I stand before everyone in this Legislature today hurting deeply since Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel 10 days ago, slaughtering more than 1,400 people in the darkest, most tragic day in Jewish history since the Holocaust. Sadly, six Canadians are among those dead, with another two still missing in the aftermath of this heinous attack.

I stand here shaken by the human suffering inflicted by Hamas in their quest to destroy innocents. It should be clear to any fair-minded person that there is no equivalence between the two actions. In sharp contrast to the actions taken by Israel, Hamas has triggered the current war, proudly targeting innocents, hiding behind civilians and dehumanizing an entire people, and has an official charter that calls for the annihilation of Israel and the murder of Jews everywhere.

That’s without mentioning Hamas’s long-standing oppression of Palestinians in Gaza. As British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said just days after the terrorist attack, Hamas “are not militants. They are not freedom fighters. They are terrorists.... There are not two sides to these events. There is no question of balance.”

In Israel, a society that remains collectively traumatized by the Holocaust, the nightmare from the Hamas massacre continues to worsen. As we speak, crews are still sifting through the wreckage, recovering bodies, including the charred remains of those burned in their homes. Horrifying details of victims of all ages, from newborns to the elderly, having been tortured and their bodies desecrated are still coming to light, to say nothing of the 200 children, men and women, including elderly Holocaust survivors, now being held hostage by Hamas after being kidnapped at gunpoint.

I have no pretense of being a Middle East expert, but in the face of the unspeakable pogrom against helpless Jewish civilians, no expertise is required to distinguish between right and wrong and good and evil. No expertise is required to recognize the inhumanity and to know that certain situations demand that we show moral decency and we speak with moral courage.

In this light, we must also consider the undeniable hardship and the suffering of the Palestinian people. They have been victims of Hamas and they too deserve human dignity. In essence, colleagues, humanity must prevail for all. Palestinians are very much in my heart and prayers. We strongly welcome the humanitarian corridor being established by the international community. Because fundamentally we stand with all victims of Hamas by making clear our condemnation too of the regime in Tehran. The Iranian regime is a state sponsor of terrorism. They too must be responsible. For the export of this terror around the world we must hold them too to account.

However, today I feel compelled to address this continuing fallout from Israel and Gaza that reaches us here in our fair land. What I have to say now has little to do with the geopolitical reality of the region but a lot to do with something far more fundamental to us as Canadians, and it’s tied to what our country stands for: the precious if fragile values of freedom, of democracy, of tolerance and justice that we hold dear in this Legislature.

Like most Canadians who have at least a modicum of humanity, I’m aghast at the Nazi-like atrocities of Hamas. The level of hate behind such pure, unadulterated butchery against babies, children, women, men in their homes is difficult to comprehend. Adding to this horror is the failure and refusal of some people, including right here in this province, to recognize and to denounce this savage blood lust that some even openly celebrate and glorify in our streets. This includes the illiberal, so-called progressive left who undermine those democratic values and norms by normalizing and validating terror in this country—and for lacking the moral courage to denounce international war crimes happening before our eyes.

It’s the radical student unions—to those student trustees or school trustees and public servants, the professors and the enablers of vile hate, I say, you are and will remain on the wrong side of human history, and that will be remembered.

I’m overwhelmed by a depressing sense of déjà vu when I see the shocking moral degeneracy and indifference many have shown to Jewish victimization. Whichever differences Canadians have in their views about the Middle East, and which I respect fully, surely, we as legislators, all of us, can accept that there is no justification for the type of barbarism that this genocidal death cult has carried out against innocent people—but unfortunately not. That is not a declaration we can make today. We have seen in our streets, in this very city, Madam Speaker—welcoming with cheers the mass murder of Jews and other atrocities. And what about those Canadians who spread the noxious lies on social media claiming these abominations never took place in the first place, or minimizing their severity?

Too bad they can’t be made to spend a day accompanying Yossi Landau and his team, with their heart-wrenching work in Israel. Yossi is a volunteer with ZAKA, the civilian emergency response group which has recovered the corpses, the remains, of people killed in various disasters. He has spent 33 years giving dignity to the dead and ensuring they get a proper Jewish burial. He and his fellow ZAKA volunteers consider what they do—it often includes collecting body parts of those blown to pieces in bombing attacks, which is a sacred duty. Having worked amid the carnage of countless attacks in Israel, Yossi thought he had seen the worst in human depravity. This changed after he was assigned the gruesome task of attending to the aftermath of Hamas’s blood-curdling rampage on October 7. A few nights ago, on Israeli television, Yossi described what he and his fellow ZAKA volunteers have encountered—and this is just a brief quote, to contextualize the horror:

“The 20 children we saw in” the kibbutz “was beyond terrible. [The terrorists] had bound their hands behind them. Abused them terribly. And simply put them one on top of the other and burned them. How can you do such a thing?

“I didn’t believe anyone could behave like this....

“We tell the bodies that we are sorry that we have not been able to honour them as we should—because of the sheer number of dead and the ongoing threat” from Hamas.

Upon entering another home in the same community, finding a woman killed, Yossi was confronted with a scene of unbridled evil. “Her stomach was ripped open, and a baby was there. The baby was still connected with the umbilical cord and stabbed. I felt that I’m falling apart—not only for me, but for my whole crew. I told some of them to go home. They were broken.”

Reflecting on the traumatic impact of these unspeakable scenes, Yossi added, “Say a prayer, please, that we and the security forces emerge sane from all this.” And surprisingly, there was no malice or sense of vengeance in his words.

In recent days, the news out of Israel has made me think a lot about our history, reminding me yet again of the importance of education and learning from humanity’s worst chapters if we seek to avoid a reoccurrence. It has also made me think of the Holocaust survivors I have had the incredible opportunity and privilege of getting to know in Toronto and in the constituency of King–Vaughan—amazing people like Pinchas Gutter; Rose Lipszyc; the late, great Max Eisen; and Nate Leipciger. Nate was here just yesterday, honoured by our Premier. All four have inspired me and so many others in this House to believe in the power of humanity, to believe the light will overwhelm the darkness. All of them have played a critical role in helping to explain to young people in this country and around the world the importance of “never again” as our moral imperative.

And to think that in 2023, such a heinous act of mass murder and terror as we just witnessed can once again afflict the Jewish people, because they are Jews—triggered haunting echoes of the Nazi genocide of European Jews. And to see Jews targeted today in such a calculated way brings back a chill that no Holocaust survivor, no son, no daughter, no grandchild should ever have to endure. And I looked at those survivors in the eye and made an unshakable commitment to them: That I, a non-Jew, a Catholic Italian son of immigrants, would not be a bystander, that I would use my platform and power for good.

And so, one year ago, we in this government in this Legislature made history. We made a difference by announcing that Ontario will be the first province in this country to introduce mandatory Holocaust education in elementary schools starting this year, so that young people could learn from history and they’re not doomed to repeat it and to be on guard against the vile manifestations of hate and be allied in combatting it and all forms of hate—to stand up to it in our schools and academia and businesses and in our civil society at large. And because our country has a tradition of standing with those who oppose injustice, tyranny and oppression, and our country has always stood for that, regardless of if it is convenient or popular. But I must acknowledge our country, too, has failed upon occasion, and I think of the refusal of Canada’s government in the 1930s to ease the plight of Jewish refugees upon the denial on the St. Louis. One senior government official said at the time, “One too many,” in reference to the Jewish families seeking asylum from persecution.

Now, we must not forget our past, Madam Speaker, and this is why we must do more to ensure “never again” is our collective legacy to the generations to come. It is why, over the summer, joining the member from Ajax, the parliamentary assistant, I wrote to the provincial counterparts across this country urging them to follow Ontario’s lead to adopt a Holocaust curriculum that was co-developed in partnership with the good people of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center and help ensure we eradicate the hate against the Jewish people once and for all. Because every province and every Canadian must know that this hate afflicts the Jews, but it never ends with the Jews. This is the historical truth that is not a matter of debate.

Rose Lipszyc, a Holocaust survivor, said of this attack going back 10 days, “It’s like the nightmares of my childhood are back. The horror that I went through is becoming so real to me now.” It pains me to have to say this, but in light of what we’ve seen in statements and protests in recent days endorsing targeted, bloody attacks on civilians, it is unequivocally wrong, even independent of its criminality. Based on reported attacks at schools and campuses and universities over the past week, I’m saddened that many young people have clearly not been students of history.

My friends, it is clear that now, more than ever, Holocaust education and civic education are essential ingredients to protecting and safeguarding our nation’s democracy, our pluralism and our freedom. We must recognize, too, that a new form of anti-Semitism is rising, targeting the Jewish people by attacking the legitimacy of the State of Israel, advancing the same old bigotry and hatred from years and generations past. The profound irony is not lost on me, Madam Speaker, as the UN continues to condemn Israel, while staying silent on the genocides, the state-sponsored terrorism, religious persecution in Syria, in North Korea and Iran. Colleagues, this makes the case, yet again, that we need more education to liberalize those values that I believe unite us as Canadians—the values that my immigrant parents chose when they left their native land in the pursuit of something better: for freedom, for democracy, for human rights and the rule of law; a nation of infinite opportunity for waves of immigrants who came to this land and for those that are already here.

But for those values and for those that perished, in partnership with the Solicitor General, the now-Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks, the members from Eglinton–Lawrence, Thornhill, Brantford–Brant, Ajax and so many others, including Willowdale, I was proud to stand with them when Ontario made history being the first, but not the last, province in this country to ensure every single child is a student of history and that the requirement to graduate is that they must learn Holocaust education. It was a personal priority for me, but it was a priority for all that care about and will stand with the concept of human dignity and human rights.

In truth, the Jewish community has shared that this mandatory Holocaust education actually wasn’t for them: It was for all the Ontarians and all of those who suffered state-sponsored oppression and persecution. It was done in the defence of democracy and to start at home, and part of that, of course, starts at home. But through public education, we can literally emancipate those values in every home and every community and every school, especially in those communities that need it most, and stress the concept of human dignity, of civility, of compassion and respect that define this remarkable nation.

What happened in Israel on October 7 and the events since made me think of my visit some years ago to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem. What I found most powerful there was learning about what is known as the “righteous among the nations.” These were the too few men and women in Europe who possessed the moral courage to do what is right in the face of evil in literal mortal danger—non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from the Nazis in defence of humanity. Amid the infinite darkness of the Holocaust, this was a source of light that gives me a sense of hope.

So I ask us all, to all of us with the privilege to serve, do we—do you—possess that moral courage? Will you do what is right even if it is not easy? That is the test of this Legislature, of our people and our nation: Do we possess the intrinsic moral courage to stand up to evil? For me, Yad Vashem was the ultimate realization that even in moments that are so difficult emotionally and spiritually and psychologically, people can, and they will, move forward despite the treacherous undercurrents of our history.

Given what has just happened in Israel, I know it feels nearly impossible—almost intellectually dishonest—to say that we should be hopeful at this moment in time, or that we should be united. But we can’t allow ourselves as Canadians to lose sight of the importance of hope and how it can motivate us to aspire for a better future, to elevate our consciousness as a nation, to elevate those fundamental Canadian values that transcend party and politics and experience—the values of, as I said, our heritage, our freedom, throughout the generations. We must preserve our faith in humanity, in the promise of the next generation, and for education to enshrine essential values and for the development of human dignity to always triumph over hate.

If we are to achieve a better future, we need people now to speak up and do what is right. This is a binary choice between good and evil, and we must pick the right side of human history. We and our fellow public figures at all levels must have the moral courage to do what is right. That means being resolved to demand that the hostages from Israel and around the world are immediately returned safely to their homes, resolved to denounce terror—yes, resolved to defend civilian lives. Under the current circumstances, especially at a time right here in Ontario when our Jewish community is in pain with the growing threat of anti-Semitism, Canadians, most especially in this House, need to speak out daily against those acts of hate. All of us need to show the moral imperative to denounce this terror and demand a sense of humanity in both our actions and our words.

I don’t apologize for this fidelity to the democratic principles of our country. They actually inform my spirited defence today, including those who swore a mission against those who swore a mission in their charter to destroy the Jewish people. I’m proud to defend and to uphold those norms of humanity, and I want to believe that in this country, regardless of our political or ethnic differences or views on the world, we are united around the common values, most especially the celebration of life over death and good over evil.

It is in moments like this that our conscience and our very humanity are tested. I want every member in this House to feel morally obliged to stand up for our values. That is the essence of leadership, of principled leadership. It is the vehicle for which we protect our democracy and our freedom. Choosing right over wrong is not a political calculus. It should not be choosing good over evil as electoral math. It is the sworn obligation we took as Canadians, as legislators, to ensure the triumph of one’s conscience and one’s values as Canadians over our politics.

Today, I’m joined by some amazing leaders of our province—faith leaders, business leaders, Holocaust education leaders, municipal politicians—who have come with a shared hope for our safety and our peace. I want to express a special thanks to the amazing Michael Levitt and Fred Waks from the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center. I want to express gratitude to Marilyn and Steven Sinclair from Liberation75. I want to thank Councillor Chris Ainsworth for his presence and leadership. I want to thank the rabbis—Rabbi Darren, Rabbi Bakshi, Rabbi Shlomo Vorovich and, of course, Rabbi Bernstein for your moral imperative of doing what’s right. I’m grateful for your work.

I am honoured to serve in this Parliament. And I will always do what is right in the defence of human dignity.

Madam Speaker, it is a difficult time, but I am so incredibly honoured to be a legislator and to be proud of our country. This is the best country on earth. It is worth fighting for. It is worth defending. It is worth safeguarding.

Every one of us has the ability to do what is right, even if it may be difficult—it is the essence of our government, it is the essence of the privilege of service, it is the essence of being a Canadian.