According to the Canadian Jewish News (CJN), Trudeau has maintained Canada’s Israel-friendly stance at the United Nations. His government worked with the Jewish state to modernize the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement. It also adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism.
OTTAWA—On November 7,2018, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stood in Parliament to apologize for his country’s decision to turn away a steamliner full of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany on the eve of the Holocaust. He said it reflected years of regrettable anti-Semitic foreign policy.
The Canadian government at the time, run by the same Liberal party that Trudeau leads today, refused to allow the steamliner, the St. Louis, to land in June 1939 after it had been blocked from docking at its original destination, Havana. The boat was filled with more than 900 passengers, most of them Jews who had fled Germany four months before World War II began.
“We apologize to the mothers and fathers whose children we did not save, to the daughters and sons whose parents we did not help,” Trudeau said last year.
The United States also refused the captain’s desperate pleas for asylum, as did Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Panama. In the end, the boat returned to Europe, but not to Germany. Jewish organizations secured them visas to Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and France. But, as Germany expanded its territory, some 254 were captured and killed in Nazi death camps.
At Sunday’s general election, 46-year-old Prime Minister Trudeau’s Liberal Party held enough seats in Atlantic Canada, Quebec and Ontario to secure a minority government.
Trudeau lost some ground but overcame the challenge from Conservative party leader Andrew Scheer, who had vowed to move Canada’s Israel embassy to Jerusalem
According to the projections, the Liberals are leading in 157 of the nation’s 338 electoral districts, versus 121 for the Conservatives.
As early as Tuesday, Trudeau will have to form an alliance or formal coalition with one or more smaller parties in order to govern.
While Jews have generally voted for the Liberals, this trend changed wih Stephen Harper, the former leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister from 2006 to 2015, who was seen as the most pro-Israel leader in the history of the country.
Around 390,000 Jews live in Canada, roughly 1% of all Canadians.
More than 87 percent live in just six census metropolitan areas: nearly one-half in Toronto, nearly one-quarter in Montreal, and nearly one-sixth in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Ottawa, and Calgary combined.
According to the Canadian Jewish News (CJN), Trudeau has maintained Canada’s Israel-friendly stance at the United Nations. His government worked with the Jewish state to modernize the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement. It also adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism.
In 2016, Trudeau and the Liberals supported a parliamentary motion introduced by the Conservatives condemning the BDS campaign against Israel.
But while Harper’s Conservatives cancelled the country’s aid to UNRWA in 2010 over the agency’s ties to Hamas, the Liberals restored this funding in 2016.
‘’That has stuck in many Jewish craws, especially given that other Western countries have stopped funding the agency. Scheer has also pledged to end it if his party forms the government,’’ wrote the Canadian Jewish News.
The Liberals say Canada’s position on Jerusalem will not change. In an interview last November, Trudeau said the only circumstance that would lead to him moving the embassy is a two-state solution worked out between Israel and the Palestinians “that is agreed to and stabilized. This is not a decision that can be made unilaterally by third parties, or even by one of the two parties. We need a two-state solution that is worked on by both parties to secure peaceful, democratic states on both sides.”
