Beginning the healing process

We Canadian Jews come in all sorts of political stripes. Take, for example, Michael Taube and Adam Goldenberg, two of The CJN’s new columnists making their inaugural appearances in their roles on page 11 of this week’s newspaper.

Goldenberg, a former Liberal speechwriter, argues Conservative partisans in this country have been manoeuvring during the last decade to make Israel a wedge issue in order to win Jewish votes. Meanwhile, Taube, a former speechwriter for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, claims that Jews and Tories share mutual ground far beyond Israel. “Jewish values and Tory values have a great deal in common,” he writes, “and this important relationship will only continue to get stronger.”

Most of us accept that there’s not much point trying to distill the Jewish community’s position on specific points of political interest. It’s simply not possible – and that’s not a bad thing, so long as we respect each others’ right to hold opinions different from our own. I would argue the community as a whole benefits specifically because it can accommodate so many disparate political and social views.

Nevertheless, all of Canadian Jewry  – or at least as close to it as you’re ever going to get – would probably agree that Phillipe Couillard and the Liberal Party’s recent triumph in Quebec’s provincial election was a tremendous victory for the Jewish community.

Armed with a majority government, Couillard, hopefully, will follow through on his election promises to fix Quebec’s economy, create jobs and reduce the deficit. That is where the Liberal government should focus its attention, not the two political hot potatoes the previous Parti Québécois government obsessed over: separation from Canada and the shameful charter of Quebec values. If Couillard merely steers the conversation away from those avenues, it will be a good start.

Quebec’s Jews – and, really, all religious people in the province – can breath a sigh of relief after a tense campaign that just a few weeks ago appeared to be heading toward a very different outcome. They no longer have to worry about the prospect of picking up their families and moving away, a very real possibility for many had the PQ and now-ex-leader Pauline Marois improved on their minority government. Nor do they have to fear discrimination in the workplace because they choose to wear a kippah. Their province has soundly rejected the PQ and Marois’ politics of division and xenophobia.

Couillard’s victory – Marois’ defeat – was celebrated beyond the borders of Quebec, too. For Jews who live in the ROC (rest of Canada) – and the ROC in general – the election result felt like a critical affirmation of religious rights across this country. The notion that under a PQ government some Quebecers might not be allowed to express themselves religiously by law left so many of us chilled, wondering whether there truly was a future for Quebec’s nearly 250-year-old Jewish community.

This campaign and the 19 months preceding it during which Marois and the PQ ruled was a scary period, for Quebec and for Canada. It will take time for the fear to fully dissipate. The good news is Quebec voters have declared that the healing process may now begin.

– Yoni