Harper and the Jews

Editorial

Anyone doubting that the landslide the Liberals won in Vancouver Quadra last election was a win more for Stephen Owen than for the party itself was disabused of that notion Monday night.

Joyce Murray, a former provincial cabinet minister and the Liberal party's candidate in a byelection to replace the admired Owen, won the seat by 151 votes. Owen, who resigned last year to take a position at the University of British Columbia, won barely two years ago by more than 11,000 votes.

The Conservative party has had trouble in urban ridings, gaining most of their support in suburban and rural areas. Monday's result might indicate that they are on the upswing in Canada's cities, although the two Toronto ridings – one urban, one suburban – that also held byelections this week were won by the Liberals with nearly 60 per cent of the vote each. Some of that certainly had to do with the candidates – Bob Rae, former NDP premier of Ontario, won Toronto-Centre; and Martha Hall Findlay, a lawyer who made an excellent impression audaciously running for the Liberal leadership two years ago, won Willowdale. A northern Saskatchewan riding, the fourth in the spate of elections Monday, was taken from the Liberals by the Conservatives.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper did not invest any political capital in Quadra. Even though he was in the city recently, even meeting with members of the Jewish community, he did not campaign for his candidate, Deborah Meredith. Perhaps if he had, they would be celebrating a coup this week.

Though Quadra is where a significant proportion of Greater Vancouver's 23,000 Jews live, we still account for less than four per cent of the population in that riding. Even if, as may be fair to assume, Jewish Quadra residents voted in higher proportions than the general population, it is hard to make sweeping conclusions.

What is undeniable is that some in the Jewish community have enthusiastically embraced the Conservatives, based largely on the Harper government's unequivocal and empathetic approach to foreign affairs vis-a-vis Israel.

This was part of the case made individually and publicly by a group of prominent community members in ads placed in this newspaper and in discussions throughout the community over the past several weeks. A case we made on this page recently was that Jewish voters might reasonably use Israel as a Rorschach test for candidates, judging how a politician might behave toward Jewish communities if threatened here, based on how they react to threats against Jews elsewhere, particularly Israel. This suggests party positions on Israel are, in the eyes of Jewish Canadians, less about foreign affairs and more about domestic sensitivities. This is speculative, of course. There is a vast range of considerations that most people take into account before casting a ballot – economic, social, environmental and other issues, as well as subjective considerations about the candidates and their leaders.

Even so, the Conservative government shocked many, including us, when, during the Lebanon war two summers ago – barely into their new term – the Canadian government took its most explicit stand yet in defence of Israel's obligation to protect its citizens from terror. Since the Harper Conservatives formed the government, Canada bravely and singularly voted against yet more ludicrous anti-Israel aspersions at the United Nations Human Rights Council. Then, just recently, they took the world's most principled stand against a reprise of the anti-Semitic hatefest that was the Durban conference of 2000.

These are meaningful and substantive commitments that the Conservatives took, not to gain votes – clearly, the Jewish community is smaller than almost any demographic in the country and couldn't directly affect the outcome in more than a handful of ridings. It is impossible even to make the stereotypical case that Jewish supporters can line the campaign war chests of the Conservatives, given that new election funding laws prevent anyone from donating more than a small amount to a candidate or party.

And, of course, the results in Toronto defy theorizing. The Liberals won big there. Willowdale, which Hall Findlay won, has a Jewish population of about eight per cent. Toronto Centre, which will now be represented by one of the Liberal party's most articulate Zionist voices in Bob Rae, has about three per cent.

After our recent editorial on this subject, a reader wrote to suggest the whole undertaking of analyzing the Jewish vote left us susceptible to the old canard that Jews control elected officials. This logic is flawed on two counts: Jews do not make up a large enough mass anywhere in the country to significantly impact the outcome of a general election. More importantly, the Conservative party seems determined to form its policy, on this issue at least, based on moral principles and doing the right thing, rather than on short-term electoral gain.

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