Ontario Votes and Proceedings, 1 December 2016

What this document is

The Votes and Proceedings are the Legislative Assembly of Ontario’s official minutes for a sitting day. This is the record for Thursday 1 December 2016, in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. Under the heading “Private Members’ Public Business” it records the debate and disposition of Private Members’ Notice of Motion No. 36, moved by Gila Martow, the member for Thornhill S016. The document carries the operative text of the motion in full and the names of the members on each side of the division.

What it establishes

The motion was carried on division, 49 ayes to 5 nays S016. Its four operative parts ask the Assembly to stand against any position or movement promoting hatred, hostility, prejudice, racism or intolerance; to recognize the ties between Ontario and Israel; to endorse the Ottawa Protocol on Combatting Antisemitism; and to reject the differential treatment of Israel, including the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement S016.

The record names the five members who voted against: Bisson, Mantha, Natyshak, Singh and Tabuns, all New Democrats S016. That is the precise fact the document supports. It does not record a caucus voting as a bloc, and other New Democrats who voted in other divisions are not listed in either column, so the accurate description is that five New Democrats voted against, not that a party opposed the motion.

Like the House of Commons vote earlier that year, this is an expression of the opinion of a legislature. It amends no statute, creates no offence and restricts nobody’s speech.

Key passages

The motion asks the Assembly to “reject the differential treatment of Israel, including the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement” and to “endorse the Ottawa Protocol on Combatting Antisemitism” S016. The disposition reads “Carried on the following division” S016.

How it is used on this site

The record is cited on Canada’s position on BDS, Is BDS antisemitic? and Is BDS legal in Canada?, and it appears in the key facts table and on the timeline.

Provenance and access

The document is published by the Legislative Assembly at ola.org. That host refuses automated requests, returning an access-denied response, so the text was read from the Internet Archive snapshot linked in the document record above. The debate itself is in the Hansard transcript for the same sitting day; the Assembly does not publish a per-motion anchor for 2016 sittings, and no archived copy of that Hansard page was located.

Page history

2026-09-21: First draft.