, or that the law of war doesn’t cover defending yourself when you’re being attacked in your home.” He also encouraged Canadians to pressure the authorities to shut down pro-Hamas protests.
“We don’t need more laws. We’ve got lots of regulations, lots of laws to condemn hatred, to stop people from disturbing our society in an appropriate manner,” he said. “All we need to do is enforce the ones that we have.”