Jewish community members will be represented on both sides of the legislature following Saturday’s provincial election.
Unlike many other cultural communities, British Columbia’s Jewish community does not have a strong history of representation in provincial politics. Although Dave Barrett, who was Jewish, served as premier from 1972 until 1975, there has rarely been more than a single Jewish individual in the legislature – and often not even one.
Polls had predicted a Conservative advantage in the single digits, but the results were a spread of more than 10 points, the Conservatives taking 48.1% of the vote to the New Democrats’ 37.4%, winning 64 seats while the New Democrats won 27, subject to official final count.
The landslide win of the Conservative Party of BC, led by Lorne Doerkson, who was elected for the third time in his riding of Cariboo-Chilcotin, includes Jaime Stein, the new member of the Legislative Assembly for Vancouver-Langara. Stein, who is on leave as Western Canada director for Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies, was elected with about half the votes cast. Stein had attempted to run in the riding two years ago as a BC United candidate, but the party folded its campaign and endorsed the BC Conservatives, leaving Stein and scores of other candidates in the lurch.
Nina Krieger, New Democrat MLA for Victoria-Swan Lake, was reelected with about 43.5% of the vote, a decrease from about 56% two years ago. Krieger, former executive director of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, had served as minister of public safety and solicitor general in the incumbent government.
In the northwestern BC riding of Skeena, Conservative incumbent Claire Rattée, who said her family identifies as converts to Judaism, was reelected.
The snap provincial election was called by David Eby, the incumbent NDP premier, to take place exactly a week after scheduled municipal elections provincewide. Apparently seeking to exploit divisions among the opposition Conservatives, Eby’s gambit backfired, leaving Eby to resign as leader after the results were tallied on Oct. 24.
The Conservative wave foiled the efforts of Richard Zussman, former broadcast journalist and a first-time New Democrat candidate, who was defeated in the Victoria-area riding of Saanich South. Won by former NDP cabinet minister Lana Popham with almost 50% of the vote two years ago, the seat was considered relatively safe but was one of 21 NDP-held ridings that fell to the Tories, many of them representing reversals of longstanding voter trends. The NDP have lost Saanich South, for example, only once in the previous nine elections – in 2001, when the NDP were almost completely wiped out provincewide.
Jewish candidates were not as successful in the municipal races a week earlier. Of the nine Jews identified by the Independent as running in communities around the province, only one was successful in the Oct. 17 election.
Jonathan Lerner, a councilor in Vancouver Island’s District of Lantzville, was the only incumbent council candidate in that community reelected.
In Richmond, council candidates Adam Dobrer, Howard Jampolsky and Karen Novorr-Pezzuto were unsuccessful. Ed Shapero, who ran for school board on the Sunshine Coast, also failed to gain election.
In Vancouver, former MLA and cabinet minister Moira Stilwell fell short in her bid to join city council with the new Vancouver Liberals slate, as did Jonathan Weisman, a lawyer and chair of the board of the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, who was running with TEAM for a Livable Vancouver.
Two Jewish candidates running for Vancouver School Board with the Vancouver Liberals slate, Darren Boidman and Ishi Dinim, were also unsuccessful.
Vancouver politics saw a major shift, with Green candidate Pete Fry defeating Ken Sim, the incumbent mayor, while slates aligned with Fry – including OneCity and the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) – swept nine of 10 council positions and every seat on park board and school board. Topping the polls for council was Sean Orr, a member of COPE with a history of statements and social media posts that are anti-Israel and that many commentators have described as overtly antisemitic.
The Vancouver results prompted a statement of concern from Jewish organizations. In a joint letter to the new mayor from the Jewish Federation of British Columbia (JFBC), the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and the Rabbinical Association of Vancouver, the leaders requested a meeting with Fry.
In a separate blog post, JFBC chief executive officer Ezra Shanken noted that eight of the 10 councilors elected had endorsed planks in the Vote Palestine pledge, which effectively equates Zionism with racism. Shanken portrayed Sim and the outgoing council as “among the most steadfast defenders of the Jewish community in the city’s recent history.”
He expressed concern about the security of Jewish children in Vancouver schools, noting that every newly elected school trustee is “committed to embedding Palestinian narratives into curriculum.”
“When city leaders openly attack our Jewish family and, in essence, tell us who an acceptable Jew is in their eyes, we have an answer,” Shanken wrote. “We say no to the old construct that seeks to define and limit us, that tells us our belonging is conditional. And we say yes to the world we have created because of it.”
