Muslim community members express frustration as politicians exploit voting blocs

First it was the Catholic churches where Italian-Canadians congregated after the war. Then it was the Sikh Gurdwaras. And now, the focus of more and more politicians during election season is the country’s diverse Muslim community. 

Younger generations who gather inside Mosques or socialize in other spaces, IRL or virtually, are questioning the tactics long used by political parties, particularly the Liberals and Conservatives, who see them as little more than pieces of a massive, game changing voting bloc in key parts of the country’s electoral map. 

"I feel like it's quite common. I do think that to a certain extent, it's exploitation," Gabriel Gebril, a spokesperson for the Niagara Palestine Coalition, told The Pointer. He says politicians are targeting vote-rich Muslim communities, courting diverse members during the election season, pandering for support without engaging them on the issues that really matter to communities.

Gabriel Gebril, a spokesperson for the Niagara Palestine Coalition, says politicians need to be connected with Muslim community members outside campaign season.

(Supplied)

"When a politician comes to the Mosque…outside of campaign season, they don't listen to their Muslim constituents. Their Muslim constituents have problems, and they're silent about them. So what I want to see from these politicians is, outside of election season, them talking to their Muslim constituents and listening to their Muslim constituents."

It’s nothing new in communities whose demographics present political opportunities for those willing to exploit the strength in numbers, and such tactics are certainly not out of bounds. But concerns have always followed the constant procession of politicians who arrive at places of worship or parade through other community spaces where ethno-religious groups can be convinced to offer their support. 

Patrick Brown at a Tamil Temple. He has admitted to exploiting the community for votes.

(Facebook)

Some even publicize their strategy to exploit these groups.

“By the time I announced my intention to run for Ontario Party leader in October [2014], I had lined up all sides of each of these communities—the four sides of the Sikh community and the three sides of the Tamil community,” Patrick Brown wrote in his 2018 tell-all memoir, which revealed some of the shameless but politically expedient tactics the former Ontario PC leader used to win that role when he was a longshot unknown who came out of nowhere to game the contest by taking advantage of a poorly designed delegate point system, admittedly exploiting ethno-religious communities.

“The Tamil community organizers told me when I announced my candidacy that they would be able to sweep the GTA for me.”

“During the campaign, we signed up around 10,000 Tamil members.”

Brown continued.

“In key ridings such as in Scarborough, where there were about 20,000 Tamil families per riding, my campaign team knew it would be a cakewalk for us. But I said to the team that the goal was to find Tamil families in other ridings.”

“In the weaker ridings, if we could get 500 Tamil members signed up to vote, we knew we’d have 80 per cent of that riding.”

The political influence of Canada’s Muslim community has grown like no other demographic in the country over the last 20 years. Nowhere has that expanding influence been more noticeable than in the region of Peel.

Between 2011 and 2021, Census figures from Statistics Canada show the Muslim population increased from 9.4 percent to 12.6 percent of Peel’s population, with 182,000 residents who identified as Muslim five years ago. Across Canada, the widely diverse Muslim population has grown rapidly, from just under 2 percent of the country in 2011 to 4.9 in 2021. According to projections there are just over 2 million Muslim-Canadians in the country currently.

And politicians like Patrick Brown now look for ways to exploit them for votes.

In 2022, when he was seeking the Conservative Party of Canada leadership to become prime minister in the current federal election, Brown tried to court the Muslim vote, telling a Montreal-based Arab language magazine that if he became PM he would not move Canada’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a position backed by most Muslims. 

But when Jewish supporters learned of his comments in the Arab language publication, Brown immediately flip-flopped, saying he would move the embassy which is what many Jewish-Canadians support.

Saleh Waziruddin, a St. Catharines resident who has advocated on a range of priorities for many Muslim Canadians, says he has also seen this shapeshifting behaviour.  

"Many non-Muslim politicians assume that if they just approach one or two people with official titles, for example a person who is part of a Mosque’s board of directors, they will get the whole Muslim community (to automatically support them)," he told The Pointer. 

"They don't consider that what they have to do for the Muslim community is much more than just public relations. They just are interested in getting votes and getting donations, and unfortunately some of the people in leadership in the community fit that expectation that they don't make demands of the politicians sometimes, and they just give donations thinking that that will endear the politician to the community.”

Waziruddin said that many Muslims in the communities he is familiar with are tired of this malpractice by politicians, while they fail to take action on real issues impacting Canadians. He expressed his concern over the appearance of candidates at several community events, including Eid prayers, just to create the impression they support the community, while they search for votes.

Changing demographics and the spread of intolerance as a result led to the creation of the group The Canadian Muslim Vote, which engages community members on the issues impacting them. The organization engaged more than 15,000 people last year, and was involved in elections at all three levels of government, including the Alberta NDP leadership race and mayoral byelections in Toronto and Mississauga. It has also been active in the recent Ontario election and the federal election, helping inform community members so they are not as susceptible to politicians and so-called community leaders with their own agendas.

“We have seen political representatives across party lines dehumanize Muslims, question our loyalties, and cast baseless aspersions on our community,” the organization’s website warns. “Islamophobia continues to rise, exemplified by legislation like Bill-21 in Quebec and exacerbated by political rhetoric and inaction. Economic uncertainty has left many struggling with affordability, and policies affecting civil liberties remain unaddressed. All of this is happening at a time when the very sovereignty of our nation is coming under attack.”

To enhance the civic engagement of Muslim voters the organization’s Get Out The Vote campaign reached a milestone in 2019’s federal election by making five million points of contact with residents across Canada in partnership with more than 250 mosques. That included the efforts of staff members and volunteers who knocked on 10,000 doors and made 11,000 phone calls, while hitting 2.2 million impressions on social media platforms. With the help of the group’s efforts, after 2018’s Ontario provincial election a survey conducted by Mainstreet Research showed that 69 percent of the Muslim population eligible to vote did so, and in ridings where Candian-Muslims were engaged directly, the voter turnout reached all-time highs between 71 to 80 percent.

It’s why some in the community are not opposed to engaging with politicians at their places of worship. 

For Umair Ashraf, the executive director of The Canadian Muslim Vote, this is not considered a breach of ethics by political candidates, but rather an opportunity for residents to speak up about their discomfort around certain issues, when done with the community’s permission.

"What I would say… is ultimately each Masjid, or each Mosque, decides where they fall within their own strategies, and what they allow," he said. "But what we try to tell people is that one of the best ways of civic engagement is to engage with politicians or any representative, wherever you can. So obviously, go visit them at their offices, but also send emails and make phone calls. However, if they do take the time, or if they do come to the Masjid or the Mosque that they're canvassing and they're standing outside, that's a very good time to actually be able to talk about all the different points that you want to bring up."

He said those who feel their voices are not being heard in the political process should come forward and ask questions of their local candidates.

“It's important for them to then continuously speak up," he stressed. "Get some more people that may be feeling the same way, and start putting some more pressure on ensuring that they're able to have that dialogue, have that discussion, and then go from there. Because ultimately, as politicians, they have to answer to you because they are public servants….They're there for their constituents. They're there for the people in their communities. And it's a responsibility to be able to hold space and hold an area where they can have a dialogue and discussion."

Opportunistic politicians have long seized on the game changing potential of playing to this desire to be heard, identifying well defined voting blocs, showing up in their spaces and telling them what they want to hear.

Gebril expressed concern over appearances by politicians at prominent Mosque events, especially on Friday afternoon prayers, courting congregants for political gain.

"Let's take the Khutbah (Friday sermon), for example. On Friday, it can be deeply political. In fact, oftentimes it is a good thing when it's political: ‘Oh, this is what's going on in the community. Oh, the ummah (the wider community of Muslims) here needs X, Y, and Z.’ The Mosque can be a place where politics are welcome, but when politicians who are not part of the Muslim community, usually, and who are just cynically coming during election season… then, yeah, we're gonna get sick and tired of it, and we're gonna want to throw the baby out with the bathwater… In the Niagara region, we don't even see the politicians giving that much promise, like they'll come to the Mosque, and they'll take a photo op," he laments.

Key figures, he says, among the Muslim community are often part of the problem.

“People want the politics that are in the Mosque to represent what the Muslim people want, what the ummah want, not what big donors at the top of the Masjid hierarchy want."

Politicians routinely exploit the growing political influence of Muslim communities across Canada.

(Malton Islamic Centre)

This engagement rarely comes with any action to help the community in impactful ways, he says. Instead, candidates often use a divisive style of politics, just like Brown did when pitting Jewish-Canadians and Muslim-Canadians against each other, often triggering discord among residents in the same riding, telling each side they are with them in their opposition toward the other.

Brown did the same with the Ukrainian and Palestinian communities, offering his support to those who opposed the Russian invasion of Ukraine, then turning around and telling Palestinian Canadians they were not getting the same support, in hopes of currying favour. Brown has long done the same with Canada’s Tamil community, aggressively pressuring members for votes, claiming he is one of few politicians in the country who has stood up for Tamils opposed to the Sinhalese rule in Sri Lanka. 

Waziruddin would like to see those in positions of influence behave more responsibly. "Some of the people who are in positions of influence in the Muslim community, their approach is that if they donate without asking anything, the politician will then be in favour of the Muslim community. But the track record shows that that's not the case."

Politicians attend Muslim community events to enlarge their vote bank, he says, but there are risks behind this type of blatant pandering.

"There's definitely no good results from these tactics. So there is a divide in the sense that many members of the Muslim community are demanding accountability from elected officials and action, but some in the Muslim community who are in positions of influence are not trying to robustly hold the elected officials accountable, and they're just trying to figure out how to be more accepted by the politicians, instead of the other way around."

Brown, the Brampton mayor, has been heavily criticized for his egregious exploitation of ethno-religious groups, including Muslims and Sikhs.

After heavily courting the Muslim vote in 2018, he remained silent on his close friend Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s disturbing move to strip Muslims in India of citizenship rights. He finally posted a brief statement expressing concern over the move, without mentioning Modi or his Hindu-nationalist BJP government, and that was only after sustained pressure from some of Brampton’s large Muslim groups that Brown had targeted for support to help win the mayor’s seat. 

Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown has openly acknowledged his political strategy of using vote-rich  ethno-religious groups for political gain.

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The Pointer has been contacted by readers about candidates in the federal election attending Mosques in Brampton and Mississauga, raising concern about the ongoing practice.  

Gebril said that instead of falling into the trap of these political candidates, the community should be more focused on staying in contact with elected officials throughout the year rather than in election season only.

"We need to make our voices heard, not once, not twice, not just around special occasions and elections, but constantly… if we want to be politically savvy, if we want to be politically effective, we have to know where our strengths and weaknesses lie.” 

He says communities eventually learn that they hold the power.

“I think that the Muslim community here is strong, but they don't show their strength. They don't ask for what they deserve."

The Pointer's 2025 federal election coverage is partly supported by the Rideau Hall Foundation and the Michener Awards Foundation's Election 2025 Fund.

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