November 24, 2008: Please allow me to introduce myself

By Michael Regenstreif

I’ve been in Ottawa, working at the Bulletin, for almost 16 months now. As a newcomer to the community, I kind of just plunged into working from the deadlines of one issue to the next, first as assistant editor, working with Barry Fishman, and then as editor when Barry had to go on disability in February.

Along the way, of course, I’ve had a chance to meet and talk with many people in the community. I meet new people – new, at least, to me – almost every day when they drop by the office, when I attend community events or go out to cover a story for the Bulletin or in the hallways of the Joseph and Rose Ages Family Building as people arrive for and leave the many programs and events taking place at the Soloway Jewish Community Centre (SJCC).

Of course, though, there are so many more people I haven’t had a chance to meet yet, so I thought I’d take a few paragraphs to tell you about myself.

I was born in Calgary and spent parts of my childhood in Calgary and Vancouver before my family moved back to my parents’ hometown of Montreal when I was in high school in 1968. I lived in Montreal for almost 40 years before coming to Ottawa. I went to Jewish day schools in Calgary and Vancouver and then public high schools.

I went through the CEGEP system in Montreal, took some time off from school to work at journalism and arts administration, and then went back and got my BA in political science and my MA in public policy from Concordia University.

My father, who is now retired, was a Jewish community professional, so I’ve been around Jewish communal organizations all my life. I’ve even worked for some myself.

I spent four summers working at Camp B’nai Brith of Montreal and did two stints working with Hillel in Montreal in the 1970s and ‘80s directing their Golem Coffee House project.

As an editor and author, I’ve worked with a number of organizations, including Canadian Hadassah-WIZO, the Jewish General Hospital and the YM-YWHA in Montreal on magazine and book projects.

I first got into journalism as a music critic for the Montreal Gazette in 1975 and have been at it – sometimes full-time, sometimes as a sideline – ever since.

As a ‘Jewish journalist,’ I did general reporting and feature writing for the Canadian Jewish News in Montreal for nearly two decades.

I’ve done some other things along the way, but that’s basically the path that led me to the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin. It’s a newspaper with an incredibly rich history having served and documented Ottawa’s Jewish community for more than 70 years.

And I’m happy to be here.

As Ottawa’s Jewish community newspaper, the Bulletin fulfils a number of roles. We report the news of our own community and use the resources of JTA to report important and interesting stories from the wider Jewish world. We’re an outlet for all manner of Jewish agencies and organizations active in Ottawa to get their news out to the rest of the community.

If your organization has news, please make sure we know about it. If you’re presenting an interesting speaker, we may well want to cover the event as a news story.

And in our various columns we try to provide you with food for thought about issues of concern, amuse you with humour, give you some great recipes to try, and turn you on to books you may want to read (or avoid) or music or films you might enjoy (or want to skip).

Your letters to the editor are welcome if you’ve got something to say about what you read in the Bulletin or on an issue of concern to the community. We’re also open to guest columns.

I mentioned in the first paragraph that Barry Fishman went on disability in February. The most frequently asked question I get is, “How’s Barry?”

Barry continues to face up to the extremely difficult medical circumstances of ALS – Lou Gehrig’s Disease – with an awe-inspiring combination of determination, courage and dignity.

As editor emeritus of the Bulletin, Barry continues to be an invaluable source of guidance and advice as we strive to maintain, and build on, the standards he set during his tenure as editor. Most of what I’ve learned, and continue to learn, about how the Bulletin works, and about how it should work, and much of what I’ve learned about Ottawa’s Jewish community, comes from my ongoing conversations with Barry.

November 10, 2008: Canadian, U.S. and Israeli elections make this a fascinating time

By Michael Regenstreif

This season has – and will continue to be – a fascinating time for those of us who are highly interested in politics.

As I write, we’re about two weeks past the Canadian federal election and, in a few days, Americans will head into their voting booths. And the Israeli election date has now been set for February 10.

By the time you read this column, the results of the U.S. election will be known. If the polling data available three days before the election holds up – and I’ll be highly surprised if it doesn’t – Senator Barack Obama of Illinois will be the president-elect.

Obama’s election will be a watershed moment in American history – a moment whose great hope and promise Obama will have to work hard to fulfil in the coming years.

The question has been raised often during the very long presidential campaign about what an Obama presidency will mean for Israel. No less an authority than Joe the Plumber, a man Republican candidate Senator John McCain called his “hero,” was quick to agree with the poppycockish statement that “a vote for Obama is a vote for the death of Israel.”

Obama has been a great friend to Israel and I’ve no doubt he will continue to be. His promised engagement in the Middle East peace process, from the very beginning of his mandate – as opposed to George W. Bush, who engaged only at the tail end of his already-failed presidency – is the best hope for peace since Yitzhak Rabin’s tragic assassination.

Ambassador Dennis Ross, a highly respected veteran of Middle East peace negotiations in the administrations of the first George Bush and Bill Clinton, is Obama’s top adviser on Middle East issues. He will be in Ottawa on November 24 to deliver the keynote address at the Negev Dinner. It should be fascinating to hear what he has to say at this important time.

Of course, much will depend on who wins the Israeli election (and whether there will be a Palestinian leadership able to act authoritatively on behalf of its people). Will Israelis choose Kadima’s Livni or Likud’s Netanyahu? They have very different agendas.

And, given Israel’s proportional representation system, to whom will the next Israeli prime minister be beholden when it comes to putting together a governing coalition?

Speaking of proportional representation, it’s been pointed out that, if Canada had such a system, rather than our first-past-the-post system, Parliament would look very different than it does today. The October 14 election results would have given us fewer Conservative and Bloc members and more from the Liberals and NDP. The Green Party, with nearly seven per cent of the popular vote, would have elected about 21 MPs.

Taking the logic to its limit, a party with one-third of one per cent of the vote could be entitled to an MP. Imagine all the single-interest groups who could garner one-third of one per cent of the vote. While Israeli electoral law demands that a party garner two per cent of the vote to be represented in the 120-seat Knesset, the percentage in Canada, with 308 parliamentary seats, would have to be much lower.

Having watched Israeli politics for many years, and having seen how the major Israeli parties have had to dicker for the support of narrowly focused or single-issue parties, I’d think long and hard before introducing such a system here.

October 27, 2008: Observations from the election that was

By Michael Regenstreif

In the headline and introduction to the column below, Alan Echenberg suggests nothing too much changed in the Sukkot election that Prime Minister Stephen Harper insisted was needed a year in advance of the fixed election date – that his government passed – despite the fact that the Conservative government had yet to lose the confidence of Parliament.

The party standings remain the same as before the election, but the dynamics are somewhat different. Harper’s Conservatives and Jack Layton’s New Democratic Party (NDP) increased their numbers in the House of Commons with the Bloc Québécois down marginally and the Liberals down big-time. After the last election, the Liberals could have combined with either the Bloc or the NDP to bring down the government – which, of course, they never did – but all three opposition parties will now have to combine to accomplish that. None will be in any hurry.

Harper said he called the election because Parliament had become dysfunctional. Hardly. The Liberals bent over backwards, from the time of the last election in 2006, to allow him to get anything he wanted passed in the House. And, if certain committees weren’t functioning properly, it was generally because of Conservative obstructionism that he could have ended with a snap of his fingers.

The reason Harper called the election was he read the polls and thought the time was ripe to lock in a majority before the looming economic downturn hit. The economic downturn hit faster and harder than expected and he blew his majority by alienating Quebec voters over petty cuts that hit hard at the province’s identity politics.

Heading into the election campaign, the Conservatives were poised for big seat gains at the expense of the Bloc. After passing the recognition that the Québécois form a nation – which is not the same as saying that Quebecers form a nation – and seeing support for Quebec separatism fall to historic lows, Harper had pretty much pushed the Bloc into electoral irrelevance. But then he got petty over a few million dollars in arts cuts that may have played well to his unwavering base in Alberta, but which people in Quebec saw as an assault on their culture. Voilà, the Bloc day was saved and the Conservative majority was gone.

Speaking of the Conservative base in Alberta, the NDP broke through there capturing the former Tory stronghold of Edmonton-Strathcona. This is on top of the party’s retaining Outremont, the former Liberal stronghold in Montreal that Thomas Mulcair captured in a by-election last year. That the NDP actually won seats in Alberta and Quebec is remarkable.

In Ottawa, not one seat changed hands with Conservative, Liberal and NDP incumbents winning seemingly easy re-election in neighbouring ridings. I suspect that the local strength of opposition MPs like Paul Dewar in Ottawa Centre and David McGuinty in Ottawa South and government-side members like John Baird in Ottawa West-Nepean and Pierre Poilievre in Nepean-Carleton had as much to do with their victories as the national campaigns of their parties.

Over the past couple of years, there was speculation that Harper’s unwavering support for Israel would lead many Canadian Jews to swing their traditionally Liberal votes to the Tories. That seems to have been the case in Thornhill, a suburban Toronto-area riding that is home to the largest proportion of Jewish voters in Ontario. Liberal Susan Kadis, who is Jewish and who won the riding with big majorities in 2004 and 2006, was overtaken by Conservative Peter Kent, a well-known broadcaster.

That Liberal-to-Conservative swing among Jewish voters didn’t come close to unseating Liberal Irwin Cotler in the Montreal riding of Mount Royal, the Quebec riding with the highest proportion of Jewish voters. Despite a majority that fell 10 percentage points to 55.7 from 65.6 in 2006, Cotler still finished more than 10,000 votes ahead of Conservative Rafael Tzoubari, his Israeli-born challenger.

Alan Echenberg notes that the Liberals are broke and can’t afford another divisive leadership race. But, even if they can’t afford it, they’re going to have one. Despite increasingly diminished returns in the past three elections, the Liberals still consider themselves a party of power and, after their showing on election night, it is obvious that the earnest Stéphane Dion would either step down or be forced out in a leadership review next May.

One thing that made this election historic was that only 59.1 per cent of Canadians voted; the lowest voter turnout in a federal general election since Confederation. More people couldn’t be bothered to vote – or, in effect, said none of the above – than voted for any party. That’s something all of the parties need to think about before the next election.

 

October 13, 2008: Conservatives, Liberals do differ on Iranian threat

By Michael Regenstreif

Three pages of this edition of the Bulletin are devoted to coverage of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa’s Communications and Community Relations Committee’s roundtable discussions with the three major federal political parties on three major issues of concern to the Jewish community.

We were aware that, because of the timing of the election call, the short campaign and the Sukkot election date, most members of the community will have voted before having an opportunity to read this edition of the Bulletin. That’s why we announced last issue that the coverage would be posted at ottawajewishbulletin.com as soon as possible, and before voting opened in the advance polls. I hope you had a chance to read the coverage online before heading to the polls.

What Canada should do vis-à-vis the threat posed to the world, and in particular to Israel, by Iran’s quest for nuclear weapon capability, especially in light of the incitement to genocide by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was one of the major topics of discussion.

I’ll get back to the Ottawa candidates’ responses to the issue in a moment, but how meshugah is Ahmadinejad? The logic of his nuclear quest and the threats implicit in his anti-Israel incitements suggest he’d use nuclear weapons to destroy Israel.

Ahmadinejad wants to destroy Israel because he sees himself as the great champion of the Palestinians. The Iranian regime, as we know, sponsors Hamas and Hezbollah. The thing is, though, if, God forbid, there were a nuclear attack on Israel and Ahmadinejad was successful in killing all the Jews in the Holy Land, it would also wipe out the Israeli Arabs, the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank, and those in the Hezbollah strongholds of Southern Lebanon.

That Ahmadinejad is some champion. He’ll save the Palestinians from the Israelis by wiping out the Palestinians.

But Ahmadinejad’s grandiose talk of wiping Israel off the map is probably not the most likely danger posed by a nuclear Iran. Ahmadinejad knows that an Iranian nuclear attack against Israel would be met in kind by Western nuclear powers. The more likely danger is that the Iranian regime would supply something like a dirty little nuclear bomb in a suitcase to one or more of its terrorist clients.

That kind of danger is not limited to Israel. A suitcase attack could strike anywhere and dwarf the effects of 9/11.

The candidates from all three parties spoke of the need for sanctions against the Iranian regime.

Paul Dewar, the NDP incumbent in Ottawa Centre, talked about how the sanctions needed to be real, not just “paper tiger” sanctions that target future investment in Iran while ignoring ongoing economic ties with the Iranian regime.

John Baird, the Conservative incumbent in Ottawa West-Nepean and a minister in the Harper government, talked about the need for tough sanctions but said he couldn’t commit the government to a course of action.

David Pratt, the former Liberal cabinet minister running against Baird, talked about the need to prevent a nuclear confrontation in the Middle East.

A particularly interesting moment in the meeting with the Liberal candidates came when they were asked if there were policy differences between the Liberals and Conservatives on the Iran issue. Pratt explained that, while their differences were great on domestic issues, there was less room for any differences on such international issues.

I wondered, at that moment, if Pratt was aware of the work of Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, his former cabinet colleague, on the Iran dossier; that is, his efforts to convince Western governments, including Canada’s, to bring Ahmadinejad to international justice for his incitement to genocide. Cotler introduced a bill in Parliament last year calling for Ahmadinejad to be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court for inciting genocide. The bill was rejected by the Conservatives.

The day before the Federation meeting with the two Liberal candidates in Ottawa, Cotler spoke at the massive anti-Ahmadinejad rally in New York and called for the Iranian president to be brought to justice.

The day after the meeting, Liberal leader Stéphane Dion spoke to a Jewish audience in Winnipeg and attacked the Conservative government for rejecting Cotler’s approach. And, in a campaign debate with a Conservative candidate in Montreal, Cotler attacked the Harper government asking, “Why are there four Canadian trade commissioners in Iran right now promoting trade with Iran?”

Clearly, there are policy differences between the Liberals and the Conservatives on the Iran issue. It would appear that the local Liberal candidates did not research that, or were not well briefed, before coming to a meeting where it was bound to be a major topic of discussion.