Irwin Cotler suggested Anthony Housefather leave Liberals, sit as independent

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OTTAWA — Irwin Cotler, the former Liberal cabinet minister and former MP for Mount Royal, says he recommended his successor Anthony Housefather resign from his party’s caucus and sit as an Independent this spring as he prepares to face a “formidable” Conservative opponent next election.

Cotler, a longtime Liberal stalwart, said in an interview he wholeheartedly supports Housefather in the brewing battle between Liberals and Conservatives for the central Montreal riding that Cotler represented from 1999 to 2015. But he thinks Housefather is in for a rough ride in the next election due to growing anger from the riding’s large Jewish population towards the governing Liberals, particularly their positions on Israel and antisemitism since the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas.

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The riding has elected Liberals — including former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau — since 1940.

But Cotler said that Mount Royal is shaping up to be as close a race in the next election as was the recent contest in Toronto—St Paul’s, the former Liberal stronghold in central Toronto that flipped to the Conservatives in a late June byelection after a tightly fought race.

“Anthony Housefather… is up against a formidable Conservative candidate. So, it’s a strong race,” Cotler said, although he said he still expects his Liberal successor to win.

The Conservative candidate is Neil Oberman, a lawyer who filed an injunction on behalf of McGill University students against an anti-Israel encampment on campus this spring.

The former Liberal justice minister under then prime minister Paul Martin believes Housefather has been an “exemplary MP” and “superb” for the riding. But he said he understands “why there is anger towards the Liberals” in the riding, which has a Jewish population representing about 30 per cent of Mount Royal. The latest polling for the riding at aggregator 338Canada.com shows the Liberals with a nine-point lead over the Conservatives in Mount Royal. In the 2021 election, Housefather’s margin of victory over the Conservatives was 33 per cent.

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“I don’t think that (Housefather) should be punished because of the desire to punish the Liberal party, which was part of the dynamic in Toronto—St Paul’s,” he said.

“I understand why there is anger towards the Liberals, but I don’t think he should end up being victimized for it. So, I’ll still be supporting him,” he added.

In March, Housefather was one of three Liberal MPs to vote against an ultimately watered-down NDP motion that called for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas as well as for the latter to lay down its arms. The original text called on the government to unilaterally recognize Palestinian statehood, but that was softened after 11th-hour negotiations with the Liberals, who mostly supported the motion. The final text of the non-binding motion also called for an arms embargo on Israel.

Housefather had said his party’s negotiations toward supporting the NDP motion had left him and other pro-Israel MPs feeling “isolated.” After the motion was passed, he seriously considering crossing the floor and discussed it with well over a dozen people across the political spectrum, including multiple Conservatives.

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He ultimately decided to stay on with the Liberals despite admitting his party’s adoption of the March motion angered him and “most Jewish Canadians” he’d spoken to. In July, he was appointed the government’s special adviser on Jewish community relations and antisemitism.

Cotler told National Post he was one of the people Housefather consulted with, and he advised the MP against crossing the floor to the Conservatives. Housefather declined to provide comment for this story.

Cotler said he recommended instead that Housefather leave the Liberal caucus and sit as an Independent, something the Liberal MP resisted.

“As a matter of principle, I don’t believe in floor-crossing,” Cotler told National Post, adding that he would not have been able to continue supporting Housefather publicly had he gone to the Conservatives.

“Anthony effectively believed not that he was leaving the Liberal party, but the Liberal party had left him. So, I said ‘make a statement, sit as an Independent’,” Cotler said.

He recounted that Housefather was concerned that he’d have “no influence as an Independent,” to which Cotler said he responded that Housefather would probably have just as much influence as an Independent MP as he does as a backbencher in a minority Liberal government.

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Cotler says Housefather ultimately made “the right decision” by staying with the Liberals.

But he expects the upcoming election will be as challenging for the Liberals and Housefather as was the 2011 election. That year, Cotler was only one of five Liberal MPs elected in Quebec and the Conservatives won a majority government.

“I think we’re going to see a reduction in the number of Liberals. We’re going to see a reduction, maybe even a dramatic one, in Anthony’s plurality, but I still think he will win,” he said.

Cotler, who is also the co-chair of the Canadian section of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) which hosted an international conference in Taiwan this week, also had warnings to offer over the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) increasing transnational repression against regime critics.

On Sunday, The Associated Press reported that IPAC members from six countries (not including Canada) said that Chinese diplomats had pressured them via text message and email to avoid attending the conference in Taiwan.

China has increasingly targeted IPAC members because the organization is critical of the CCP and the threat the organization says China poses to “rules-based and human rights systems.”

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Cotler said that he has not been informed of any recent attempts to discourage Canadian IPAC members from attending the conference in Taiwan, likely because none had planned to do so.

But the international chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights said the recent revelations are yet another “case study” in Chinese foreign interference and transnational repression.

Canadian IPAC members, which include MPs of all political stripes as well as four senators and Cotler, were the targets of an attempted cyberattack by a Chinese-backed group in 2021. The attacks were thwarted but MPs were controversially only advised about the incident in 2024.

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

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