The City of Pickering released a taxpayer-funded video labelling its critics “alt-right” and cancelling public in-person city council meetings.
In a video posted Monday, Mayor Kevin Ashe announced the decision to only have online meetings at the start of the new year.
“Over the past two years, the City of Pickering has witnessed a growing infiltration of alt-right individuals, ideologies and influences that have created an atmosphere of uncertainty, fear and intimidation over our council, our staff, our residents, and indeed the broader community,” Ashe said in the video.
The video shows several comments from critics of the city council, including harsh language and, in some cases, jokes about councillors being harmed. The city mentioned the term “alt-right” eight times in the video, although it does not define it.
“The alt-right Freedom Movement has moved from online videos and commentary on Rumble, Twitter and Facebook; they are here, and they’re trying to control, sow dissent and intimidate our community,” a city staffer claimed in the video.
Neither Ashe nor the City of Pickering responded to True North’s requests to comment or to define the term, though the term “alt-right” has historically been used to describe white nationalists.
Much of the video was directed at Councilor Lisa Robinson, accusing her of laughing at alleged threats against the council on podcasts and celebrating “far-right” Member of European Parliament Christine Anderson and tying her to comments made by her supporters. Robinson has apologized for both instances.
Robinson called the move to ban public in-person participation at the city council meetings “cowardly” and “an affront to democracy” in a video response released on X.
She said the mayor and council were “manufacturing a sense of danger” by using American headlines about “alt-right” groups infiltrating municipal politics.
The city claimed a post from Robinson where she recited the “Fifth of November” poem, accompanied by a clip from the movie “V for Vendetta,” which was a call to violence.
Robinson said the city was “grasping at straws,” and it was a poem from one of her favourite movies about resisting tyranny. The movie involves all the citizens of a dystopian London, England, peacefully standing up to an authoritarian government.
“Council and staff see this post as a veiled threat, or at the very least a menacing call for violent dissent,” the video continued. “While councillor Robinson has publicly said that she does not condone violence towards Pickering Council and staff, some of her more unhinged supporters feel differently.”
One allegedly threatening email said, “Your day of reckoning will come. You can’t treat citizens like this. Your dictatorship will come to an end.”
“It’s honestly laughable to any reasonable person who might watch it. It reveals how the mayor and the city are resorting to bullying tactics, labelling their own residents as alt-right and dismissing voices from outside the city,” Robinson said.
“Instead of providing real evidence, they fabricate and exaggerate a false narrative of threats appealing to fear over a few voicemails.”