Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic took to Twitter on Monday night to condemn a series of tweets from U.S. President Donald Trump in which he suggested that several female members of U.S. should “go back” to the “places from which they came.”
Vrbanovic pointed to the fact that he is the child of immigrants as he took umbrage to the words of the U.S. president.
READ MORE: Trudeau on Trump’s ‘go back’ tweet: ‘That’s not how we do things in Canada’
“These postings by a world leader are disturbing,” he wrote. My family came to Canada 50yrs ago & at times my father was wrongly referred to as a DP. To think that 50yrs later, in an increasingly global & multicultural world, nobody has the right to say “go back to where you came from”!”
Trump did not use the names of any of the four newly elected female members of congress who are of colour in his tweets but the tweets were widely interpreted as a reference to them.
READ MORE: Trump accuses congresswomen of hating America in defence of Twitter tirade
“So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run,” he wrote in the series of tweets.
WATCH: Trudeau on Trump’s ‘go back’ tweet: ‘That’s not how we do things in Canada’
The group, known collectively as ‘The Squad,’ includes Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Abdullahi Omar, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib. Only Omar, from Somalia, is foreign-born.
Several world leaders including Justin Trudeau have also condemned Trump’s tweets.
The Canadian Prime Minister was asked about the tweets by reporters on Monday.
READ MORE: Republicans won’t fully rebuke Trump’s Twitter attack on Democratic congresswomen
“I think Canadians and indeed people around the world know what I think of those particular comments. That’s not how we do things in Canada,” Trudeau said.
“A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.”
— With files from Global News’ Amanda Connolly, Kerri Breen and Jessica Vomiero