A Liberal MP says he was pushed by one of the protesters who have been gathering on Parliament Hill for the first week of the fall sitting.
Several MPs say they have been harassed throughout the week by protesters who have been shouting and calling politicians and their staff “traitors.”
Liberal MP Taleeb Noormohamed told CBC Radio’s The House that one of the protesters shoved him as he was leaving Parliament Hill earlier this week.
In an interview with CBC News’ The House host Catherine Cullen, B.C. Liberal MP Taleeb Noormohamed describes being surrounded by a group of protesters with a colleague in Ottawa. He says they were called ‘traitors’ and that he was pushed out of the way by a protester.
“A group surrounded us and started yelling profanities and obscenities, saying some pretty awful things,” Noormohamed told host Catherine Cullen in an interview airing Saturday.
“One of them literally put two hands on me and pushed me out of the way.”
Noormohamed said the Parliamentary Protective Service (PPS) restrained the woman he said had pushed him. But he said she later continued to follow him down the street, yelling.
Earlier in the week, NDP Jagmeet Singh confronted two of the protesters after someone accused him of being a “corrupted bastard.” The incident took place just outside the doors of West Block as PPS officers looked on.
The Parliamentary Protective Service says it’s adding more officers and tightening security after NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s heated confrontation with protesters, but some MPs want the sergeant-at-arms to create larger protection zones that demonstrators can’t access.
The PPS says it has stepped up security measures in the wake of that incident. But one Liberal MP said she’s worries it won’t be enough.
Pam Damoff, parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs for consular affairs, asked Sergeant-at-Arms Patrick McDonnell in a letter on Wednesday to boost security even more.
“I feel unsafe, and I am worried that someone is going to be seriously injured,”Damoff said in the letter, which was obtained by CBC News.
Lori Idlout, the NDP MP for Nunavut, told The House that she also was confronted by the protesters and at one point was called a “Nazi.”
“I didn’t take it seriously knowing that there are Indigenous people’s lives that are at more risk, that there are other Indigenous peoples that are in more danger,” she said.
“What’s happening with the protest is just a symptom for me. It’s just a system of racism that exists. It’s just a symptom of what we need to do to address the more deep root of racism.”
But NDP MP Gord Johns said aggressive protests have occurred outside of Ottawa as well. He said his constituency office has recently been the target for protesters and even vandalism.
“I’ve had someone throw an axe through my window, my office window,” he told Cullen in a separate interview.
Johns also described a protest at his local office during a tax workshop that was meant to help people with disabilities.
“People actually left that needed help and this is what we’re dealing with,” Johns said.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller’s constituency office was vandalized earlier this summer. NDP MP Leah Gazan said in an online post last week that someone had thrown bricks through the windows of her constituency office twice in the recent weeks.
“Every MP has stories. Some of them are not so willing to talk about them up front,” Johns said.
Noormohamed said he fears that harassment of politicians is becoming normalized.
“What we are starting to see is that people are acting in a manner that no other profession, no other line of work, would we deem acceptable,” he said.
“You don’t get to go into your local Tim Hortons and yell obscenities and profanities at the individual that’s trying to pour your coffee.”
Source Agencies
