From the Editor: Notes from the election(s) front

Michael Regenstreif

By Michael Regenstreif

Editor

I wrote my last Ottawa Jewish Bulletin column three days before the October 21 federal election and noted opinion polls showed the Liberal and Conservative parties virtually tied with both parties in the range of taking 132 seats – far short of the 170 seats needed to form a majority government.

While the popular vote nationally gave the Conservatives a slight edge, the way the vote broke across the country gave the Liberals a much stronger minority government than expected with 157 seats. The Conservatives took only 121.

Here in Ottawa, the Liberals won seven of eight seats – with only MP Pierre Poilievre holding Carleton for the Conservatives.

While Jews make up about one per cent of the population nationally, the Canadian Jewish News reported there are 14 ridings – mostly in the greater Toronto and Montreal areas, but also one in Winnipeg – where Jews constitute between five and 37 per cent of the population. The Liberals won 13 of those ridings – with only MP Peter Kent holding Thornhill for the Conservatives.

Among the most interesting of the election races in those 14 ridings were in the Toronto riding of York Centre, where Jewish MP Michael Levitt was running for re-election, and the Montreal riding of Mount Royal, where Jewish MP Anthony Housefather was running for re-election.

In those ridings the Conservatives targeted many Jewish voters with a direct-mail pamphlet featuring a photo of leader Andrew Scheer and a headline reading “Jewish community in Canada?” in block letters. The pamphlet painted the Conservatives as very strong and the Liberals as very weak on issues such as Israel and antisemitism.

The pamphlet didn’t seem to have the effect the Conservatives hoped for. Both Levitt – the chair of the Canada-Israel Parliamentary Group – and Housefather were re-elected with significant increases in the proportions of their votes from the 2015 election.

The direct-mail pamphlet was also sent to some Jewish voters in several other ridings across the country. I live in Ottawa West–Nepean and received one. Several other people I know in Ottawa told me they also received the pamphlet. Anecdotally, everyone I talked to who received the pamphlet was unhappy about being directly targeted as a Jew.

In Quebec, the Bloc Québécois’ singular defence of the province’s Bill 21 – which bans certain public servants, including teachers, police officers, prosecutors and judges from wearing such religious symbols as the Muslim hijab, the Sikh turban and Jewish kippah – led to the separatist party’s resurgence under a banner of Quebec nationalism.

However, as popular as Bill 21 is said to be in Quebec, the Liberals – the only party whose leader said his or her government might join a court case against a law for which a provincial government invoked the notwithstanding clause to suspend provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – won more seats and a higher proportion of the popular vote than the Bloc.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud Party leader, has failed to form a governing coalition in Israel following the September 17 election there (the second inconclusive Israeli election in 2019) and the mandate to try and form a government has been passed to Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz.

It is unlikely that Gantz will be any more successful than Netanyahu in putting together a coalition that commands at least 61 of the Knesset’s 120 seats. It is probable, as I’ve suggested before, Likud and Blue and White will form a unity government alternating the premiership or there will be a third Israeli election.

And, in the United Kingdom, voters will go to the polls on December 12 with the leadership of both major parties in the hands of highly polarizing figures.

The Conservative Party is led by Boris Johnson, whose major issue is achieving Brexit, the so-called exit of the U.K. from the European Union (while Brexit was approved by 51.9 per cent of voters in a 2016 referendum, current polling suggests support has fallen to about 44 per cent).

And the Labour Party is led by Jeremy Corbyn, a once fringe figure whose anti-Zionism has frequently flirted with antisemitism and who has allowed antisemitism to fester in the British Labour Party.

A View from the Bleachers: Election campaign was short on substance

Rabbi Steven Garten

By Rabbi Steven Garten

The recent federal election offered something for everyone. The left-leaning voter was offered affirmation that Canada was a progressive country as the total seats accrued by the progressive parties totalled 216, a clear majority in Parliament. In addition, the progressive parties could take pride in accumulating the majority of votes cast. Those citizens who consider themselves Conservatives could take comfort in knowing that the Liberal Party was denied a majority in the House of Commons and that the Conservative Party accumulated the most votes of any single party. Every voter had something to kvell about or kvetch about. A perfect Canadian election.

While the results may have brought comfort to many, the campaign did not. It was a campaign short on substance and long on polemics and hubris. In the end, only those motivated enough to read party platforms were offered a glimpse into the policies which might serve as the underpinnings of a governing party. One of the most notable absences among the public discourse was almost any conversation about the State of Israel or the Middle East in general. Though each party might have offered some glimpse at their approach in private meetings with the leadership of the Canadian Jewish community, publicly the topic was virtually absent from the discourse. One could hypothesize about why a Canadian federal election was silent on a fairly significant foreign policy issue, but the reality was the campaign also ignored our country’s relationship with China, Russia and even the United States. How a 40 day campaign could ignore the “bully” to the south is incomprehensible.

While our political leaders were mute on the subject of Israel those individuals running for the Democratic U.S. presidential nomination were not. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who at this writing is among the leaders in the polls to be the nominee, recently declared, “Everything is on the table.” She was answering a question about the United States response to the Israeli government’s stated policy of increasing settlements on the West Bank and annexation into Israel of the West Bank settlements.

“Right now, Netanyahu says he’s going to take Israel in a direction which is counter to U.S. policy,” said Warren. “The policy of the United States is to support a two-state solution. If Israel continues in this direction then everything is on the table regarding our response, including military and foreign aid.”

Warren joins Senator Bernie Sanders and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg as candidates questioning the long standing U.S. policy of large amounts military and foreign aid to Israel. There’s obviously a sizable possibility that this is all hollow rhetoric from the candidates, but it is part of a notable shift nonetheless. In addition to public opinion moving away from unanimous support for Israel, there have been recent legislative attempts to hold Israel accountable for its human rights abuses.

These are worrisome trends. Many of the reasons for American support have not disappeared. Israel is still the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel is still the only committed ally of the United States. Israel has been a model of economic development and innovation that could offer developing countries models for self-development. It has, until recently, been a country devoted to the rule of law and justice above all.

The bipartisan support for Israel has weakened ever since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose to publicly embarrass president Barack Obama by not only opposing the Iran nuclear treaty, which was his right to do, but by speaking in the U.S. Congress against it. By choosing to side with the Republican Party over and against the president of the United States, Netanyahu made the State of Israel a partisan issue. However, now we have a glimpse into what the ever-changing reality of American politics and the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East could mean for those who have unquestioned support for Israel. One should not forget that the current U.S. president raised the notion of dual loyalty, even if it was contained in a typical Trump tweet.

While we might have been happy or disappointed that only one our federal leaders spoke about moving the Canadian Embassy to Jerusalem, we might have wished that some political leader condemned the expanding settlements, or the blockade of Gaza, or rallied against the ongoing terrorism from Gaza and the expanding power of Hezbollah and Hamas. However, if we look southward to see what happens when Israel becomes part of the game of politics, we might be glad – for both Israel and our own personal security – that boring Canadian political campaigns remain boring.

From the Editor: Is this an election that no party wins?

Michael Regenstreif

By Michael Regenstreif

Editor

As Jason Moscovitz notes below, the October 28 issue of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin goes to press before the October 21 federal election – so I’m writing this column before we know the actual results.

However, if the latest polls are close to being accurate, the results of this election might well be as un-decisive as the results of Israel’s two 2019 elections. As I write, more than a month after Israelis voted on September 17, a governing coalition is still not in place there.

A poll analysis site I’ve followed throughout the campaign is www.338Canada.com and its latest projection suggests the Liberal and Conservative parties are virtually tied with both in the range of taking about 132 seats. The strength of both major parties has diminished during the campaign while the New Democratic Party (NDP) and Bloc Québécois (BQ) have each gained significant strength.

With the possibility of up to six parties electing MPs, and the further possibility of one or two independent members, we may see a situation like Israel’s in which neither of the major parties has enough potential support in a minority Parliament to effectively govern.

How did we get to this possible situation? Here are some of the contributing factors.

While Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s personal brand was already wounded before the start of the campaign from various broken promises, from mixed messages on environmental and Indigenous issues, and from the SNC-Lavalin scandal, it took a major hit a week after the writ dropped with the revelation that Trudeau, as an adult, had foolishly donned blackface and brownface makeup on at least three occasions. Any ordinary candidate for Parliament would surely have been dropped by their party if such a revelation had surfaced during the campaign.

Meanwhile it came to light that Conservative leader Andrew Scheer holds dual American and Canadian citizenship. That probably wouldn’t have been too significant an issue except for the fact that in 2005 Scheer himself raised the issue of then-governor general Michaëlle Jean’s dual citizenship, and because in past election campaigns the Conservatives attacked then-Liberal leader Stéphane Dion and then-NDP leader Tom Mulcair for their dual citizenships. While Scheer now says he’s begun the process of renouncing his American citizenship, he was a member of Parliament for 15 years – and served as speaker of the House of Commons for more than four of those years – without ever revealing his dual citizenship.

There is no doubt that the NDP’s growing strength outside Quebec can be attributed to frustrations with the Trudeau Liberals and to strong performances by NDP leader Jagmeet Singh in the debates and on the hustings, and to his grace under fire from racist attacks.

In Quebec, the rise of the BQ – which 338Canada predicts will win about 35 seats, up from 10 in 2015 – can be at least partially explained by support among francophone voters for Quebec’s Bill 21 banning certain civil servants from wearing religious symbols, including Jewish kippahs, Sikh turbans and Muslim hijabs. While the Liberals remain strong in multicultural Montreal, the BQ seems set to take most of the francophone ridings off the island of Montreal. The BQ has promised to protect Bill 21 from federal interference.

Speaking personally, the response to Bill 21 – which achieves its goals by use of the notwithstanding clause to override the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – by all of the federal leaders has been highly disappointing. While Trudeau, Scheer, Singh and Green Party leader Elizabeth May have all expressed opposition to Bill 21, only Trudeau will say that the federal government “might” intervene in a court case against it. Even Trudeau’s “might” is a weak response. As I noted in my August 19 column, the phrase “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian” is merely an empty platitude when one province can get away with removing Charter rights from certain targeted minorities.

Of course, the polls might be wrong and we might see a strong minority or even a majority government emerge after October 21. A better bet, though, is another election sooner than later (with the possibility that one or more of the parties has a new leader).