The conflict in the Middle East could be affecting the next federal election already
Elizabeth Thompson | CBC News | Posted: April 18, 2024 8:00 AM | Last Updated: April 18
Positions taken by political leaders seem to be shifting support for their parties
Fareed Khan sometimes becomes overcome by grief when he talks about the growing death toll in the Israel- Hamas war. When he talks about how Canadian politicians have reacted to the conflict, grief gives way to anger.
"I will never help another Liberal in this government," said Khan, a human rights activist and founder of Canadians United Against Hate.
In the past, Khan has worked to elect Liberal politicians like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and MP Anita Vandenbeld. But he said he's upset with the way the Liberal government has responded to the current conflict in the Middle East — a conflict that reminds him of the plight of his Muslim parents when India was partitioned, and his late Jewish father-in-law's experiences during the Holocaust.
He said he's also unhappy with the Conservative Party's response and party leader Pierre Poilievre's position on Israel.
He's not alone. Six months after Hamas's deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel — during which nearly 1,200 people were killed and about 250 were taken hostage — and the start of a war that has since claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Gazan civilians, Canadian political parties have been forced to navigate difficult issues raised by a bloody conflict that has deeply divided the electorate.
The ways in which the parties have reacted and the positions they have taken — on matters such as funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and an NDP-sponsored motion that called on the government to work toward recognizing a Palestinian state — are having an impact on their support in different communities.
In February, as Ramadan was about to begin, the National Council of Canadian Muslims and officials in a number of prominent mosques signed an open letter warning MPs that they wouldn't be welcome in mosques across the country until they call for an immediate ceasefire, demand restoration of funding for UNRWA and condemn what the letter described as Israeli war crimes.
Canada's Jewish, Arab and Muslim communities are not monolithic and many factors influence which party an individual voter chooses to support. Nor do those communities form majorities in most ridings; the 2021 census found that nearly one per cent of respondents listed their religion as Jewish, while nearly five per cent said they were Muslim.
But these communities are large enough in certain ridings to have an impact in general elections and byelections. The war in Gaza appears to be putting their votes in play.
WATCH: Poilievre says Hamas is bent on spreading death and suffering
Poilievre hasn't spoken often in the House of Commons about the conflict in Israel and Gaza. In recent weeks, however, he has showcased his strong defence of Israel and his views on the Middle East. In speeches at synagogues in Montreal and Toronto that have been well received by many Jewish Canadians, he has vowed to defund organizations that promote antisemitism.
Ruby Dagher, an assistant professor in international development at the University of Ottawa, said Poilievre also has courted Canada's Muslim community with a mix of bread-and-butter policies and his party's stance on social conservative issues like trans rights, gender identity and LGBTQ rights.
She said his recent speeches on Israel have given pause to some Muslim and Arab Canadians who had been leaning toward the Conservative Party.
"I think for some it was a wake-up call," she said. "And we have seen some reactions. I have heard some people talking to me about it, saying, 'I cannot believe he said this.'"
Trudeau's Liberals have tried to walk a very narrow line on the war to avoid offending both Muslims and Jews. But the government's positions don't appear to satisfy either side.
WATCH: Pro-Palestinian protest forces cancellation of PM's event
Members of the Jewish community interviewed by CBC News said they feel the Liberal government hasn't taken a strong enough position in favour of Israel's right to defend itself. Many of them are also upset that most Liberal MPs voted for an NDP motion that originally called on the government to officially recognize Palestinian statehood, and ended up calling on Ottawa to work toward "the establishment of the State of Palestine as part of a negotiated two-state solution."
Muslim and Arab Canadians, meanwhile, have said the government has reacted too slowly and hasn't done enough to help Palestinian civilians dying in Gaza.
Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, said the conflict has presented a particularly awkward challenge for the Liberals.
"Where the NDP and the Conservative Party have staked out pretty unequivocal ground, the challenge is very much for the federal Liberals, where they are taking a stance that is trying to walk a line that is clearly not necessarily satisfying anybody," she said. "But they're alive to the fact that they have support bases within both communities."
Are Muslim voters migrating to the NDP?
While the numbers are not large enough yet to be reportable, Kurl said she's seeing hints in her polling that Muslim voters are leaning toward the New Democrats.
The NDP has condemned Hamas but also has called repeatedly in the House of Commons for Canada to do more to help Palestinians.
WATCH: NDP leader questions Trudeau on funding for UN aid agency
The position Poilievre has adopted on Israel and the war, meanwhile, could make it harder for Conservatives to win some ridings, she said.
"There's no path to victory for either major party unless you win the suburbs and the suburbs are home to significant portions of Canada's Muslim community," said Kurl.
"That's the big question — do the Conservatives feel like they can win without it?"
Steve Pinkus, vice-president of Mainstreet Research and a former Liberal Party organizer, estimates there are between six and eight ridings in Canada with significant Jewish populations and a dozen or more with significant Muslim populations.
While the biggest issues moving polling numbers are things like affordable housing, he said, the conflict in the Middle East has presented a challenge for the Liberal Party.
"Trudeau has tried ... to placate both [sides], and he's just failed," he said.
Pinkus said Poilievre's speech earlier this month at an Orthodox synagogue in Côte Saint-Luc, Que. — during which he blamed the Oct. 7 attacks on Iran — struck a chord with many Jewish Canadians. The Jewish community in the riding (Mount Royal, currently represented by Liberal MP Anthony Housefather) is large enough to have a significant influence over the outcome of the local contest.
"Poilievre, 1,400 people showed up to hear him [in Mount Royal] and he hit every note," Pinkus said. "The video of that speech has gone viral across Canada and into the States ... There's a real buzz about it."
Pinkus said one upcoming byelection to watch will be in former Liberal cabinet minister's Carolyn Bennett's riding of Toronto-St. Paul's, which has a significant number of Jewish voters. Bennett, who stepped down in January, won the riding in 2019 with 54 per cent of the vote and with 49.2 per cent in 2021.
Eta Yudin, vice-president Quebec with the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, was among those who showed up to hear Poilievre speak in Cote St. Luc. She said she liked what she heard.
Jewish community 'still reeling,' advocate says
"The messages that he shared that evening, it was a principled position that he took that really took the entirety of the conflict into context," said Yudin. "It was the same position that the Liberal government advanced at the outset.
"There's a clear impression that Prime Minister Trudeau has capitulated to the loud, toxic voices amongst those who support the genocidal vision of Hamas."
Yudin said the Jewish community "is still reeling" from the decision by all but three Liberal MPs to vote for an amended version of the NDP's motion on the conflict in the Middle East, and is alarmed by the rise in antisemitism in Canada.
"We're seeing hateful chants on the streets," she said. "We're seeing an explosion of antisemitism on our university campuses, groups trying to impose a toxic atmosphere and agenda under the guise of freedom of speech."
Yudin said it is too early to tell whether Poilievre's position on the conflict will sway Jewish votes in the next election.
Richard Robertson, Toronto-based director of research and advocacy for B'nai Brith Canada, said he thinks it will.
"I think that it's logical to suggest that the leader of the opposition, the leader of the Conservative Party, attending to a synagogue to affirm his support for the Jewish community and his commitment to combating antisemitism will have a positive effect on Jewish voters," he said.
Robertson said a number of the positions Poilievre took in his speech in Cote. St. Luc resonated with the Jewish community, including his call to ban Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) in Canada, his pledge to defund groups that promote antisemitism and his recognition of the Jewish people as being indigenous to the region.
"A politician ... unquestionably acknowledging Jewish indigeneity to the land of Israel in the way in which Mr. Poilievre, did, making reference to the thousands of years of continuity of Jewish prayer and Jewish inhabitation of the land of Israel, was a very seminal moment within his remarks and was of significance to the Jewish community," he said.
But Dagher pointed out that other peoples are also indigenous to the area around modern Israel.
"There are a lot of Palestinians who are Christians, for example, who are descendants from the time of Jesus Christ who still speak Aramaic, at least in their churches, and pray in Aramaic," she said. "And so, in that sense, they're also indigenous to the land."
Dagher, who worked with the Canadian International Development Agency when Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in power, predicts a Poilievre government would return Canada to the Harper government's policies on the Middle East, such as defunding UNRWA.
Poilievre's position on Iran is potentially dangerous, Dagher said.
"His focus on Iran right now and the blaming of Iran is not going to be helpful, and it's not going to help lower the tensions, and it's not going to help solve the problems," she said.
She said she's also concerned about Poilievre's pledge to defund groups that promote antisemitism.
"This is a really scary perspective because, as we've seen ... recently, any criticisms of the actions of the government of Israel [have] been deemed to be antisemitic," she said. "So we're not talking about criticisms of Jews. We're talking about the criticisms of the actions of the government of Israel [that have] been deemed to be antisemitic."
Nadia Hasan, an assistant professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies at York University who worked in the past as an adviser with the National Council of Canadian Muslims, said she was struck by how little there was in Poilievre's speech about the Palestinian death toll in Gaza and his position on the Israeli government's actions.
"It gave the government of Israel a blank cheque to do whatever they want, and that they would have the Canadian government's almost unfaltering loyalty no matter what they did," she said. "That's the message that I heard.
"It doesn't bode well for the ability of the Canadian government in the future if Pierre Poilievre was to come into power to stand for human rights when it came to the Israeli government."
Hasan said that while there has been some movement by the Liberals on the issue, many Muslims are disappointed by how long it took for the government to call for a ceasefire.
Hasan said that while the NDP has been "quite bold" in supporting many of the things that Palestinians and Muslims have been calling for, "politically, there is a lot of work to do."
Khan said he believes that while the NDP could pick up Muslim votes in the coming election, the war won't be the only thing influencing Muslim voters. With nearly two million Muslims in Canada, and with many of them concentrated in certain regions, the community's votes can make a difference, he said.
"Muslims have come to realize that we have to be very careful who we choose as our political friends," he said.