MPs React After Officer Questions Protest Attendee About Stance on Palestine Statehood to Access Parliament Hill

Conservative Deputy Leader Melissa Lantsman asks a question during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Feb. 13, 2024. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

Some MPs are calling for answers after a video circulating on social media appears to show a Parliamentary Protective Services (PPS) officer barring Parliament Hill access to a protest attendee who refuses to acknowledge Palestinian statehood.

The social media video posted on Oct. 5, shows the PPS officer stopping an individual from entering the area. In the video, the PPS officer says he will not let the man into that area because the man indicated earlier that he did not recognize Palestine as a state.

The officer told the man that he needed to go to the other side of Parliament Hill, as the area he was trying to enter was for Palestinian supporters only.

In the video, the man references an apparent earlier conversation with the officer that had taken place off camera.

“I said I never saw Palestine as a state, that doesn’t mean I’m anti-Palestinian people,” he told the officer.

The officer said that the man would not be allowed in “where the pro-Palestine event is taking place.”

“If you want to be on Parliament Hill and share your message, you go on the other side,” the officer said.

Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman shared the video on social media on Oct. 5, saying it was “absolutely outrageous and wrong.”

“Who told this officer that Canadians need to state a foreign policy position before coming into Parliament Hill,” she questioned in her post on X.

“Parliament Hill should be a place for all Canadians, not a place where people are subject to a political purity test to satisfy anti-Israel protestors.”

Lantsman said that the Conservatives would be raising the issue in the House of Commons “at the earliest opportunity.”

The video was also shared by Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner in an Oct. 6 post on the X platform, who said, “It’s one thing to ask someone to go to a separate area on the Hill designated for a counter protest,” she said in the post. “It’s quite another for a uniformed officer of Parliament to appear to demand alignment with a certain political viewpoint to have access to the grounds.”

PPS told The Epoch Times in an email that the individual was not denied access to the Hill.

“Rather, he was informed that if he wanted to enter the Hill, he should leverage another point of entry to demonstrate in the appropriately dedicated zone,” the email said.

PPS said its main priority was keeping people safe during demonstrations.

“For the security of everyone involved, when tensions are high (regardless of what a given protest is about), it is not uncommon to ensure that protestors with opposing views be encouraged to gather in different and dedicated protest zones.”

It said that protestors were all given access to the Hill, but that officers “can choose to separate groups if and when that practice supports the safety of demonstrators and that of the public at large.”

Flag Burning

Lantsman shared another video on social media of an anti-Israel protest in Vancouver on Oct. 7— the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel—where protesters can be heard calling for Israel to burn.

The video shows protesters lighting Canadian flags on fire while chanting “Israel burn, burn. Palestinians will return. Israel is a terrorist state.”

“The pro terror mob is now burning a Canadian flag in the streets of Vancouver after a year of lawlessness and escalation everyday with no consequences,” Lantsman said in the post on X.

Other videos of the same protest circulating on social media show a woman speaking to a crowd saying, “Death to Canada. Death to the United States. And death to Israel,” and “We are Hezbollah, and we are Hamas.”

In reacting to the incident, Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilieve on Oct. 8 called on the federal to designate pro-Palestine group Samidoun as a terrorist organization and ban it from operating in Canada. Samidoun, which goes by the full name of Samidoun Palestinian Solidarity Network, has chapters in Toronto and Vancouver. The group has alleged ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which Canada has listed as a terrorist group since 2003.

Conservative Party of B.C. leader, John Rustad, denounced the Vancouver protest on his social media account, saying his government would take action against such demonstrators if elected in the upcoming provincial election.

“If you call for ‘death’ and burn the Canadian flag — BC’s Conservatives will fight for your arrest or deportation,” Rustad said in an Oct. 8 post on X.

B.C. NDP Leader David Eby also reacted to the incident on social media on Oct. 8, saying, “This kind of hateful rhetoric is wrong and has no place in our province. We stand together against violence - and the glorification of it. And we strive for peace.”

Other pro-Palestine protests were held in Canada on Oct. 7 that descended into violence.

In Montreal, police used chemical irritants to restrict a group of protestors who were using metal bars to smash the doors and windows of a row house under construction belonging to McGill University.

A masked speaker with a megaphone said it was to be part of a sports science institute named after Israeli-Canadian billionaire Sylvan Adams, and urged the protesters to “take out your rage on the building.”

Liberal MP Anthony Housefather reacted to the incident on social media, calling on police “to arrest and prosecute everyone who breaks the law.”

“The destruction of buildings, trespassing on McGill property & using Oct 7 the date of the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust to extoll what occurred last year is sickening,” he said on platform X on Oct. 7.

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.