Senator from P.E.I. apologizes for tying international students, Gaza immigrants to terrorism

Percy Downe from Prince Edward Island has walked back comments he made urging security checks on international students and immigrants from Gaza, but an advocacy group is still calling for his resignation.

«Islanders are concerned about terrorists coming to our country, given the terrible, savage crimes committed by Hamas against the citizens of Israel,» Percy Downe said in the preamble to a question directed at Marc Gold, the Trudeau government's representative in the Senate.

«Given the lack of security checks on international students, what checks will be conducted on individuals coming from Gaza?»

Downe followed up his comments with a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, calling for security checks on immigrants and students from Gaza.

On Saturday, he deleted the post and put up a brief note in its place: «Upon reflection, the tweet I sent out on Gaza was wrong. My apologies for my mistake.»

That was not enough for BIPOC USHR, a P.E.I. group representing people of colour that issued a statement describing Downe's comments as «blatantly racist and Islamophobic» and calling for his resignation.

«I was really shocked because I didn't expect it to be so blunt and so openly racist… especially from someone in that kind of position,» Sobia Ali-Faisal, the group's executive director, said in an interview Monday. «It's harmful. It's dangerous.»

She said that as a Muslim herself, she found the comments particularly disturbing and unnerving.

«One of the most common racist, Islamophobic tropes is that Muslims are terrorists, or we're somehow complicit in terrorism, and we're dangerous and violent.

»It really makes you feel like, 'OK, this is not someone I would ever, ever go to for anything.'"

Sexual violence also cited

In