The election posters of Canadian Jewish parliamentary candidates Rachel Bendayan and Anthony Housefather vandalized with swastikas. Photo: Twitter.

Politicians in Canada have roundly condemned the antisemitic vandalism of election posters in Montreal promoting two Jewish candidates ahead of the Sept. 20 snap general election called last Sunday by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Trudeau led the declarations of solidarity with his two fellow-Liberal Party candidates — sitting MPs Anthony Housefather and Rachel Bendayan — after swastikas were discovered scrawled on their posters in their respective ridings, or parliamentary constituencies, of Mount Royal and Outremont in Montreal.

“I am disgusted and I am angry that Rachel Bendayan and Anthony Housefather had signs vandalized with antisemitic graffiti. It is completely unacceptable,” the Canadian leader declared on Twitter. “I stand in solidarity with Rachel and Anthony, and the entire Jewish community, against this type of hatred.”

Housefather himself was defiant. “Pretty sad to see antisemitism hitting the campaign on Day 3,” he tweeted. “I can assure whoever did this that no swastika is going to scare me or stop me from speaking up for Jewish Canadians.”

Separately, Bendayan warned that “we’ve seen the road that the politics of the far right leads us to in the US and around the world.”

She continued: “That is not us. That is not our Canada.”

Former Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, who now serves as the Canadian government’s antisemitism envoy, said that he was “disgusted by the targeting of Jewish candidates with the most vile of antisemitic symbol of hatred — swastikas.”

Added Cotler: “There is no room for such antisemitic hate in Canada, or anywhere, and certainly not in a democratic electoral process.”