July 18, 2011: The history of the Canadian Jewish Congress should be honoured and celebrated

By Michael Regenstreif

The Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) website – which was still accessible as of July 7 – includes a brief history of the organization that first came together to represent the Jewish community on a national basis in March 1919.

I presume the page was written about two years ago because the last line is, “From coast to coast, Canadian Jewish Congress is still going strong at 90 years old.” At 92, though, the CJC, ceased its operations. On July 1, as you may already have read in the JTA reports on page 4, the CJC, the Canada-Israel Committee, the Quebec-Israel Committee, National Jewish Campus Life and the University Outreach Committee, were all merged into a new organization temporarily being called CIJA 2.0.

CIJA (the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy) itself is a relatively new body. It was established in 2004 by UIA Federations Canada – the national organization of the Jewish federations in Canada, including the Jewish Federation of Ottawa – as an umbrella organization to coordinate the advocacy efforts of the organizations it has now absorbed. In the original CIJA model, each of the advocacy organizations remained independent with its own structure, board of directors and staff.

In the months since the news of the CIJA restructuring began to emerge late last year, there have been many expressions of concern, particularly from CJC activists, present and past, that CJC’s rich history will be forgotten and that its advocacy work on a broad range of issues of concern to Canadian Jewry will be overshadowed by the new organization’s concentration on Israel-related issues (hitherto, the domain of the Canada-Israel Committee).

One suggestion on the table throughout the merger discussions is that the new organization be called ‘Canadian Jewish Congress.’ This would provide a measure of historical continuity to Canada’s national Jewish advocacy organization and also recognize the CJC’s long and venerable history. The other organizations merged into CIJA 2.0 are all much newer creations, none of them nearly as well known as the CJC.

According to the JTA report, CIJA 2.0 CEO Shimon Fogel has said in the past that it’s possible the new agency will be called ‘Canadian Jewish Congress.’

I suppose the choice of a permanent name for CIJA 2.0 will depend on whether the decision-makers want the new organization to reflect a long history of Jewish activism in Canada or whether they want to start from scratch in building a new brand for Jewish and Israel advocacy.

If it were up to me, I would choose to honour the many thousands of people whose actions have been a part of the CJC over a period that almost reached a century and retain the name ‘Canadian Jewish Congress.’ It’s a history that should be celebrated and not forgotten.

The Gaza Flotilla

As I write on July 7, there have been several reports that organizers of the so-called Gaza Freedom Flotilla have finally decided to abandon their ships after none of them made it out of the Athens port in their attempt to sail the Mediterranean past the Israeli navy bringing “peace, freedom and humanitarian aid” to the Palestinian people.

The flotilla, in reality, was a sham that had nothing to do with peace or freedom and little to do with humanitarian aid. It was simply about delegitimizing the State of Israel.

The amounts of food and other aid that flows daily into Gaza from Israel and from Gaza’s now-open border with Egypt dwarfs anything the flotilla might have brought.

The flotilla’s real goal was to lend support to Hamas, the terrorist organization that governs Gaza while continuing to practise terrorism, while continuing to hold Gilad Schalit – who was kidnapped from Israel – captive for more than five years.

You can’t support Hamas, in word or deed, and be a peace activist. Hamas rejects peace. Hamas is in league with Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator whose regime has murdered thousands of his own people in recent months.

“Peace activists” who want to fight for human rights in the Middle East should try sailing their flotilla into Syria.

June 13, 2011: CJC leader runs for the Liberals in the Ontario election

By Michael Regenstreif

I saw Shimon Fogel recently and he told me the details of the long-anticipated merger of Canada’s major Jewish advocacy organizations – including the Canada-Israel Committee, of which he’s been the long-time CEO, and the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) – would be announced sometime this month. (It’s even possible the announcement was made sometime in between my writing this column and your reading it.)

Fogel is to be CEO of the new organization – temporarily being called Newco – created by the merger.

One person who won’t be on Fogel’s senior staff, at least for the first four or five months, is Ottawa native Bernie Farber, who has worked at the CJC for 27 years and has been the CEO since 2005.

Late in May, Farber announced he’s taking a leave-of-absence to run on Premier Dalton McGuinty’s team as the Liberal candidate in the suburban Toronto riding of Thornhill, the Ontario riding with the highest proportion of Jewish residents. He’ll be looking to unseat Progressive Conservative MPP Peter Shurman – who is also Jewish – in the October 6 provincial election.

Shurman was elected to the Ontario Legislature in the 2007 election, when a cornerstone of the Progressive Conservative platform was extending public funding to faith-based day schools. Until then, and now, the only faith-based schools that receive public funding in Ontario are Roman Catholic. Most other provinces, including Quebec, have long had formulas for funding all faith-based day schools that meet provincial curriculum standards. The funding proposal was not popular with voters in 2007, and John Tory’s Tories were soundly defeated by McGuinty’s Liberals. Thornhill was probably one of the few Ontario ridings in which the issue actually helped elect a Tory.

Funding for day schools has been a major concern of the Jewish community in Ontario for decades.

At the Federation AGM, in her final address as Jewish Federation of Ottawa chair, Donna Dolansky noted that one of the major challenges for the Federation is establishing a firm financial footing for the Ottawa Jewish Community School. That the school – and virtually all Jewish day schools in Ontario – faces financial difficulties is largely attributable to the lack of public funding provided in most other provinces.

The Canadian Jewish Congress has always been a leader in the struggle for Jewish day school funding. In fact, Farber’s first CJC job in 1984 was lobbying the Ontario government on the school funding issue – and it’s been an issue of concern to him ever since.

And, Farber says, it’s not an issue he’ll give up on should he win the Thornhill seat. Whether as a government or opposition MPP, he plans to continue working on the issue, despite McGuinty’s unequivocal stance against non-Catholic faith-based day school funding.

“While the premier and I may disagree on this subject, I’ll have the opportunity to speak inside the tent and try to effect change,” he told the Canadian Jewish News.

Farber – who says he’ll return to a senior position in the reorganized Jewish advocacy organization, should he not win in Thornhill – might also have his work cut out for him on the school funding issue even if the Tories win the election.

Although funding for faith-based day schools was a major plank in the Progressive Conservative platform in 2007, there’s not a word about it in the 2011 election platform recently released by party leader Tim Hudak.

May 30, 2011: Mayor did the right thing by withdrawing Whitton proposal

By Michael Regenstreif

Mayor Jim Watson did the right thing on May 8 when he withdrew his proposal that Ottawa’s new archives and library building be named in honour of Charlotte Whitton.

The proposal had been approved by the city’s Finance and Economic Development Committee on May 3 following six presentations by individuals and organizations, including the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, the Canadian Jewish Congress and the Friends of the City of Ottawa Archives, who were opposed to Whitton being honoured with the naming of the building. There were no presentations from citizens or organizations in support of the Whitton proposal.

While Watson wanted to honour Whitton’s place in history as Ottawa’s first female mayor – in fact, the first female mayor of a major Canadian city – the Jewish community was opposed to honouring her because of the major role she played, years earlier, in ensuring that Jewish orphans not find refuge in Canada during the Holocaust, thus sealing the fate of hundreds of Jewish children at the hands of the Nazis.

Despite the objections, the committee voted 8-1 to approve the proposal. Only Councillor Keith Egli stood against it.

“Our job is to listen to our constituents,” said Egli. “With the Jewish, French Canadian and historical communities all opposed [to naming the building for Whitton], I must vote against.”

The measure was to go to the full city council for ratification, but didn’t when the mayor withdrew his proposal following the online and media brouhaha that erupted as a result of news coverage of the committee vote. Emails from many in the Jewish community and beyond to the mayor and city councillors, an online petition, op-ed pieces and letters-to-the-editor in the Ottawa Citizen and the Ottawa Sun, all helped convince the mayor that withdrawing the proposal would be the best course of action.

“These kinds of commemorative namings should be positive occasions that bring the community together. Instead, this suggestion, which was mine, and mine alone, was creating disunity in parts of the city, and as mayor, I felt it my obligation not to allow the matter to continue to divide,” wrote Watson in his memo to city councillors advising them he was withdrawing the proposal.

In withdrawing the Whitton proposal, the mayor, like Egli, listened to his constituents.

The May 8 revocation of the proposal, and the new plan for a proper consultative process before a new name proposal for the building next comes before council, was the best possible outcome for the Whitton-naming controversy. But, it did mean that my editor’s column in the May 16 issue of the Bulletin – which called for the building not to be named for Whitton – was out-of-date three days before anyone read it. Such things occasionally happen with publications that have a lengthy lead time.

The column was written on May 5 and we went to press on May 6. Copies of the May 16 Bulletin were first available for sale on May 11 (and arrived in most mail subscribers’ homes on May 12 and 13).

My plan, of course, was for the mayor to read my column, agree with my logic, and then retract the proposal. That’s not the way it worked out. But, all’s well that ends well.

openOttawa

On May 18, I attended the first follow-up session to April’s openOttawa symposium, an ongoing initiative aimed at engaging Ottawa’s young Jewish adults with the community and providing assistance to 20- to 35-year-olds in their quest to express themselves Jewishly in ways that are relevant to them. We’ll have a full report on the session from reporter Jacqueline Shabsove in the June 13 issue of the Bulletin.

While the openOttawa discussion was fascinating, I couldn’t help but be reminded of how similar the discussion was – minus, perhaps, the Facebook, Twitter and website references – to discussions I was party to in Montreal during the 1970s and ‘80s when I was in that age group. And mine was hardly the first generation to have that discussion.

It is up to every generation to find ways of engagement that are relevant to them and it’s also up to the preceding generations to help them in their quest and to make room in the open tent for those new ways of engagement.

May 16, 2011: Charlotte Whitton’s name should not be on new archives and library building

 By Michael Regenstreif

Since moving to Ottawa in 2007 to work at the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin, I’ve met Mayor Jim Watson on a number of occasions – first, in his earlier role as an Ontario cabinet minister and MPP and, more recently, as a candidate for the mayoralty and as mayor.

He has always struck me as a friendly and very astute politician. He has always been well-briefed and understanding of issues of concern when I’ve seen him talk to Jewish groups, and he has proven himself to be a friend of Ottawa’s Jewish community. He even says nice things about the Bulletin.

That’s why it’s hard to fathom why Watson is pushing so hard to have the City of Ottawa’s new archives and library building named in honour of Charlotte Whitton.

What is to be gained by honouring Whitton now – some 36 years after her death?

Yes, she made history by being the first woman to be mayor of Ottawa. But that notable achievement looks small in comparison to her ensuring that 500 Jewish refugee orphans ended up in Auschwitz instead of Canada during the Holocaust, to her efforts in helping to ensure that Canada not be a haven for Jews seeking to escape the Nazis.

Whitton’s role in that shameful of chapter of Canadian history is well documented in None Is Too Many by Irving Abella and Harold Troper, and in Open Your Hearts: The Story of the Jewish War Orphans in Canada by Fraidie Martz. (The Jewish war orphans that Martz wrote about were only allowed into Canada beginning in 1947.)

Whitton was deeply antisemitic. She also hated French Canadians, Armenians, Ukrainians … the list goes on.

I attended the committee meeting at City Hall on May 3 (see my news report on page 4) when the mayor’s recommendation to name the building for Whitton was given preliminary approval. There were six presentations – including representations from the Jewish Federation of Ottawa and Canadian Jewish Congress – that argued compellingly against honouring Whitton. Not one citizen or organization came forward in her favour.

And, yet, with the notable exception of Councillor Keith Egli, the mayor and the rest of the councillors on the committee voted in favour of naming the building for Whitton.

To be blunt, I was appalled at some of the things I heard the councillors say in their discussion. Councillor Marianne Wilkinson said she didn’t consider Whitton’s antisemitism or her actions to be a “civic issue.” Councillor Doug Thompson reduced Whitton’s actions during the Holocaust to the level of “comments.” Councillor Diane Deans suggested we had to recognize the time Whitton was living in.

The fact is Whitton was not just a product of her time – she was one of the leaders who shaped that time, who ensured that “none is too many.”

Surely, in today’s multicultural Ottawa, there are many better examples of persons deserving of honour than Charlotte Whitton.

Thanks Deanna

You may have noticed that Deanna Silverman’s Kid Lit column – a regular feature in almost every issue of the Bulletin over the past 20 years – has been missing from several issues of late. Unfortunately, Deanna has been having some health issues and has now decided to retire from writing the column.

I would like to thank Deanna for her contributions to the Bulletin over so many years. So many Jewish kids in Ottawa have had their childhoods enriched thanks to the hundreds of books she’s reviewed and recommended over the past two decades.

Our thoughts and best wishes are with her.