The West Block Transcript, Episode 35, Season 13

THE WEST BLOCK
Episode 35, Season 13
Sunday, May 12, 2024

Host: Mercedes Stephenson

Guests:
Kamal Khera, Diversity, Inclusion and Persons with Disabilities Minister
Philip Ingram, Former British Intelligence Officer

Location:
Ottawa Studio

Mercedes Stephenson: As clashes escalate between protesters and police on American university campuses, will Canada follow suit?

I’m Mercedes Stephenson. The West Block starts now.

Temperatures have spiked at universities south of the border. Is Canada far behind? With protests at campuses across the country, arrests at the University of Calgary and protesters vowing to dig in as Jewish student say they feel unsafe, will Ottawa step in?

And, if Canada couldn’t hit NATO’s spending targets before, it may have just gotten a lot worse. As Canada struggles to make NATO’s minimum spenders club requirements, the British are suggesting raising the bar even higher.

For weeks now, we’ve seen emotional scenes of anger boiling over and police action to break up pro-Palestinian protest encampments on American university campuses.

Last week, police in Calgary took a similar approach. There have been several Canadian campus protests also calling for their universities to divest from Israeli companies. But they’ve largely been tamer than their American counterparts and hadn’t resulted in a police crackdown until Calgary last week. The rise in campus encampments and the accompanying signs and rhetoric have left many Jewish students feeling unsafe, though. Some of those students came to Ottawa last week to testify before MPs about antisemitism on campus.

Claire Frankel, McGill University Student: “Students have been physically assaulted. They’ve been doxxed. They’ve lost friends. They’ve been harassed. They’ve