Cotler speaks to Jews

PAT JOHNSON

With Stephen Harper's Conservative party reportedly making inroads with Jewish voters based on vigorous and vocal support for Israel, the Liberal party sent one of its most eminent voices to Vancouver on the weekend to try to stanch the flow.

Irwin Cotler, the Liberal former minister of justice under prime ministers Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin and a past president of Canadian Jewish Congress, met with Jewish community members in a packed private home Sunday, joking that he'd be hard pressed to attract such a crowd in his own Montreal riding of Mount Royal, where he received more than 65 per cent of the vote in 2006. (Cotler was first elected to Parliament in a 1999 by-election, scooping 91 per cent of the vote in the former constituency of Pierre Trudeau.)

Cotler was brought in to support a number of local Liberal candidates, notably Joyce Murray, who squeaked into Parliament in a March 17 by-election by just 151 votes. Her riding, Vancouver Quadra, is home to the largest Jewish population in British Columbia.

Cotler was received warmly, but he faced forceful questioning from local Jewish community members who accused the Liberals of not being as vocally supportive of Israel as the Conservatives. Cotler credited Prime Minister Harper for his position on Israel, but then launched broadsides against the Conservatives on a host of issues Cotler said should be of concern to voters. These issues included what Cotler said was inaction in the face of Iran's genocidal threats to Israel and tepid support for the fate of the people of Darfur, who face imminent genocide at the hands of Sudanese-backed paramilitary.

"I come to the support of Israel not because it's a Jewish cause, but because I believe profoundly it's a just cause," Cotler told the Independent in an interview before the meeting. "It's a just cause and it's a cause for all Canadians, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. I therefore commend Harper for his stand with regard to Israel. My concern is not about that. For his stand, I think he should be commended, though I think there have been some shortcomings, as I mentioned, in the case of Iran and the like. However, if you really care about Israel as being a profoundly just cause, you don't want to create a wedge issue [in an election campaign]."

Cotler said he would strive, in a Liberal government, to advocate a similar policy toward Israel, but he listed off areas he said should give Jewish voters pause toward the Conservatives.

"On matters of principle that underpin the choice of political leadership," said the former law professor, "the test of ethical, responsible, moral political leadership can be found and is reflected in respect for the rule of law, for Parliament, for the independence of the judiciary and for minority rights. And I regret to say that Harper made a quartet of decisions in calling the election that show disrespect for each of these four."

Harper's government enacted a fixed election date law, intended to end the practice of prime ministers calling elections when the political winds suited them.

"What has Harper done?" Cotler asked rhetorically. "He has not only breached his own election law, but he has broken his undertaking to Parliament and the people."

By calling an election, Cotler said, Harper killed a series of parliamentary inquiries, including one looking into allegations that former prime minister Brian Mulroney received kickbacks from business figure Karlheinz Schreiber over the sale of Airbus planes, another that was investigating published allegations that Conservative party officials offered the late B.C. independent MP Chuck Cadman a million dollar life insurance policy to vote against the 2005 Liberal budget and a third inquiry into the so-called "in and out scandal," in which the Conservative party is alleged to have funnelled more than $1.3 million from their 2006 national campaign to local candidates in order to circumvent legal spending limitations.

"All these things ended by the unilateral dissolution of Parliament," said Cotler. "He [Harper] even had ordered some of his own people not to report, to be witnesses [in the inquiries]."

Cotler also accused Harper of disrespect for the independence of the judiciary for unilaterally nominating a judge for the Supreme Court of Canada.

"The person he nominated is a good person," Cotler said of now-Justice Marshall E. Rothstein. "I make no comment on the quality of the judge. However, there was a process in place for the appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada whereby he was to receive the report of a parliamentary advisory committee and then act on receipt of that report."

Cotler said he was in a similar position when he was minister of justice, facing a Supreme Court vacancy in the lead-up to an election.

"We said we will not appoint anyone, because it would be unfair on the eve of an election for us to do that kind of nomination," Cotler said. "Whoever wins that election will then make the nomination. Harper didn't even await the report of the committee ... to go ahead and make the nomination. Again, a disrespect for the independence of the judiciary, for the parliamentary process."

And, while Canadian Jewish Congress officials have stated publicly that scheduling the election to fall on Sukkot still leaves Jews with plenty of opportunity to vote in advance polls, Cotler is less accommodating.

"The answer that people could vote in advance polls is no answer for those who are unable that day to act as volunteers, as campaign workers, as drivers and the like," said Cotler. "They are deprived of equal participation in the electoral process."

The noted human rights legalist assailed the Harper government on a host of other issues, including the dismantling of the Court Challenges program, which funded human rights legal cases under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Cotler said a Liberal government would not only restore the program, but double its funding.

He also condemned the Conservatives' reduction of a Liberal plan to create a comprehensive national civil and criminal legal aid program, slammed the Conservatives for a lack of official commemoration around the 25th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and attacked Harper for discarding the Kelowna Accord, which was intended to improve education, employment and living conditions for First Nations.

Cotler ticked off a litany of areas in addition to support for Israel that he said should be of concern to Jewish voters.

"We had Kyoto, with regard to the environment: discarded. We had a parliamentary committee report recommending equal pay for work of equal value: discarded. We have Status of Women Canada, with its mandate for advocating the rights of women: funding diminished; they had to close 12 of their 16 offices," said Cotler.

While he credits the Conservatives for defending Israel in its fight against Hezbollah, Cotler lambasted the government for failing to cite in their Throne Speech what Cotler calls "the two great foreign policy issues of the 21st century ... genocide by attrition in Darfur and the state-sanctioned incitement to genocide in [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's Iran."

"The Genocide Convention not only prohibits direct public incitement to genocide, it obliges all state parties to the Genocide Convention to take the necessary steps to bring Iran as a country to account and to bring Ahmadinejad as an individual to hold him personally and criminally liable," Cotler said. "When I proposed a motion before the parliamentary foreign affairs subcommittee on international human rights to that effect, the Liberals supported it, the NDP supported it, the Conservatives voted against it. Here, the great issue that's a threat not only to Israel and the Jewish people, but to Middle East stability and international peace and security, where do you find the Conservatives? On the wrong side of that great issue. Just as with Darfur, you don't even find them mentioning at all."

Pat Johnson is, among other things, managing director, programs and communications, for the Vancouver Hillel Foundation.

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