Conservative Party of Canada: Friend of Israel, no Friend to Jews

"There is no better friend to Israel than Canada," exclaimed Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird while on a state visit this past Tuesday. The Conservative party is doubling down on Israel, throwing all of their support behind them, insisting that to do otherwise would be falling a victim to trend. 


"For a country like Canada, the easy thing to do would be simply to go along with anti-Israeli sentiment, to get along with other countries," said Baird. It would appear that that the Conservative Party is sticking to their principals even if they have nothing tangible to gain. Baird Continues:

"Whether it is rockets raining down on Israeli schools, or the constant barrage of rhetorical demonization, double standards and delegitimization, Israel is under attack." 

"It is symptomatic of that new ill — the new anti-Semitism."

I find it ironic that the Conservative Party, successor to the antisemitic and regressive Reform party, is lecturing the world on just the opposite. There may be a Christian Evangelical motivation but by and large this is nothing more then a veiled attempt to court Canadian Jewish voters, hoping we forget their checkered Reform and Alliance past. Why shouldn't they broaden their base? It worked in my home of Richmond BC where 52% of the population are Canadian-Chinese. Conservative Alice Wong won the riding hands down in the 2011 federal election, despite having membership to a political party that once referred to her as belonging to an 'Asian Invasion'.

So if the Conservative party is such a great friend of Jewish people what are they doing to combat antisemitism and racism at large here in Canada? Not much. During the years 2008 - 2009 there was a 100% increase in antisemitic activities that met with a meek response. In 2011 Harper signed the Ottawa Protocol to Combat Antisemitism which goes to great lengths to draw an equivalence between the criticism of Israel and Judaism which is not the same thing.


The Reform Party who birthed the Canadian Alliance and now the Conservative party was once considered by many Jewish groups to be antisemitic. The Bnaibrith published a report in 1994 about the Heritage front, who had links to the Reform party and the Jewish Virtual Library designated both the Reform Party and the Heritage Front to be associated with modern Neo-Nazism. I do not think that Stephen Harper is an antisemite but the political movement to which he belongs certainly has a history that alarmingly overlaps it.

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