September 30, 2013: Excitement is mounting about the redesign of the Bulletin and our new website

By Michael Regenstreif

Anticipation continues to mount in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin office about the upcoming launch of our redesigned print edition and our new dynamic website scheduled to make their debut with the community-wide Chanukah edition to be published November 25.

The mock-ups we’ve been seeing from the team headed by award-winning designer David Berman are exiting and will revitalize the look of the newspaper.

It’s also very exciting that the Bulletin will be fully available online for the first time. For some years now, studies have shown that many readers have drifted away from traditional media in favour of online sources – particularly younger readers, in essence the emerging generation whose engagement has been prioritized by such organizations as the Jewish Federation of Ottawa.

The Bulletin has been an important presence in Ottawa’s Jewish community for 76 years, and we believe that this combination of a fresh look, the addition of a dynamic online edition, as well as engagement through various social media will help ensure our efficacy for many more years to come.

Plans are also coming together for a special launch event to celebrate the redesign of the print edition and new website. We’re inviting everyone – Bulletin readers and advertisers, representatives of community agencies and organizations, etc. – to join us at the Federation’s members meeting on Tuesday, November 26, 7 pm, at the Soloway Jewish Community Centre.

We’ll have a guided tour of the redesign and the website and we’ll hear from several speakers, including such noted Bulletin columnists as Jason Moscovitz, Mira Sucharov, Barbara Crook and me.

Speaking of columnists and the emerging generation, have a look at Ilana Belfer’s initial Emerging Gen column on page 21. Ilana begins a discussion in the column that we hope all – particularly members of the community in their 20s and 30s – will participate in.

Ottawa bus tragedy

The last production day before the Bulletin goes to press is always busy in our office and this issue – which we were hustling to finish two days earlier than usual due to the advent of Sukkot – was no exception. On final production days, we tie up loose ends, make final corrections, and I sit down to write the editor’s column – invariably the last thing that goes into each edition of the Bulletin.

Just as we were settling into the office on that morning – September 18 – breaking news came of a horrible and tragic bus and train collision in Ottawa that left at least six people dead and many more injured. We quickly learned that among the injured was at least one person who is active in the Jewish community.

The accident occurred near the Fallowfield transit station in Barrhaven, when a double-decker bus heading downtown on OC Transpo route 76 hit a Via Rail passenger train en route from Montreal to Ottawa and Toronto. Apparently, for a reason not yet determined as I write just a few short hours after the accident, the bus crashed through the lowered barrier at the railway crossing and struck the train.

While most of us routinely travel hither and yon in cars and on buses, trains and airplanes without incident throughout our lives, random events like this accident are a reminder of the delicate balance in which life always hangs. Our thoughts and prayers are with all of those affected by this tragic event.

September 9, 2013: Proposed Quebec charter an assault on fundamental freedoms

By Michael Regenstreif

Ours is a multicultural society in which it is completely acceptable to wear such items of religious expression as the Jewish kippah, the Muslim hijab or the Sikh turban.

However, the right to wear such items by employees in the public and publicly funded sectors in Quebec will soon be curtailed, if the province’s Parti Québécois (PQ) minority government gets its way. The government has announced it will introduce a charter of Quebec values this fall, and some of the provisions of the charter, leaked late last month, indicate an outright rejection of the Canadian brand of multiculturalism that allows such freedom of religious expression.

This comes after several years of divisive debate over the issue of what constitutes reasonable accommodation for immigrants and religious minorities in Quebec. A debate that heated up in 2007 when Hérouxville – a village of 1,300 whose population is virtually 100 per cent Québécois de souche with no immigrants or Jews, Muslims or Sikhs – passed a code of conduct for immigrants and religious minorities.

This debate over reasonable accommodation is relatively new. Leaving aside the rancorous debates over linguistic policies, successive Quebec governments in the years since the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s – including previous Parti Québécois governments – have never before made an issue of religious practice. In fact, on such issues as funding for faith-based private schools – such as the Jewish school system in Montreal – Quebec has been one of the most progressive of provinces.

I know several Jewish doctors in Montreal who wear kippahs in the course of their day-to-day lives, including while they work at hospitals like the Montreal General or the Montreal Children’s. But, soon, should this charter of Quebec values pass, it will be illegal for them to do so. It will be illegal for a Moslem woman to wear a hijab while teaching in a public school or for a Sikh police officer to wear his turban while on duty.

It’s been suggested that the charter may include a provision whereby a culturally specific public institution like the Jewish General Hospital could apply for an exemption from certain charter regulations, but it is unclear if that means all religious expression would be permitted there or, as a historically Jewish institution still largely supported by the generosity of the Jewish community, that kippahs would be OK, but not hijabs or turbans.

It’s also not clear that the proposed charter will pass. The PQ forms a minority government and the Liberals have indicated they will oppose it. That leaves the third party, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), which holds the balance of power in the National Assembly, and which seems to favour a charter that doesn’t go quite as far as the PQ would.

MP Irwin Cotler, whose legal expertise is beyond reproach, has pointed out the proposed charter is an assault on fundamental freedoms guaranteed in both the Quebec and Canadian charters of rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and there has been widespread condemnation from many organizations, including the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and even from the government of Ontario.

But the PQ doesn’t care and is playing to the 65 per cent of Quebec francophones who, according to polling data, supports the proposals. The CAQ, too, is reading those same polls.

The federal government has recently been making much of its efforts to promote religious freedom around the world. Is it also ready to do so at home?