The fear, carefully nurtured by the anti-Semitic press here and in Montreal, that international Jewry was manoeuvering to secure the admission of a large number of German-Jewish refugees into Canada, where, according to such papers as Le Patriote, they would overrun the country, resulted in the passage of a resolution by the Quebec city council urging the federal authorities not to relax the existing strict immigration laws.
The resolution sent to the Hon. W. A. Gordon, federal minister of immigration, pointed out that the movement of a large number of Jews to Canada would give rise to a state within a state as they were not easily assimilated. Furthermore, it was decared, it was in the interest of the “two mother Christian races (i.e., the French and English) of this country to prevent the entry of non-Christian persons.”
This resolution can safely be called the outgrowth of the agitation carried on by a number of French-Canadian publications against the Jews. It represents the credence attached to the hue and cry these papers have raised over the alleged existence in Belg###um### flood Can ###The Fren###### members of the Federal Parliament have assured their constituents that they will oppose any relaxation of the immigration bars. So keen was the anxiety aroused by the anti-Semitic press reports of a Jewish “invasion”, that a spokesman for the immigration department at Ottawa felt called upon during the week to issue a statement denying the Government’s intent to lower entry restrictions.
The cry for a total ban on Jewish immigration into Canada was again raised by the Federation of Fascist Labor Clubs when its St. Edouard section adopted a resolution in favor of complete stoppage of Jewish immigration into this country because “any immigration into Canada of Jews from Germany, or elsewhere, would be detrimental to the laboring classes of the Dominion.”
The resolution was forwarded to the Minister of Immigration at Ottawa. Brown caps and shirts, as well as the Fascist salute, were much in evidence at the meeting when the anti-Jewish resolution was passed.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
