On July 25, Iain Aspenlieder pleaded guilty in court to a charge of mischief for defacing Canada’s National Holocaust Monument. Before dawn on June 9, Aspenlieder—a former lawyer with the City of Ottawa—cycled to the monument with three cans of bright red paint to write the words “FEED ME”. He meant the phrase as a political statement about the humanitarian condition of Palestinians in Gaza, he admitted. He had also just started a hunger strike, which lasted nearly a month, to call attention to the cause.
After his guilty plea, a Superior Court justice released Aspenlieder on bail until the sentencing process starts in the fall. He must leave Ottawa and remain under supervision until then at his parents’ home near Alliston, Ont. He is under what the Crown Attorney described as “extremely strict” bail conditions, including wearing a GPS-tracking ankle bracelet, staying off social media, and keeping away from Jewish or Israeli buildings. He is also banned from discussing the conflict in Gaza with anyone except mental health specialists.
The prosecutor argues this was a hateful act, and the government intends to ask the judge for a prison term because of the fear he instilled in the Jewish community. But Aspenlieder’s defence maintains their client was “driven by a profound sense of compassion and moral urgency—not by hatred or prejudice.”
On today’s episode of The CJN’s North Star podcast, host Ellin Bessner gets reaction from Ottawa’s Jewish community, including Mina Cohn, the chair of Ottawa’s Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship, and lawyer Lawrence Greenspon, who is co-chair of the National Holocaust Monument Committee.
Transcript
Ellin Bessner: That’s what it sounded like on June 15th in Ottawa at an interfaith gathering held at Canada’s National Holocaust Monument. The rally was called “No Place for Hate,” organized by local Jewish leaders who look after the monument. They arranged it just a few days after bright red paint was discovered splashed on the walls of the memorial and the words “Feed me” painted in big red letters. Political leaders across the spectrum condemned the act, from the Mayor of Ottawa to the Prime Minister. The story prompted headlines around the world. It was a shocking and painful desecration of a solemn place where the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust are memorialized, and it targeted Canadian Jews for what’s happening in the Middle East.
As you all heard, a few weeks later, Ottawa police carried out a search warrant and arrested 46-year-old Iain Aspenlieder. They found the former City of Ottawa lawyer at his home. They seized clothes, a bicycle, and running shoes with splotches of red paint on them, and also booklets and magazines talking about how Canada is complicit in Israeli apartheid, and a Palestinian flag in a black backpack, also with red paint. Aspenlieder told police he was actually wearing incriminating evidence—a T-shirt with more paint stains. He admitted later that he hadn’t worn gloves and even left a handprint behind, so they’d know who it was, although surveillance cameras and the discarded paint cans led the police right to him. He was charged with two counts of mischief and one of criminal harassment. He was held in custody and denied bail. But we couldn’t report the details of why until now, as there’s been a court-ordered ban on publication.
Now, with Aspenlieder pleading guilty on Friday, July 25th, the ban is lifted. He’ll be released on bail. He might already be out of jail, but under what the Crown attorney called extremely strict bail conditions: leaving Ottawa, living with his retired parents in Everett, Ontario, that’s near Barrie, with an ankle monitor bracelet. He has to stay away from the Jewish community and stay quiet about anything related to Israel, Jews, or the Israel-Palestine crisis. He’s supposed to be sentenced a couple of months from now after victim impact statements are delivered. We’ll know more after Labour Day.
Lawrence Greenspon: You can wash away the paint, but you can’t wash away the pain.
Ellin Bessner: I’m Ellin Bessner, and this is what Jewish Canada sounds like for Monday, July 28, 2025. Welcome to “North Star,” a podcast of The Canadian Jewish News and made possible in part thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.
According to evidence that we couldn’t report before now, it appears that Iain Aspenlieder’s behaviour had started to worry his family for quite a while. Court documents show he’d been on leave from his job with the City of Ottawa for mental reasons since Christmas. His current partner had recently broken up with him in May, and just hours before he set off on his bike around 2:30 in the morning, June 9th, carrying the paint, he informed his family he was on a hunger strike. According to court documents, he’d been on the strike for two weeks before he was arrested. That day his mom drove to Ottawa and asked authorities to have her son taken to hospital for a psych evaluation, where he got a clean bill of health.
Nevertheless, he was kept in custody until now because the judge ruled he didn’t want Aspenlieder to have a national platform to spout his political views, which he’d planned to do by continuing his hunger strike, lying on his parents’ couch, and in his words, seeing it to the end. When news of the arrest came out, the City of Ottawa fired him. His previous partner, who is the mother of his two children, has now asked the court for full custody. Then we learned on Friday, Iain Aspenlieder’s guilty plea includes the promise that he’s done with any more illegal acts and protests and that he understands the impact it’s had on his own family and on Jews across Canada. The Crown wants him to go to prison because painting the Holocaust monument caused real fear in the Jewish community and was hate-motivated or hateful. But his lawyer says it wasn’t hate;it was his client’s way to draw attention to human suffering.
So how does the guilty plea sit with the Jewish community most closely tied to the Holocaust monument? And what do they want the sentencing to look like? We’re joined now by Mina Cohn, who chairs the Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship in Ottawa, and also by Lawrence Greenspon, who’s co-chair of the Holocaust Monument Committee.
Lawrence Greenspon: Good afternoon.
Ellin Bessner: Thank you. Well, Lawrence and Mina, of course, your groups and you have been following the arrest, the desecration first of all, the arrest, and then the court hearings of the person who has pleaded guilty now to defacing the Holocaust monument. Can you give me, either one of you can start, sort of a quick, off-the-top immediate feedback on: is this a good thing that he pleaded guilty? Is this what you wanted?
Mina Cohn: I think I’m pleased he said he committed it. I would be upset if he didn’t recognise that. But legally, I have no idea what it means.
Ellin Bessner: Let’s hear from the lawyer and the Holocaust Committee Monument group as well.
Lawrence Greenspon: Well, the guilty plea is, of course, a recognition that Mr. Aspenlieder has done the crime, and the crime in this case was damage to the National Holocaust Monument. So he’s pled guilty to that. He’s been released on bail pending his sentence, and he will come back to be sentenced. At the time that he’s sentenced, it for sure will be taken into account that he’s already spent the equivalent of—well, he spent 30 days in jail in pretrial custody. And typically, what that attracts is credit for one and a half days for each day in jail. So, he will have done the equivalent of 45 days in jail for this mischief charge.
Ellin Bessner: But in terms of the guilty plea, would you have preferred that it goes to trial?
Lawrence Greenspon: I spoke with the Crown, Moiz Karimjee, and he basically said, ‘Look, we’ve included in the agreed statement of facts the fact that members of the Jewish community were scared or frightened as a result of this act.’ But I’m not convinced that the Crown Attorney gets it. And what I mean by that is there’s already been comments by Aspenlieder’s lawyer to the effect this wasn’t motivated by hate, to which it’s just not real.
It’s the unfortunate link that everybody makes these days, which is, you know, ‘We’re not antisemitic, we’re not anti-Jews, but we really don’t like what’s happening in Gaza.’ So here you have a message which, in and of itself is not hateful: “Feed me”. It’s not a hateful message, but look where the guy put it. He put it on the National Holocaust Monument. He desecrated the equivalent of six million Jewish tombstones by his action. That’s what he did. So it’s ridiculous to say that this was not motivated by hate. Aspenlieder himself made the connection between Gaza and what’s happening there and Jews. And it’s this kind of connection, this kind of link which fuels antisemitism worldwide.
Ellin Bessner: Mina, did you want to weigh in on this?
Mina Cohn: Yeah, I agree 100% with Lawrence. I would say that defacing the monument in the middle of the night is not just something that has no intention. This vandalism is definitely clear to everybody that sees it for what it is. What he did is an assault on the memory and respect of not just six million Jews, but I think on Canadian shared morals as well.
Ellin Bessner: In court, in his early bail hearings, he went on a hunger strike, and the judge was saying, ‘I’m not giving you this platform. Absolutely not. You’re staying in prison until you get a lawyer.’ And when he said in court, “I asked Prime Minister Carney to acknowledge that Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal and he’s complicit in genocide,” and I don’t have to go on…”And so that’s what I would like an acknowledgment of in the courtroom.”
So he tried to use this; he did try to say all this stuff in court. We couldn’t publish it until now. And I’m just wondering, would a trial have been better or maybe not? As a lawyer, strategy-wise, is this a better outcome for the Jewish community, strategy-wise?
Lawrence Greenspon: I wouldn’t even repeat what he said. I would take the last minute of your broadcast and edit it out. I wouldn’t even repeat his message. That is the essential problem, that that’s the message that everybody uses to fuel the antisemitism that underlies all of it. Would a trial have been better? No. It would have given him an even larger platform to spew his message. No. I think the fact that he pled guilty to the crime, now really it’s going to be a question of sentence and the judge is going to have to look at motivation.
And if the judge is looking at motivation, this was a hate-motivated crime. Otherwise, why didn’t he put the message on the National War Memorial? Why didn’t he put the message, you know, on Parliament Hill somewhere? He put his message very pointedly, very purposely on the National Holocaust Monument. That’s the sacred place that he desecrated. And the reason he did that is because that’s where Jews, 6 million Jews, are memorialized. So the place is the connection; the place is the link here to antisemitism.
And at the time, and Mina will be aware of this as well, at the time, all the politicians were tripping over themselves to condemn this act of desecration. To be the first one to say this is not acceptable, this is terrible, this is awful. Yeah. And then they walked away and started making comments about what’s happening in Gaza and condemning Israel for what’s happening in Gaza. Right after they condemned this terrible act of desecration of the National Holocaust Monument. What do you think it is that fuels antisemitism in Canada and worldwide? It’s the linking of the two, the linking of what’s happening in Gaza to the underlying hatred of Jews that has become an epidemic.
Ellin Bessner: When you have to give your impact. Thank you. When you have to give your victim impact statement, I imagine they’re going to ask you for one. Is that something you’re going to do if, if they give that chance to you? Mina?
Mina Cohn: Nobody contacted us yet. I can tell you that immediately after this, actually, this vandalism caught me in a conference in Toronto for Holocaust centres from North America. We were all shocked and fearful. We came back to Ottawa and three days later CHES had to launch the iWalk app for the National Holocaust Monument. And calls came in from the community, from descendants of survivors, asking me to postpone it because they were afraid, they were afraid to come. And we have a few people that cancelled their participation because of it. They were so fearful, they didn’t know at the time who did it, what does it mean, where would it lead? Would it be safe to be at the monument? And I refused to cancel it because I said we have the police, we have the RCMP, everybody is with us, the government is with us and we didn’t cancel. So. But the community was very, very afraid. They didn’t know what the consequences will be.
Ellin Bessner: Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead.
Lawrence Greenspon: As you know, a week after the desecration, we, the National Holocaust Monument Committee, together with other Jewish agencies, we organised a vigil which was extremely well attended and there was very much a question of security. There’s always been, whenever we’ve had events at the monument, there’s always been a question of security. But in light of what had happened here, there certainly was a heightened concern about security and people nevertheless showed up in large numbers to. It was held as an interfaith vigil and we felt that this was a very quick but meaningful reaction to what had happened at the monument.
Ellin Bessner: So what would your victim impact statement look like then?
Lawrence Greenspon: I think the most important thing that has to be gotten across is that this was a hate-motivated crime and that it impacted the Jewish community. There are still survivors of the Holocaust in our community. There’s certainly second generation and third generation and people in our community were afraid, as Mina has pointed out. But it goes beyond that. It goes beyond the immediate fear and anxiety and hesitation that you have to go to the monument. It goes beyond that. It’s something that stays with you in the back of your mind all the time. What you now know, that a place that is the ultimate sacred place for the Holocaust, that that place has been, has been desecrated, it’s been accessed by a hater and it’s been desecrated.
Ellin Bessner: So you said earlier that he served, let’s say, almost 45 days equivalent. He’s pleading guilty. There were three charges. One was criminal harassment, which was against the Jewish community, which was very novel. We wrote about that.
Lawrence Greenspon: Right.
Ellin Bessner: And I don’t think that’s the one they’re going to stick to. I think they’ll drop that is what I’ve heard.
Lawrence Greenspon: Right.
Ellin Bessner: They’re going to just do mischief on am To the war memorial type thing, right?
Lawrence Greenspon: That’s right.
Ellin Bessner: So what would be an appropriate sentence?
Lawrence Greenspon: Well, for the, the offence itself, if he’s done 45 days in jail for mischief to a war memorial, that’s. And that’s the offence he pled to, unfortunately. But that’s the one that he pled to. And the other two are going to be withdrawn. I would say, you know, that 45, the equivalent of 45 days in jail is, you know, is substantial, it’s significant. And is it going to serve as a deterrent, as a gentle deterrent in the future to others who might be like-minded? I would certainly hope so.
Mina Cohn: I would ask another question here. Has anybody thought or is somebody in the legal environment thinking of disbarring him from being a lawyer after he did that?
Lawrence Greenspon: He’s been suspended. There is, as far as I’m aware, there is a complaint that has been made to the law society and the law society has the power to disbar him for sure.
Ellin Bessner: Mina, I don’t know if you’ve read it, I guess you haven’t, but his mom was worried. That’s how they found him in a way because he went on a hunger strike. He told his family he was going on a hunger strike three or four weeks before his domestic family law issue was coming to court, that his ex-spouse was suing him for full custody of their children. And he said in court “I wasn’t gonna be alive that long to even contest it.” He got a clean bill of mental health from the hospital. They kept him in prison partly so that he wouldn’t die because they were watching him because he was on this hunger strike, which then he eventually stopped. I mean, the public did not know any of this. But now that you know, does this change anything as far as what he did and why he did it to the Holocaust monument when, you know, there were all these other things?
Mina Cohn: It doesn’t change anything in my mind. I mean, people have personal issues, but they don’t take it out on a monument. Regardless of what his personal issues were, the fact that he has a clean bill of health and he’s not, doesn’t have any mental issues, makes it more, more severe in my opinion, Lawrence.
Lawrence Greenspon: Well, we’re seeing in criminal law more and more frequency of mental health being involved in criminal defense cases. It’s skyrocketed. We look at this case, and I don’t know that he can say, “Well look,” as he has. He said, “No, I have a clean bill of health. I don’t have any mental health issues really.” I don’t know. I mean, it’s a guy who’s a lawyer for the city of Ottawa, goes and does this type of act and then claims he doesn’t have any mental health issues. I’m with Mina on that one.
Ellin Bessner: Mina, you must have seen the surveillance footage, I imagine.
Mina Cohn: Yes, of course I did. Yeah, yeah.
Ellin Bessner: And when you saw that, I mean, were you able to tell me, just before we end, how watching it impacts you?
Mina Cohn: It’s scary. It’s scary that somebody would do something like that out in the open. I knew there would be evidence because of the location. I didn’t expect it to be undisclosed, but it’s hard to watch, yes.
Lawrence Greenspon: Having just gone through the mischief provisions of the criminal code in another matter, the maximum sentence on a mischief charge is 10 years for like.
Ellin Bessner: For desecrating a war monument, yeah.
Lawrence Greenspon: Yes, I understand that the Crown is going to be seeking a penitentiary term, and you know, that’ll be up to the Crown to advocate for, as victim impact statements, you’re not, you’re precluded, you’re not allowed to suggest what you think is an appropriate sentence.
Ellin Bessner: Sorry. A guy a few years ago who defaced the national war monument got 60 days in jail. But most of the other ones, like the people from the Freedom Convoy, the urinating kids, they got off. Nothing happened. All the charges were dropped. Yeah, well, story, different story.
Lawrence Greenspon: Yeah, I can’t talk about the Freedom Convoy at this point. The Crown was looking for seven years for the mischief [against his client Tamara Lich] and eight years on Barber. So it’s a, it’s a whole other…
Ellin Bessner: Yes, I’d love to talk to you about that after it’s over. I know. Another day. Yeah. And we’ll see what happens. Thank you for sharing your reaction, your thoughts with us.
Mina Cohn: Thank you very much. Thank you.
Ellin Bessner: And that’s what Jewish Canada sounds like for this episode of North Star, made possible thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.
Just a quick note. Lawrence Greenspon is representing Tamara Lich, the Freedom Convoy co-leader who was convicted of mischief for the February 2022 protests in Ottawa. Greenspon has asked for her to receive an absolute discharge, but the Crown has asked to put her away for seven years. The maximum sentence for Iain Aspenlieder is 10 years.
Our show is produced by Zachary Judah Kauffman and Andrea Varsany. Our executive producer is Michael Fraiman, and the music is by Brett Higgins. Thanks for listening.
Show Notes
Related links
- An Ottawa judge originally denied bail to the man who later pleaded guilty to defacing the National Holocaust monument.
- Why the Ottawa police hate crime team and the Ontario Crown prosecutor laid three charges, including criminal harassment, against the suspect Iain Aspenleider.
- Why Ottawa’s Jewish community held an interfaith rally June 15 at the Holocaust monument site after the June 9 defacing.
Credits
- Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
- Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
- Music: Bret Higgins
Support our show
- Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
- Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
- Subscribe to North Star (Not sure how? Click here)
