Ontario NDP candidate Steve Parish, the former mayor of Ajax who defended naming a street after a Nazi officer, will not represent the party in the upcoming provincial election, leader Andrea Horwath has announced.
“The NDP’s vetting process gave us confidence that Mr. Parish does not hold antisemitic views. However, our party is committed to naming and correcting injustice, and vowing to do better—and as a candidate he has not met the mark,” Horwath said in a statement released Jan. 31.
“Specifically, Mr. Parish has not denounced the decision to have a street named after a high-ranking German officer in the Second World War. Perhaps most importantly he has not demonstrated that he understands why that is harmful.”
Parish’s nomination garnered media attention and controversy when it was revealed that, in 2007, while he was mayor of the community east of Toronto, he had presided over the naming of a street for Hans Langsdorff, the commander of a Second World War Nazi warship.
In 2020, the question of the street name was raised again and Parish, then the former mayor, spoke at the town council meeting against changing the street name, despite opposition from the local Jewish community, including Rabbi Tzali Borenstein of the Chabad Jewish Centre of Durham Region and Holocaust survivor Max Eisen.
Last week, at his nomination meeting on Jan. 22, Parish acknowledged that the Nazi regime “was the most evil regime in the history of humankind.”
He continued, “Indeed, the terms genocide and crimes against humanity come that terrible part of our history. This caused pain to some people in the Jewish community in Ajax and beyond in Ontario, and for that, I am profoundly and completely sorry.”
The apology failed to quell the controversy, with Jewish advocacy groups pointing out that Parish’s statement failed to say whether he had changed his views, and insisting he should not have been approved by the NDP as a candidate.
Liberal and Conservative candidates in the riding also criticized the NDP’s decision to greenlight Parish’s nomination in the first place, given his record.
Even NDP members were appalled by Parish’s nomination. Emma Cunningham, the former president of the Ontario NDP riding association in nearby Pickering-Uxbridge, said Parish’s nomination was the “final straw” and resigned her position, citing other cases where the NDP had failed to properly vet antisemitic candidates.
After Horwath’s announcement, Cunningham tweeted, “WE DID IT!!!!!! (Next step: make sure the @ndp and @OntarioNDP put measures in place in order to not have this happen again.)”
In her statement, Howarth thanked grassroots New Democrats and Jewish leaders who had met with her to discuss the issue. “Their counsel has been invaluable in arriving at this decision,” she said in her statement.
“Our candidate team must be one that Ontario trusts to be leaders in the fight against antisemitism, and hate in all its forms—whether that’s in a synagogue in Texas or on the streets of Ottawa. Today, that means acknowledging and apologizing for our own mistakes, committing to do better, and moving forward.”