Jon Liedtke joined The Gene Valaitis Show on Niagara’s 610 CKTB to discuss his latest opinion piece, Majority of Nothing: Premier Ford’s Al Quds Performance Art and Al Quds Day in Toronto, and leadership and safety in Ontario.
Transcript (Gemini Generated):
Gene Valaitis: Well, over this past weekend, there were anti-Jewish hate rallies held right across Canada. There was one in downtown Toronto. Now, if you were listening on Friday, you know that ever since I was a little kid, one of my favorite things to do is to go to the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto and, you know, it became a tradition. I grew up in Toronto. I don’t live there anymore. I could never live in Toronto. Um, but you know what? I was too frightened to go into downtown Toronto because of this hate protest over the weekend. Now, normally, one of our storytellers on the show, Jon Liedtke, is with us on Tuesday, but he advocates for Jewish groups, and I didn’t want to wait around until Tuesday to talk about this. So he has some thoughts, as he always does, on this and other events. Good morning, Jon.
Jon Liedtke: Good morning, Gene.
Gene Valaitis: You know, I was talking to our pal Joe Warmington from the Sun on Friday, and he was saying, “Well, Doug Ford may get an injunction to stop this.” I mean, are you kidding me? He waited until like Friday afternoon at 4:00. I, you know, I don’t buy into what he was doing or saying.
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, we got to look at the timing of all of this, right? He waited until 4:00 on a Friday for a Saturday afternoon event. That’s not a legal strategy; that’s a PR stunt. He didn’t go to court to win; he went to court so he could tell his base that he tried. He knew full well that the judge would have no choice but to dismiss it for lack of evidence and for lack of time. He moved at the 11th hour purposefully to ensure that the event would happen so he wouldn’t get blamed for it not happening. But now he gets to spend Monday morning blaming activist judges instead of explaining his own inaction. This is a guy playing Monday morning quarterback who intentionally threw the game on Friday.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. You call this the “optics of outrage.” What do you mean?
Jon Liedtke: It is the optics of outrage. I mean, it’s sort of also all hat, no cattle. It’s easy for Doug Ford to have sat down on Friday, recorded a video and condemned and castigated and said, “These type of events have no place on our streets” because we know that in the past there have been calls for violence, there have been documented instances of antisemitism. Um, but he doesn’t want to do anything about it. So it’s just all outrage politics, but it’s just optical outrage politics. He wants it both ways. He doesn’t want to upset either base that he has: the people who support the event and the people who oppose the event. So he’s trying to straddle this like he’s riding some kind of a bull here. But again, like I said, at the end of the day, this is just all hat, no cattle.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. It’s kind of like, here’s the performance, but here’s the reality.
Jon Liedtke: Exactly. Um, this is a premier who is very good at his fire-and-brimstone rhetoric, but fundamentally, he doesn’t want to follow through. He promised to ban this event back in 2018, eight years ago. And he has two massive majorities later, but he’s still just releasing social media videos. This is a premier who hasn’t hesitated in the past to use the notwithstanding clause to stop school board strikes or cap election spending when it suits his bottom political line. But if he actually wanted to stop what he calls a breeding ground for hate, why does he choose to opt for a weak injunction and a weak toolkit when he actually has things that he can use? I.e., passing legislation using a majority government and, if that’s found to be unconstitutional, saying to hell with the courts, I’m using the notwithstanding clause because I have values that I stand for. Or maybe he doesn’t actually have these values.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. You know, I pointed out last week that after not one, not two, but three synagogues were shot at in the Toronto area, and also a gym owned by an Iranian gentleman, um, they had this big newser, news conference for the rest of us. And the police held it, and the mayor of the largest city in Canada, Olivia Chow, did not show up because she was at the Metro Zoo doing a polar bear plunge. Now, fast forward to Saturday: there was a man arrested in downtown Toronto after he burned an Iranian flag. Jon, I’ve been watching these protests for the last two and a half years, and I have lost count of the number of flags of Israel that have been burnt and zero has been done.
Jon Liedtke: It does seem like a selective policing of dissent here. There’s a glaring inconsistency in how this government polices dissent. We see a premier who picks and chooses which rights to defend based on which way the political winds are blowing. And of course, he doesn’t direct the police; I understand that. But leadership comes from the top, tone flows downward, and we all know—Gene, you especially, someone who follows this closely and who speaks with legal and criminal experts—police take their direction from the political winds. So yeah, it’s very unfortunate that what we see here is at least a double standard or what some, I think, could probably make a very fair argument of a two-tiered system of policing, if not two different sets of laws that we have in this province.
Gene Valaitis: Well, you know, the Solicitor General of Ontario about a month and a half ago said that he wrote to the Toronto Police Department telling them to start enforcing laws and getting tough with pro-Hamas demonstrators in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods, where the police are still escorting them through, just like it was, you know, fun with Dick and Jane on Saturday. I mean, I still can’t believe they’re still doing this. I mean, what’s up?
Jon Liedtke: I don’t understand it. I have a hard time wrapping my head around it. I followed Joe Warmington’s coverage on Twitter on Saturday. The photograph that I use actually from my piece was a screengrab that I grabbed from one of his videos, giving him credit, of course. And of course, there’s Toronto Police dutifully walking alongside the protesters at the Al-Quds Day event. Um, they didn’t have a permit, but we know that Toronto Police were speaking with them daily leading up to the event and weeks leading up to the event. This is a group that didn’t have a permit. Why is Toronto Police interacting with them whatsoever other than to say, “This is going to be an illegal march; we’re not going to allow for it”? I mean, to be planning logistics? This is harkening back towards that infamous video where the police officer handed the protester the coffee and the Tim Hortons that was delivered to them. I mean, I don’t know why it seems like we have police services that are not only, you know, being delivery services, running logistics services, in some cases being PR services. It’s frustrating. I would like that kind of service.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah, me too. Um, you know, I hate to see what’s next. I mean, this situation is so out of control and there doesn’t seem to be anybody in control.
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, at the end of the day, what’s the point of having a majority government if we’re not going to take control and use the powers that you have? So Premier, I question it. We see the spike in antisemitism, shots fired at synagogues—there’s genuine fear in our streets. But instead of leadership, we get performance art. We don’t need a Monday morning quarterback who complains about the results of the game that he intentionally threw; we need a premier who wants to win the game.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. And you know, down here where this should not be happening in St. Catharines, some of the crap is coming down the highway. We had a home invasion robbery early Friday morning here in St. Catharines. You know what? That’s not supposed to happen in St. Catharines; they can keep that in Toronto. So I’m alarmed about that and I want the Premier to bring in a “stand your ground” law because, you know, we have to start protecting our families, our wives, our kids, our property.
Jon Liedtke: Keep our province straight, Premier Ford. You heard it here first.
Gene Valaitis: Oh, right. Listen, thanks for popping in on a Monday. We’re going to have you back on with another story tomorrow morning right after Dave Trappert. So have a good day and we’ll talk again around this same time tomorrow.
Jon Liedtke: Cheers, Gene. Thank you.
Gene Valaitis: All right. There he goes, Jon Liedtke. Always has a great story.
This aired on 610 CKTB
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