Most Jews in riding voted Tory, Cotler concedes
By JANICE ARNOLD, Staff Reporter
Canadian Jewish News
Thursday, 12 May 2011
MONTREAL — Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, who won with 41 per cent of the vote in Mount Royal, acknowledges he didn’t get the support of most Jewish electors.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and wife, Laureen, got behind the counter at a kosher bakery in Mount Royal during a visit in the final days of the campaign.
“Clearly, there was an erosion,” Cotler said in an interview after the May 2 federal election. “I think it’s correct that I lost the majority of the Jewish vote. But I won, importantly, in the cultural communities.”
His closest opponent, Conservative Saulie Zajdel, who trailed Cotler by 2,200 votes, is confident he received at least two-thirds of the ballots cast by Jews, who make up about 35 per cent of the electorate.
Mount Royal comprises Côte St. Luc, Hampstead, Town of Mount Royal and part of Côte des Neiges-Snowdon, and has been Liberal since 1940.
While a win for any Liberal was an accomplishment, Cotler has seen his popularity tumble from 92 per cent when he was first elected in a 1999 byelection. In 2008, he received close to 56 per cent of the votes.
Cotler, a stalwart defender of Israel and Jewish concerns, says he doesn’t take it personally. Many Jews, he understands, feel a debt of gratitude to Prime Minister Stephen Harper for his stance on Israel.
“People said to me directly, ‘Irwin, you’re a great guy, but we have to vote for Harper. He’s there for us. We have to be there for him.’”
He also admits many did not like Ignatieff, but he said he was bothered by what he called “the demonization” of Ignatieff by the Zajdel campaign.
“I had some painful encounters. I would go into seniors’ residences, and they would ask me, ‘Why is Ignatieff an antisemite?’… Negative attack ads do work,” Cotler said.
The Zajdel campaign’s flip-flopping on who was behind flyers making disparaging comparisons between the Harper Conservative and Liberal record on Israel, antisemitism and terrorism, including charges the latter party was sympathetic to Hezbollah and Hamas, left a bad taste in Cotler’s mouth.
“I took Saulie’s word at the beginning of the campaign that the flyers had nothing to do with him, then the ads came out. You can’t have it both ways.”
Cotler is one of only seven Liberals elected in Quebec and 34 in the country. As the “dean” of that greatly diminished caucus, he was asked to serve as interim leader until the party finds a replacement for Michael Ignatieff, he said, but he declined.
Cotler believes the nearly 7,000 votes New Democrat Jeff Itcush garnered was largely at his expense, rather than Zajdel’s.
“Ten days before the election, I was polling at 50 per cent. In the week after that, with the NDP surge, I was down to 40 per cent,” he said.
One of the bitterest personal outcomes of the election was the loss of his close friend and “soulmate,” fellow Liberal MP Ken Dryden, who lost to Tory Michael Adler in the Toronto riding of York Centre.
Both had recorded phone messages for each other’s constituents during the campaign in an unusual exchange.
Cotler notes that all of the members of the Liberal Parliamentarians for Israel, including Dryden, were defeated, except, of course, himself. Cotler is now the only Jewish Liberal in the House of Commons.
The turnout in Mount Royal was 57 per cent, below the national average of 61 per cent. Cotler thinks the relatively low showing in his riding, when the race was thought to be close and an indicator of the extent to which Jews were shifting to the Tories, reflects people’s growing cynicism about “negative” campaigning.
Cotler, who turned 71 this month, is now, he believes, Canada’s oldest MP. But he said he doesn’t feel his age, and vows “to hit the ground running” when Parliament resumes.
The former justice minister in Paul Martin’s cabinet and most recently his party’s human rights critic doesn’t think the Liberals’ demotion to third-party status will affect his advocacy on the international level.
Cotler plans to work with the government and other parties, and hopes that Harper, who now has a secure majority, will co-operate more with the opposition.
His priorities in foreign affairs are passing legislation holding Iran accountable for “incitement to genocide” and adding the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to Canada’s terrorist list, as well as urging the government to endorse the Ottawa Protocol drawn up at last November’s international parliamentary conference on combating global antisemitism.
Zajdel feels that making up 8,000 of the 10,000 votes that separated Cotler and his Tory opponent in 2008 is “a moral victory,” especially in a province where just six Conservatives were elected. “I think the people of Mount Royal have made clear they can no longer be taken for granted.”
His only regret is that he perhaps did not focus enough on the concerns of non-Jewish residents. Otherwise, he is proud of his campaign, including his criticism of the Liberals and especially Ignatieff on Israel and other issues of specific Jewish interest, going back to Cotler’s participation in the 2001 Durban conference.
Harper made his first visit to Mount Royal as prime minister on the Friday before the election at a party event held at the Ben Weider Jewish Community Centre. He made no reference to Israel in his address to the 400 registered participants. He received an effusive endorsement at the event from Suburban newspaper publisher Amos Sochaczevski, who said that, although Cotler was his friend, he would vote Conservative because of Harper’s strong support for Israel.
Itcush is also satisfied with his showing – close to 18 per cent of the vote – the best for the NDP in Mount Royal since 1965, when the candidate was Charles Taylor, the distinguished scholar who co-chaired Quebec’s commission on reasonable accommodation a few years ago.
Itcush said he found non-Jewish voters, who come from a wide variety of ethnicities and religions, felt their concerns were overlooked because of the “obsession” with Israel, which Itcush found inappropriate, even though he’s Jewish and pro-Israel.
Itcush received the most support from pluralistic Côte des Neiges-Snowdon and TMR to a lesser extent. He estimated that 12 per cent of Jewish voters backed him.
“I spoke in synagogues, mosques and Hindu temples,” he said.
If there was a shift among Jews to the Tories, it had little effect in other ridings with significant communities. In Outremont, New Democrat MP Thomas Mulcair was easily returned over second-place Liberal Martin Cauchon, who had the endorsement of some haredi community leaders, while Conservative hopefuls Agop Evereklian, Neil Drabkin and Svetlana Litvin came third, respectively, in Pierrefonds-Dollard, Westmount-Ville Marie, and St. Laurent-Cartierville. Pierrefonds-Dollard was taken by the NDP in an upset over a longtime Liberal incumbent.
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