From Immigration To Integration
The Canadian Jewish Experience:
A Millennium Edition
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From Immigration To IntegrationThe Canadian Jewish Experience:
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Lorraine E. Weinrib
In the late-twentieth century, Canada became a multicultural nation state in which all citizens enjoyed a full array of rights, freedoms, and opportunities without disadvantages based on race, religion, colour, or ethnic origin. This achievement is the product of many forces, international and domestic. This essay traces the efforts of the Jewish community to realize equal citizenship for its own members and for all Canadians.1
In the traditional understanding, Canada was a Christian society, dedicated to preserving and promoting its British and French heritage. Jews, however, were non-Christians; worse still, they had denied Christ. Exiled from their biblically ordained homeland, they were condemned to wander in an inhospitable world of nation states. Their religious bonds and varied nationality made assimilation implausible. As perpetual foreigners, Jews posed a persistent threat to the traditions and cohesiveness of the established social order.2
Full integration in Canadian society was not a question of right, but an assortment of privileges that the established majority could dispense or withhold according to its own preferences, including the perpetuation of its cultural and religious hegemony. Accordingly, as a matter of private preference and public policy alike, Canada excluded Jews from immigration and refugee rosters and relegated those Jews who were Canadian citizens to second-class status.
The diligence and perseverance of the Jewish community contributed to the attainment of full citizenship entitlements for Jews, and, by extension, for a wider range of minorities in Canada. There were many facets to the effort. The immediate challenge was to remove impediments, formal and informal, that thwarted individual and community self-fulfillment. Next on the agenda was general protection against the creation of such impediments. Only then could attention turn to concerns specific to the Jewish community. The most ambitious part of the project was the redesign of the Canadian Constitution. The Jewish community advocated that the Constitution provide a statement of the fundamental values of Canadian society as well as clearly formulated restraints on the exercise of public power.
The efforts of the Jewish community to vest first-class citizenship in all Canadians coincided with significant changes in the attitudes towards Jews and other minorities. The battle against Hitler solidified general revulsion at ideas of racial supremacy and policies endorsing racial purity. The establishment of the State of Israel marked an end to the myth of the Jew as a stateless, damned people, condemned to wander in a world of religiously and ethnically homogeneous nation states. Canadian soldiers, among them an impressive number of Jews, returned from the battlegrounds demanding treatment as full and equal members of Canadian society. The strong economic boom precipitated by the war required an increased labour force, resulting in long overdue changes in Canada’s restrictive, racially-based, immigration policies.3 Canada’s population became increasingly more diverse.
The post-war period became not merely a time of reconstruction and renewal for Canada but, more importantly, the first genuine opportunity for nation building. These efforts coincided with the creation of the United Nations and the development of international rights protecting systems. The war marked the demise of colonialism generally. Canada moved closer to complete independence from the United Kingdom and took pride in its reputation on the world stage as a country that condemned racism. One of the products of this new independence at home was the creation of Canadian citizenship. Members of the Supreme Court of Canada, now Canada’s highest appellate court, started to take seriously the idea that Canada’s unwritten constitutional traditions empowered them to review legislation for conformity to the basic norms of democracy, fairness, and equality in a diverse and pluralistic land. Winds of change were taking hold in Quebec, where state-endorsed religious antisemitism, combined with resentment at the anglophones who dominated economic activity, had undermined the full integration of Jews into the life of the province.
In this environment, various groups representing the Jewish community seized the opportunity to press for legal reform. The objective was to dismantle the intricate structure of discrimination, both private and public, that permeated Canadian society. The strategy was to join forces with others suffering from discrimination and forge alliances with liberal groups committed to freedom and equal opportunity. This was not to be a parochial battle. It was a moral crusade for equal citizenship as a cornerstone of Canadian democracy.
In the aftermath of World War II, Canada endorsed the creation of the United Nations and the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Canadian government’s commitment was serious enough to put public policy initiatives in motion. When Parliament began to examine the need for increased protection of fundamental rights and freedoms under Canadian law, the Jewish community was fully prepared to support the effort.4 The problems that Jews faced in Canadian society were precisely the kind that the new human-rights agenda was designed to address.
In 1950, three submissions were made on behalf of the Jewish community to a special committee of the Canadian Senate mandated to consider ways to protect human rights under Canadian law. The major submission was a combined effort by the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) and B’nai Brith, under the auspices of their Joint Public Relations Committee (JPRC), which had been established in 1939 to address domestic antisemitism and discrimination. The other two submissions were by the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) and the United Jewish People’s Order (UJPO).5 These presentations set the parameters for the Jewish community’s sustained involvement in Canada’s transformation into an egalitarian, multicultural state.6
The major presentation was a model of preparation, insight, and advocacy. Its tone was deferential, a striking posture given the intensity of frustration at the Canadian government’s refusal to open its doors to Hitler’s victims and the systemic inequality that had characterized the Jewish experience in Canada. The details of the submission reveal considerable expertise in the theory and history of human-rights protection, as well as the intricacies of Canadian constitutional law and politics. Most noteworthy, however, is the thoughtfulness and sophistication of the responses offered to the Senators’ questions about the origins and experience of antisemitism in Canada.
The delegation was made up of three people: Saul Hayes and Monroe Abbey (national director and national vice-president of the CJC, respectively), and Ephraim Rosenzweig (from the Joint Public Relations Committee). As spokesman for the delegation, Mr. Abbey began his formal presentation, on behalf of “Canada’s Jewish citizens,” with an appeal to “a deeply rooted sense of justice” based on the “ancient spiritual principle of the inherent dignity of each member” of the political community - the principle that provides “harmonious cohesion” within human society.7 The key issue was the nature of Canadian citizenship: was it informed by principles of justice or cultural privilege? Societal cohesion, Abbey argued, did not depend on an established social hierarchy based on religious and/or ethnic homogeneity. Equal human dignity would provide a more just and stable foundation.
These few opening sentences swept away the ideas that had informed Canada’s construction of second-class citizenship for religious and ethnic minorities. The submission also anticipated the work of theorists in the late-twentieth century who identify constitutional patriotism, based on respect for equal human dignity, as the cohesive factor in the pluralist, often divided, post-war multicultural state.
The presentation continued in positive and constructive terms. Mr. Abbey praised Canada’s role in securing the commitment to equality and non-discrimination in the United Nations Charter. He emphasized the importance of protecting these values within the Canadian legal system by means of a “clear definition,” as exemplified in proposed amendments to Canada’s written Constitution, the British North America Act of 1867. Noting that constitutional amendment might not be feasible, he stressed that Parliament could, by ordinary statute, incorporate human-rights protections into the areas subject to federal law-making authority.
Mr. Abbey knew that statutory change at the federal level was not sufficient. He made further recommendations in respect to the administration of justice. He expressed the need for a civil-rights section in the federal Department of Justice to investigate alleged violations of civil liberties and to co-ordinate the work of all government departments. In passing, he chose as his specific example the department that had, in the exercise of its discretion, imposed exceptionally severe restrictions on Jewish immigration. In addition, he made two recommendations in respect to provincial areas of law-making authority. First, he proposed that the federal government request that the provinces act within their jurisdiction to protect human rights. Second, he encouraged the federal government to invoke its power to disallow provincial legislation that violated the spirit of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.
This succinct formal submission outlined an agenda that took over thirty years to accomplish. Its genial tone, brevity, and clarity masked its audacity. The call was for a complete transformation of the deepest value structure of Canadian society. Government policy restricted immigration to those who, on the basis of race, could be assimilated without “social or economic loss to Canada” - a standard applied to exclude Jews. The statute books, federal and provincial, still contained some racial distinctions. Employment opportunities were restricted on the basis of race and ethnicity, including jobs in the public and private sector and entry into professions. Educational institutions controlled admission on the basis of racial preferences and, in some instances, quotas. There was extensive racism in day-to-day life, including restrictions in commerce, recreation facilities, and housing. Antisemitism was pervasive. The formal submission set out the remedies sought, but offered no details of the suffering or sense of injustice that prompted the call for change.
One senator sought out an account of the Jewish community’s specific experience of inequality in Canada. The question was pointed: “Is there any discrimination in this country that can be especially complained of, or do you regard it as an absolutely free country where you have the same privileges as everyone else?”8 This invitation did not unleash a detailed history of either the second-class status that Jews experienced in day-to-day life in Canada or the failure of Canadian governments to treat citizens equally. Mr. Hayes, who took the question for the JPRC delegation, remained focused on the need for laws that would guarantee equality and equal opportunity, based on merit, to all members of Canadian society.
The examples that Mr. Hayes offered supported the universal values he considered paramount. He assured the committee members that his proposals would not intrude on the private sphere of individual likes or dislikes. He distilled his proposals into the basic proposition that Canadian law must eliminate prejudice and discrimination that impaired full participation in Canadian society. Only then did he turn to detail, pointing out examples of discrimination against Jews, Blacks, and French Canadians. He went on to delineate three particular contexts in which the problem was pervasive. The first was employment, where decisions to hire and fire were often based on racial preferences, not merit. The second was the use of restrictive covenants by which private parties, individually or in association, imposed stipulations on the purchase and sale of property based on the race or religion of a party to the transaction. The third was the practice of those providing commercial services to the public - such as resorts, restaurants, and recreational facilities - to seek an “exclusive” clientele, rather than opening their doors to all possible customers.
Perhaps because he had established his credibility, one senator sought out Mr. Hayes’ views on the origins of antisemitism.9 Hayes pointed out the irrationality of discrimination and stressed its harmful effects on the fabric of society generally, not merely on Jews. Discrimination, he noted, infringed on the innate and inalienable rights of citizens in a democratic society to equal treatment and opportunities. Looking back on the dark days of World War II, he pointed out that Hitler’s antisemitism had been opportunistic, harnessed to other domestic and external initiatives, and that Japan had embarked on anti-semitic policies despite the fact that there were virtually no Jews in Japan.
The primary focus of another group representing the Jewish community, the National Council of Jewish Women of Canada, was on universal equality, democracy, and equal citizenship, rather than on examples of past injustice.10 The challenge was to adapt the Canadian legal system to conform to the aspirations embodied in the new international human-rights initiative. Mrs. E. R. Sugarman, the NCJW national chairman of international affairs, set out a list of basic rights and freedoms and stressed the need for formal protection for these entitlements under Canadian law. Regional and demographic diversity, combined with the federal division of legislative authority, dictated the need to specify the country’s fundamental values in this way. She noted the educational advantages of such an undertaking, particularly for new citizens and children. The moment was propitious for such an initiative: Canada was reaching its political maturity on the world stage just as the Supreme Court of Canada took on the responsibilities of highest appellate court.
The United Jewish People’s Order, the third Jewish organization to make a submission, brought to the committee an egregious example of abuse of state power.11 Morris Biderman described how the Quebec government had closed down the Jewish Cultural Centre in Montreal under the infamous Padlock Law. This law, one of the most discredited pieces of legislation in Canadian history, permitted the attorney general of Quebec to terminate the use of any premises, including private homes, if he believed the property was being used in the “propagation of communist propaganda or doctrines.” Standard protections of the rule of law and due process were not provided. The targeted organization was a fraternal, cultural, and educational order, with branches across Canada, engaged in education and social welfare activities, whose operation had for some reason attracted the opprobrium of the provincial government. The authorities had also raided a Jewish school, terrorizing the students and taking away a large volume of material, although no closure order followed. Mr. Biderman made an impassioned plea for a bill of rights that would secure freedom of speech, the press, association, and assembly for every Canadian. Without such protection, “no organization, no minority grouping, no individual is safe from autocratic and despotic repressions by men and parties whose interests and prejudices are served by these means.”
These early efforts on the part of the Jewish community bore fruit in the committee’s final report that, in the shadow of the Holocaust, endorsed the idea of constitutional protection of fundamental rights under the umbrella of the international human-rights revolution. They also set the stage for other initiatives in the statutory and judicial arenas. The ultimate goal was to bring the Canadian legal system into conformity with its most fundamental aspirations. That would take decades, but the process had begun.
A common form of discrimination was the practice of including restrictive covenants in the legal documentation that formalized transactions in real property. These enforceable covenants embodied undertakings by private landowners not to sell their property to persons defined by race, colour, ethnic origin, or religion. Often these covenants applied to whole neighbourhoods or residential housing developments.
In the late 1940s the Canadian Jewish Congress and B’nai Brith, through their Joint Public Relations Committee, decided to support litigation challenging the legality of restrictive covenants.12 The challenge, which arose in the context of the sale of a recreational property, exposed the most respectable justification for private prejudice. The argument was that people were free to choose those with whom they were willing to associate and that such choices, especially in the context of transactions in residential property, expressed the innocuous desire to preserve the cultural distinctiveness of neighbourhoods. The alternative view, bolstered by the post-war condemnation of racism in both the public and private spheres, branded such preferences as unacceptable: because the restrictive covenants undermined the deepest values of a diverse and pluralist society, they should not enjoy legal protection.
The legal efforts met with mixed success. In Noble and Wolf v. Alley (1950), the Supreme Court refused to enforce the covenant but based its decision on narrower grounds than the JPRC had hoped.13 JPRC’s preference was for a general denunciation of racial discrimination as a matter of public policy, a ruling that would apply to the common law across Canada. Despite this disappointment, the litigation, bolstered by the work of an alliance between Congress and B’nai Brith with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), succeeded in convincing the Ontario government to pass legislation that would invalidate future restrictive covenants.
Perhaps the best test for the success of the efforts to do away with restrictive covenants is in the court of public opinion. The arguments made in support of the covenant now sound very strange, even repugnant, to our sensibilities. They included, for example, the assertion that the public interest required strict adherence to the terms of contractual arrangements in order to preserve the freedom of the parties. To ban discrimination in private dealings was to deny the freedoms that must prevail in a diverse, democratic society and to introduce indicia of totalitarian thought control. More specifically, the sale of the property in question to a Jewish purchaser would result in the depreciation of its value. The disappearance of these arguments from public and legal discourse suggests that, despite the Supreme Court’s refusal to propound a public-policy rationale for its ruling, the renunciation of discrimination in private dealings has now become part of the basic fabric of Canadian society.
Changes to specific features of the common law were not sufficient to remove the disadvantages that Jews and other minorities encountered in Canadian society. Discrimination in employment, accommodation, and public services, as noted in the presentation to the Senate committee in 1950, was so pervasive that the only remedy was law reform. In the employment context, discriminatory attitudes affected decisions on hiring, firing, and promotion in both the public and private sectors. Landlords discriminated against certain groups in renting residential premises. Such preferences reinforced the pattern of residential segregation produced by restrictive covenants. Businesses offering services to the public rejected customers on the same basis. Members of minorities were thus unable to enjoy an open market for recreational facilities, restaurants, and holiday accommodations.14
Jewish groups joined other liberal associations in pressing governments to ban discrimination. They invoked the need to condemn in Canada the kind of racism that had fuelled Hitler’s war against the Jews. They made parallels with the civil-rights movement that was dismantling racial segregation and discrimination in the United States. Post-war immigrants from many parts of the world also created pressure for rules assuring that they would enjoy the full benefits of equal opportunity in their new country.
These efforts eventually produced results, first at the provincial and then at the federal level. Saskatchewan and Ontario led the way, passing laws that addressed the problem in both specific and general terms. Initially, separate statutes banned discrimination in employment and housing. The federal government later followed this lead by passing similar legislation within its nation-wide jurisdiction. Eventually, all the provinces and the federal government had in place comprehensive anti-discrimination laws that applied to both the private and public sectors. As part of the same process, discriminatory policies that had limited opportunities in higher education in general, as well as entry to professional faculties in particular, were abandoned. Jobs in university teaching and administration, as well as in the public service at the municipal, provincial, and federal levels, became available to members of formerly excluded minorities. Racial categories were also removed from the immigration regulations and Canada became more receptive to accepting refugees. In the late 1960s, the federal Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism extended its concerns beyond Canada’s founding nations to the ethnic diversity of Canada. Its work prompted the creation of government programs fostering the multicultural heritage of a country that had abandoned the expectation that newcomers must forfeit their religious beliefs and practices, cultural traditions, and languages in order to be considered true Canadians.
The commitment to multiculturalism reached its highest level with the adoption of the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canada’s constitutional bill of rights. Section 27 of the Charter requires the courts to interpret the Charter “in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.” Judges have invoked the principles of multicultural equality as fundamental concerns when reviewing an exercise of state power for conformity with the Charter. The Charter’s specific guarantees, for example, the guarantee of freedom of religion or expression, are thus informed by the concerns stipulated by this clause, not by the majority’s cultural or religious traditions.
While remaining alert for ways to improve these general laws forwarding equality, the Jewish community turned to other reform initiatives. For example, it supported the adoption of amendments to the Criminal Code creating the crimes of advocating genocide and promoting hatred. In the context of a revival of antisemitism, including a number of alarming incidents, the Jewish community pressed for this legislation. When the federal government struck a committee of experts to formulate policy and draft legislation, it turned to the very people who had lobbied for designation of the new crimes, appointing Maxwell Cohen as its chair and Saul Hayes as one of its members. This illustrious committee also included a number of academics from across the country: James Corry, Father Gerard Dion, Mark MacGuigan, and Pierre Trudeau. The committee did its work well. Its report anticipated, and definitively analyzed the arguments later relied upon by the Supreme Court in upholding the amendments in the face of Charter challenges.15
At the request of Toronto lawyer John Syrtash and the Orthodox Va’ad Ha-Rabonim (rabbinical court) of Toronto, B’nai Brith Canada led the move to change provincial legislation in Ontario to allow the adoption of the “get law.” This law assisted women whose husbands refused to grant them a get (a divorce under Jewish law) that would allow them to remarry according to religious tradition. In answer to a request from the minister of justice for statistical proof that the problem was serious enough to warrant legislation, B’nai Brith Canada issued a study on the use of the get as a bargaining tool in Jewish divorce proceedings.16 The passage of the get law in Ontario established the groundwork for a subsequent federal amendment in a campaign that involved the support and participation of many other groups, including the Canadian Jewish Congress and the Coalition of Jewish Women for the Get.
These amendments have attracted considerable controversy.17 The attorney general of Ontario expressed the view that the legislative mechanism had the effect of breaching the freedom of religion of the recalcitrant husband, while other constitutional experts reached the opposite conclusion. Nonetheless, these statutory provisions have alleviated the plight of a significant number of Canadian women who are seeking nothing more than to get on with their lives, in accordance with their religious tradition, after the breakdown of their marriages.
Some initiatives met success as law-reform measures, but failed to fulfill their promise. After extensive study, the Canadian Parliament made provision for the prosecution of war criminals in Canada. The Charter, when adopted in 1982, made special accommodation for such prosecution. In operation, however, this legislation has not secured convictions due to a controversial Supreme Court of Canada ruling.18 The court determined, in R. v. Finta, that the Crown must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused had subjectively understood at the time that he committed the criminal acts in question - in this case, unlawful confinement, robbery, kidnapping, and manslaughter - that these were crimes against humanity. The majority of the court concluded that the Crown’s evidence had not gone so far. The pervasive dissemination of false information and propaganda against the Jews at the time and place of the wrongful acts raised a reasonable doubt - in the opinion of the court - as to whether the accused was sufficiently aware of the cruel and barbarous quality of his actions.
The focus has now turned to extradition of alleged war criminals. Jewish groups have not simply pressed for punishment for those who inflicted suffering on Jews. They have pressed for prosecution of all war criminals, insisting that only prosecution will provide justice and an adequate deterrent to prevent future crimes against humanity anywhere in the world.
The Canadian Jewish community has worked hard to support law reform that reflects the full and equal human dignity of every member of Canadian society. Various groups have entered the debate on a wide range of issues raising both general concerns, and matters of more particular concern to the cultural and religious lives of Jews. There is continuing interest in issues such as refugee policy, the continued development of human-rights code protections, and eradication of any vestiges of antisemitism from the private and public spheres. Longstanding issues have broadened or taken on new life. The battle against Holocaust denial continues, now waged against Internet sites and telephone hotlines. In the aftermath of a ruling that municipal councils cannot begin their proceedings with the Lord’s Prayer, community organizations have protested the continuation of this practice in the Ontario legislature. They have pointed out that other Canadian legislatures have long since abandoned this Christian prayer in favour of a more inclusive, multicultural reading. These examples illustrate the ways in which the Jewish community continues to fulfil its commitment to the post-war vision of a multicultural, egalitarian polity.
The adoption of a constitutional system of rights protection was finally achieved in April 1982. The organized Jewish community had a hand in the development and adoption of that instrument and has been active in the courts seeking rulings that forward its understanding of autonomy, equality, and equal human dignity.
In November 1980, the Canadian Jewish Congress made a submission to the Joint Committee of the Senate and House of Commons regarding a draft text of the proposed constitutional Charter of Rights and Freedoms.19 The submission, true to established practice, offered comments on general issues as well as on matters of specific interest to Canadian Jews. It is striking to compare this submission to its counterpart in 1950. In 1950, the Jewish community came as a subordinated, minority group seeking to transform the public and private presuppositions of Canadian society. In 1980, its submission had the quality of a polished legal brief provided by acknowledged experts in international human-rights systems and comparative constitutional law. The brief was the work of a committee headed by Maxwell Cohen, the former dean of law at McGill University. The committee included an impressive list of law professors and prominent lawyers in private practice, many of whom later received judicial appointments. The composition of the committee alone suggested the radical expansion of equal opportunity in Canadian society.
The submission supported the adoption of the Charter, including its most controversial feature, the judicial enforcement of rights. This new role was not, as critics alleged, an illegitimate challenge to the traditions of parliamentary supremacy, but the enlargement of the established judicial responsibility to enforce the limited language and religious protections of the Constitution Act (1867), formerly the British North America Act. Of special concern, however, was the provision that was formulated to allow justified limits on guaranteed rights. This provision, as drafted, was remarkably broad and, it was feared, would unduly restrict the enjoyment of fundamental rights and freedoms. The CJC joined forces with all the other public-interest groups who were supportive of the project in suggesting that the Charter text emphasize the force of the guarantee of rights, not the limits upon them. The draft text was also deficient in that it did not offer a generous statement of judicial remedial authority, including injunctions and damage awards.
The CJC expressed another structural concern when it noted that the Charter did not provide appropriate arrangements for rights protection in times of emergency. It suggested that the Charter expressly stipulate that only the narrowest of departures from Charter guarantees would be permitted in such circumstances, and only under legislative oversight. Even in times of emergency, there was need for strong protection for democratic rights, autonomy, and personal dignity. Here the submission draws on the international rights-protecting instruments as well as a comparison to the constitutional arrangements of other countries.
When the submission turned to the specific guarantees, it called for expansion of many of the rights set down in the draft. In the area of criminal procedure, for example, the CJC proposed inclusion of a right to secure legal assistance and legal aid. It also recommended that criminal trials be available in English, French, and Native languages. Turning to equality concerns, it called for a ban on discrimination against the disabled in the equality provision, as well as a specific endorsement of the equality entitlement of women to all Charter guarantees. Further recommendations in respect to language included the right to use English or French in all provincial legislatures, the extension of the official language stipulations to New Brunswick and Ontario, and broader access to minority-language education. The CJC also addressed the need to establish a just resolution of Aboriginal entitlements. It called for protection against abrogation or derogation of the rights of Native peoples, as well as, at a later stage after consultation, protection for treaty and Aboriginal rights.
While most of the submission was general in character, three points were identified as having particular relevance to the Jewish community. One was the need to give assurance that the protection of freedom of expression would not undermine the criminal offence of publicly and wilfully promoting hatred, which the Jewish community had supported in the legislative process. Another was the provision of appropriate legal arrangements for the prosecution of war criminals in Canada. Third, the CJC registered a note of caution in regard to the possibility that affirmative action might lead to quotas that impair equality of opportunity.
In many respects, the submission marked continuity with its 1950 counterpart. Much of its content rested on a reading of Canada’s obligations under the international human-rights-protecting instruments. It also stressed the way in which a definitive statement of the ultimate values of Canadian society, in the form of guaranteed rights and freedoms against state action, would provide a cohesive framework for a diverse, often divided, nation.
The quality of these recommendations is not reflected in the mixed success they met in the formulation of the Charter’s text. One member of Parliament commented that the CJC submission was so comprehensive that it went beyond suggestions for improvement of the draft under review to a proposal of a new document altogether. Many of the suggestions that did not find their way into its text were later adopted by the Canadian courts in the interpretation and application of the Charter.
The Jewish community’s contribution did not stop with the development of the Charter’s text. It has become very active in litigation under the Charter. In many instances, such participation has made an important and distinctive contribution. A full account of this activity is beyond the scope of this essay. A few important cases will be highlighted, beginning with one area where such intervention was needed but not available.
One of the first major Charter cases, Big M Drug Mart (1985), held particular significance for the Jewish community.20 The Supreme Court invalidated the federal Lord’s Day Act, originally enacted in 1906, that prohibited a wide range of industrial, commercial, and recreational activity on Sundays. The court ruled that this statute imposed an unjustified breach of freedom of religion. Parliament had passed the statute at the behest of the Lord’s Day Alliance, an international organization supported by Protestants and Catholics. The Alliance advanced the law on the premise that Christian religious observance was a generic foundation for public policy. While the statute imposed a day of rest on all, it argued, its effect was liberating rather than coercive because most people observed Sunday as a day of rest.
The Jewish community, in alliance with the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, had objected strenuously to this statute when it was passed. It did not take the position that Parliament should not enforce the Christian Sabbath. Such an argument was unthinkable at the time. The objection was narrower, that the legislation failed to accommodate, by way of exemption, those who observed their own religious Sabbath, albeit on a different day, and needed the remaining six days of labour to support themselves and their families. The submission appealed to the common-law notions of autonomy and property rights. It cited exemptions made available to Jews in England and the United States. There was also an argument based on citizenship. Since those who were true to their religious traditions were good citizens, the state should not tempt citizens away from their beliefs or impose financial burdens on religious practice. “Do justice to us,” was their plea, according to the standards of other civilized, Christian countries. Justice meant that the government should formulate public policy on secular grounds or, if it took religion into account, have regard for minority, and not just majority, religious belief, and practice.
The Lord’s Day Alliance delivered a scalding reply. Any exemption, even one so carefully designed to effect no disturbance of Christian enjoyment of the Sabbath, would rob the majority of its rightful privileges. Any impact on the Jewish community was in any event temporal, not religious. At issue here was nothing more than an age-old policy that exacted a reasonable cost for religious non-conformity. Democracy vested no rights in religious minorities. Public policy was forged on the anvil of the preferences, custom, and tradition of the majority.
The government’s response was a sharp repudiation of the idea of equal citizenship. Alien immigrants should not expect to enjoy the benefits of their new country without accepting the rules that it chose, as a Christian polity, to impose in the public interest. Parliament thus rejected the claim put forward by the Jewish community and the Seventh-Day Adventist Church for a circumscribed exemption to the law. The minister of justice made clear that promoting Christianity was a central feature of Canadian law.21
In Big M, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Charter’s guarantee of freedom of religion means that Canadian governments cannot impose general prohibitions on Canadians to forward the religious beliefs or practices of the majority. The court’s conclusion, as well as its reasoning, vindicated the position that the Jewish community had taken eighty years earlier. Moreover, one by one, it rejected the arguments that the Lord’s Day Alliance and the Canadian government had considered decisive. This vindication, however, was incomplete. While the judgment contained a comprehensive account of the history and theory of religious freedom, it did not note the Jewish community’s eloquent, dignified, and impassioned objection to the legislation as it passed through the legislative process, on the very grounds later embraced by the court.
This omission may have reflected the fact that no Jewish organization participated in the litigation. It is to be regretted that there was no acknowledgement in the reasons for judgment of the quality and prescience of the Jewish community’s early critique of the Lord’s Day Act. Its understanding of citizenship, democracy, and equal human dignity in 1906 anticipated the values of the human-rights revolution that gripped the world after World War II and, eventually, in 1982, found their way into the Canadian Constitution.
Just one year later, the Supreme Court returned to the question of Sunday-closing laws in the decision on Edwards Books and Art Limited.22 At issue here was the validity of Ontario’s retail Sunday-closing regulation, as well as an exemption that had been forged to accommodate the needs of Jews and Seventh-Day Adventists. The court upheld the legislation in general terms, but recognized that it imposed special burdens on those who observed Saturday as their Sabbath. For these groups, the court ruled, government must provide an exemption. Here again, the court endorsed the position taken by the Jewish community in 1906. The court went on to sustain the exemption that Ontario offered, although it did not offer relief to all those who closed their stores to observe the Sabbath on Saturday. Instead, it offered relief only to smaller retail operations - measured by floor area and the number of employees - that closed during the relevant period for any reason. Thus small operations could take advantage of the exemption, even when there was no religious basis for their closing hours, while large operations that closed for religious reasons could not.
The dissent in the Supreme Court seized on this anomaly. Religious freedom meant that the state must offer a full religious exemption that made no stipulation about the size of the business. The core of this position was the recognition that the Charter must protect more than individual religious belief and practice. This guarantee must also embrace the organic religious community. Only a full religious exemption would respect religious belief, practice, and community. The state cannot divide the religious community in an arbitrary way.
The court lacked a full factual record in this case, which representatives of the Jewish community could easily have provided. The justices did not seem informed about the importance of self-employment in a small minority community whose work week does not coincide with that of the majority. In addition, while the court, to its credit, expressed concern for the importance of Sabbath observance to the retail worker generally, as an interest to be balanced against that of the employer, its analysis of the question was inadequate. It did not focus on the additional burdens borne by the relatively few retail workers who observed Saturday, and not Sunday, as their Sabbath. Its concern seemed to be that Jewish employers would prefer Jewish employees and vice versa, raising the spectre of religious preferences in hiring. While such preferences would be objectionable in most circumstances, the context at hand might provide a legitimate exception to that rule. Religious preferences in hiring might, in fact, offer the most expeditious way of solving the problem created when religious observance mandated a different work week for a small minority of employers and employees. Moreover, the court had no information available as to the religious, cultural, or language requirements of the retail businesses affected, or the extent to which they were family undertakings. Ironically, some of the values of anti-discrimination, which the Jewish community had worked so hard to promote generally, worked against a fair and egalitarian resolution of the problem of regulation of store hours.
Members of the court also voiced concern that administering an exemption on some basis other than objective criteria, such as the size of the operation, would require those who sought the exemption to make formal affirmations of religious belief. Here, again, one sees a point on which a contribution by the Jewish community to the legal argument might have been beneficial. In contrast to some other religions, such affirmations have no significance in Judaism. Other jurisdictions, in any event, have found alternative arrangements that involve the simple posting of permission to open a business on Sunday if closed on Saturday (and on religious holy days). The court assumed that the strictures that single out a particular day for special rituals are more or less the same within the full range of religions. Again, the Jewish community would have been able to shed some light on the distinctiveness of Jewish religious practice in this respect.
These cases illustrate how important it is for representatives of the Jewish community to participate in cases where issues particular to its religious doctrines, observance, or cultural norms arise. As time has passed, Jewish organizations such as B’nai Brith and the Canadian Jewish Congress have responded to that need, becoming actively involved in a wide range of cases, sometimes intervening in civil cases or prosecutions, and on occasion initiating litigation as well.
One important group of cases had to do with the validity of criminal offences that proscribed the promotion of hatred and denial of the Holocaust. In the prosecution of an Alberta schoolteacher, James Keegstra, for promoting hatred by teaching antisemitic dogma in his history classes, a number of organizations participated. B’nai Brith, CJC, and Inter-Amicus submitted written briefs and offered oral submissions. The Supreme Court of Canada’s reasons for judgment, which upheld the hate-promotion offence, reflect this participation.23 The court ruled that while the teacher’s freedom of expression had been breached, Parliament was permitted under the Charter to purge the public space within Canada’s free and democratic society of hatred against certain groups defined by race and religion. In result and analysis, the court followed in the path of the post-war international rights-protecting instruments, as advocated by the Jewish groups that acted as intervenors. It thus rejected the almost absolute approach to freedom of speech advocated by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which follows the US legal approach. The court’s post-war understanding was later affirmed when the court upheld the removal of a teacher from the classroom because of his extensive antisemitic activities outside the classroom. The court determined that the learning atmosphere had been poisoned for minority students.24
In a later ruling that disappointed the Jewish community intervenors, the Supreme Court invalidated the Criminal Code provision that provided the basis for prosecuting Canada’s foremost Holocaust denier, Ernst Zundel.25 He was successfully prosecuted, at the initiative of the Canadian Holocaust Remembrance Association, for “spreading false news” injurious to the public interest. The court determined that this offence imposed an unjustified restriction on freedom of expression. In a remarkable dissenting judgment, Justice Iacobucci and two other members of the court reached the opposite conclusion. Justice Iacobucci noted that the ambition of the Holocaust denier is to counteract the post-war commitment to racial equality by casting doubt upon the historical record that stands at its foundation. He invoked the post-war rights-protecting instruments and Canada’s obligations to comply with their strictures. He discussed with approval the efforts of other countries to suppress and punish distortion of the historical record of the Holocaust. He invoked the general purposes of the Charter as well as the multiculturalism clause, stressing the understanding that Canada’s democratic society operated under constitutional commitments to equal human dignity and non-discrimination so strong as to justify limitations on freedom of expression. He brought these themes together in this passage of his reasons for judgment:
The tragedy of the Holocaust and the enactment of the Charter have served to emphasize the laudable… aim of preventing the harmful effects of false speech and thereby promoting racial and social tolerance. In fact, it was in part the publication of the evil and invidious statements that were known to be false by those that made them regarding the Jewish people that led the way to the inferno of the Holocaust. The realities of Canada’s multicultural society emphasize the vital need to protect minorities and preserve Canada’s mosaic of cultures.
The relevant authorities have consistently rejected calls by B’nai Brith Canada and the Canadian Jewish Congress to prosecute Zundel under the hate law. Proposals to enact specific laws in Canada criminalizing Holocaust denial have not succeeded in putting this issue on the public policy agenda. Zundel has nonetheless not escaped the reach of the law entirely. Further proceedings have been instituted against him under the Canadian Human Rights Act to shut down his Internet site. These efforts, initiated by Holocaust survivor Sabina Citron, enjoy the support of the Toronto Mayor’s Committee on Community and Race Relations, the attorney general of Canada, the Canadian Holocaust Remembrance Association, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, the Canadian Jewish Congress, and B’nai Brith Canada.
The problem of hate on the Internet has attracted significant attention. Both B’nai Brith Canada and the Canadian Jewish Congress are part of the Hate and Bias Activity Roundtables (HBAR) convened by the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism, in order to study the problem and consider possible government responses. B’nai Brith’s League for Human Rights is active in the Research, Data Gathering, and Public Education Working Group, while the Canadian Jewish Congress is involved in the Media Working Group. Recently, a review panel charged with the task of making recommendations for updating the Canadian Human Rights Act, under the leadership of recently retired Supreme Court justice Gerard La Forest, made detailed recommendations for combatting hate on the Internet. Combatting hatred has become a matter of important public policy, not merely the work of vulnerable minorities.
The Canadian Human Rights Act has proven to be an effective tool in suppressing the communication of hatred by telephone. Before the advent of the Internet, it was common for hate groups to pre-record hate messages and publicize a telephone number that callers could dial to hear the messages. In 1990, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the act’s provision, despite the finding that it encroached upon the Charter guarantee of freedom of expression. As it had done in the Keegstra decision, the court ruled that the prohibition was justified because it promoted equal opportunity, tolerance, and the dignity and self-worth of targeted minorities.26 The Canadian Jewish Congress, B’nai Brith Canada, and the Canadian Holocaust Remembrance Association intervened in this case in support of the constitutionality of the challenged provision.
B’nai Brith Canada has filed a number of complaints against hate groups, asking the Canadian Human Rights Commission to order a stop to the hate messages. One such action was against Terry Long and the Aryan Nations in Alberta in 1989. Another was against Bill Harcus and the Ku Klux Klan in Manitoba in 1992. Both of these complaints led to orders to stop the use of the telephone to incite hatred. B’nai Brith also intervened in the Liberty Net case in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Commission had authority to stop the use of a call-in telephone line, pending determination of whether its messages breached the ban against the communication of hatred.
These cases on public hate-promotion marked a point of departure for the two leading Jewish organizations on the one hand, and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association on the other. These groups have almost invariably shared a liberal concern for freedom, equality, and human dignity. The CCLA, however, takes the position that freedom of expression must be sufficiently expansive to permit promotion of hatred and Holocaust denial, leaving the repudiation of these opinions to the rationality and good sense of Canadians. B’nai Brith Canada and the Canadian Jewish Congress, in contrast, insist that these opinions damage the multicultural fabric of Canadian society and undermine equality in pervasive ways. The German Constitutional Court accepted similar arguments when it sustained a Holocaust-denial crime against a challenge based on freedom of expression.
The leading Jewish community organizations and the CCLA also parted company in some of the cases litigated to ascertain the impact of the Charter’s guarantees of freedom of religion and equality on public education. These organizations had previously joined forces in a group of cases that ultimately determined that the provinces cannot require Christian prayer and sectarian religious education in the public schools, even if they offer full exemptions to minority or atheist students.27 The courts ruled that imposing the majority’s religious beliefs and practices is inimical to a multicultural society and damaging to the development of children. This ruling did not preclude courses in comparative religion or readings selected from a variety of cultural and religious traditions.
In a later series of cases, the issue was public funding for religious schools. The Jewish organizations argued for the extension of the historical compromise that created publicly funded Protestant and Catholic minority schools at Confederation.28 The extension of funding to the religious schools of other minorities in Ontario, they argued, would bring the schools system into conformity with the Charter’s guarantees of freedom of religion and equality. The CCLA, in contrast, took the position that the secular public school system, which is the foundation of a democratic society, would suffer if funding were extended in this way. The Supreme Court concluded that there is no legal entitlement to funding for religious schools beyond those set down in the Constitution at Confederation.
The issue was subsequently taken to the United Nations by an Ontario parent. The UN Human Rights Committee ruled that Ontario’s failure to fund all religious schools was discriminatory and therefore contrary to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Canada had signed with Ontario’s full approval.29 This ruling would, by extension, apply to all Canada’s provinces since none offer full funding to all religious schools. To date, the federal and provincial governments have not acted to eliminate this breach of their international obligations. The federal government has taken the position that the ruling is not legally binding. While it has made clear that it takes seriously its obligations under the International Covenant, it has also pointed out that education lies exclusively within provincial jurisdiction. It can therefore go no further than to urge Ontario to do what is necessary to come into compliance with the Human Rights Committee’s ruling. Ontario, despite its commitment to international human-rights norms, has taken the position that it will do nothing. The minister of education has stressed that the government’s policy is to maintain the status quo-funding public schools and Catholic schools that are accessible to all students - even if such an arrangement stands in breach of the International Covenant. The United Nations does not enforce the rulings of the Human Rights Committee, but it does continue to press state parties to perform their obligations. It remains to be seen whether this quiet diplomacy will have any effect on the entrenched positions of the two governments.
The recent interventions by the Canadian Jewish Congress and B’nai Brith Canada in two leading equality cases constituted a noteworthy revival of earlier battles against discrimination in employment and for comprehensive human-rights legislation.30 At issue in one such case was the failure of the Alberta legislature to provide protection against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the context of employment, accommodation, and public services. The Canadian Jewish Congress submission identified this omission as a breach of the Charter’s guarantee of equality. It explained its concern by noting the fact that Jews, gays, and lesbians had suffered as the victims of the Nazi racial-purity policies. This history prompted the Jewish community, now advanced in its enjoyment of equality in Canada, to come to the assistance of a group still suffering from disadvantage and prejudice. While the submission drew this parallel between the past suffering of Jews and homosexuals, it made the stronger point that the Jewish community includes many homosexuals for whom the CJC sought protection under the Charter that the Alberta statute law had denied. The strongest feature of the argument was the claim that the implementation of the racial-purity laws - which targeted Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and the disabled - were to a large extent the work of the German judiciary. These judges shamefully failed to uphold the rule of law and the sanctity of human life and equal dignity. In times of pervasive stereotyping and prejudice, the CJC argued, it falls to the independent courts of law to illuminate the path of justice that representative institutions often ignore or reject. Although this submission was not referred to in the reasons for judgment, observers are of the belief that it had an important effect in persuading the court that Alberta had breached Charter norms.
At issue in the other case was the policy of the military not to send either Jewish or Moslem members of the armed forces to join Canadian forces in the Middle East. B’nai Brith Canada asked the court to declare the policy unconstitutional. The Federal Court Trial Division ruled in 1991 that B’nai Brith could not bring this application to the Supreme Court. Only an individual claimant actually injured by the policy could initiate such a proceeding. B’nai Brith challenged this ruling by intervening in an appeal case brought to the Supreme Court by the Canadian Council of Churches to determine when public-interest groups could initiate a Charter challenge. In 1992 the court held that, with certain exceptions, an individual injured by the policy in question was necessary. Although this ruling precluded B’nai Brith from having carriage of the litigation, Andrew Liebmann, who had been denied service in the Gulf War because he was Jewish, sued to have Canada’s policy declared unconstitutional, and B’nai Brith Canada joined in as an intervener. The Federal Court Trial Division ruled in 1998 that Liebmann had been the victim of discrimination but that the policy, as then re-drafted, was constitutional.31 The court reasoned that any denial of opportunity to serve made on the basis of religion or culture reflected the sensitivities of the parties to the conflict, not invidious stereotypes. The overarching objective was to ensure operational effectiveness, safety, and the perceived impartiality of the peacekeeping operation. B’nai Brith Canada and Liebmann have appealed to the Federal Court of Appeal.
The Jewish community has found itself drawn into the vortex of constitutional politics since the adoption of the Charter. The province of Quebec did not consent to the amendments to the Constitution adopted in 1982, including the Charter. While these amendments apply to Quebec nonetheless, proposals for further constitutional amendments have come forward to bring Quebec back into the constitutional family. The first of these efforts, the Meech Lake Accord, failed to attract the necessary unanimous provincial consent in 1990. Its main thrust was to recognize Quebec as a distinct society with certain collective characteristics and aspirations. Both B’nai Brith Canada and Canadian Jewish Congress opposed the accord. This opposition focused primarily on the possible weakening of Charter rights in Quebec. There was also criticism at the lack of consultation in the formulation of the terms of the accord, which had been the work of the First Ministers without the public participation that had constituted such an important part of the Charter’s development and legitimacy. The politicians failed to convince these groups that it would be possible to address any unacceptable or undesirable consequences flowing from the adoption of the accord at a later date.
In contrast, the Charlottetown Accord, a later attempt to achieve the same result, won the support of these groups, as well as of ethnic organizations generally. The accord was clearly open to the same criticisms as the Meech Lake proposal. The leadership of ethnic groups stressed that their overriding concern was now national unity, which they believed the accord would secure. The Canadian Jewish Congress, for example, took the position that constitutional unity was the best protection for human rights, quality education, and immigration. It expressed empathy with Quebec’s anxiety at the continuity of its language and culture. It read the accord as a recognition of the pluralist reality of Canada, not the elevation of the collective rights of the francophone majority over the rights of individuals or minority groups. B’nai Brith Canada also stressed the advantages of accepting the accord to strengthen national unity, although it conceded that the document raised difficulties. Underlying these positions was a clear concern not to undermine the status of the Jewish community in Quebec. The accord was defeated in a national referendum in 1992. One study has concluded that “a significant minority” of Canadian Jews voted against the accord, for reasons that included fear of Quebec nationalism, support for a strong federal government, and fidelity to Pierre Trudeau’s vision of Canadian society.32
The position of Jews in Quebec became a matter of acute concern in 1996 when the French Language Office of Quebec (OFL) took action that compromised the availability of imported, kosher foods necessary for Passover. The OFL objected to the absence of French labelling on products offered for sale for the eight-day holiday. In response, stores removed the objectionable goods from the shelves, although it was never established that the products in question contravened the regulations or that the officials had the authority to order them removed. The Jewish community took the position that the enforcement initiative breached a prior agreement that permitted entry to these products for the short period required by the holiday, in limited quantities, for a very restricted market. The Quebec government made no response to the widespread condemnation of the agency’s action and its remarkably ineffective attempts to defend its position. The issue was eventually resolved by an agreement between the OFL and the Canadian Jewish Congress that permitted the sale of the products for Passover without French labels for an appropriately limited period. CJC undertook to monitor compliance. However, B’nai Brith Canada objected to this agreement for a number of reasons. It would have preferred wider consultation. It also expressed the view that it was inappropriate for the CJC to undertake any role in supervising compliance. B’nai Brith’s preference was to delineate the precise content of the regulatory strictures and their constitutional validity through litigation.
This incident touched a nerve in Canadian society. It called to mind the comments of Premier Jacques Parizeau in the immediate aftermath of the Quebec referendum of 1995. Disappointed at the razor-thin defeat of his government’s proposal for Quebec sovereignty, he had blamed “money and the ethnic vote,” a phrase that many interpreted to refer to Jews and immigrants. This comment brought forward a xenophobic strand of Quebec nationalism that the sovereignty supporters had tried to disavow, and raised the question of whether the premier was sending out a message that those who rejected Quebec sovereignty should reconsider their place in Quebec society. The premier immediately resigned.
The same issues contributed to the resignation of his successor, Premier Lucien Bouchard, in January 2001. A member of the Parti Quebecois precipitated a political crisis in Quebec by making, and standing by, remarks widely considered as antisemitic. Yves Michaud, an elder statesman of the separatist party, reiterated the complaint that it was ethnic voters who had defeated the referendum for Quebec sovereignty and proceeded to rub salt in an open wound. How, he asked, could Jews reject Quebec sovereignty and, at the same time, support Israel as their own homeland? When his interlocutor suggested that the examples were not exactly parallel, Michaud castigated Jews for holding the view that they were the only people to have suffered in “the history of humankind.” It was this historical myopia, he suggested, that fed the stubborn tendency of Jews to accord the right of self-determination to themselves, but not to the province of Quebec. He went on to excoriate B’nai Brith, which had campaigned to change the name of a subway station that commemorated a revered Quebec figure who had been antisemitic. He labelled B’nai Brith as anti-Quebec, anti-sovereigntist, and, to make his point clear, an extremist arm of international Zionism. Jews, in his view, were still immigrants, despite their arrival in Quebec two centuries ago.
The response was rapid. B’nai Brith Canada, the Canadian Jewish Congress, and commentators around the country and beyond condemned Michaud’s comments. So did Premier Bouchard. How, he asked, did a debate about language come to include an evaluation of Jewish suffering or blanket condemnation of those who reject the sovereignty project? Bouchard made clear his view on the most offensive of Michaud’s statements, stating that “the Holocaust is the supreme crime, a systematic attempt to eliminate a people, a negation of human conscience and dignity.” He emphasized that his approach to Quebec’s future was open, tolerant, and inclusive. To think otherwise was to deny respect for democracy in Quebec. On a more practical level, he noted that Michaud’s views would undermine support for sovereignty in Quebec’s cultural communities as well as in the international arena. The response of the Jewish community was effusive. B’nai Brith praised Mr. Bouchard’s comments as “the most important, most powerful and most passionate statement on the Jewish community made by any premier, whether he be Péquiste, Liberal, or whatever, in the history of Quebec.”33
Jewish immigrants to Canada came to a country that conceived of itself as a Christian polity, dedicated to preserving its religious, cultural, and ethnic character. As non-Christians, and for the most part non-British and non-French as well, Jews were the quintessential outsiders. Having their own biblically ordained homeland, Jews were perpetual aliens, waiting out the period of their exile. To the extent that Canadians held antisemitic sentiments, attitudes were even more negative.
While Canada offered welcome freedom from religious oppression, it also established many barriers to full enjoyment of political, social, and economic opportunities. For many immigrants, integration could be had in exchange for assimilation. For most Jews, however, even this exchange was not made available. Members of the Jewish community wanted to engage fully in Canadian life, but to be a Jew was to be beyond assimilation, even for those willing to yield their identity and way of life in return. Until World War II, integration without assimilation was just as strange to Canadian society as the age-old religious rituals Jews brought from Europe.
In the aftermath of the war, the human-rights revolution gave the Jewish community in Canada a legitimate paradigm for a different kind of accommodation. Given the importance of law in Jewish tradition, the idea of an overarching legal system at the international level that was committed to democracy, fairness, and equality was very attractive. To their credit, community leaders did not expend their efforts forwarding their narrow interests. They worked hard to promote a wider conception of the public good that included the particular needs of other minority communities. They forged alliances with religious and cultural groups that shared their objectives as well as with associations committed to liberal agendas. The idea was to find cohesion not in religious traditions or ethnic affinity, but in universal norms such as justice, equality, and human dignity.
Today Canada stands fully committed to the values of the post-war rights revolution. The last vestiges of a society that branded Jews as perpetual aliens have all but disappeared. Canadian law provides a legal structure in which to challenge these vestiges as well as an elaborate framework of laws and dispute resolution that grinds down the prejudice and ignorance that feeds racism. Mr. Bouchard’s emphatic rejection of Mr. Michaud’s variations on an old theme marks an important advance in the slow, often painful, process of building a multicultural society that is home to all its citizens. We have only to recall the exchange that occurred in 1906 to see how far we have come. Recall that it was the then-Minister of Justice, in Parliament, who told Jewish citizens of Canada, who sought nothing more than the chance to earn their living and keep their Sabbath, that Canada was a Christian country to whose moral standards alien Jews must conform. Canadian society has experienced a dramatic transformation in less than a century. The Jewish community has been both a prime beneficiary and a full contributor to this transformation.