In the Oct. 24 provincial election, the riding of Skeena, which includes Terrace and Kitimat, has two candidates who identify as Jewish: incumbent Claire Rattée, for the Conservative Party of British Columbia, and Nick Gottlieb, for the BC Green Party. At press time, neither candidate had responded to the Jewish Independent’s request for an interview.
The past month has been politically hectic for Rattée. On Sept. 18, the Conservative party’s then-leader, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, ousted Rattée from the party in what turned out to be the final hours of Findlay’s time at the helm of the province’s second-largest caucus. On Sept. 21, a day after Findlay’s resignation and a day before the election was called, Rattée returned to the Conservatives after three days as an independent.
A tattoo artist and businessperson born and raised in Delta, Rattée served as a Kitimat city councilor from 2014 to 2018. She ran unsuccessfully for the federal Conservatives in the Skeena-Bulkley Valley riding in 2019 and 2021, but, in 2024, she ran in the provincial election and garnered 51% of the vote to become an MLA.
Before that 2024 election, she spoke to the Independent about her struggles with drugs, the need for low-income housing and emergency shelter during extreme weather, supports for those battling mental illness and the development of the regional economy.
Rattée’s parents converted to Judaism around the time she was born, she said, but sent the kids to Christian schools.
“We are not Orthodox,” she told the JI. “My father ran a sort of church service, and we had about 50 people that were a part of that organization and my father still runs Bible study every Saturday, and I try to partake in that via Zoom when I can.”
Asked to clarify if she considers herself Christian or Jewish, Rattée said that she and her three siblings consider themselves Jewish.
“It’s a little bit confusing,” she acknowledged. “Not to get into the weeds on it too much, but I would essentially consider ourselves converts.”
At the time, Rattée said she was proud that her party had released a “comprehensive antisemitism strategy.”
Gottlieb is a writer, researcher, community organizer and PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University. According to information released by the BC Greens, he advocates for greater investment in health care, affordability, workers and a “livable future,” among other things, while challenging what he deems excessive corporate influence over public policy.
Since moving to Terrace five years ago, Gottlieb has been involved in campaigns focused on affordable housing, environmental protection, international solidarity and a proposed data centre in the region. His academic research centres on Canada’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry.
Gottlieb has written about Jewish issues for Canadian Dimension, a left-of-centre publication based in Winnipeg. In a Feb. 12, 2024, piece, a week after Selina Robinson was forced out of the BC NDP cabinet for remarks she made about Israel, Gottlieb argued, “Robinson’s removal from cabinet was a starting point for BC’s government. But it cannot be the endpoint: the lessons of the Holocaust demand not that we give Israel a blank check to commit genocide, but that we do everything we can to oppose its genocidal actions.”
In an Oct. 15, 2025, article he wrote, “It is not the Palestinian people, victims of decades of apartheid, internationally recognized illegal occupation, and now putative genocide, that need to be deradicalized. It is Israel, a society led by a political movement Albert Einstein and a group of prominent American Jews once called ‘closely akin … to the Nazi and Fascist parties.’”
Sarah Zimmerman, a Terrace councilor and former journalist, is the NDP candidate for Skeena.
Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.
