Conservatives

Silence can’t be an option

The entire federal cabinet – save the foreign affairs minister – was absent Monday when the House of Commons unanimously voted to characterize the Chinese government’s treatment of its Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in the northwest part of China as “genocide.”

In the absence of the prime minister and all his cabinet colleagues, Marc Garneau, the foreign minister, stood and declared, “I abstain on behalf of the Government of Canada.”

The vote was on a nonbinding resolution brought forward by the Conservative party and, ultimately, was supported by all parties, receiving a unanimous vote by those members in the house and participating remotely. An amendment, brought by the Bloc Quebecois, also passed, calling on the International Olympic Committee to move the games scheduled for Beijing in 2022 unless the genocide stops.

According to international law, genocide is the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” The United States, at the tail end of the Trump regime, became the first country to name China’s behaviour genocide.

The Chinese government is perpetrating mass incarceration of millions of Uyghur Muslims and ethnic Kazakhs in northwestern China, operating concentration camps, separating families, committing forced sterilization, using slave labour and employing indoctrination apparently aimed at breaking the victims’ adherence to Islam and promoting obeisance to the communist regime.

The Chinese state barely disguises their intent, acknowledging that they are operating “re-education camps” or “counter-extremism centres.” An Australian study last year posited that there are 380 such facilities in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, where most of the 12 million Uyghurs live. The area produces a large proportion of the world’s cotton and the BBC has reported that an estimated 500,000 people are being employed in forced labour picking cotton. Some who have escaped the camps report physical and mental torture, including mass rape and sexual abuse.

An argument could – indeed should – be made that the use of the term “genocide” must be applied carefully in order to avoid diminishing the significance of the language. We have seen the misuse of the term applied to Israel. But there is a great difference between using caution out of respect for the magnitude of the allegation and avoiding the term out of some political expediency or fear of diplomatic retaliation.

Whether what is happening in China right now fits the definition of genocide as we understand it in contexts like the Holocaust, Darfur, Rwanda or Bosnia is not immaterial. But there can be no question that what is happening are crimes against humanity on a massive, blood-chilling scale. Censure of the most extraordinary sort is absolutely justified.

Of course, discretion plays a role. In every decision and position the government takes relating to foreign parties, there are multiple domestic, diplomatic and practical considerations. No country’s foreign policy is pristine or unsullied by what we might consider pure self-interest or unprincipled motives. Fears of repercussions are legitimate.

China is a bully. In response to Canada’s rightful arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition request, the regime effectively kidnapped two Canadian citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who have now been incarcerated for more than 800 days.

As we have said in the context of Canada’s support for Israel, elected officials should exercise immense caution in employing foreign policy as a wedge issue. Certainly there are legitimate differences of opinion among parties and individuals on various international topics.

Objectively, O’Toole and his party did the right thing. They were accompanied by MPs from all parties, including Liberal backbenchers. We would hope that the motion and the unanimous support is a symptom of a genuine Canadian commitment to fighting evil in the world. However, it is difficult not to see some partisan calculation at play. O’Toole and his party have been effective and vocal in raising the Uyghur issue (as well as other Chinese government atrocities and human rights abuses) for some time. By contrast, the Trudeau government has appeared to waffle, hemming and hawing over the definition of genocide and appearing reticent to offend the Chinese regime; their approach to China in general has been scattershot and incoherent.

It is within the realm of reason that the Conservatives saw a chance to embarrass and divide the Liberal government and took it. But the bigger issue is, even if the Conservatives were motivated by some hope of political gain, the Liberal government could have muted any such benefit by simply doing the right thing – as Liberal MPs and those of other parties did.

O’Toole, after the vote, decried an absence of leadership. Fair enough.

If the Canadian government has a reason to not characterize Chinese actions as genocide, we’d like to hear them. By simply refusing to show up, the Trudeau government did not take a stand on one of the crucial global issues of the day.

When a people is facing genocide, the very least the victims and Canadian citizens should expect is for Canada’s government to speak up. Too many times in history we have seen the consequences of silence.

Opening Pandora’s box

Maxime Bernier quit the Conservative party last week, at the precise moment that Conservatives from across the country were gathering in Halifax for their national convention, preparing for the federal election that is 13 months away.

Canadian political history would suggest that the former cabinet minister’s departure and his promise to form a new federal political party will be little more than a footnote in the history books when all is written.

The ostensible point of division between Bernier, who came a very close second to Andrew Scheer in last year’s Conservative leadership contest, is supply management. Supply management is an agricultural policy that limits supply in an attempt to stabilize prices so that Canadian farmers can make a decent living. It’s the reason we pay what we do for cheese, milk and poultry and it is prefaced on the understanding that the few extra dollars we pay weekly keeps the agricultural sector viable.

Bernier, who lambasted his former party over the issue, is correct. Support for such meddling in the economy is antithetical to conservative economic values. But it is an oddly Canadian consensus by which parties across the spectrum essentially accede to the status quo for political, if not policy, reasons. Opponents of Bernier in last year’s leadership race expressed fears that his opposition to supply management would undermine the Conservatives precisely where they are most popular: in rural Canada.

If less interventionist economic policies become the basis for Bernier’s new political party, it is hard to imagine how it will catch fire among Canadian voters. From a political standpoint, such a platform seems like a loser from the gate.

But there is a potential wild card in this scenario. Though he skirted the subject during his news conference last week, Bernier’s recent social media statements play to xenophobic, anti-immigrant sentiments. This, far more than economics, has the potential to get the attention of Canadian voters.

The Liberal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau likes to be associated with openness and a welcoming diversity, which contrasts nicely with developments to the south. But a recent poll suggests Canadians may not be as settled on this approach as some of us would like to believe.

The poll asked whether Canadians believed that there are too few, too many or the right number of immigrants to Canada. Overall, 18% of Canadians said there are too few immigrants coming to Canada, while 38% said there were too many and another 38% said the numbers were about right. The poll’s breakdown by party label indicates just how divisive this discussion could become. Only 12% of self-declared Liberals said that Canada has too many immigrants, while 73% of Conservatives hold that position.

Canadians, to an extent, have avoided opening a Pandora’s box in the form of a national discussion about immigration, perhaps happy in our complacency and self-image as a welcoming place. If Bernier’s new party – or, indeed, if the Conservatives – see an opening, we may be about to lift the lid somewhat on this issue.

If Bernier decides that he has nothing to lose and something to gain from upsetting accepted wisdom, it won’t necessarily prove a winning formula for his new party. However, if, by raising these topics, he forces other parties to articulate more specifically the generalized approach to multiculturalism and diversity that we take for granted, we may be headed for a reckoning on immigration, diversity and openness.

The election of Doug Ford as premier of Ontario suggests that populist messages are not anathema to Canadian voters. The Quebec provincial election, now underway, may very well provide a test case for some of these ideas that challenge our cherished notions of diversity.

When voter turnout hovers around the 50% mark, mobilizing one’s political base can be as crucial as convincing the undecided. If suspicion of outsiders appears likely to excite an identifiable core of the electorate, ambitious politicians will certainly consider how they might benefit by exploiting it.

Confronted by a heckler in Quebec last week, the prime minister shut her down by dismissing her as racist. It turns out, she may well be. But she also may not be the voice in the wilderness that some, including the prime minister, would like to believe. These people, too, will demand to be represented in Parliament and in the national discussion.

The rest of us, then, will need to have more than happy axioms and comforting self-satisfaction if we are to successfully defend diversity, inclusiveness and the social and economic value of new Canadians.

Partisan decision

Andrew Scheer was two days old when Joe Clark was elected prime minister of Canada in 1979. In that election campaign, then-Progressive Conservative leader Clark promised to move the Canadian embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

Cabinet documents recently released help explain why that promise was never fulfilled. There were diplomatic and, yes, commercial considerations though, at the time, the government claimed potential backlash from Arab states and businesses was not a factor.

Andrew Scheer is now leader of the Conservative party, facing a different Prime Minister Trudeau, and this week he promised to, well, you guessed it.

“Canada’s Conservatives led by Andrew Scheer will recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital when we form government in 2019,” declares a pledge on the party’s website. It describes the party as “a strong voice for Israel and the Canadian Jewish community.”

The Conservative government under Stephen Harper was indeed a strong voice for Israel – at times the only government in the world to be so – and for the Jewish community in Canada. There is no reason to believe that a Conservative government under Scheer would be any different, but the politics around this pledge are disappointing.

The statement came in the form of a petition-type pledge on the party’s website. That is, for those unschooled in the modern art of email harvesting, a strategy – legitimate and legal, certainly – of inviting people who agree with a topic to sign their name (and share their email address). The party can then target that voter, knowing they have a particular interest in the topic.

Again, there is nothing untoward about this, in general. But if a party that wants to form government chooses to issue a significant platform plank or promise dealing with one of the most contentious diplomatic issues in the world, perhaps a speech in Parliament or other suitable venue would be a more appropriate medium than a partisan webpage unabashedly accumulating names of voters for future political solicitations.

It is also so blatantly an imitation of the U.S. president’s shameless move on the issue. As we wrote here at the time, Donald Trump’s actions were not motivated by principle, but by sheer political calculation. Or, inasmuch as that president is not given to overthinking matters, more intended as a slap in the face to his political enemies.

We will leave aside here whether the embassy move is a good idea, a fair one, timely or otherwise merited or unmerited on substance. The point here is that the Conservatives are exploiting this issue for political purposes – and that is not good for Israel or for Jewish Canadians.

When Justin Trudeau became prime minister and effectively adopted the same policy approach vis-à-vis Israel as his predecessor, it was clear that a Canadian consensus was essentially in place. The New Democratic Party, in convention a few days ago, managed to put a lid on most of whatever dissent there was on this topic. Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party, put her leadership on the line in the summer of 2016 to let her members know she would not lead a party with an extremist agenda toward Israel.

This consensus is not a result of stifling free expression or of Zionist power or of anything other than a fair Canadian reading of important world events. In other words, for whatever else we disagree on, Canadians, by and large, accept Israel’s right to exist free from terrorist attacks.

Scheer’s move this week is cynical. It turns the legitimate consideration of the embassy’s location into a partisan one, when it should be entertained within the broader consensus we have developed. That is not the kind of voice Israel or Jewish Canadians want from our elected representatives.

Liberals sweep into power

Justin Trudeau schmoozes after a speech to the Richmond Chamber of Commerce in July. (photo from Justin Trudeau’s Office)

As Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party swept to a majority victory Monday night, it was British Columbia that finally made a difference. Without the 17 seats the Liberals took here, Trudeau would have won, but with a minority mandate – albeit a big one.

The Liberals swamped Vancouver and its suburbs, winning some seats that few, if any, observers anticipated they were even competitive in, particularly in the eastern suburbs. The North Shore was a Liberal sweep. In Vancouver South, the Conservatives lost their only foothold in the city as incumbent Wai Young lost to Liberal Harjit Sajjan.

Liberals Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra) and Hedy Fry (Vancouver Centre), the only two Liberals elected from British Columbia in 2011, trounced their respective opponents. Murray more than doubled the votes of her nearest competitor, a Conservative, and Fry almost tripled the vote of the second-place New Democrat.

The new riding of Vancouver Granville, slicing through the centre of the city north to south, is a microcosm of what appears to have happened locally and nationally. Several organizations had formed to encourage Canadians who opposed Harper’s Conservatives to vote strategically for the candidate most likely in their riding to defeat the Conservative. In Granville, Leadnow, probably the most prominent of the anti-Harper organizations, urged voters in the riding to back New Democrat Mira Oreck. This drew a backlash from Liberals, who said their candidate was either tied or ahead of the New Democrat in the available public opinion polls and the Vancouver Sun noted the friendship between Oreck and the head of Leadnow. In the end, so-called “change voters” seem to have looked at the national polling trends – which, by the end of the campaign, showed the Liberals slightly ahead of the Conservatives and NDP support dissipating – and turned red. In the end, Liberal Jody Wilson-Raybould took nearly 44% of the vote, with Oreck and Tory candidate Erinn Broshko effectively tied at 26%, Oreck edging out the Tory by 38 votes for second place; Green candidate Michael Barkusky took about three percent. Oreck and Barkusky are members of the Jewish community.

There were no clearly evident trends in ridings across the country with concentrations of Jewish voters. In the Montreal riding of Mount Royal, held until the election by retiring Liberal Irwin Cotler, Anthony Housefather, the Liberal candidate and mayor of the suburb of Cote-Saint-Luc, beat Conservative Robert Libman by a comfortable margin. Both Housefather and Libman are Jewish.

In Thornhill, the Toronto-area riding with the country’s largest concentration of Jewish voters, Conservative incumbent Peter Kent trounced Liberal Nancy Coldham. In Eglinton-Lawrence, incumbent Conservative finance minister Joe Oliver, the most senior Jewish official in Ottawa, lost by a significant margin to Liberal Marco Mendicino. In York Centre, another Toronto riding with large numbers of Jewish voters, Tory Mark Adler was narrowly defeated by Liberal Michael Levitt. Adler is known nationally mostly for his foibles, such as calling out to advisers of Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the Western Wall in Jerusalem to be included in a photo opportunity and, several weeks ago, for seeming to exploit his family’s history in the Holocaust for political gain.

In 2011, post-election surveys indicated that Jewish voters supported the Conservative party by large margins. Though such indicators are not yet available for this week’s election, it appears that Jewish voters are far from being a monolithic bloc.

Kenney discusses priorities

Jason Kenney, Canada’s minister of national defence and minister for multiculturalism. (photo from forces.gc.ca)

Jason Kenney, Canada’s minister of national defence and minister for multiculturalism, says this country should prioritize Christian refugees and other minorities who constitute the most imperiled of the millions fleeing Syria and Iraq.

“Some people are in an understandable wave of emotion … telling me that we should just send C-17 aircraft over there to refugee camps and load them up and bring them to Canada,” Kenney told the Independent. But the refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) that Kenney sees as most vulnerable are not even in the United Nations refugee camps, he said.

“I know these issues extremely well and I can tell you that there are certain vulnerable Syrian and Iraqi minorities who cannot and do not even go to the UN camps,” said Kenney. “Why? Because they are the persecuted minorities. Ismaili Muslims, Druze, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Syrians, Armenians – e.g. the Christians – do not go to the refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey because they’re afraid of their minority [status], the implications of that. These are the people who are living in urban slums in Amman, Jordan, in Beirut, Lebanon, and some in Ankara, Turkey, who we have said we will focus our refugee resettlement programs on.”

These minorities are less likely, Kenney said, to harbor individuals who could pose a threat to Canada.

“These are the victims of the doctrine of armed jihad,” he said. “I can tell you that these people, when they come to Canada, they want to keep us safe from what drove them out of their homes. This is why I think we need to be intelligent about refugee resettlement.”

Kenney emphasized that he wishes peace and protection to all of the refugees and IDPs regardless of their faith or political views. But, he added, “I’ve been to the camps, alright? When I go into people’s tents and I see there’s very few young men, I’ve asked in Turkey and Lebanon and in Jordan: where is your father, where is your husband, where’s your son? I see the pictures in the tents.”

The response he has received often, he said, is that the men are off fighting with the al-Nusra Front or other Islamist militias.

“This is a vicious stew of violence and we must ensure that that cult of violence doesn’t inadvertently come to Canada,” said the minister, who is running for reelection in Calgary. “So that’s why we need to be careful and prudent about security screening and, I think, ensure that to the greatest extent possible the refugees who we welcome to Canada are those who are amongst the most vulnerable.… I don’t apologize for saying we should focus on the most vulnerable and on Canada’s security at the same time.”

Kenney, who has been the Conservative government’s point person for ethnic communities, spoke with the paper as the image of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian-Kurdish refugee child whose body washed ashore on the Turkish coast, was animating the world to act on the refugee crisis.

“The image of that boy represents thousands of others who die in human smuggling operations and the tens of thousands who have – excuse me, the hundreds of thousands – who have died in the Syrian civil war and as victims of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,” said Kenney. “It galvanizes collective attention on the total humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq and Syria.”

Canada is the largest per capita resettler of refugees worldwide, Kenney said, welcoming one in every 10 resettled refugees in the world. (CBC and Global News have both analyzed this claim and note that it refers to refugees resettled from an asylum country like Lebanon or Jordan to a country that has agreed to take them as refugees. Because most refugees flee to an adjacent country – or, as seen in recent months, trek to European countries – the news outlets assert that Canada is not first, but 41st, in the world. Canada accepts one in 10 resettled refugees, but most refugees remain unsettled, they claim, making Canada’s acceptance rate of total refugees about one percent, not 10%, of the world’s refugees.)

In any event, the enormity of the problem, Kenney said, means “resettlement is not a solution.”

This is where Kenney differentiates the Conservative government’s position from those of the opposition parties. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees cites 15 million Iraqi and Syrian refugees and IDPs, he said.

“It’s a cruel myth if we think we can solve a humanitarian crisis with 15 million IDPs and refugees and here’s the key thing – new refugees are being created every single day,” he said. The world needs to address the root cause of the massive refugee problem, he said, which is the genocidal terror of ISIS (also called ISIL or the Islamic State).

“We have a moral obligation to play a role in degrading and ultimately defeating ISIL in its campaign of terror,” he said. “And, we also need to provide humanitarian support to the IDPs and refugees, which we are doing…. We’ve contributed between the two countries over $810 million in emergency humanitarian assistance. We will do more.”

The defence minister took a shot at New Democratic party leader Thomas Mulcair and Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, both of whom oppose Canadian ground troops in the fight against ISIS.

“What we’re doing is important,” Kenney said. “The military contributions that we are making through our airstrikes and the training of the Kurdish Peshmerga in northern Iraq are making a meaningful difference but, in the grand scheme of things, are relatively modest contributions. So, for the Liberals and NDP to suggest that we should completely withdraw even from the air campaign or, in the case of the NDP, from training, is, I think, morally irresponsible and reprehensible. If the world is moved by the images of the Kurdi family on the Turkish beach, we must recall that these were people who fled the violence of ISIL and there will be more Kurdi families unless and until the world stops this genocidal terrorist organization. That’s why we believe there is a moral obligation and a security imperative for us to participate in the international coalition degrading and, hopefully, ultimately defeating ISIL.”

On the issue of domestic security, Kenney also lashed back at critics of Bill C-51.

“If you look at the additional security powers included in Bill C-51, they are modest compared to most of our liberal democratic peer countries,” he said. “Most of the new powers included in Bill C-51 are actually invested in the courts, the judiciary, not in the police or intelligence agencies and certainly not in the hands of politicians. And many of those additional powers themselves are very modest.”

Kenney said RCMP were keeping an eye on Martin Couture-Rouleau, the “lone wolf” terrorist who killed Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent in Quebec last year.

“The RCMP went to the prosecutors and said we want to apply for a preventative detention order or peace bond to restrict this guy’s movements because we think he’s going to do something crazy and violent,” said Kenney. “The prosecutor said, sorry, but we just do not have the legislative, the statutory, tools to do this. We would have to prove to a court that he will commit a terrorist offence and there’s no way to do that.”

Under the new law, said Kenney, police can go to the prosecutor, who in turn can go to the court, and the court determines whether an order for preventive detention can be issued.

“And, by the way, the maximum order for that can be seven days,” he said. “In Britain, it’s 28 days. It’s why I say the powers here are relatively modest.”

Another example of what Bill C-51 does, he said, is to allow the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to interrupt a possible terrorist event.

“What does this mean practically? If CSIS is observing that a 15-year-old kid’s spending hours every day on terrorist websites, instead of just waiting for him to blow up metaphorically, they can go to his parents now and say, ‘Are you aware that your son appears to be in the process of radicalization?’” Kenney said. “Is this a violation of civil liberties? No. As the prime minister says, the most important civil liberty is the right to live safely and securely.”

Kenney described the idea that C-51 could be used to infiltrate or disrupt civil society protests against things such as oil pipelines as “rubbish.”

“I think the criticisms of Bill C-51 have been massively overblown,” he said. “If they advocate going and blowing up pipelines, yes, possibly. But protesting the construction of pipelines? Absolutely rubbish. No police officer would be interested in that, no prosecutor would bring a charge on that, no court would accept it. It is ridiculous.”

The Conservative government has often been alone on the international stage in defending Israel’s right to defend itself, a position that has been criticized on several fronts, including accusations that the Tories have turned Israel into a partisan political issue. The Independent asked if the government’s vocal position is driven by theology, politics or ideology.

“What drives that is principle,” Kenney said. “Israel is not a normal state. Israel is a moral cause. Israel is the refuge of the survivors of the Shoah and, therefore, the world has a moral obligation to ensure the protection of that refuge, that one and only Jewish homeland in the world.”

He dismissed political expediency as a factor, noting that fewer than one percent of Canadians are Jewish – and that not all of them are committed Zionists – and Canada has little of the Christian Zionist movement that exists in the United States.

“So, it’s not political,” he said, adding that it is also not based on “some kooky Christian reconstructionist millennial theology.”

“I have never heard a Conservative political actor in Canada make reference to Christian Zionist theology in articulating our support for Israel,” he said. “That’s a phantom for some paranoid minds on the left. The truth is this … we see Israel as an emblem, a symbol, a surrogate for Western civilization in the Middle East, by which we mean that Israel is predicated on the belief in human dignity, which is manifest in a liberal democratic political system, protection for human rights, religious freedom and pluralism.”

He said Israel’s enemies are motivated by what they view as “an unacceptable presence of those Western civilizational values in the Middle East, but secondly because the enemies of Israel are motivated by a deep and irredeemable antisemitism.”

“Most of Israel’s enemies do not seek a conventional peace – negotiations toward a two-state solution or a conventional political solution to the conflict there. They seek one thing, which is the elimination of the so-called ‘Zionist entity’ and the driving of the Jews into the sea. A second Holocaust.”

In addition to foreign affairs, Kenney said he wanted to remind Jewish Canadians of programs the government has undertaken domestically.

“We’ve taken a zero-tolerance attitude to antisemitism here domestically and that’s not just rhetorical,” he said. “We’ve paid a price for it. I’ve defunded organizations that were receiving grants – perversely – to provide integration services to newcomers, like the Canadian Arab Federation and Palestine House, whose leadership were openly antisemitic. I’ve been sued for it, our government’s been sued for these decisions, but we did the right thing.”

The government, he said, has also funded security infrastructure projects to upgrade security at synagogues, Hebrew schools and Jewish community centres.

On the issue of whether Canada is in a recession, Kenney said there was a sectoral contraction in oil that’s affected Alberta.

“No doubt about it, Alberta is in a recession due to the crash in oil prices,” he said. “But the rest of the country and the other industry sectors are growing. Employment remains strong. This is hardly a recession by any broadly understood definition and, according to the June StatsCan report, we’re back into a growth phase of two percent annualized growth. The dumbest thing we could do would be to act as though there is a serious, deep recession by going out and borrowing tens of billions of dollars as the other parties [would] do, which constitute deferred taxes. We think fiscal discipline, low taxes [and] expanded trade markets continue to be the right recipe for growth.”

The Independent has interviewed Liberal leader Justin Trudeau and has invitations out to NDP leader Thomas Mulcair and Green party leader Elizabeth May. The federal election is on Oct. 19.

Adler amends bio, posters

The photo tweeted Aug. 16 by Walrus editor Jonathan Kay of Mark Adler’s original campaign office sign. (photo from @jonkay)

Conservative MP Mark Adler has removed a reference in his online biography in which he described himself as the first child of a Holocaust survivor to be elected to Parliament.

The move came after an Aug. 17 Canadian Jewish News story revealed that Raymonde Folco, a Liberal who served as a Montreal-area MP from 1997 to 2011, preceded Adler in that distinction, and that Folco was herself a child survivor of the Holocaust.

The Adler campaign also changed a large building sign outside his campaign office that contained a reference to the candidate being the son of a Holocaust survivor, which was removed and replaced with a message about “keeping our taxes low.”

The York Centre MP found himself at the centre of controversy after Walrus editor Jonathan Kay tweeted a picture Aug. 16 of Adler’s original campaign office sign containing his claim about being the son of a survivor. “And who needs Yad Vashem when Holocaust awareness is now being promoted on partisan Conservative signage?” Kay tweeted with the photo.

Adler’s current online biography continues to describe him as “a child of a Holocaust survivor … [who] has passionately dedicated his time to raise awareness about discrimination and antisemitism throughout the world.”

In a prepared statement, Adler said, “Throughout my life, I have advocated for Holocaust remembrance – so that all Canadians will remember the great evil of the Second World War and never forget. My father came to Canada after surviving the horrors of a Nazi death camp, and chose Canada based on the values that continue to unite us: democracy, freedom, human rights and the rule of law.

“I am proud to serve our country and deliver on the priorities of residents in York Centre – including advocacy for the security of the state of Israel and the promotion of democratic values abroad. I share the concern of many residents who are alarmed by the global campaign to isolate and denounce Israel, and the moral relativism that was embraced by past governments who equivocated on the defence of the Jewish state.”

Adler’s NDP opponent, Hal Berman, a palliative care physician, criticized the MP on his own Twitter feed, saying, “Shame on you using #Holocaust for political gain. #yorkcentre deserves better – I am in this for voters.”

Ironically, Berman is also the child of Holocaust survivors. In his own web bio, the Montreal-born Berman points out his “grandparents and mother arrived to start a new life after the Holocaust.”

Meanwhile, Folco said she found it “disgusting” for Adler “to use the Holocaust in this way, for personal ends.” As an MP, she never publicized her status as a child of Holocaust survivors, while Adler is “profiting” from it.

“Whether he is the first or 15th, I should think it is your record that matters: what you’ve done and what you intend to do for Canadians, when elected,” she told the CJN.

Adler is far from the first politician to draw attention to unique circumstances in their personal background.

In Vancouver, Liberal candidate Harjit Sajjan, who served in the Canadian Armed Forces and received the Order of Military Merit, noted in his web biography that he “is the first Sikh to receive this award and continues to be a role model for youth across the country as he prepares to serve his country in new ways.”

Retired senator Vivienne Poy, a Liberal, is described on the parliamentary website as the “First Canadian of Chinese origin appointed to the Senate.” She notes on her own website that she “was the first Canadian of Asian descent to be appointed to the Senate of Canada.”

High-profile NDP candidate Olivia Chow mentions her unique circumstances in her online biography, as well: “Olivia was born in Hong Kong and moved to Toronto with her parents when she was 13. In 1991, Olivia became the first Asian-born woman elected as a Metro Toronto councilor.”

And, south of the border, Hillary Clinton, the front-running Democratic Party presidential candidate, in a statement designed to appeal to new Americans, said during the campaign that her grandparents had immigrated to the United States. However, that comment was inaccurate. Three of her grandparents were born in the United States and the fourth immigrated to the country as a young child.

– For more national Jewish news, visit cjnews.com.

NDP drops candidate

Three federal NDP candidates are under intense scrutiny – and one has resigned – for controversial comments each made about Israel.

Hans Marotte, the NDP candidate in Quebec’s Saint-Jean riding; Morgan Wheeldon, who was, until stepping aside Aug. 9, running in the Nova Scotia riding of Kings-Hants; and David McLaren, running in Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, were among the NDP candidates featured, alongside past comments they made, on a Conservative Party of Canada’s attack website titled “Meet the NDP.”

Marotte, a lawyer and well-known former separatist, is flagged on the site for a statement he made in his 1990 book Un Pays à Faire (A Country to Make): “When a Palestinian comes to ask me to sign his declaration of support for the intifada, and tells me how happy he is to have my name on his list, I see how important it is that we not close in on ourselves.”

photo - Until he stepped aside, Morgan Wheeldon was running in the Nova Scotia riding of Kings-Hants — Until he stepped aside, Morgan Wheeldon was running in the Nova Scotia riding of Kings-Hants. *(photo from Facebook via cjnews.com)*

Wheeldon, whose website has been wiped of all content, is featured on the Conservative site for a comment in an August 2014 Facebook post, made in the context of a discussion about British MP George Galloway, who had been physically attacked in London allegedly for his anti-Israel views.

The quote reads: “One could argue that Israel’s intention was always to ethnically cleanse the region – there are direct quotations proving this to be the case. Guess we just swept that under the rug. A minority of Palestinians are bombing buses in response to what appears to be a calculated effort to commit a war crime.”

McLaren, meanwhile, is quoted as saying it isn’t principled to take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because it is like picking a side in “a telephone booth packed with dynamite.”

In a statement to the Canadian Jewish News, the NDP’s senior campaign adviser, Brad Lavigne, said the party’s “position on the conflict in the Middle East is clear, as [leader] Tom Mulcair expressed clearly in [the recently televised Maclean’s] debate. Mr. Wheeldon’s comments are not in line with that policy, and he is no longer our candidate. We were made aware of some information that had not previously been disclosed. When we approached Mr. Wheeldon with this information, he submitted his resignation.”

The NDP did not offer a comment on Marotte’s or McLaren’s statements.

Wheeldon himself told the CJN via Twitter that his Facebook statement “referred to how information sources affect framing of the conflict. I also attacked terrorism and said neither side was solely at fault, but pointed out the alternate perspective. I said ‘one could argue.…’ I’ve been called an antisemite, and it’s pretty upsetting for me and my family.”

Michael Mostyn, CEO of B’nai Brith Canada, said that it was appropriate for Wheeldon to offer his resignation following his “libelous smears against the Jewish state.”

“Israel is a democracy where all its citizens enjoy rights and freedoms unimaginable anywhere else in the Middle East,” said Mostyn. “Mr. Wheeldon should use some of his newfound free time to advocate against actual ethnic cleansing taking place on a daily basis in the terrorist Islamic State, which continues to massacre Christians, Yazidis, gays and other minorities.”

Mostyn also noted that B’nai Brith is trying to track down a copy of Marotte’s book, and reach out to him to verify the accuracy of the quote and whether his opinion has changed over the 25 years since he wrote the book.

He added that “the quote in question displays a certain naiveté about the fact that one does not sign a petition to support an intifada, jihad or any other extremist act of violence. Seeking to promote a pluralistic society in Canada does not translate to supporting calls for violence against innocent civilians.”

Joe Oliver, the Tory MP for the Toronto riding of Eglinton-Lawrence, also condemned the remarks.

“These radical anti-Israeli comments are just another example of the NDP’s troubling lack of support for a democratic friend and ally,” Oliver said. “They stand in stark contrast to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s unwavering support for Israel’s security and right to defend itself against international terrorism. Reckless comments on matters of international relations make it abundantly clear how inexperienced and risky the NDP would be for Canada’s future and its standing in the world.”

– For more national Jewish news, visit cjnews.com.

MPs reception guests

Left to right: The Hon. Alice Wong, Conservative MP; Erinn Broshko Conservative candidate, Vancouver Granville; Bonnie and Allan Belzberg; and the Hon. Jason Kenney, Conservative MP. (photo by L. Broshko)

Conservative Party of Canada MPs Jason Kenney and Alice Wong were special guests at a reception held on Aug. 9 at the home of Allan and Bonnie Belzberg. Erinn Broshko, the Conservative candidate in the Vancouver Granville riding, addressed the gathering and introduced Kenney, Canada’s minister of national defence and multiculturalism. Kenney spoke about the federal government’s support for Israel, foreign policy and other topics of interest to the group. His remarks were candid and well received by the approximately 35 people in attendance.

While Kenney was in Vancouver, he participated in the most recent Canada Decides 2015 townhall organized by Temple Sholom and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

Sights set on election

Stan Shawn (photo from Stan Shawn)

Stan Shawn wants to become the first Sephardi member of Parliament from British Columbia.

The Vancouver realtor is seeking the Conservative party nomination in Vancouver-Centre, hoping to take on Liberal Hedy Fry, who has held the seat for 22 years. Shawn believes changes to the riding boundaries could help his party seize the seat, one of only two the Liberals won in the province during the last election. The riding comprises the downtown peninsula and northern Kitsilano.

“Maybe people have the sense that it’s not that winnable because Hedy Fry has been there since 1993 and people don’t really have a lot of faith in anybody opposing her, but I actually have confidence that I’ll do a pretty good job,” said Shawn.

Shawn is a director of the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver and president of the board’s Westside Vancouver division. He is a graduate of Western Washington University and taught in Richmond public schools for a time.

Shawn came to Vancouver at the age of two. He was born to Iraqi Jewish parents in Bangkok, Thailand. His father was founding president of Beth Hamidrash, Vancouver’s Sephardi synagogue, and his mother was the first sisterhood president. Shawn later became president of the synagogue himself. As a teenager, he attended Camp Miriam. He attended Vancouver Talmud Torah and public schools. He spent two stints living in Israel during the 1970s and ’80s.

He is getting involved in politics now, he said, because he “wanted to do something more significant for the general community.”

“I’m really turned on by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper,” he said. “I think it’s just the best possible government we could have. I like their policies on security, community security, fighting racism and antisemitism … support of Israel absolutely is one of my favorites.”

Shawn hopes people who live in the riding of Vancouver-Centre will join the Conservative party and support his bid for the nomination. The party has not yet set the date for the nomination vote but individuals must be members of the party for 21 days in order to vote. Information is at vote.stanshawn.com.

“The Jewish community has benefited greatly by Stephen Harper’s government and we owe it to them to support the Conservative government because there’s never been anything like them,” said Shawn. “If people know anything about history, there’s never been anything like the Conservative party government insofar as being steadfast in supporting the Jewish people and Israel.”

The Conservative party did not respond to email or telephone messages requesting the names of other candidates for the Vancouver-Centre nomination.

Pat Johnson is a Vancouver writer and principal in PRsuasiveMedia.com.

Canadian political support of Israel notable

As the conflict rages in Israel and Gaza, so it does, in a different way, worldwide. As is always the case when Israel is involved in a conflict, the rage level escalates swiftly among commentators, social media, street activists, politicians and diplomats. While both sides are engaging in heated and contentious “debate” – we should take nothing away from Zionists’ ability to engage in slapfests on social media – something darker is emerging.

Protests in France and Germany have been especially grisly. In Paris, one synagogue was firebombed while, at another, Jews were forced to barricade themselves inside the shul as a mob attacked with bats and chairs. Jewish-run businesses were ransacked in a Paris suburb. In Germany, overt neo-Nazis are marching daily, some chanting, “Gas the Jews.” “Anti-Israel” rallies worldwide are rife with anti-Jewish imagery and messaging. Individual Jews have been assaulted around the world. One man in Australia, badly beaten, told media that the antisemitic onslaught he experienced after going public was worse than the assault itself.

There are certainly examples of anti-Jewish prejudice amid the public discourse in Canada, though we have seen nothing near to what is happening elsewhere. In fact, the brightest spot in the whole sad global discourse around the conflict comes from right here in Canada. For the better part of a decade, the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been an unequivocal voice of reason and support for Israel’s right – obligation, he said – to defend its citizens from terrorism. Our foreign policy has been steadfast in defending our closest ally in the region, and the only democracy there, amid a cacophony of vitriol and hatred.

Significantly, what was a few years ago considered a surprising and unusually unambiguous position has become the dominant Canadian political consensus. Liberal leader Justin Trudeau has issued a statement echoing the Conservatives’ strong support for Israel.

More remarkable has been Thomas Mulcair’s extraordinary success at turning his New Democratic Party from what was once a nest of Canada’s most vocal anti-Israel zealots into a moderate party in line with the other two mainstream parties. He has done this in the face of a small but venomous clutch of extreme Israel-haters. A writer on the website Rabble recently referred to “Mulcair’s abhorrence of Palestinian rights.” (We have been known to employ some extravagant semantics in this space, but for a really eccentric level of rhetoric almost unknown since the fall of the Berlin Wall, head over to Rabble for a nostalgic walk down memory lane.)

Mulcair’s accomplishment, of course, is derided by Israel’s enemies as proof that the craven Zionists have finally got their talons into the last of the major parties’ platforms. In reality, it is an acknowledgement that Canada’s body politic has recognized, alas, that morality and pragmatism demand that we stand with our allies and against those who seek to slaughter them. There is nothing novel in this – what was novel was the years when we went off the rails trying to play an “honest broker” role between a democratic, peace-seeking, pluralist Israel and the genocidal terrorists determined to destroy the country and kill its citizens.

There is a place for extreme views in a democracy – in extreme, fringe parties. Which may explain why Green party leader Elizabeth May is right now taking up an anti-Israel cudgel just as the rest of the civilized political spectrum is affirming the only position mainstream, moderate parties can justify.

There are tactical reasons, too. Israel-bashers insist that Harper’s Israel policy (and now that of the Liberals and NDP) is a sop to win Jewish votes, which suggests they are as bad at math as they are telling terrorists from allies. The “Jewish vote” in Canada is miniscule and shrinking, while the number of new Canadians coming from places where hatred of Israel is something akin to a birthright is growing.

While the three main parties are doing the right thing, the Greens seem ready to welcome those who have been left out in the cold by a consensus that our country should stand with democracies when they are under assault from terrorists. It may be a political strategy for a tiny party seeking a foothold, but it doesn’t seem like a moral one.