By Barry Ellsworth
TRENTON, Canada (AA) – The leader of Canada’s largest Muslim organization canceled a meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday for failing to do more to help Palestinians in Gaza and inaction to curb rising hate crimes.
“We no longer think it’s productive to speak with this prime minister,” Stephen Brown, chief executive officer of the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), said at a press conference in Ottawa.
“There is nothing new that we could say,” Brown said, as reported by the Globe and Mail newspaper. “We’ve said it all before.”
The cancelation comes hours before federal and provincial politicians, Muslim leaders and others were to gather in Quebec City for a ceremony to mark the seventh anniversary of the murder of six Muslim men at the Islamic Cultural Centre Mosque.
On his way into the House of Commons in Ottawa, Trudeau did not address the cancelation, but his office later said the prime minister had “nothing to add.”
The meeting was slated to discuss anti-Muslim hate, but Brown said he skipped the session because Trudeau had not kept his promises made in the 2015 election; namely, funding programs to curtail hate crimes such as security cameras at Muslim prayer sites.
“It has become clear that we seem to only get a sliver of policy reform when our lives, or our safety is destroyed,” Brown said. “Our government has failed to move on substantive hate-crime legislation.”
Islamophobia incidents have jumped since the Palestinian group Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 and the Israelis launched an all-out war on the Gaza Strip. Toronto police said the Israel-Hamas war led to an increase in hate crimes by more than 104% between Oct. 7 and Dec. 17.
Brown said Trudeau has not pressured Israel to step back from its bombardment in Gaza. Al Jazeera reported Monday that more than 26,000 Palestinians have been killed to date.
“We’re interested in the government taking real tangible action to reduce Islamophobia in this country (and) taking real tangible action to stop the hostilities in the Middle East,” Brown said.