B.C. Premier John Horgan toured the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver on March 29, speaking with community members of all ages. (photo from Office of the Premier)
B.C. Premier John Horgan visited the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver just before erev Pesach, March 29.
The premier had visited the JCCGV before, but only to attend meetings in the boardroom, and this was his first visit as the province’s head of government.
Horgan toured the building, visited the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, the sports facilities and spent time with children and parents at the daycare. (photo from Office of the Premier)
Horgan toured the building, visited the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, the sports facilities and spent time with children and parents at the daycare.
In a statement to the Independent after the meeting, the premier said: “People drive community. Touring the centre really hit that message home.… I was glad to meet with and hear from community leaders, see the range of services being provided and visit with kids, parents and educators at the childcare centre in advance of Passover.”
On April 12, the premier also participated in a Yom Hashoah ceremony at the B.C. Legislature, which included numerous survivors of the Holocaust. In next week’s Independent, there will be more about the Yom Hashoah commemorations that took place in Victoria and Vancouver.
“Our goal was for him to get to know us and get to see our centre, get to understand the level and breadth of activities we offer,” said Eldad Goldfarb, executive director of the JCCGV. “His focus was primarily on childcare and I think he had a few more visits during that day to other [childcare] facilities.… We wanted him to see what we are doing and we wanted him to hear about our plans for the future.”
While there was no formal agenda for the meeting, after the tour, Horgan met with representatives of agencies that are located in the building. He was introduced and thanked by Alvin Wasserman, vice-president of the JCCGV.
While affordable housing was not on the agenda officially, Goldfarb said he discussed with the premier the opportunity for including such accommodations within the planned redevelopment of the JCCGV site. The new provincial government made a substantial commitment to affordable housing in its first budget, Feb. 27.
Nico Slobinsky, director of the Pacific Region for the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said Horgan was at the centre more to listen than to talk.
“He was there to learn a little bit about what the centre does and the opportunity to connect with the community since becoming premier,” said Slobinsky, who helped arrange the visit. “He hasn’t had a chance yet to do that. He did that before but not since becoming premier.
“As a community,” he said, “we have long enjoyed a great relationship with the provincial government and we are very happy to see that continue.”
Portrait of Dave Barrett by photographer Fred Schiffer, June 9, 1975. (photo from Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia)
More than four decades after he led British Columbia through one of the most tumultuous and consequential epochs in the province’s political history, British Columbia’s first – and, to date, only – Jewish premier is being remembered for an extraordinary life.
Dave Barrett died Feb. 2, several years after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He served as premier for a comparatively short period, from 1972 to 1975, but his policies continue to affect everyday life for British Columbians.
In 39 months – 1,200 days – Barrett’s New Democratic Party government passed 357 diverse and sometimes radical pieces of legislation, more than any single government before or since. The landmark initiatives included the creation of the Agricultural Land Reserve, the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, a provincial ambulance service and air ambulances, Pharmacare for seniors, neighbourhood pubs, British Columbia’s first ministry of housing, rent controls, the most expansive human rights code in Canada, mandatory kindergarten, reduced teacher-student ratios and the Seabus.
Barrett’s government also proclaimed B.C. Day as a statutory holiday. It established Whistler as Canada’s first “resort municipality” and saved Cypress Bowl from logging, turning it into a provincial park. His government ended logging and mining in provincial parks and banned the export of raw logs, funded the City of Vancouver’s purchase of the historic Orpheum Theatre, raised the minimum wage from $1.50 to $2.50 an hour and created “Mincome,” which guaranteed a minimum income of $200 per month for people over 60. The Barrett record includes the expansion of community colleges, new daycare facilities, French immersion in public schools, and Robson Square, among many other things that we now take for granted.
At a celebration of life in Vancouver March 4, and in interviews with the Jewish Independent, people close to Barrett shared their reflections of the man who led the first socialist government in the province and who was a dominant figure in the life of B.C. politics from 1960 until 1993.
* * *
In his memoir, Barrett: A Passionate Political Life, the former premier recalls growing up on McSpadden Avenue, a one-block spur off Commercial Drive on Vancouver’s East Side, in a house “crammed with books and brimming with lively political discussion.”
His father, Sam, was born in Winnipeg, his mother, Rose, north of Odessa. She was brought to Canada by a Jewish refugee agency after pogroms that followed the Russian Revolution. (In his political life, Barrett would be a strong voice for Soviet Jewry.)
David Barrett was born in Vancouver on Oct. 2, 1930, the youngest of three – his brother Isador was 4 and sister Pearl, 2.
Barrett attended Laura Second elementary and Britannia high school. On weekends, he worked with his father selling fruit and vegetables from a truck and, later, in a retail-wholesale store on Powell Street. After graduating from Britannia, he went, in 1948, to Seattle University, a Jesuit institution that helped cement Barrett’s social justice orientation.
“I had a wonderful time at university, but I was on academic probation muc
Portrait of Dave Barrett as a boy, circa 1940. (Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia L.00029)
h of the time,” Barrett wrote in his book.
Returning to Vancouver in summer and during winter breaks, Barrett continued to help out in the family business. One year, to make money, he sold Christmas trees across the street from his dad’s store. He also worked on a CNR train between Vancouver and Edmonton and for the City of Vancouver, pouring hot tar on cracks in the road.
In 1953, he came home with a bachelor’s in sociology and a minor in philosophy.
In his memoirs, Barrett notes that education was deeply important to his family. One day, he recalls, he received a call from his mother to say that his brother Issy, “already an internationally recognized researcher in ocean sciences, had just earned a PhD with distinction.
“There was a pause and she asked if I got the message. I said, ‘No, Mom, what’s the message?’ And she replied, ‘When are you going to return to school and make something of yourself?’”
Barrett was speaking to his mother from the premier’s office in the B.C. legislature.
* * *
When he and Shirley Hackman decided to get married, when Barrett was 22, his parents did not react positively.
“He thought I was too young to get married,” Barrett recalled of his father’s response. “My mother reverted to her traditional role: she went right up the wall. This progressive mother of mine wanted me to marry a Jewish girl, and Shirley was Anglican.”
The marriage went ahead nevertheless. The couple spent $300 on the reception and scraped coins together to make ends meet in subsequent weeks. Rose’s reservations about Shirley dissolved.
“This woman, who hadn’t wanted her Jewish son to marry a gentile girl, did a complete reversal.” Barrett wrote in his memoir. “Now I was no good. I didn’t deserve this wonderful woman. They had an incredible relationship.”
Barrett got a job at the Children’s Aid Society and later worked with young offenders at Oakalla, an overcrowded provincial prison in Burnaby. But he realized he would have to continue his education to advance in the field.
After he was turned down by the social work school at the University of British Columbia, he visited an older mentor in Seattle, who advised him to apply to St. Louis University, another Jesuit institution, in Missouri. While his grades weren’t good, and he had repeated run-ins with authority figures, Barrett had apparently impressed the priests at Seattle University, whom he credited with facilitating his admission to graduate school.
In St. Louis, with a wife and newborn son, Barrett took a side job at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, working with teenagers. When he graduated, he was offered a job back home in British Columbia, at the Haney Correctional Institute, for $355 a month. There, he created programs including sports, drama, occupational training and rehabilitation for the inmates.
But he was disenchanted with the correctional system and decided the only way to make systemic change was through politics. So, he announced his intention to run for the legislature, on behalf of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (the CCF, which, in 1961, became the NDP). As a provincial employee engaging in politics, Barrett was already poking the bear. He was eventually fired from his job for criticizing the corrections and social services system during his campaign for the nomination.
The Vancouver Sun ran the story big and Barrett was thrust into the spotlight, losing his livelihood but becoming a political sensation before even winning the party’s nomination – which he did, in a first-ballot landslide.
Because the general election was still some time away – and because being a member of the legislative assembly at that time was a part-time job that paid $12,500 a year – Barrett secured a position at the John Howard Society, an organization that works with people in, or at risk of entering, the criminal justice system. It was there that he met Norm Levi, who would also become an MLA and play a central role in Barrett’s government, as the one responsible for welfare policy, including “Mincome.”
Elected to the legislature in 1960 in the constituency of Dewdney, Barrett remained a fixture in Vancouver’s Jewish community through the decade. He attended the relatively short annual sittings of the legislature and spent the rest of the year balancing constituency responsibilities and working at the Jewish Family Services Agency, where his mentor was Jessie Allman, and as director of the Jewish Community Centre, even as he rose in the ranks of provincial politics and was recognized as an emerging star.
* * *
Gloria Levi worked at the JCC when Barrett was director.
“It was a riot,” she told the Independent. Gloria and her husband, Norm, had returned from a two-year stint in Israel at the end of the 1950s and the couple became fast friends with Shirley and Dave Barrett.
As Barrett’s career progressed, he would become Norm Levi’s supervisor at the John Howard Society. Gloria Levi recalled something that drew the two couples together.
“[Barrett] was very respectful and very admiring of Norm and me because we wore our Judaism on our sleeve and he didn’t,” she said. “But it meant a lot to him. I think his whole social ethic came from feeling Jewish. I think his sense of justice was definitely influenced from being Jewish. He was always the one who was seen as different because he was Jewish. He was an East Side kid and he had to fight his way a lot of times.”
The Levi and Barrett daughters, as well as the daughter of another (non-Jewish) NDP stalwart, Stu Leggett, attended Camp Miriam and remain friends today. The parents also hung out in the 1960s and ’70s, playing cards at the Barrett home in Coquitlam.
“Many a Saturday night we would go over to their house – this was when we were all elected – and we’d play poker,” Levi said. “I have to say, the person with the best poker face, who could win, was Shirley Barrett.”
The anecdote is telling not only because of what it says about the poker skills of the wife of the future premier, but because, for whatever else one might discern about Dave Barrett, he rarely would or could conceal his feelings.
* * *
Barrett became leader of the British Columbia NDP in 1969, shortly after the party lost its 12th consecutive election.
Premier W.A.C. Bennett, the Social Credit leader who had led the province since 1952, declared Barrett “the most dangerous leader the socialists have ever had in B.C.”
From the perspective of a premier who had triumphed over opponents in seven provincial elections, Barrett was indeed dangerous.
Barrett had seen how Tommy Douglas, the federal NDP leader, used humour to deflect the electorate’s fear of the left, and Barrett used his natural jocularity to his political benefit. In his memoir, Barrett claims people just laughed at Bennett’s assertions.
“Nobody saw me as a threat,” he wrote. “I was just a social worker, a little overweight, maybe, but quite jolly. A funny little guy.”
In 1972, Barrett led the NDP to victory, taking 38 seats to the Socreds’ 10. While Bennett was reelected in South Okanagan, most of his cabinet was wiped out.
The emotions on election night were overwhelming on both sides. For Social Credit, the Bennett family and their supporters, the era that had seen British Columbia’s most expansive economic growth under a seemingly invincible leader was at an end.
Among New Democrats, for whom losing elections had seemed a congenital disorder, there was disbelief and jubilation. Speaking at the celebration of life for Barrett at the Croatian Cultural Centre on Commercial Drive on March 4, former premier Dan Miller recalled the power of the moment.
“When we won in 1972, the euphoria I experienced that night has never been duplicated,” said Miller, who was premier for six months after Glen Clark resigned in 1999. “Not when I ran myself in 1986, not when we formed a government in 1991, not even when Glen Clark outsmarted and out-campaigned Gordon Campbell to give him a back-to-back victory for the first time for the NDP. And not even when John Horgan formed the government last year.”
Miller compared Barrett to Jean Lesage, the premier of Quebec who, in 1960, ended more than three decades of rule by the Union Nationale and ushered in what came to be known as the Quiet Revolution.
“I think he was transformational,” Miller said of Barrett. “He brought B.C. into the modern era – and I guess you might be able to describe his revolution as a noisy one.”
When Barrett ended the 20 years of Bennett’s premiership, the legislature had no question period, there was no Hansard (the written record of house proceedings), the entire NDP caucus was forced to share a single office with no support staff, and members of the legislative press gallery were earning pocket money writing news releases and speeches for members of Bennett’s cabinet.
Even as resource revenues were filling government coffers in the 1950s and ’60s, Bennett’s parsimony was so legendary that government travel outside the province was banned – to the extent that the premier himself (who preferred the title “Prime Minister of British Columbia”) avoided federal-provincial conferences. Even long-distance telephone calls by cabinet ministers had to be pre-approved by the premier’s office.
Among Barrett’s first acts in office was to improve conditions and funding for opposition MLAs and institute question period.
* * *
Marc Eliesen served as Barrett’s deputy minister and remained one of the premier’s closest friends and confidants to the end.
“I think, in part, the reason why the two of us connected was that we both came from Jewish working-class backgrounds,” Eliesen told the Independent. “While both of us were not religious – we were secular in belief – we had a very proud and conscious recognition historically of what our particular people had done through history in fighting for social justice and economic equality and I think that dominates basically the orientation of where he was going and what he stood for. He never detracted from that. The upbringing by his folks reflected that particular orientation, for lack of a better description, of being for the little guy and wanting to make life a little bit better.”
Eliesen knew Barrett’s parents and described Rose Barrett’s affinity for communism – and for a time, Stalin – as like a religion.
“Dave very clearly saw the extremes, which were not for him,” Eliesen said. Sam Barrett was a Fabian socialist, a gradualist, and that was the ideology that affected young Dave the most, he said. While the younger Barrett was no revolutionary – seeking change through democratic, parliamentary processes, like his father’s approach would dictate – the record of his fairly short time in the highest office was, if not revolutionary, certainly unprecedented and groundbreaking.
* * *
At the end of the emotional, laughter-filled celebration of life, local band Trooper’s 1977 hit “We’re Here for a Good Time (Not a Long Time)” blasted through the house.
While the Barrett administration predated the song by at least two years, legend has Barrett, at his first cabinet meeting, taking off his shoes, getting up on the polished cabinet table and sliding from one end to the other, demanding of his ministers: “Are we here for a good time, or a long time?”
The veracity of this story is ambiguous but, in his memoir, Barrett acknowledges that the choice was made to go for broke. The stars that aligned in 1972 – including a tired incumbent premier, who had served two decades, and a four-way split in the popular vote – might not align again in the subsequent election. (The party would, in fact, lose again four successive times, three of them under Barrett’s continued leadership, before sitting around that cabinet table again.)
“We discussed whether we were really going to make fundamental changes in British Columbia, or whether we would try to hang on for another term, rationalizing that we’d get the job done next time around. We agreed unanimously to strike while the iron was hot,” he wrote.
No government before or since has passed so much legislation or brought so much change to Victoria in so short a time.
The new government doubled the pay of MLAs to $25,000 and made the role more full-time, significantly increased welfare rates and nearly doubled human resources spending as a percentage of the budget (to 15.1% from 8.5%). The new government provided collective bargaining rights, including the right to strike, to government employees. It introduced a new labour code, established the Islands Trust to thwart uncontrolled development on the Gulf Islands, purchased the Princess Marguerite, which maintained ferry service between Victoria and Seattle, refurbished the Royal Hudson steam locomotive and made it a rail tourism attraction, created a police commission to determine policing standards in British Columbia and set out provisions for dealing with complaints against the police from members of the public.
For the first time, legislation required elected and appointed officials to disclose their financial holdings so that the public could see real or potential conflicts of interest. The government increased funding for the arts and legal aid, initiated the province’s first consumer services ministry and introduced Canada’s strongest, at the time, consumer protection legislation. Legislation eliminated succession duties on farms transferring from parents to children.
The Barrett government launched a range of self-determination initiatives for First Nations. It created a provincial Status of Women office and funded women’s shelters and health facilities, including agencies for victims of rape. It overhauled the province’s family court apparatus.
The NDP had condemned the Social Credit regime for what Barrett viewed as allowing the resources of the province to enrich the wealthy, without benefiting the general population. To address this, the government created the B.C. Energy Commission to regulate utilities and monitor oil and gas prices, upped mineral royalties and increased government royalties on coal 600%.
Alarming many in the business sector, the new government became very directly involved in the economy. The NDP government purchased two pulp mills, two sawmills and a poultry operation to prevent them from going out of business. (With the exception of the chicken business, all became profitable.) The government acquired Shaughnessy Veterans’ Hospital, which would be transformed into B.C. Children’s Hospital. And pay toilets were outlawed.
* * *
Barrett’s Jewishness was not a factor, apparently, one way or another in his election. But the fact that British Columbia – and Canada – elected its first Jewish premier was not overlooked by those with negative biases.
Marc Eliesen was raised in Montreal and served as deputy minister to Manitoba’s first NDP premier, Ed Schreyer, before being coaxed to take the same role in Barrett’s Victoria administration.
“When I was there, there was no question that antisemitism was still around,” he told the Independent. “I saw all the letters that would come in. Being the first Jewish premier … Dave never shied away from the fact of who he was. He was very conscious of people criticizing him not necessarily for the policies he was doing but for his ethnic background. I saw that front and centre and it was much more extensive than a lot of people would want to believe. It was reflected also in death threats that came through.”
Eliesen remembers the words of the mayor of Victoria at the time, Peter Pollen, who would go on to become leader of the B.C. Conservative party.
“There is the mayor of Victoria, when I was hired, making comments saying, ‘Dave Barrett could think nothing more of putting us Christians down and surrounding himself with a Jewish coterie.’ That was the kind of thing that was taking place at the time,” said Eliesen. He thought the words would spark outrage, but they didn’t.
“I’ll never forget it,” he said. “It’s one of those things that shocks you at the time.”
* * *
This photo appeared in the Jewish Western Bulletin Nov. 9, 1978.
Bernie Simpson, who later became an MLA in the government of Mike Harcourt, met Barrett in Jewish communal activities and was persuaded by him to join the NDP.
“From a political point of view, he was my mentor,” Simpson said. “I was with him from the very beginning.”
Under Barrett’s tutelage, Simpson became advertising director of the Democrat, the party’s official organ. Advertising sales is a notoriously tough business and that experience would lead Simpson to become one of the party’s leading fundraisers in years to come.
Simpson takes exception to suggestions from some quarters that Barrett was not connected to his Jewishness or to the community.
“There is a perception out there that he didn’t consider himself that Jewish,” Simpson told the Independent. “It’s actually the contrary. I remember distinctly how proud he was of being the first Jewish premier.”
Simpson went on to say that a core group of leaders attempted to convince Barrett to abandon politics and remain at the helm of the JCC, but, Simpson said, Barrett had determined early in the 1960s that he wanted to be premier.
Simpson recounted another memorable incident in Barrett’s time in politics.
Barrett met Shimon Peres at the Vancouver airport. The man who would become the eighth prime minister and, later, the ninth president of Israel, was tired. But the Hadassah Bazaar was on at the time, at the Pacific National Exhibition grounds, and Barrett thought Peres should see it.
Simpson recalled Peres’s initial response, “Hadassah, Shmadassah. I want to go to the Bayshore to rest.”
But Barrett convinced the Israeli leader to go to the then-annual spectacle. The former premier was mobbed. The future Nobel laureate, who had not yet reached the heights of Israeli politics but was already legendary, was largely disregarded.
“He was kind of ignored, Shimon Peres,” Simpson recalled with a laugh. “It’s not all Jews there at the forum at the PNE and Peres was pissed off. But, 15 years later, I see Peres. The first thing he says it is, ‘How is Dave Barrett?’ Remember, this is 15 years later, after we picked him up at the airport. Which goes to show you two things: one is the prodigious memory of Shimon Peres, and the second thing is the charismatic personality of Dave Barrett, that he would leave such an impression on Shimon Peres.”
Peres and Barrett actually did cross paths in Israel shortly after the Hadassah incident, when Barrett was opposition leader. In his book,
Barrett recalls an invitation to a conference in Jerusalem on international terrorism. The confab included Peres, Israel’s then-prime minister Menachem Begin, George Bush, who was then the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, and other world leaders.
For Dave and Shirley Barrett, it was the first trip to the region and, while there was plenty to see outside of business hours, it was also an opportunity to connect with mishpachah. While Barrett’s mother, Rose, had migrated to Canada, her brother had fled to Palestine. On this trip, Barrett finally met his uncle, as well as cousins and second cousins he had never known.
* * *
For all the new government’s ambitious undertakings, there was not only the domestic political situation to consider, but global realities to be faced.
The early 1970s saw a period of steep inflation, caused in part by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, whose embargoes were sending global fuel prices through the roof. With oil prices spiking the cost of everything, wage demands naturally responded.
British Columbia was, at the time, among the most highly unionized workforces in North America. During Barrett’s term, inflation led to increasing expectations from private and public employees and, eventually, to the most intense period of labour unrest in the province’s history, with major parts of the B.C. economy halted by strikes.
Barrett brought in back-to-work legislation, an extraordinary act for an avowedly socialist government, and one from which he would not recover. The legislation was seen as an attack on collective bargaining rights and drove a wedge between the NDP and its crucial union supporters.
At the celebration of life, Jim Sinclair, a past president of the B.C. Federation of Labour, joked about the often-strained relations between Barrett’s NDP and the trade union movement.
“I would like to say that the relationship with the labour movement during that time was just rock solid,” he said. “But I think it was more rocky than solid.”
While Barrett’s government frequently clashed with union leaders, Sinclair said, “There was nothing wrong with the relationship between Dave Barrett, the premier of this province, and ordinary working people in this province.”
Meanwhile, the opposition was uniting, with three of five Liberal MLAs and one of the two Conservatives in the legislature defecting to the Social Credit caucus, now led by W.A.C. Bennett’s son, Bill Bennett.
In 1975, just over three years into his mandate, Barrett made a gut decision to go to the polls. Though he had introduced scads of popular initiatives – Mincome among them – he had disrupted every aspect of the status quo. There was probably not a sector, policy area or demographic that had not been affected by his government’s legislation. Many voters were supportive. Plenty were outraged.
Barrett jumped the gun, hoping that he might catch the strengthening opposition before they were sufficiently unified and ready. It was a miscalculation.
“There was reluctance on the part of some members, followed by a fatalistic acceptance,” Barrett writes in his memoir, acknowledging that few in his government thought the gambit would work.
If it was true that Barrett flung himself down the cabinet table at that first meeting asking if they were there for a good time or a long time, the answer came on Dec. 11, 1975. His government was defeated in a landslide and Barrett lost his home riding of Coquitlam.
* * *
Dawn Black was a young mother volunteering to reelect Barrett in Coquitlam in 1975.
She would later follow him into the legislature and to Parliament in Ottawa, where she viewed him as “den father” of the B.C. NDP caucus.
At the celebration of life, Black spoke about a contentious policy decision of the Barrett government from a personal perspective.
“As premier, Dave Barrett named Eileen Dailly as education minister and she was [also] the first woman deputy premier,” Black told the audience. “She banned corporal punishment in the schools, making us the first jurisdiction in Canada [to do so]. And not till a full 30 years later did the Supreme Court of Canada take action on that issue.”
The public blowback to Dailly’s decision, Black said, was enormous and unanticipated.
“You’d have thought they were banning blackboards and textbooks,” she recalled. “The pundits were screaming, they were hysterical that the kids would be running the schools, they’d be running roughshod over the teachers and every school in B.C. would be like a scene out of Lord of the Flies.”
But Black had a different reaction.
“I remember when I was strapped,” she said. “I remember the fury, the humiliation. And I can still feel that sting half a century later. I remember feeling so powerless in the face of the physical force of an adult.”
Banning the strap, she said, forced teachers to find better, more effective ways to keep order in the classroom and ensured that children did not come home traumatized.
“In fact, they learned a whole new lesson. There are better options – there are always better options than violence – to resolve conflict,” Black said to an enormous ovation.
Black also credited the Barrett government’s creation of the B.C. Cancer Agency.
“You are never more powerless than when one of your kids is diagnosed with cancer,” she said. “I’ve gone through that with two of my kids. I can tell you firsthand: going to the cancer agency in B.C. and knowing that your family is going to be treated to the highest standard of care in the world, that meant everything to me and it means everything to all of the other people who go through that door.”
* * *
Marc Eliesen believes part of Barrett’s success was that some people underestimated him.
“Because of his fantastic performance as an orator and an individual who was very funny and [had a] quick wit, there was often the impression that he was an off-the-cuff kind of guy and instantaneous kinds of observations would be made on contemporary political developments,” Eliesen said. “In fact, he was systematic, he was deliberate and he was rigourous. He thought very clearly as to what he wanted to do and how he wanted to do it.
“That government accomplished more than any other government in Canadian history in so little time,” Eliesen said. “I think there were a number of factors responsible for it. Number one was the overall leadership provided by Dave. He had chutzpah. He had political will. He was quite different than what you see in the contemporary political scene where politicians, regardless of their parties, tend to shift positions depending on the political winds.
“The second thing is that he had a cabinet and a caucus that wanted to do things, that wanted to deliver. He allowed a wide scope for them to initiate the kinds of things that they had collectively decided on. It wasn’t what you see today in political affairs, where things at the centre are micromanaged.”
Hindsight suggests Barrett knew he only had one shot.
“Not that there was a kind of a death wish associated with a one-term government,” Eliesen said, laughing. “But they knew the vagaries of political life and they said, look, we’ve got a majority government. We have a mandate from the people. We went out and talked about all these things. Let’s deliver. And they did it with great gusto.”
After the 1975 defeat, the Barretts and the Eliesens went to Manzanillo, Mexico, for a couple of weeks to decide what to do with the rest of their lives.
“Dave decided that, if there was support, he would go back and be the leader of the opposition, and there was support,” said Eliesen, who went on to head Ontario Hydro, Manitoba Hydro and, eventually, B.C. Hydro.
Barrett led his party to two more defeats before retiring as leader. In each of his three defeats, the share of the NDP vote was significantly higher than his winning tally in 1972, but it always came up short against the unified centre-right.
* * *
Joy MacPhail, who served in many senior cabinet portfolios in the 1990s, represented a part of East Vancouver that Barrett had also served after returning to the house in a by-election following his 1975 Coquitlam defeat.
After the NDP was routed by Gordon Campbell’s Liberals in 2001, MacPhail was leader of the opposition from 2001 to 2005, heading a caucus of two that included fellow East Van MLA Jenny Kwan. MacPhail thought she would get some sympathy from Barrett when he visited them at the legislature. Instead, she got tough love.
“He leaned across the desk,” said MacPhail, “and he said to me, ‘Listen, two of you and 77 of those sons of bitches seems like a fair match. Now get in there and do it.’ We went in there, we did it, and we never won a thing, but we felt we could, because of Dave.”
She recalled meeting with the Barretts when Dave was considering a run for federal Parliament, in 1988.
“We were sitting around, the four of us, there was lots of talk about logistics, tactics, strategy, is it good for the province, what would it be like being in Ottawa, and the three of us were talking and Shirley wasn’t saying anything. So I knew that this was not right and I turned to Shirley after a half-hour of the rest of us BSing and I said, ‘Well, Shirley, what do you think?’ And she said, ‘Listen, anything to get the clown out of the house.’”
MacPhail added: “And I want to say, it wasn’t ‘clown.’ But … we’re not allowed to say what she really said.”
MacPhail, who was appointed last year by the new NDP government to head the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, recalled the history before the provincial auto insurer was in place.
“Working people couldn’t afford to insure their cars, so they were driving around without insurance and there were huge consequences for families in terms of when crashes occurred, and lives were destroyed,” she said. “People who survived but had no ability to heal, get healthcare and pay for the damage they’d done to other lives, as well.… To know that that was done within the first few months of the Barrett government and survives to this day … I can only hope that – and I do see it as my mandate – to bring it back to the great corporation that it once was.”
* * *
B.C. Premier John Horgan credits Barrett for his own attraction to a political career. During the Solidarity movement opposing premier Bill Bennett’s “restraint” program, Horgan went with a friend to a rally on the lawn of the legislature.
“I was not overly political at that time. Two years earlier, I had met Tommy Douglas and I had wanted to be a social worker, but transferred into political science after hearing Tommy Douglas speak,” Horgan told the Croatian centre audience. “Dave would start a little bit low, you had to lean in to hear what he had to say. Then he would start to build and the people in the audience would start to move with him, this way, that way.… That was the power of his delivery. But, more importantly, it was the power of his message. I left the legislature, I walked up Blanshard Street in Victoria, I went into the local NDP office and said, ‘What can I do to help?’”
Glen Clark, another former NDP premier, said that Barrett’s demeanour should be a model for today and he added a quip that brought down the room.
“Social injustice is worse than ever,” Clark said. “Inequality is greater than ever. There is an opioid crisis of immeasurable proportions, with record overdose deaths every year. And perhaps the greatest challenge of our time is solving climate change. In an age of unprecedented cynicism toward government, Dave Barrett taught us that it doesn’t have to be that way. These problems are man-made and, as such, they can be solved … by women.”
* * *
The support Barrett had from his family – his wife Shirley and their three kids – was brought up repeatedly during the celebration of life.
Marc Eliesen said: “Dave would often ask Shirley, ‘Shirley why do you stick around?’ And Shirley would say, ‘Dave, I just want to see what happens next.’”
Gerry Scott, who has run countless campaigns for the NDP, said: “At school, when the kids were asked, ‘What does your dad do?’ The only answer that could be consistent was, ‘He raises hell.’ And they were proud of this.”
All three adult children spoke at the event.
Daughter Jane offered a different answer to the question, “What does your father do?”
“I often told people … he was a plumber. I told him he was up to his neck in…” she said, trailing off. “My friends would say, ‘But aren’t you proud?’ Of course I was. But not for the reason people thought. Plumber, politician, didn’t matter. He was just my dad.”
Son Joe said that Barrett was the same guy at home as he was publicly.
“There was no difference. He was funny, cheerful, always supportive of us. Of course, you’re going to make mistakes in life and he would say, ‘It’s easy not to make mistakes. Just do nothing.’”
Joe Barrett said his father faced Alzheimer’s matter-of-factly.
“He accepted it, he was peaceful, he was courageous and he stoically faced that last challenge right to the end,” he said. “Dad, he celebrated life, he loved life. As the Jews say, ‘To life! L’chaim!’”
Son Dan recalled a light moment in a dark time. One of Barrett’s closest confidants and advisors was Harvey Beech. At a time when death threats against the premier were too common, the two were walking to lunch in Victoria.
“And, one day, walking up Government Street … Harvey was lagging behind and so my dad lays into him: ‘Harvey, what are you doing back there? You gotta get up in front of me. You’re protecting me. This is the premier of the province. Some guys are going to get out and shoot me.’
“Harvey said, without skipping a beat, ‘Dave, they can kill a man but they can’t kill an idea.’ This did not give my dad a whole lot of comfort.”
Dave Barrett, then leader of the opposition, offers greetings at the Congregation Emanu-El rededication ceremony in Victoria, June 6, 1982. (photo by Cyril E. Leonoff; Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia L.18490)
After the ceremony, Joe Barrett told the Independent that his dad was very proud of his Jewish heritage.
“It was a fundamental, deep part of who he was,” he said. “I was reminded yesterday, one of the very first things that the government did was remove the covenants on property titles. Up until 1972, landowners – I guess in the British Properties in particular – could write ‘no Jews, no Sikhs, no blacks.’ The very first thing they did. He knew who he was and where he came from and he was proud.”
There have not been a great number of Jewish people in B.C. politics, but there are two Jewish cabinet ministers in the current government.
“Dave Barrett, when I was a young man, made tremendous change in British Columbia,” George Heyman, minister of environment and climate change strategy, told the Independent. “The legacies that he left – the [agricultural] land reserve, ICBC, the ambulance service, things we take for granted now, recording proceedings in the legislature, question period – all of them go back to the brief period of ’72 to ’75. He was a warm, funny man. He could rouse a crowd like no one else and it’s an honour to me to have been able to have sat down with him on a couple of occasions and just have a quiet conversation.”
Selena Robinson, B.C. minister of municipal affairs and housing, is proud to note that she represents the riding of Coquitlam-Maillardville, the third Jewish MLA, after Barrett and Levi, to be elected in the area, which would not, by any demographic measure, be termed a “Jewish riding.”
“Unfortunately, I never got a chance to meet him,” Robinson told the Independent, “but I really feel connected to him.” Of Barrett’s legacy, Robinson said, “It really was about tikkun olam, it was about how to heal the world. It was what motivated him and I felt a kindred spirit.”
In a telephone interview, Shirley Barrett recalled Passover seders at her mother-in-law’s home and said her husband was “basically a humanist, but he was a secular Jew.”
“He always was proud to be a Jew,” she said. “He grew up with the values of his parents and he never relented on his heritage. He was an insatiable reader and one of the topics he returned to repeatedly was trying to understand the history of his people.
“He was a reader of everything that he could get his hands on as far as trying to understand why the Holocaust happened and why there was antisemitism,” she said. “He just was so interested in trying to figure out the human psyche.”
* * *
Barrett returned to politics as a member of Parliament from 1988 to 1993. He ran for the federal party leadership in 1989, coming a close second to Audrey McLaughlin on the final ballot.
He hosted a hotline radio program on CJOR, did stints as a lecturer at Harvard and McGill universities, and continued campaigning for New Democrats as long as his health allowed.
Moe Sihota, a former cabinet minister who emceed the celebration of life, remembered what the diversity of Barrett’s cabinet meant to a young Indo-Canadian person. In addition to the first female deputy premier, the Barrett government included two black MLAs and the first indigenous cabinet minister in B.C. history.
“We grew up as kids in Lake Cowichan, a small sawmill community … we always saw colour as a barrier,” Sihota said. “Dave Barrett came along and he never thought that colour was a barrier. Dave, together with the late Emery Barnes, Rosemary Brown and Frank Calder, made all of us kids in the Cowichan Valley believe we could make a change in society.”
* * *
On Cypress Mountain, at one of the most scenic views in this scenic province, looking down across Burrard Inlet at the city of Vancouver and beyond, is a plaque that reads:
“Throughout the 1960s, the future of Cypress Bowl was hotly debated. In 1964, a member of the Legislative Assembly [MLA] by the name of Dave Barrett pressed the minister of forests to honour a commitment to preserve forest lands and Cypress Bowl. What followed was an eight-year effort by MLA Barrett to save Cypress Bowl from chainsaws and residential development. Elected British Columbia’s premier in 1972, his dream was finally realized when his government established Cypress Park as a ‘Class A’ Provincial Park in 1975.
“Dave Barrett was elected to serve as an MLA in British Columbia from 1960 to 1975, and from 1976 to 1983. He was elected as a federal member of Parliament serving from 1988 to 1993. He was awarded the Order of Canada in 2005.”
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.
Purim is a time when we play with identities, dress in disguises and revel in deceptions. There is an aspect of great fun to this holiday, and there are lessons that are deeply serious.
One of the timeless aspects of the Jewish calendar is that, while the dates and texts may remain the same – Purim again will start the night of 13 Adar and the Megillah will not have changed – we, the readers, are different than we were last year and the circumstances of the world we live in have changed since our last reading.
As with many Jewish holidays, Purim includes a lesson about the importance of continuity and survival against existential enemies. This is, sadly, an enduring reality.
Just this week, at the annual conference on international security policy, in Munich, Germany, Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reiterated the danger posed by Iran’s nuclear program and warned that regime not to underestimate Israel’s resolve in confronting it.
There are other threats, as well, in the form of growing antisemitism among far-right parties in Europe and in the British Labour Party, online and in the number of antisemitic incidents reported in North America and elsewhere.
We are still trying to uncover whether antisemitism played a role in the mass murder of 17 students and teachers at a Parkland, Fla., school last week. The tragedy led a white supremacist group to claim the perpetrator was one of theirs, but, despite being widely reported, this claim has been debunked.
Five of the 17 victims were Jewish – the high school is in an area with a significant Jewish population – and the murderer’s online rantings were teeming with hatred of African-Americans and Jews. In one online chat, he claimed that his birth mother was Jewish and that he was glad he never met her. Per usual, we are engaged in debating what motivated the perpetrator – easy access to guns, mental illness, pure evil or various combinations of these. As usual, we will engage in a nearly identical cycle of shock, grief, argument and ultimate apathy the next time this occurs, and the next time.
Threats of another kind are also top news right now, with charges recently laid against a number of Russian individuals and groups who are alleged to have interfered with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The deception appears to have involved creating and stealing social media identities, as well as starting fake political pages intended to divide Americans. A rally against Islam, in Houston, Tex., in May 2016, was met with a counter-rally against Islamophobia. Both rallies, it now appears, were incited by Russian troublemakers.
More seriously still, the allegation is that deceptive and outright false statements were made in online posts and advertisements, which had the apparent impact of suppressing support for Hillary Clinton in key swing states, thus electing Donald Trump president. As each new allegation and example of proof has arisen, Trump has misrepresented reality, deflecting charges that his campaign (including members of his family) was engaged in collusion with the Russians, and claiming vindication at every turn.
A better president would pledge to get to the bottom of whatever is (or isn’t) real in the matter. Instead, this president plays partisan games and, unlike King Ahasuerus, does not take wise counsel willingly.
So, identity, disguises and deception are not only central to our Purimspiels, but woven through our news cycles and sensibilities every day, demonstrating again the eternal relevance of our narratives. Each year, on this holiday as on other days, we recognize and gird ourselves against the threats to our identity and existence. But we also celebrate our survival and rejoice in our not insignificant good fortune.
British Columbia lost a larger-than-life figure last Friday. Dave Barrett was the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, he grew up in the Commercial Drive neighbourhood of East Vancouver and became British Columbia’s first – and so far only – Jewish premier.
Though he led the province for just a little more than three years, his legacy was substantial. His New Democratic Party government – another first in B.C. history – created the Agricultural Land Reserve, the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, strengthened labour laws and substantially reformed the welfare system. His government created Pharmacare, increased the minimum wage, created the air ambulance service, introduced French immersion in the B.C. school system, initiated consumer and human rights protection legislation and – not to be forgotten – banned pay toilets.
Author Tom Hawthorn, writing a few days ago in The Tyee, said that Barrett at the podium was “by turns a rabble-rousing firebrand, an Old Testament scold and a Borscht Belt comedian.”
He infuriated many on the right and some on the left, including trade unions whose refusal to back him in 1975 helped lead to his early defeat. He also made some enduring enemies in the Jewish community. In his last interview with the Independent, Barrett acknowledged that some never forgave him for recalling the legislature on Yom Kippur.
But his self-deprecating humour made him hard not to appreciate. He liked to tell the story about how a newspaper, during one of his election campaigns, hired an astrologer to assess his and his opponents’ characters. The seer declared that Barrett must be a passionate lover. In his nightly call home, as he retold the story, he asked his wife Shirley if she had seen anything interesting in the news that day.
“No, Dave,” she said, “just the same old lies.”
Barrett was a social worker by training and vocation, but he was elected to the B.C. legislature at the age of 30 and remained active in politics for the next 33 years. Though his victories were numerous, he was no stranger to political losses. He lost his first bid to become party leader in 1969, and lost his own riding when his government was defeated in 1975. He returned to Victoria through a by-election and led the party to two more defeats before retiring as party leader. But he was not done with elective office. In 1988, he was elected to Parliament and he ran for the leadership of the federal NDP, losing narrowly to Audrey McLaughlin. He lost his seat in the 1993 election and retired from politics.
He knew that his time in power could be short and he wanted to make the biggest impact he could. Barrett was a bold leader whose drive turned out to be part of his legacy and part of his undoing. He was a model of idealism, influenced in part by his family’s heritage. It was quite a life for a working-class Jewish kid from Commercial Drive.
When she was Nova Scotia’s lieutenant governor, Myra Freeman opened up Government House to the public. (photo by Alex Rose)
When Myra Freeman (née Holtzman) was appointed lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia in 2000, she broke down two major walls. She was the first woman appointed to the position, and she was the first Jewish person appointed to the position. In fact, she was the first Jewish appointee to such a position in all of Canada, and the second in the entire Commonwealth of Nations (the first was former Australian Governor-General Zelman Cowen).
“It’s always been my family and my heritage that have defined me,” Freeman told the Independent in a recent interview.
Her Jewish values, she said, were put in place by her grandparents, who moved to Canada around the turn of the 20th century, and strengthened during her upbringing in Saint John, N.B., the city where her grandparents eventually settled. The Holtzmans were one of about 120 Jewish families.
Freeman went through the Canadian Young Judaea program. She said it nurtured seeds to give back to Israel, to give back to community and to help improve the lives of Jewry on the other side of the world. These lessons were echoed by her parents – her mother was a president of the local Hadassah-WIZO chapter and her father was very involved with their synagogue.
“Over the years, I’ve never really lost sight of the fact that I have a responsibility to the Jewish community, and I’ve always been proud of the things that I’ve done in my shul, in Hadassah, in United Israel Appeal,” she said, just the beginning of the long list of a life of involvement in the Jewish community. But, with that, she added, “the broader community was a huge part of my life as I changed careers.”
Myra Freeman (photo from Myra Freeman/Historica Canada)
Freeman’s first career was teaching, and she always thought it would be her only career. She loved working with students, helping them discover the joys of learning and the world around them. She encouraged students to step up and help others, to set an example by leading the way. She passed along lessons she had learned from mentors who had inspired her over the years. And, as she taught these lessons, she also took them to heart, becoming increasingly involved in community.
“And that’s when, in April of 2000, I received a call from the prime minister [Jean Chrétien], and he asked me to take on the responsibility as the queen’s representative in Nova Scotia,” said Freeman.
Aside from being the first woman and the first Jewish person to serve in the role, Freeman’s tenure as lieutenant governor, which concluded in 2006, will be remembered for some of her main initiatives, said Craig Walkington, communications advisor to the Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia. For one, she focused on supporting education and childhood development. She also created a number of awards that recognized Nova Scotians who excelled in their fields, including writing, teaching and the environment.
“I think the one I’m most proud of is the Lieutenant Governor’s Masterworks award, which gives an opportunity for artists to showcase their creative talent,” said Freeman.
Walkington added that Freeman will also be remembered for opening up Government House, which is the lieutenant governor’s residence, to the public. It is the oldest vice-regal residence in North America – the cornerstone was laid in 1800.
“We call the Government House the ceremonial home of all Nova Scotians,” explained Walkington. “I think, for a lot of people, it was just this very big mansion on Barrington Street that they would drive by every day, and having it more accessible means that visitors and Nova Scotians can learn about the history of this province and the history of the people who worked and lived in this house.”
Walkington estimated that 14,000 to 15,000 people pass through Government House every year.
“We made it like our home. We had a kosher home, we had Shabbat, we had seders in there,” said Freeman of her time at Government House. “And I think one of the remarkable moments was we had a visit from royalty.”
When Prince Michael of Kent, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth, visited Nova Scotia in 2002, he stayed overnight in Government House. He was scheduled to arrive around 4:30 on a Friday afternoon and Freeman had been instructed to show him to his room and then leave him be, but she had other plans.
“You can’t surprise royalty, OK? You cannot just throw something on them when they arrive,” she said. But, even so, “after I showed him to the room, I said, ‘Every Friday night, our family tries very hard to be together to observe the Sabbath and have our Sabbath meal. And we’ll be eating dinner at 7 o’clock if you would like to join us.’… He looked at me and he said, ‘It would be an honour.’”
Freeman said Prince Michael was attentive throughout the whole evening, as they sang “Shalom Aleichem” and as her husband made Kiddush. At the end, he told Freeman that, as a man in his late 70s, it was the first Shabbat dinner he had ever attended; he also said it was the highlight of his trip across Canada.
“It just goes to show that we take for granted … our heritage, and we might not observe it as much because we think it’s nothing, but to somebody else … he was so honoured to be a part of it,” said Freeman.
“Each of us brings to our communities our traditions and our culture, our heritage,” she said. “And we, as people of an ethnic background, like all other people of ethnic backgrounds, contribute and make Canada unique…. We care enough to participate and to become involved in community, and we give of ourselves. And, when we do that, we add diversity to the country and we enhance the social fabric of our countries.”
As Jewish community members, she said, “we have the responsibility to our home and abroad, because, really, our heritage is our strength, and we have to preserve that through our actions. We never lost sight that we have an equal responsibility to take our place in the secular community – in our city, in our province, in our country, and globally – because Canada afforded our grandparents a home and the opportunity to achieve.”
Alex Roseis a master’s student in journalism at the University of King’s College in Halifax. He graduated from the same school in 2016 with a double major in creative writing and religious studies, and loves all things basketball, especially his hometown Toronto Raptors.
U.S. President Donald Trump with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the Presidential Palace, Bethlehem, May 2017. (photo by the White House)
Mahmoud Abbas has had enough. Thirteen years into his four-year term as elected leader of the Palestinian people, he has nothing of substance to show for his efforts and his friends are abandoning him.
On Sunday, his frustration was on full display during a two-and-a-half-hour speech.
Things have been building up lately for Abbas and his Fatah faction and, at a meeting of the Palestinian Central Council, he finally let loose.
Naturally, he focused on Israel, which he declared a European colonialist enterprise and denied Jewish connection to the land.
“Israel is a colonialist project that has nothing to do with Jews,” Abbas said. “The Jews were used as a tool under the concept of the Promised Land – call it whatever you want. Everything has been made up.”
Abbas, who has a doctorate in history, has taken a creative approach the discipline from the start, when his dissertation discounted the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis and contended that European Jews were collaborators in their own genocide in order to advance the cause of Zionism.
Of course, Abbas also railed against the U.S. president for his announced intention to move the American embassy to Jerusalem. Abbas accused Donald Trump of destroying the prospects for peace.
“Yekhreb Beitak,” Abbas said in the general direction of Trump. According to the Associated Press, the curse literally translates as “may your house be demolished.”
“In colloquial Palestinian Arabic,” AP explained, “the phrase can have different connotations, from a harsh to a casual insult, but its use in a widely watched speech seemed jarring – and could exacerbate his already fragile relationship with an American president who is particularly averse to criticism.”
If the U.S. president is a notorious hothead, that’s exactly how Abbas appeared Sunday, but certainly not without reason.
What must hurt more than anything is that Abbas now sees those who have been the Palestinians’ historic allies softening their resolve. As a New York Times investigation earlier this month indicated, while Arab leaders from Egypt to Saudi Arabia were making appropriate noises in public about Trump’s Jerusalem gambit, behind the scenes they are giving every indication that they won’t expend political energy on the matter.
The irony is clear – and for Abbas and his allies it must be especially painful.
The welfare of Palestinians has never been a genuine priority for the Arab world, even as they have propelled the Palestinian cause to the top of the global agenda, paralyzing the United Nations in the process. For Arab leaders, Palestinians have always been little more than a battering ram with which to land blow after blow against the Zionist entity. Palestinian life under Israeli occupation and autocratic leaders is filled with small and large indignities.
Now that geopolitics suggests Israel is not so much the regional threat that Iran poses, the Palestinians, once a useful weapon for the Arabs in their 70-year confrontation with Israel, are being cast aside.
Abbas’s obvious frustration Sunday suggests there may finally be a change afoot to the status quo that has been unsatisfactory for Israelis and even more so for Palestinians. What the future looks like for the Palestinians – and for their relations with Israel – remains unclear.
***
Note: The headline of this editorial has been changed. In the Jan. 19 newspaper, the piece ran as “Abbas rightly irked,” which misled some readers to think that we agreed with Mahmoud Abbas’s remarks. We in no way condone his abandonment of historical fact, his inhumane accusation that Jews were complicit in the Holocaust or the many other false and immoral statements in his two-and-a-half-hour diatribe.
Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. There are a number of issues to unpack in his (un)diplomatic announcement.
First, rioting by Palestinians and others around the Middle East, as well as potentially related attacks on Jewish institutions in Sweden, are acts of violence that deserve to be condemned, with no excuses or legitimation.
Second, as for the president’s decision, we can leave aside partisanship from the mix. Former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have all made effectively the same statement: Jerusalem is the undivided capital of Israel.
But we need to separate the ethical from the pragmatic. For whatever else it is – home to holy sites of three religions, a multicultural, multifaith, multilingual metropolis – it is Israel’s capital. Tel Aviv may be the economic heart of the country and the first modern Jewish city, but it has always been toward Jerusalem that the national aspirations of the Jewish people have been directed. But, the fate of Jerusalem is considered one of the core issues to be addressed in any permanent peace agreement that results in a two-state solution. Whether or not recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is the morally right action, the pragmatic truth is that the president’s move was not inspired by a desire to do right.
The most charitable thing we can say about the president’s Jerusalem decision is that he kept his promise to evangelical Christian voters. He was unequivocal before the election on this issue and, unlike those who came before, he appears to be following through. The same can be said on many other fronts where conventional observers assumed a cooler head would prevail once the weight of the office descended on the showman. The provocations around immigrants, the racism, the assaults on even members of his own party – none of these has eased since he moved into the White House. While Congress has ensured the president has so far passed no legislation of consequence – though a sweeping and irresponsible tax bill is on the horizon – the president has behaved just as he did when he was a candidate, esteem for the office, personal dignity and respect for others be damned.
Again, there may be disagreement on whether moving the embassy is a good thing, a bad thing, ill-timed or overdue. But let us not pretend that the president was moved by any ethical, theological or political morality. This was just the latest in a succession of provocative actions through which the president thumbs his nose at anyone with a modicum of nuance, diplomacy or sense of the larger geopolitical reality.
Trump likes to stir things up and this time he did it using Jerusalem. This is no favour to the Jewish people or Israel. We may, in fact, suffer its consequences alongside many in the Palestinian territories who may lose their lives in riots and skirmishes precipitated by this thoughtless edict. All of us are just the tools in another of his childish, and very dangerous, games.
A sold-out crowd attended CJPAC’s Women in Politics Pecha Kucha event on Oct. 24, which featured four speakers, including CJPAC’s Sherry Barad Firestone (standing on the left). (photo from CJPAC)
On Oct. 24, CJPAC (the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee) hosted its first Women in Politics Pecha Kucha event in Vancouver. It was a sold-out crowd with women and men of all ages and political backgrounds in attendance. Hodie Kahn hosted the event at her home.
The Pecha Kucha style of 20 slides at 20 seconds per slide created a dynamic evening that allowed CJPAC to showcase four guest speakers, all Jewish, each highlighting different facets of political engagement, as well as its importance and its accessibility during and between elections.
CJPAC advisory board chair Sherry Barad Firestone, originally from Vancouver but now living in Toronto, was one of the presenters. “It was such a thrill to participate,” said Firestone. “It was nice to be able to share my experience as someone who does not come from a political background. We often think politics should be left to the experts but there’s a role for all of us, regardless of experience, in our democracy.”
Other presenters included Temple Sholom Rabbi Carey Brown, an American transfer to Canada, who is passionate about adult and youth education, social justice and teen engagement; Dr. Moira Stilwell, who served as the member of the Legislative Assembly for Vancouver-Langara from 2009 until 2017, and was a minister of several portfolios; and, Rakeea Gordis, a high school student who has attended political rallies, volunteered on campaigns and recently became an EF Canadian Youth Ambassador.
Perhaps one of the best and inspiring quotes of the night came from Gordis, who stated, “I’m too young to vote. The only way I can use my womanly voice is to volunteer on campaigns.”
Kara Mintzberg, B.C. regional director for CJPAC, noted that CJPAC hopes to have more events focused on women’s experience in politics. “We know that it’s not always easy to be a woman in politics but we think events such as these, in particular hearing from their peers, will encourage more women to get involved and, ultimately, it will become easier for those who follow.”
CJPAC is hosting another event soon – the Ultimate Kiddush Club, featuring “Scotch master” Barry Dunner, on Nov. 23, 7:30 p.m. For more information about the evening or any other CJPAC events and opportunities, contact Mintzberg at [email protected] or 604-343-4126.
Left to right, MP David Sweet, MP Michael Levitt, CIJA chief executive officer Shimon Koffler Fogel, MP Scott Reid and MP David Anderson pose for a photo during the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage hearings on M-103 on Oct. 18. (photo from CIJA)
Jewish groups were in Ottawa on Oct. 18 to testify in front of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, which will make policy recommendations on M-103, a motion that condemns “Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination.”
Leaders of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and B’nai Brith Canada drew on the Jewish community’s experience with fighting antisemitism in their recommendations on how to maximize the motion’s efficacy.
In his testimony, CIJA chief executive officer Shimon Koffler Fogel pointed to statistics that showed Jews are the most targeted religious minority in the country.
“Nationally, there were 54 hate crimes targeting Jews per 100,000 individuals in 2015. While this number is relatively consistent with previous years, there was an increase in hate incidents targeting other minority communities, including the Muslim community. In fact, Muslims were the next most targeted group, with 15 incidents per 100,000 individuals,” Fogel said. “I mention these numbers not to showcase Jewish victimhood, but rather to demonstrate the very real experience our community has in grappling with the issues this committee is studying.”
B’nai Brith Canada chief executive officer Michael Mostyn recommended that the motion be constructed so that it will be “embraced broadly by all Canadians” and by “communities that are the targets of racism and discrimination, including Canadian Jews, who continue to be the target of antisemitism.”
Mostyn said the bill must not diminish “the threat to Canadians of all faith communities who face racism and religious discrimination and it must not suggest that one form of racism or religious discrimination is more threatening, or of greater priority, than another.”
Among Fogel’s recommendations was that the committee work to improve on the collection and publication of hate crime data, as it currently varies widely by police department.
He said statistics from the Greater Toronto Area – including Peel Region, Toronto and York Region – are readily available, “but even with these three neighbouring jurisdictions, each report provides different information, making direct comparisons sometimes difficult.”
He added that there are cities, such as Montreal, that don’t release data about which identifiable groups are being targeted, leaving policymakers with incomplete information.
Fogel said it’s important to properly define hate, as we “can’t effectively fight bigotry and hatred without precisely defining it. The term ‘Islamophobia’ has been defined in multiple ways, some effective and some problematic. Unfortunately, it has become a lightning rod for controversy, distracting from other important issues at hand.”
Fogel used the Islamic Heritage Month Guidebook, which was issued by the Toronto District School Board earlier this month and contains a definition of Islamophobia that includes “dislike toward Islamic politics or culture,” as an example.
“Muslims can be protected from hate without restricting critique of Islamist political ideologies,” Fogel said.
Mostyn agreed that the committee should “exercise great care in any definition of Islamophobia” because, if the definition is vague or imprecise, it can be “hijacked and only inflame tensions between and among faith communities in Canada.”
Mostyn said an imbalance can create “the impression that Canadian Muslims are the only victims of hate crimes. We are just as concerned with the source of hate crimes targeting Canadian Jews from within radical elements of the Muslim community.”
Fogel also recommended that greater and more consistent enforcement of existing laws is needed. “Recently, the attorney general of Quebec decided not to lay charges in a case of an imam in Montreal who had called for the murder of Jews. Quebec’s attorney general also declined to pursue a second charge of genocide promotion. This decision sent a message that someone can call for the death of an entire group of people without consequence,” he said, adding that the federal government should train police and prosecutors to better enforce the existing Criminal Code hate speech provisions and provide resources for the development of more local hate crime units.
In his testimony, David Matas, B’nai Brith Canada’s senior legal counsel, argued that some fear of radical Islam is rational.
“Adherents to some components of Islam preach hatred and terrorism, incite to hatred and terrorism and engage in hate-motivated acts and terrorist crimes,” Matas said. “What the committee, we suggest, can usefully do is propose criteria, with illustrative examples, which can guide those directly involved in the combat against the threat and acts of hatred and terror coming from Islamic radicals.”
Matas called on the committee to “focus both on those victimized by Islamophobia and on the incitement and acts of hatred and terrorism, which come from within elements of the Islamic community.”
In his remarks, Fogel also referred to the passing of Bill C-305 – a private member’s bill that would expand penalties for hate crimes against schools and community centres associated with identifiable groups – which had its third reading on Oct. 18.
“CIJA has long advocated for the changes contained in Bill C-305,” Fogel said. “C-305 is a clear example of how elected officials can work together, in a non-partisan spirit, to make a practical difference in protecting vulnerable minorities.”
CIJA chair David Cape said, “CIJA remains grateful for the tireless efforts of MP Chandra Arya, who has committed his time and energy to strengthening hate crime protections. As we celebrate Canada’s 150th anniversary, we’re reminded that the safety of at-risk communities is essential for a healthy, vibrant country. Criminals who target Jews or other minorities don’t distinguish between houses of worship, community centres and schools – neither should the law.”
