In May of 2017, the Bloc Québécois, led at that moment by Martine Ouellet (a former member of the National Assembly of Quebec, 2010-2018) announced its decision to introduce a motion in Parliament in support of the recognition of a Palestinian state. The Bloc Québécois announcement was supported by both Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) and Palestinian and Jewish Unity (PAJU). The motion was being put forward on behalf of the Bloc Québécois by Martine Ouellet and Bloc MP Mario Beaulieu.
The Bloc scheduled a press conference for 10:00 a.m. Monday, May 29, 2017 on Parliament Hill, at the Charles-Lynch 130-S, Centre Block. The press conference was attended by members of CJPME and PAJU including CJPME President Thomas Woodley and PAJU Co-President Bruce Katz, both of whom spoke in support of the Bloc Québécois motion. The motion itself was tabled on May 29 by BQ MP Mario Beaulieu on behalf of the party’s leader Martine Ouellet. (I met with Martine Ouellet prior to the press conference. She was forthright in her support for Palestinian rights and Palestinian self-determination and I thanked her for that forthrightness.)
A section of the motion read, “In order to assure the peaceful co-existence between Palestinians and Israelis, we ask that the government officially recognize Palestine as an independent state, in the name of the inalienable right of people’s self-determination.” Martine Ouellet stated that “136 of the 193 United Nations members now recognize Palestinian statehood, among the most recent being Portugal, Iceland and Sweden.” Mario Beaulieu criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for continuing the same policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as former prime minister Stephen Harper.” The Quebec National Assembly’s Québec Solidaire endorsed the BQ motion.
The motion in favour of Palestine sows discord among Bloc MPs
What ensued in the weeks following the tabling of the Bloc motion was a rebellion against Martine Ouellet with seven of the ten Bloc Québécois MPs deciding to leave the party. “The seven members of Parliament who split from the Bloc Québécois have released the name of their new federal party — Quebec Debout — and say they no longer believe it’s their job to promote Quebec separatism at the federal level.”
Bloc MP Rhéal Fortin (Rivière-du-Nord) stated the following :
« We don’t believe that our job in Parliament is to promote independence, » he said.
« That’s not our mission and that’s not what we want to do. We want to work for the Quebec interest. We want to stand up for Quebec. »
The former Bloc Québécois interim leader said that, while the members of the new party caucus still believe in an independent Quebec, he would leave the question of holding another referendum on the matter to the provincial National Assembly.
The party will register the new name with the chief electoral officer next week before launching consultations across Quebec to learn how their constituents want to be represented in Ottawa — and how people will choose between them and their former party.
The seven MPs who decided to split from the Bloc claimed that Martine Ouellet was “constantly zeroing in on independence instead of defending Quebec’s interests on the federal scene.” They added that they objected to “Martine Ouellet’s leadership and her political priorities.”
That should be tempered, however, by the fact that certain Bloc Québécois MPs were (and still are) ardent supporters of Israel and sat (and still sit) on the Canada-Israel Inter-Parliamentary Committee (CAIL), committed to promoting Israel’s interests in Canada, notwithstanding the fact that the apartheid regime in Tel Aviv is responsible for a genocide in Gaza, pogroms across the occupied Palestinian West Bank, bombing in Syria, in Lebanon and bombing in Iran in full transgression of international law. It is to be noted that Rhéal Éloi Fortin remains a member of the Canada-Israel Inter-Parliamentary Executive Committee. That appears to point to one of the principal reasons for Fortin’s denunciation of Martine Ouellet: her support for Palestine collided with his support for Israel.
Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet was the only federal party leader to sit on that same pro-Israel committee, but has since left (subsequent to a damning email which I sent to him earlier in 2026 and to the other 20 Bloc MPs who were also sitting there along with him, most of who have since also left; more on that later in my article). So much for his ‘selective’ declaration on the principle of the ‘self-determination of peoples.’
In a speech in early May of 2018, Martine Ouellette “accused Fortin and the other MPs of spreading « fake news » against her and compromising the party’s « internal democracy. » After a resounding vote of non-confidence in her leadership, Ouellet announced that she would be stepping down as leader of the Bloc Québécois on June 11, 2018. “During a 30-minute speech leading up to her resignation announcement, a passionate Ouellet blamed the vote on party president Mario Beaulieu, accusing the former leader of running a negative and aggressive campaign against her.” Shortly after Martine Ouellet stepped down as leader, Yves-François Blanchet took over as leader of the Bloc Québécois. The seven ‘rebels’ made ‘peace’ with the newly ‘reinvigorated’ pro-Israel Bloc Québécois.
Interestingly, when PAJU held a press conference in Montreal in 2014 to denounce Israel’s murderous attack on Gaza, the only federal MP to appear at our press conference to express his support for our position was Mario Beaulieu. Today, Beaulieu has been pushed into a corner by Blanchet, presumably for his support for the principle of Palestinian self-determination. It would appear that Beaulieu was given an alternative: leave with Ouellet or tow the pro-Israel Bloc Québécois line. Of course, there is no ‘proof’ of my claim, but there is a certain capacity to ‘put two-and-two together,’ so to speak.
Federal MPs sitting on the Canada-Israel Inter-Parliamentary Committee
When I published my article, entitled “How Canadian MPs in the Canada-Israel Inter-Parliamentary group are at the table of apartheid” on June 11, 2020 in The Canada Files, I noted that “a group of Canadian Members of Parliament representing four of the five federal parties sitting in the House of Commons, implicitly, if not explicitly, supporting Israel’s brutal apartheid regime by participating in the Canada Israel Inter-parliamentary Groupwhich functions as little more than an internal pressure group the function of which is to normalize and consequently whitewash Israel’s apartheid regime. Within this group sit 19 members of the Bloc Québécois (of 32 Bloc Québécois MPs sitting in the House of Commons), 18 Conservative MPs, 16 Liberal MPs, 2 New Democrats and 9 Senators.”
Subsequent to my sharing the article on lists including some card-carrying members of the Bloc and Parti Québécois, a number of the Bloquistes discreetly removed themselves from CAIL. Yves-François Blanchet was not one of those who left,nor was Rhéal Fortin, thereby confirming once again exactly where they stood on the question of Israel-Palestine. Not only did they not step away from CAIL; they added eighteen more Bloc MPs for a total of twenty-one Bloc MPs sitting comfortably at the table of pro-Israeli hasbara (propaganda) subsequent to the election of a Liberal minority government in 2025. Following the results of that election, I went to the CAIL website to check the presence of federal MPs there. Though not at all surprised to see the presence of Bloc MPs there, I was surprised to see that 21 of 22 Bloc Québécois MPs including their leader were on CAIL.
On December 12, 2025 I sent the following email to PAJU service lists with a copy of the email to the Bloc Québécois MPs sitting on CAIL. I listed them in the email as can be seen below in the copy of my December 12 email. It was also sent to other lists by way of ‘blind copy’:
| Objet: | Bloque québécois, demi solidaire! |
| De: | « kab1@videotron.ca » <kab1@videotron.ca> |
| Date: | Fri, 12 Dec 2025 17:38:56 -0500 |
| À: | PAJU Administration <pajuadmin@googlegroups.com>, PAJU1 <paju1@googlegroups.com>,PAJU2 <paju2@googlegroups.com> |
« Comme tous ses collègues du Bloc Québécois, y compris son chef, Yves-François Blanchet, Rhéal Fortin est membre en règle du Comité interparlementaire Canada-Israël (CAIL). Cette appartenance confère également aux députés du Bloc leur statut auprès de la CIJA et d’autres organisations sionistes. M. Fortin siège d’ailleurs au conseil d’administration du CAIL. Sur les 22 députés du Bloc Québécois siégeant au Parlement, 21 sont membres du Comité interparlementaire Canada-Israël. . . comfortablement assis tous à la table de l’apartheid! Veut-on parler de l’autodétermination des peuples? Quelle mascarade pathétique! » (1)
Bruce Katz
PAJU
Canada-Israel Inter-Parliamentary Committee (CAIL)
- Xavier Barsalou-Duval, M.P.
- Yves-François Blanchet, M.P.
- Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, M.P.
- Patrick Bonin, M.P.
- Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, M.P.
- Martin Champoux, M.P.
- Claude DeBellefeuille, M.P.
- Alexis Deschênes, M.P.
- Rhéal Éloi Fortin, M.P.
- Jean-Denis Garon, M.P.
- Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, M.P.
- Marilène Gill, M.P.
- Andréanne Larouche, M.P.
- Sébastien Lemire, M.P.
- Christine Normandin, M.P.
- Yves Perron, M.P.
- Louis Plamondon, M.P.
- Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, M.P.
- Mario Simard, M.P.
- Gabriel Ste-Marie, M.P.
I have only just recently gone back to the CAIL website to view which parties continue to have MPs sitting on CAIL. Of course, there are still Liberal and Conservative members of CAIL. The Bloc Québécois MPs have since shrunk to just four members of CAIL. They are:
Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe (Lac St-Jean)
Rhéal Éloi Fortin CAIL Executive Committee (Rivière-du-Nord)
Jean-Denis Garon (Mirabel)
Sébastien Lemire Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue
Guilty conscience or political opportunism?
Seventeen of the twenty-one Bloc MPs who sat on CAIL have mysteriously departed including Yves-François Blanchet. Perhaps the savagery of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, the pogroms in the West Bank, the unlawful attack on Iran and the savage bombing in Lebanon meant that it had gotten ‘too hot in the kitchen’ so to speak for the Bloquistes. Tacit support for apartheid and genocide had suddenly become ‘unseemly,’ politically disadvantageous! It changes nothing in terms of the fact that the Liberals, Conservatives and Bloquistes are perfectly comfortable with selling themselves at auction to the highest bidder! Political Jacks-in-the-Box who pop out of their boxes when they deem it politically advantageous and slide discreetly back into their boxes at the first sign of having to stand on principle!
Jewish supremacy from the River to the Sea
The eminent Israeli journalist Gideon Levy provides a concise and unequivocal statement on the nature of Zionism. Levy writes:
Zionism, at its base, is the belief in Jewish supremacy between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and just like any other ideology that subscribes to racial, national or religious supremacy, it is illegitimate.
What Gideon Levy does not add is, that in the Israeli context of Zionism – which is the Revisionist Zionism of Vladimir Jabotinsky and Benzion Netanyahu with its vision of a ‘Greater Israel’– Zionism means ‘White Jewish Zionism.’ The Zionist colonial pioneers were white Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe, especially from what had been the Pale of Settlement of the western region of the Russian empire where Jews were forced to live in undesirable conditions. Although The Pale was formally abolished subsequent to the Russian Revolution of 1917, before Stalin’s rule, Stalin’s totalitarian policies deeply impacted the former Pale’s Jewish population through forced cultural homogenization, state institutionalized antisemitism and the Stalin-induced ethnocentric notion of a Jewish ‘race’ rather than the Jewish religion. This ethnocentrism became the corner-stone of the Zionist Revisionism of Jabotinsky.
In Israel, the Ashkenazi elite dominates the military, politics, academia, and the judiciary. It continues to be the overwhelming presence of the governing military-industrial elite of Israel to the exclusion of other non-European Jews. It is an apartheid system, the discrimination of which oppresses first and foremost Palestinians, but non-White Jews as well, if to a lesser degree.
A case in point is the systemic discrimination in Israel against the black Ethiopian (Falasha) Jews. There are more than 145, 000 Falasha Jews in Israel. Over half of its members live under the poverty line and while they possess Israeli citizenship they remain second-class citizens. “A significant contributing factor to their plight is the Chief Rabbinate’s non-recognition of Ethiopians and their children as fully Jewish, leading to systemic discrimination and marginalization.” In other words, in Israel, as far as the status of Ethiopian Jews goes, “you’re Jewish if you’re a white Ashkenazi Jew.”
Discrimination in Israel against the ‘Mizrahi’ Jews (a term invented by the Ashkenazi Zionists) – Jews from North Africa and the Middle East – has been a reality since the origins of the State of Israel. The Mizrahi community historically has faced systemic exclusion by the European Ashkenazi establishment that has held power from the outset of Israel’s founding.
The State of Israel has, from its outset, favored a Westernized, European identity. “The Arabic language, North African/Middle Eastern traditions, and Arabic music of Mizrahi immigrants were treated with contempt and actively suppressed to « indigenize » them into a new Hebrew culture.” Again, it is the Israeli Ashkenazi institutional discrimination against non-European, non-White Jews who do not fit into the Ashkenazi bias of a ‘Western civilization outpost’ promoting Western ‘values’ among ‘lesser peoples,’ a replaying of ‘The White Man’s Burden.’ That is what Benjamin Netanyahu means when he refers to Israel as the ‘wall’ of Western civilization in the Middle East.
White Supremacy in Quebec Bad, White Supremacy in Israel Good
It is indisputable that Jewish supremacy in Israel is, in fact, White Jewish Supremacy. How ironic is it, then, when Canada’s and Quebec’s political class denounce a recent event in Quebec where right-wing Quebec nationalists carry slogans stating, “Je me souviens d’un Québec blanc” (I remember a white Quebec). In supporting Israel unconditionally, which is what the political class in Canada and Quebec does (has done since 1947), the same political class supports ‘White Supremacy in Israel’, yet it decries the same expression in Quebec.
Moreover, I maintain that this same political class – of which the Bloc Québécois MPs are a perfect example – is fully aware of the fact that Israel constitutes a bastion of White (Jewish) Supremacy, yet supports that Israeli state and thereby affords it the impunity with which it spreads violence and hatred across the Middle East in full transgression of international law. Juxtapose that to the Bloc Québécois’ ugly hypocrisy, and the hypocrisy and moral turpitude of Mark Carney who pays tribute to the rule-of-law while trampling it when he deems it politically advantageous. Let it be noted as well that the government of Quebec has a commercial office in Tel Aviv by which the same government that has denounced the ‘White Quebec’ event in Shawinigan lends commercial support to the fascist apartheid regime in Tel Aviv and its genocide in Gaza.
Craven political leaders in Canada and Quebec
There is no real difference between the craven hypocrisy, the self-serving opportunism and unseemly servility of a Mark Carney (like Justin Trudeau before him), a Pierre Poilievre or an Yves-François Blanchet when it comes to bowing before the altar of the Jewish Supremacist State of Israel. Perhaps the greatest hypocrite of all is Yves-François Blanchet who plays at being so much more ‘moral’ and ‘progressive’ than his political adversaries in the Liberal (Zionist) and Conservative parties of Canada.
No criticism from any of these feckless political Jacks-in-the-Box regarding Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza, in the Palestinian West Bank, in Lebanon or in Iran where, as in Gaza and Lebanon, residential structures, hospitals and schools have been targeted by “the only democracy in the Middle East.” No denunciation whatsoever of the more than 70, 000 Palestinian civilians murdered in Gaza with more than 171,000 injured, 70% of them being Palestinian women and children. No reference on the part of these political nullities concerning the murder of more than 20, 000 Palestinian children, (UNICEF places the number of Palestinian children who have been killed and maimed at more than 64,000), no critique of Israel’s systematic abuse of Palestinian prisoners which the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem calls a systematic torture network, no denunciation of systematic sexual abuse in Israeli prisons, or of the multiple calls for genocide against Palestinians on the part of Israeli politicians and Israeli media.
What an indolent and ineffectual lot these Canadian-Québécois politicians are! There is one question which begs asking in terms of the more than 64,000 Palestinian children callously murdered and maimed by Israel: would the political Jacks-in-the-Box that lead Canada have been as callous in their regard of the murder of Palestinian children if the latter were white with blond hair and blue eyes? After all, Palestinian children are brown, not white! That is a rhetorical question; we know the answer.
It would appear that there is, indeed, something rotten in the State of Canada!
The views and comments of the author are his own.
Bruce Katz is a founding member and co-president of Palestinian and Jewish Unity (PAJU), a Palestinian solidarity organization founded in November of 2000.
Notes
- The translation of my email to the Bloc MPs reads as follows:
Like all of his Bloc colleagues, including his leader, Yves-François Blanchet, Rhéal Fortin is a full member of the Canada-Israel Inter-Parliamentary Committee (CAIL). This membership also grants Bloc Québécois MPs their favorable status with CIJA and other Zionist organizations. Mr. Fortin also sits on the CAIL executivecommittee. Of the 22 Bloc Québécois MPs in Parliament, 21 are members of the Canada-Israel Inter-Parliamentary Committee… comfortably seated at the apartheid table! Do we wish to talk about the self-determination of peoples? What a pathetic charade!
