Ahead of the City of Montreal election Nov. 6-7, former mayor Denis Coderre is banking on the affection he engendered in the Jewish community during his single 2013-2017 term.
By contrast, incumbent mayor Valérie Plante, who upset Coderre four years ago, did not garner such popularity nor seek it with the determination her main rival did.
Plante and Coderre, looking for a comeback, are in a dead heat according to polls, after Coderre’s early lead slipped.
Newcomer Balarama Holness’s 12 percent support could decide this tight race.
Regard for the ex-Alouette football player has grown among anglophones and other minorities since the Oct. 28 English mayoral debate when Holness asserted he alone opposes Bills 96 and 21, Quebec’s strengthened language and secularism legislation, respectively. Coderre and Plante did not demur.
With about half of Jews living outside Montreal proper, the community’s impact on the election result is limited.
Coderre, a Liberal MP from 1997-2013 and briefly immigration minister, caused consternation in the Jewish community in August 2006 when he spoke at a massive rally against Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah.
Once mayor, however, Coderre declared “zero tolerance” for antisemitism through a number of initiatives. In 2016, he and Toronto mayor John Tory led a large economic mission to Israel and the West Bank. Two years later Coderre took part in the March of the Living.
After his defeat, Coderre became a paid “ambassador” for the Jewish General Hospital Foundation.
Plante, who grew up in Rouyn-Noranda, had no history with Jewish people. And after such warmth from her predecessor, she appeared remote: closer to francophones, too left-wing, too ideological.
She did maintain the Yom ha-Shoah commemoration at city hall, but contact with the community has been limited, the pandemic likely hampering relations.
The major point of contention for the Jewish community is the Plante administration’s refusal to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism.
Lionel Perez, interim leader of Coderre’s Ensemble Montréal (EM) party, proposed its adoption in January 2020 and again this March. Plante put off the matter for study by an in-house committee, citing a lack of public consensus on the definition.
Perez charged Plante’s Projet Montréal (PM) party was swayed by the group Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), which supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.
Federation CJA, and its advocacy arm, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, issued an uncharacteristically harsh rebuke of an elected official. They accused Plante of not keeping a February 2020 commitment made privately with community leaders to support the definition. They termed the inaction “a blemish on the city’s reputation” and “unbecoming of a leader.”
The definition was endorsed by Perez’s Côte des Neiges-Notre Dame de Grâce (CDN-NDG) borough council, save for the sole PM member, Magda Popeanu, who withdrew from the vote. CDN-NDG is the most populous of Montreal’s 19 boroughs.
First elected in 2010, Perez, one of only two Jews on the 64-seat city council, Sephardic and observant, is running for borough mayor of CDN-NDG.
In June, independent city councillor Marvin Rotrand announced his support for Coderre and EM. Rotrand, who leaves office this month after 39 years representing the CDN-NDG district of Snowdon, is sharply critical of the Plante administration’s dealings with the Jewish community.
The son of Holocaust survivors, Rotrand said, “it has done nothing for the Jewish community; in fact, it’s a slap in the face to Jewish voters.”
Named last month B’nai Brith Canada’s League for Human Rights national director, Rotrand charged that the Plante administration was “discriminating” against Jewish voters and engaging in “purposeful voter suppression.”
He cited advance polls on Saturday (in addition to Sunday), no polling stations at the Caldwell Residences for Jewish seniors, the lack of mail-in voting, and generally fewer voting options in Snowdon. He thinks this was deliberate because Plante’s party has had weaker support among older people, especially anglophones and Jews.
On Oct.27, B’nai Brith released results of a questionnaire it sent to the leading mayoral contenders, which found Coderre “fully committed” to the IHRA definition and a concrete plan to combat antisemitism.
Plante, the organization says, did not respond by an Oct. 22 deadline or by “the subsequent extension her party agreed to respect.”
The PM candidate in Snowdon, Victor Armony, who is Jewish, says it is unfair to cast Plante or her party as indifferent to Jewish concerns and regrets the “trigger antipathy” of many Jews. A sociology professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Armony emigrated from Argentina in 1989.
The political neophyte was invited to run after working for the city on the issue of racial profiling and other discrimination issues. He does not view referring the IHRA definition to the city’s important President’s Commission as shelving the matter.
“I’ve talked to Mayor Plante about it and feel comfortable about (her position). As a Jew, I would not want to get into a place I did not feel at ease. I grew up under a military dictatorship that was very antisemitic, so I am very aware of that,” he said.
Sonny Moroz, the EM candidate in Snowdon, says he is “very disappointed” with PM’s handling of the IHRA definition. “I think they listened to IJV (Independent Jewish Voices), which is confusing at best.”
A first-time candidate, Moroz, 31, claims eight years’ experience in politics, at the municipal, provincial and federal levels. For the past six years, he was outreach co-ordinator for Mount Royal MP Anthony Housefather, a job that he says brought him in close contact with Snowdon’s populace.
Moroz has the personal backing of Rotrand.
Highly multicultural, Snowdon no longer has the large Jewish population it once did, but is home to numerous institutions, notably the federation’s campus and several synagogues and schools.
An important segment of the community that Coderre has not won over is the Hasidim living in the Outremont borough, who represent almost a quarter of its residents.
Coderre got off on the wrong foot during the 2013 election. A clip of a private meeting with Hasidic representatives, covertly videotaped and posted on social media, showed him warning that if they want his “friendship and support” to not vote for the new PM candidate in Outremont’s Claude Ryan district.
Mindy Pollak, then just 24, the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, would become the first Hasidic woman elected to public office in Quebec.
Coderre did not improve things in the 2017 election when he stood by the Outremont candidacy of Jean-Marc Corbeil, a vocal opponent of accommodation of the Hasidic community.
In this election, Coderre publicly stood by Dan Kraft, the EM candidate in Claude Ryan, after the exposure of his blog posts over several years questioning police racial profiling, disparaging George Floyd, and blaming Muslims generally for terrorism.
Kraft withdrew on Oct. 26, protesting the “smear” by “trolls” and pointing to his longtime fight against antisemitism and other discrimination.
Pollak, now seeking a third term as borough councillor (which means she does not sit on the city council), says the hostile attitude toward her on council disappeared after 2017 when PM took four of five borough seats. She cites the respect for Jewish holidays on the municipal calendar and her inclusion on important committees as indicative of the harmonious atmosphere.
Her sole opponent is a late entry: Joshua Rosenbaum of Holness’s Mouvement Montréal party.