Not kosher NPA'sach

Editorial

Last November, at an all-candidates' meeting at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver (JCC), Sam Sullivan boasted of the support he had in the Jewish community.

Sullivan went on to win the election and now wears the chain of office as mayor of Vancouver. He is presumed to have taken a sizeable chunk of the Jewish vote – a bloc that may be larger than the number of votes James Green took from Jim Green. Yet in one of the first major events sponsored by the NPA since regaining civic government in November's election, the NPA scheduled its annual general meeting for the first night of Pesach.

Such scheduling would be thoughtless at the best of times. But it is particularly galling mere months after a significant, probably unprecedented, groundswell of support among Jewish Vancouverites helped put Sullivan in the mayor's chair and arguably elected an NPA majority to council, parks board and school board. Prominent Jewish leaders very publicly backed Sullivan, publishing third-party advertising in this newspaper and others supporting Sullivan and calling on Jewish voters to join them in supporting the NPA. Herb Silber, past-president of the JCC, and Jeffrey Goldberg, chair of the Combined Jewish Appeal campaign, circulated widely an e-mail of support for Sullivan, albeit in the capacity of private citizens.

Senior NPA officials tell the Independent that the date was chosen based on the availability of the space, Heritage Hall on Main Street, where the meeting is to be held. (The NPA, if it ever was a West Side club, has made a point of holding major events on the Eastside in recent years.) When the availability was offered, the board did not realize that the date was Passover, said the official.

The apology from NPA brass seems heartfelt and genuine enough. Dumb mistake is the defence. The civic governing party promises to consult their multicultural calendars in future.

The problem is, this is not the first time this has happened. Far more egregiously, the NPA held a fund-raising celebration last year on Kol Nidre. One such scheduling error may be understandable and forgivable. Twice and it begins to look like a trend.

Certainly, NPA leaders say, the date was not chosen deliberately, or for some sinister political reason. It was an oversight. But it demonstrates a lack of sensitivity and a sloppiness that probably shouldn't be happening at this level of politics in a city that boasts such proud diversity.

Scheduling a major civic event at a time when a significant number of interested citizens will be precluded from attending based on membership in a cultural or religious community is insensitive, but it's not exactly tsuris of unprecedented proportions. Most of Vancouver's Jews probably don't care when the NPA holds its meetings. But the scheduling snafu, however unintentional, is a strange repayment to a community that gave so much so recently to the NPA.

While the NPA leadership has promised such an oversight will never happen again, perhaps it is the responsibility of Jewish NPAers to make sure this is the case. The lesson here may be that the best way for a political organization to appropriately reflect the needs and sensitivities of a cultural community is for members of that community to integrate themselves into the decision-making structure of the party – and not just send money and supportive e-mails at election time.

While the timing of a political party's meeting may not be the most dramatic issue this community will face this year, it nonetheless suggests that a core principle of Canadian multiculturalism – that reasonable accommodations be made to meet the specific needs of a cultural community – has not been structurally integrated into the party that runs this city.

In the end, reasonable accommodation is really all that the Jewish community has ever asked of its elected officials. It should not be too much to expect. This is why this incident has struck such a chord: first Yom Kippur, then Pesach. Three strikes and this community might actually get angry.

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