Jon Liedtke joins 610 CKTB’s Gene Valaitis for his regular weekly segment, Liedtke’s Got a Take!
Jon Liedtke discusses Canadian municipal politicians using local councils to address foreign policy issues, specifically motions involving Israel, arguing these actions are ineffective overseas, waste taxpayer resources, promote polarization, & violate anti-racism standards while distracting local leaders from addressing actual community responsibilities.
Transcript (Gemini Generated):
Full Word-for-Word Transcription
Gene Valaitis: All right, this is segment four of the first hour on Tuesday. That means it’s time for “Liedtke’s Got A Take.” Jon Liedtke joins me once again. Good morning, buddy.
Jon Liedtke: Good morning.
Gene Valaitis: All right, let’s talk municipal politics. Um, in Ontario, the next municipal election is coming up on the 26th of October. We have to be very careful here at the radio station now that if we have somebody on who’s running, we have to give, uh, other people equal time. So, we’re being very careful about some of the guests that we’re having on. Like, there was a St. Catharines town, um, city council meeting the other day, but we couldn’t have the mayor on ’cause he’s running for re-election, so we had to have a councillor on. And, uh, he was with Steph this morning. But I’m just looking at what all of these crazy city councillors are doing. It’s as if they’re not paying any attention to local problems. For example, the mayor of, uh, Montreal, very nice woman, opposed city council debating a motion to cut ties with Israel and labeling it, uh, and its actions after they were attacked, a genocide. Now, that’s not the city’s job.
Jon Liedtke: No, it—it’s not the city’s job. And, unfortunately, that motion last night was, uh, rewritten so as just to condemn the actions of Israel, not to explicitly cut ties and not to label it as such. Um, and, you know, the mayor is right, 100%. This is a complete waste of finite municipal time and tax dollars. It only serves to divide the city. Operationally, you know, cutting procurement at the municipal level, that’s laughable. If a city actually enforced a full boycott, you’d be seeing them lose access to software, hardware, potentially even first responder training that municipalities rely on. It would disrupt local infrastructure for zero impact overseas and only problems at home. Legally, cutting diplomatic ties would face immediate court challenges for discriminating based on national origin. Um, yeah, this is—the mayor of Montreal was correct in opposing this.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. Now, over the weekend in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Toronto, we saw an explicit blood libel—libel tropes shouted on a megaphone in Toronto over the weekend, with a protest speaker using, uh, his megaphone to allege Zionists eat children and use black magic. Now, how does that rhetoric on a Toronto city street council connect to what’s happening inside other city councils in places like Montreal, Ottawa, and Windsor?
Jon Liedtke: You know, it all feeds off of each other. When leaders across cities or the provinces or the Feds push, uh, blood libels or allow blood libels in their streets, extreme views get reinforced, and then that eventually will trickle into the council chambers, like we’re seeing in Montreal yesterday, or as we’ll talk about with, uh, certain candidates that are running in other cities. So when the public is constantly exposed to the demonization of a specific group, people act on those beliefs.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. Now, in Ottawa, a candidate running for mayor has labeled the, uh, conflict a genocide as part of his campaign. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But if candidates say their local voters care deeply about an issue, why shouldn’t a guy running for mayor take a stand?
Jon Liedtke: You know, I guess, you know, take a stand. That’s fine. It’ll be to the detriment, I think, though, of a campaign. If you care locally, if you care about foreign policy, go talk to your MP, go volunteer for the federal party, go run for that office. There’s lots of legitimate avenues to affect foreign policy in Canada. City Hall ain’t one of them. Anyone doing this at City Hall is far more interested in discrimination and political theater than in actually affecting meaningful change, because that’s not the place to do so. So, candidates, take the stands that you want, but if you want to weaponize your campaign to push false claims, you’re just going to alienate massive swaths of the community, deepen local polarization.
Gene Valaitis: What’s happening in your city council down Windsor way? It’s the same thing, right?
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, we’ve got a, uh, candidate that’s running here who is pushing a, you know, boycott, divest, sanction program. Um, and, you know, there’s nothing wrong with having ethical spending, but what are they actually alleging is happening at Windsor City Hall? Cities purchase items at the best cost for taxpayer dollars. There’s no, uh, foreign policy ideology associated with buying gravel or asphalt or transit parts. Um, there’s false narratives that are created about what these candidates are actually advocating for. Um, and when you look at these policies, um, it’s clearly designed to be impacting Israel and Israel alone, though they won’t say that, um, outright and explicitly. I would much rather them be, uh, very clear about their bigotry.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. Now, these city councils doing this—Montreal, Windsor, Ottawa, etc.—are they violating federal anti-racism guidelines?
Jon Liedtke: Well, I think that any, uh, city that actually does move forward with it, uh, with something like this—unfortunately, we haven’t seen any actually adopt a policy like this—um, would be. Uh, virtually all governments in Canada—from the Feds have, the provinces have, and multiple cities have—adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which says to hold, uh, Israel to a double standard is considered antisemitism. And when we adopted the IHRA in Canada, we put that in with our national anti-racism definition. So, yeah, we would be violating federal anti-racism guidelines by trying to, um, discriminate, ostracize, or boycott Israel, for example, and not other countries that are doing actual genocides, for example, like, um, you know, China, for example. So, you know, it just seems like it’s always only Jews who don’t get to define the bigotry espoused against them, though, when it comes to things like this. Um, and that’s the—that’s what’s really a problem here.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah, but at the end of the day with all these motions and—does it actually help anybody overseas?
Jon Liedtke: No, this is all political theater, and that’s the point. We’re in a propaganda war, and unfortunately, there’s so many people in our politics willingly signing up to play lead roles or as even their understudies. This achieves zero impact abroad. It causes maximum harm at home. It makes lives for Canadians just tougher generally getting along with their neighbors, with their family, with their friends. Hateful online vitriol turns to targeted harassment of individuals in your communities. Turns in—your daily life into walking through minefields. So, I don’t know, I think it’s a problem. It doesn’t do anything overseas. It actively tears our communities apart.
Gene Valaitis: All right, great take today. Talk to you later.
Jon Liedtke: Thank you.
Gene Valaitis: All right, there he goes. Jon Liedtke. Liedtke’s Got A Take.
This aired on 610 CKTB
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