As most members of Parliament debated a Liberal MP’s motion denouncing Islamophobia in the House of Commons Wednesday evening, four Conservative leadership contenders took their opposition on the road to Toronto.

There they riled a hundreds-strong crowd gathered at the Canada Christian College. The majority in attendance were middle aged, but there were a number of twenty-somethings among them, and some children, presumably there with their parents.

The event, hosted by Conservative pundit Ezra Levant and his right-wing website The Rebel, gave the Conservative MPs a chance to rail against motion M-103 among like-minded supporters.

A place where their concerns – that the non-binding motion would stifle free speech, that it doesn’t define Islamophobia, that it places one religion above others, and that it does nothing to address the threat of terrorism – drew cheers.

“Chronic political correctness is strangling free speech in Canada and it has to stop,” said Pierre Lemieux, the first of the Conservative leadership candidates to speak.

Next at the microphone Kellie Leitch, who drew ire last year for suggesting immigrants should be screened for Canadian values, said “freedom is a Canadian value” and urged the crowd to sign her petition opposing motion M-103.

Chris Alexander, who faced backlash after the last Rebel event he attended in Alberta, where the crowd devolved into chants of “Lock her up” in reference to NDP Premier Rachel Notley, was delayed but made it in time to share his own reasons for opposing the motion.

“I have a lot of trouble with a motion that talks about hatred this, phobia that and doesn’t mention the number one threat in the world today which is Islamic jihadist terrorism,” he said.

Brad Trost was the last of the Conservative leadership hopefuls to speak out against M-103.

“We in Canada shouldn’t have a thought police,” he said.

“We need to talk to discuss the serious security threats tied in with extreme Islamism with jihadism, and we need to have the freedom of speech to do it,” he said.

“Do you see what’s happening here?” asked Levant.

“The deliberate blurring of having a dissenting opinion, labeling anyone who dares to even have a public conversation about the real issues of Islam, whether it’s the treatment of women, the separation of Mosque and state, non-violent solutions to problems, proper integration and assimilation of refugees, proper vetting of refugees, terrorism.”

“There are so many live and genuine public policy issues that Justin Trudeau wants to swallow up whole and call every single one of those issues Islamophobia and if you dare criticize his massive unvetted, un-integrateable Muslim migration…that’s Islamophobia”

The motion under attack at the event was tabled by MP Iqra Khalid in December.

It calls for the government to “recognize the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear” and “condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination.”

It also asks the government to “take note of the House of Commons petition e-411 and the issues raised by it.”

That petition, which was tabled by Liberal MP Frank Baylis with 70,000 signatures, asked the government to recognize that extremists “do not represent the religion of Islam, and in condemning all forms of Islamophobia.”

Finally, Khalid’s motion asks that the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to study how the government could “develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia, in Canada.”

CBC reported Wednesday evening that Khalid defined Islamophobia as “the irrational hate of Muslims that leads to discrimination,” and said she wouldn’t remove the word from her motion, during the debate in the House.

“I will not do so, any more than I would speak to the Holocaust and not mention that the overwhelming majority of victims were six million followers of the Jewish faith and that anti-Semitism was the root cause of the Holocaust,” she said. “We cannot address a problem if we fail to call it by its true name.”

The debate surrounding Khalid’s motion comes as hate crimes against Muslim people in Canada have increased.

In April of last year Global reported that hate crimes against Muslim people that were reported to police more than doubled between 2012 and 2014, from 45 crimes to 99.

Following the shooting in a Quebec Mosque last month hate incidents in that province rose dramatically.

In Montreal, police received 29 calls regarding hate incidents in the three days after the shooting, the Globe and Mail reported in early February.