Several federal Canadian politicians have received police protection on Parliament Hill this week, including a Jewish Conservative MP whose Toronto-area office was vandalized, CBC News reported on Thursday.
The office of MP Melissa Lantsman, who represents the district of Thornhill, in the suburbs of Toronto, was plastered with anti-Israel posters overnight.
One of those posters included one warning "the Jews of Thornhill" that history is watching how they respond to the Israel-Hamas conflict, according to CBC News.
A Conservative official confirmed that Lantsman, who also serves as the deputy Conservative leader, has RCMP protection but did not say why.
RCMP or Parliamentary Protective Service officers also have been assigned in recent weeks to protect Emergency Preparedness Minister Harjit Sajjan, Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, according to the report.
The Prime Minister has a protective detail and cabinet ministers occasionally do, but it is rare for an opposition MP to require or receive that level of protection, CBC News noted.
Antisemitism has spiked in Toronto and other areas of Canada since the start of Israel’s war against Hamas on October 7.
In early November, an Indigo book store in downtown Toronto was vandalized with red paint and posters plastered on its front windows wrongfully accusing its Jewish founder and CEO, Heather Reisman, of “Funding Genocide.”
Last month, a Jewish-owned grocery store in Toronto was spray-painted with the words “Free Palestine” and later set on fire.
Days later, Toronto police arrested four people on a highway overpass, located near a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, that has become the site of recurring pro-Palestinian Arab protests.
This week, an anti-Israel protest at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto turned into a display of antisemitism.