Barbara Kay: Public policy think-tank, news site demonstrate the moral clarity Trudeau lacks

The Macdonald-Laurier Institute and National Post have shown bravery and leadership in combatting antisemitism

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Published Jan 12, 2025  •  Last updated 0 minutes ago  •  4 minute read

Brian Crowley, managing director of the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI), launched the think-tank's "The Promised Land Project" to combat the antisemitism that exploded following Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel. Photo by Caroline Phillips / Postmedia News

What constitutes true leadership? The lowest bar, it seems to me, would — following a horrific event abroad (October 7) that sparked knock-on mayhem at home, fomented by hate-messaging, terror-supportive groups targeting a peaceful minority and their institutions — see the leader of a democratic nation such as ours spring into action to re-establish civil order and protect the victims from harm. That didn’t happen in Canada after 10/7.

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In fact, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s single most pressing objective seems to have been: Don’t. Offend. Muslims. His frostiness to Israel, a democratic ally, and his muted, boilerplate responses to Canadian Jews’ legitimate fears have — not coincidentally — paralleled a 670 per cent increase in antisemitic incidents in Canada since 10/7. (For detailed amplification of this claim, see investigative journalist Terry Glavin’s excoriating review in The Free Press of the leadership vacuum on this file: “The Explosion of Jew Hate in Trudeau’s Canada.”)

Until a change of government ushers in principled political leadership on this issue, Canadians must take comfort from the courage and moral clarity of leaders in Canada’s ideas and policy research communities.

In Canadian media, true leadership emerged, post 10/7, in these pages, backed by Postmedia’s C-suite. Asked at a tribute evening in his honour last October about his editorial decision to commit the National Post to a muscular defence of Israel and to exposure of the government’s failure to deal effectively with spreading antisemitism, our Editor-in-Chief, Rob Roberts, described something like an epiphany: “Oct. 7 kind of radicalized me”; “it gave me clear eyes”; “I understood the world in a way I didn’t before.”

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Homage must also be paid to the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI), an independent public policy think-tank that focuses on all issues that fall under the federal government’s jurisdiction. Its true leadership emerged in the form of The Promised Land Project, initiated by founder and Managing Director Brian Crowley.

On Oct. 17, 2023, Crowley published a statement, couched in direct messaging, in response to Hamas’s pogrom in southern Israel. To “our friend and ally Israel,” he wrote, “The State of Israel is a legitimate and welcome member of the community of nations whose right to exist is uncontestable historically, legally and morally.” Regarding Palestinians’ hopes of eradicating Israel rather than accept Israel’s many offers of land for peace, he wrote, “Anyone who wants peace in the Middle East must start by recognizing Israel’s legitimacy and right to defend itself and its people.”

To the government of Canada he wrote, “We at MLI stand unambiguously with Israel in the face of these barbarous attacks, and wish to reiterate that Israel’s existence and safety, as well as the safety and security of the Jewish community worldwide, cannot and must not be threatened with impunity. We urge the government of Canada … to condemn in the clearest possible terms all anti-Semitism as well as the calls from Hamas supporters in their own populations to abandon our friend and ally Israel.”

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The Promised Land Project has partnered with organizations such as Secure Canada, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, Muslims Facing Tomorrow and the International Legal Forum, amongst others who share their objectives, with the aim of tackling a “vacuum of moral and intellectual leadership” following 10/7. Their goal is “to address critical gaps in Canadian understanding of Israel and the Middle East, combat growing antisemitism, and counter extremism.”

To this end, Crowley and multi-faith MLI researchers have published op-eds in newspapers and substacks, hosted webinars and podcasts, and mounted special events at the MLI offices with such notables as former Australian PM Tony Abbott, public intellectual Douglas Murray and Israeli foreign policy expert Einat Wilf. As evidence for their impact, MLI claims significant influence in the finally successful branding of Samidoun as a terrorist organization. (MLI’s interest in terrorism predates 10/7; its 2019 report, “Canadian Terrorists by the numbers,” explored the phenomenon of Canadians who join and support Islamist terror groups.)

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In an email exchange, I asked Crowley about his motivation to stick MLI’s head above the parapet of neutrality on this issue. Some outtakes from Crowley’s response: “I knew immediately on 7 October 2023 that an event of world significance had occurred and that how we in the West understood and interpreted that event would matter enormously … yes, the statement was unique in the history of MLI in the sense that traditionally the Institute does not take positions, (but) I felt the events of 7 October were so epoch-making …that we needed to get our own thinking clear, to commit ourselves to an understanding of those events in the context of all Canadians, and not just the Jewish community, as well as the interests of the West as a whole.”

There’s an important overlap in Roberts’ and Crowley’s explanations for their instincts to go all-in on their defence of Israel and resistance to Israel-related antisemitism. Roberts: “clear eyes”; Crowley: “thinking clear.” Cognitive clarity, unburdened by ego or political opportunism, permits moral clarity, and from moral clarity, leadership in word and action. As Crowley told me: “I have discovered that the most powerful thing you can do is speak up. There are many people who are willing to be second to say something, but very few willing to be the first.”

National Post

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