Juno News - Did rampant antisemitism sway the Toronto—St. Paul’s byelection？

00:00:00.000 I wanted to take a bit of a different spin on this.

00:00:12.000 Obviously, the results of the Toronto St. Paul's by-election are well-known by now,

00:00:16.140 but there was Mobilizing Behind the Scenes, a campaign that even I had only peripherally been

00:00:22.320 made aware of closer to the end of it, and it was a campaign to advocate in the riding at a riding

00:00:27.400 level for Jews and allies of Jews to realize that, hey, anti-Semitism is a big problem, and you need

00:00:35.160 a political change to deal with that. It was a campaign called jewishally.ca, and it was the

00:00:43.720 brainchild of a gentleman who's been a guest on this show a couple of times, Andrew Kirsch, who's a

00:00:48.100 former CSIS intelligence officer, also author of the book I Was Never Here, which is a fantastic book,

00:00:55.040 and you should go back and look at my long-form interview with Andrew. I think it was a couple

00:00:58.640 of years back now when that book came out, and he had reached out to a long-time friend of mine,

00:01:04.400 Stephen Taylor, who is a long-time conservative activist as well and has experienced setting up

00:01:09.480 what are called third-party groups. These are groups that are not political parties,

00:01:14.180 but they're engaged and regulated and registered with Elections Canada to mobilize on issues. So

00:01:20.400 wanted to delve into exactly what this was, why it was important, and what it might mean for the

00:01:25.460 future with an election coming up in potentially 15 months or less. Andrew Kirsch and Stephen Taylor

00:01:31.760 join me now. Andrew, Stephen, thank you so much for coming on today. Good to talk.

00:01:36.380 Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

00:01:38.860 Now, I'll start with you, Andrew, because you and I were candidates for the provincial election in 2018

00:01:44.620 at the same time, and I would have said at the beginning of the election that I had a much greater

00:01:48.920 shot at getting elected than you because you were running in St. Paul's, which at the time was,

00:01:54.380 you know, I'm curious about your sort of sense of what your chances of winning were going in.

00:01:59.120 Of course, in the end, we both lost, so, you know, the joke is on me. But you've still very much stayed

00:02:04.260 involved in this, I think, and especially now that you're out of CSIS, you've got the ability to be a

00:02:10.500 lot more forceful and forthright about your political leanings, of course. But explain to me why you

00:02:16.200 wanted to get involved in this campaign. Well, I'm born and raised in Toronto St. Paul's. I live

00:02:22.440 in Toronto St. Paul's right now, raising my family here. So, and I ran in 2018. People said, you know,

00:02:28.020 why Toronto St. Paul's? Because of that kind of long shot. Well, that's where I live. That's where

00:02:33.920 I wanted to represent. So I'm very familiar with how challenging a riding that it is. I had to

00:02:41.180 obviously take a step back from involvement, formal involvement when we did this third party.

00:02:46.420 And really, I wanted to organize around an issue that was important to me that had

00:02:51.100 particular resonance in the riding. Toronto St. Paul's does have, I think, the fifth largest

00:02:56.760 Jewish population, a member of the Jewish community. And since October 7th, not just the

00:03:03.820 events of October 7th, really the response since then, there's been growing, the Jewish community's

00:03:09.680 been upset, disappointed by the response of the liberal government to rising antisemitism. I say

00:03:17.240 that the Jewish community has diverse views on Israel, on the conduct of the current conflict,

00:03:23.140 but we're very united in the concern about antisemitism, that there are protests coming

00:03:28.480 through our neighborhood, that our Jewish day schools and synagogues are being shot at and firebombed.

00:03:33.500 And so I kind of want to take a step back from the campaign to start this, to think of what a way to

00:03:40.760 raise awareness of this issue in a riding where it was uniquely affected by it and had an opportunity

00:03:47.660 in the by-election to raise awareness of it. And of course, this campaign takes the form of what's

00:03:55.080 called Jewish Ally, the website's still online, jewishally.ca. How did you get involved, Stephen?

00:04:01.220 Well, Andrew reached out in January and said, look, he wanted to obviously react to this rising

00:04:10.480 antisemitism that, you know, we've all seen. And again, he, you know, he mentioned the violence

00:04:16.480 in the community. And, you know, by-election is a perfect time to register your distaste with how

00:04:25.640 things are going and how the government is handling these affairs and its reaction to the rising

00:04:31.740 antisemitism and violence against the Jewish community. So he reached out and I said, let's

00:04:37.440 build something that's, first of all, positive. It kind of reaffirms some hope within the community and

00:04:47.020 its friends. So I pitched the idea jewishally.ca as a way to sort of rally the Jewish community and its

00:04:58.920 allies. So you don't necessarily have to be Jewish to support it, but it is especially, you know, to 0.67

00:05:05.480 support the Jewish community and allow its allies a venue to do so.

00:05:09.780 So I'll go back to you on this, Andrew. I mean, your experience here is obviously based on you

00:05:16.280 being very committed to Toronto St. Paul's. Is there an extrapolation that you could do or plan

00:05:22.340 to do with this beyond? Because while not every riding is going to have the Jewish population of

00:05:26.800 Toronto St. Paul's, the antisemitism issue is still pervasive very much across the country.

00:05:31.980 Absolutely. You know, I think that the community was very, you know, very upset, very mobilized by

00:05:40.940 what we were seeing on our streets. And I think, you know, not to be overly cynical, but, you know,

00:05:47.220 the Jewish community is only a large community in a small number of ridings and that there may have

00:05:51.540 been a political calculation done by the government that, well, if we're very forceful in support of

00:05:56.420 Israel, then maybe there are other ridings that we will upset, where, you know, there are different

00:06:02.640 communities who react differently. And so that's why I felt it was important for our community to

00:06:08.100 have a voice and to be able to speak out about the issues that are important to us, where, you know,

00:06:14.500 unfortunately, just by numbers that might not always have the opportunity or might not always

00:06:19.060 resonate or may not always find an audience. So we need to be a little stronger together.

00:06:24.540 Absolutely. Do I think that there, unfortunately, is a growing need for this, not less? And how that,

00:06:30.740 you know, goes going forward, I'm not sure. But this issue still remains that we are seeing rising

00:06:37.420 antisemitism. We are seeing on our streets, we can debate the criminal code definitions of hate,

00:06:43.820 but intimidation of this community, of my community, of our community, in our neighborhoods. It seems like

00:06:49.620 daily, if not at least weekly, these incidents are happening. So until we see change, we're gonna need

00:06:56.080 all the voices out there calling for it. Now, this isn't just, you know, a website with, you know,

00:07:01.820 some lofty goals. This was actually a campaign and third party advertising can sometimes get a bit of

00:07:08.120 a bad rap, but it's a part of the democratic process. And there are a bunch of rules governing

00:07:11.820 how it's supposed to go about. So I'll go to you, Stephen, because I know you've been in the

00:07:15.520 trenches on a lot of political fights over the years. What were you tactically doing with this?

00:07:20.100 And how do you think that you actually did move the needle in the riding?

00:07:24.840 Yeah, well, being a by-election, we were quite limited by Elections Canada and sort of the scope

00:07:29.840 of what we could do. I mean, if you're running a federal campaign, third parties have much larger

00:07:36.080 budgets that they're allowed to spend. But I think in this by-election, Elections Canada had us at a cap

00:07:42.280 of about just over $5,000. And so we wanted to make sure that every dollar that we spent

00:07:48.920 on advertising in the campaign was most effective. So we targeted, it was the first local election

00:07:59.260 campaign where when I targeted ads, I targeted less than the whole riding geographically. So

00:08:04.600 targeted basically the blocks with high Jewish population to remind them of the failures of the 1.00

00:08:16.000 Trudeau government with respect to addressing the concerns of the community. And we focused all of

00:08:23.160 our resources essentially in that area. And, you know, while the cost to reach such a small area might

00:08:30.780 have been a little higher, we think that, you know, the dollars spent on advertising to that very

00:08:36.160 small. You talk about microcasting, you know, microcasting to a few blocks for GOTV is intense

00:08:44.840 when it comes to online digital advertising. And were you, with your targeting efforts, and I know

00:08:51.620 that Facebook and other platforms have changed what you can do over the years, but were you trying to

00:08:56.640 target people you believed were Jews in St. Paul's? Or were you just targeting anyone in that riding,

00:09:01.660 knowing that it was going to have a disproportionately larger group of Jewish voters than other parts of

00:09:06.520 the country might? No, there was no demographic targeting, it was geographic targeting. So we really

00:09:11.520 just kind of dropped a pin on the map and said, you know, higher likelihood that, you know, Jewish

00:09:18.400 individuals and Jewish families live here. So we wanted to get them out to vote, because we knew that

00:09:25.680 that would register quite a message and a verdict against the government with respect to its dealings

00:09:32.860 since the events of October 7th. Yeah. And if I can add kind of, you know, Jewish allies, it's not, 0.83

00:09:39.240 you don't have to be Jewish. And we were saying that the Jewish community was not feeling safe.

00:09:44.080 And, you know, our message was no safe seats until the Jewish community feels safe. Your neighbors are

00:09:48.720 not okay. Your Jewish friends are not okay. And this is a way to show some support for the community. 0.99

00:09:52.740 And I also want to say, as a former candidate, all credit should go to Don Stewart and his team and

00:09:59.880 the amazing, incredible work that they did by election to get turned out and all those things.

00:10:04.800 You know, we were doing our kind of separate thing. I don't want to take anything away from

00:10:08.860 all they did. But just to say that what motivated kind of me and us, and ultimately, I think a lot of

00:10:15.960 people in the riding was this issue. And we felt that by shining a light on it and kind of raising

00:10:21.580 awareness of the by-election. You know, when people, by-elections come and go, by-elections in the

00:10:25.860 summer, a big concern that people wouldn't know about it, that we could raise some awareness and say,

00:10:31.100 this is an issue that's important to you, passionate to you, to support for your neighbors and the

00:10:35.180 community. This is an opportunity to raise that concern and to vote accordingly. And, you know,

00:10:42.800 we'll see what comes back. But I hope, I hope we had an impact.

00:10:49.420 Andrew, you mentioned that could this campaign essentially extend beyond this election in sort

00:10:56.320 of other facets? Well, we're still taking signups on the website. So if you want to go to

00:11:00.940 jewishally.ca and sign up and sort of be a member of our movement, please go ahead. And again, it's for

00:11:08.540 the Jewish community and their allies. So we're casting a large net to essentially put out a

00:11:15.440 verdict against, you know, not just the Trudeau government, but any sort of government's,

00:11:20.820 you know, failures to address the concerns of the Jewish community.

00:11:25.120 Getting aside from the political dimension of this for a moment, I wanted to ask you,

00:11:29.040 Andrew, just on a personal note, as a, you know, as a Jew in Toronto, St. Paul's, as a Jew in Canada

00:11:34.060 right now, you have seen antisemitism. And I mean, in your past life working with CSIS,

00:11:40.260 I know you had to sit down and talk to people that would have, if they knew your background,

00:11:45.680 would have hated you for it. And you talk about that in your book. I think it was one case in

00:11:49.500 particular. So you're aware of this, but do you feel that pre-October 7th others were as well? Or do

00:11:56.880 you think that it was something that was only really, or has only really been reckoned with in a

00:12:01.340 substantive way in the last nine months? I have had a unique view and insight into the threats

00:12:09.280 that we face, the Jewish community faces, you know, here and abroad, you know, in my role of

00:12:14.480 CSIS, sitting down with folks investigating threats to the Jewish community or threats to Canada that

00:12:19.460 arise because of, or antisemitism being a part of that threat landscape. So yeah, I've absolutely seen

00:12:26.080 it upfront in a way that many haven't. I think the events of October 7th were very, what the word is,

00:12:33.180 I don't want to say clarifying, but we saw a horrific attack, the worst attack against Jews

00:12:37.200 since the Holocaust. And the response online was protests against Israel and protests against the

00:12:44.460 Jewish community and, you know, social media, you know, calling, calling things out. And I think 1.00

00:12:49.460 the community was surprised, but aghast or just, you know, the reaction and then the lack of support

00:12:55.260 that, that, that came forward to support the Jewish community from our leaders and people who we look

00:13:00.420 to for that support and defense, I think was also kind of shocking to many because of my background.

00:13:06.560 And as I said, I sent my kids to Jewish day school. If you remember very early on, there was the, 1.00

00:13:10.420 there was the, uh, the day of rage that they, they want to organize and people were very concerned.

00:13:15.340 And I got, I get phone calls from parents saying, should I send my kids to school? I'm worried

00:13:19.240 about sending my kids to school. Chat was just outside the neighborhood. Um, you know,

00:13:23.500 they are having bomb threats. They've been evacuated a few times. And so I said, because of my

00:13:28.840 background, uh, people call me up and ask me for advice. What do I do with my home? Do I take down

00:13:33.340 my mezuzah? What are we going to do about these protests and the funding that's, that's coming in,

00:13:38.100 that's supporting these things. Many phone calls I'm on where the people on the other end are crying

00:13:42.940 and they just say, I don't feel safe. I'm not okay. And I don't know what to do. Um, and, and

00:13:49.520 as I said, uh, that feeling is out there. If people do not understand or, um, aren't aware or the depths

00:13:57.440 of it, I'm telling you, your Jewish community is not okay. Um, and if this can be a wake up call, 1.00

00:14:02.060 uh, for more support, geez, I hope, I hope, uh, that's what it is and that we will, we will see it

00:14:08.060 because I'll tell you, it is not politically, like it's not a right, left center, uh, thing.

00:14:15.020 There are many people in Toronto, St. Paul's will bear that out, um, on the left who also feel

00:14:20.640 abandoned by, by their leaders. So yeah, I think October 7th was a wake up call. I think the

00:14:25.460 protests we've seen since is a wake up call. And the fact that we're looking around saying, well,

00:14:31.160 is every, you know, is this okay with everybody? Like, why are we not, why is this not being condemned?

00:14:36.520 Why are people that I thought were my friends and neighbors kind of supporting it? Um, that has

00:14:43.480 been a wake up call, I think, to many. So I have to put you both on the spot here as we close.

00:14:49.480 Without jewishally.ca, does Don Stewart still win?

00:14:56.380 Yeah, look, I, I think so. I don't know. Like, I don't know. Um,

00:15:01.660 It's a narrow race. It's, it's, it's in a narrow race. I think anything, anything can count. So

00:15:06.760 it's, it is very tough. And, and see, I don't, Stephen will kill me in his, you know,

00:15:10.540 he's got to say, yeah, yeah. I know Stephen's just like salivating.

00:15:15.120 Let me just rescue Andrew here for a second. Um, I've been a candidate and they had a lot,

00:15:21.620 hard fought. He was out there, knock on doors in the sun. You know, the team is out working hard,

00:15:27.060 putting everything I have into it. They deserve all the credit in the world. Um, so this is what

00:15:32.280 I'll say. And I'll turn it over. If we were able to support them in any way, raise awareness for what

00:15:36.200 they were doing. Uh, um, I hope that we did that. Um, and also for, for this effect of liberal voters,

00:15:42.760 um, but I don't want to take any credit away from the candidate having been one by having been one

00:15:46.660 myself. Yeah. Well, let's just say the, the right, well, the, the answer is that every vote counts

00:15:53.440 and every effort in an election counts. And, um, so, uh, whether we were able to nudge, uh, people

00:16:02.060 in one direction or the other, um, I think we did so. And I think that, um, yeah, that certainly had

00:16:09.080 an effect, you know, might've actually tipped, uh, some liberal voters to vote NDP, uh, or discuss,

00:16:15.360 uh, if they were somehow misinformed, uh, as to the, what they, what the, what the right answer was.

00:16:19.980 So, yeah. Um, no, I, I do think that like our effort was certainly, um, focused and pronounced.

00:16:27.460 And I think that, uh, yeah, every effort in an election counts, whether you're knocking on doors

00:16:32.320 or you're handing out literature or you're making phone calls or, um, you're, you're running ads.

00:16:40.000 And I will fully concede with a semi-apology to Andrew and Steven that it's a very unfair question

00:16:45.720 because the whole point of an election is that you do everything for your 36 days, your 40 days,

00:16:51.040 your 60 days, and you really don't know what worked and what didn't. Uh, you know, I, I think

00:16:55.560 it's Tony Clement that has a story about, you know, canvassing this one part of the riding that was

00:17:00.600 very difficult to get to, and it was hilly and no one ever canvassed there. And, you know, he won by

00:17:05.900 like, you know, 12 votes or something like that. And, you know, that that's the story and it's a great

00:17:10.100 story. And, you know, maybe it was that canvas that did it, or maybe it was something else that did it.

00:17:14.040 But I think you're right, Steven, that there are a lot of different inputs. There are different

00:17:17.300 things that alert people. There are different things that motivate people and your, your campaign,

00:17:21.660 I think you can both agree was definitely a part of that. It was a part of what voters in that

00:17:25.400 riding were being hit with on a, on any given day. Yeah. Well, I'll just, uh, give, give some,

00:17:30.440 uh, advertising facts on sort of what we were able to do. We, we targeted a very limited, uh, number of

00:17:36.120 people. As I mentioned earlier, we did reach, uh, 32,000 people in the riding, uh, over five times

00:17:43.920 during the, um, the advanced polling period and, uh, the, uh, you know, the day or two before

00:17:53.080 election day. So, um, I mean, those metrics, uh, are indisputable. We, we did reach that many

00:17:59.560 people with a message that said, send Trudeau a message that he's failed the Jewish community

00:18:04.880 and that, uh, you won't be silent. And, and I'll just, I'll give you, uh, the last word on,

00:18:12.420 on this, Andrew, just because you're obviously the brainchild of this as Steven was, was very

00:18:17.060 gracious to point out as well when he and I were chatting about this before, but, uh, what, what

00:18:21.400 would you like to see as the next step, not just for, for this campaign, but for others that are

00:18:25.840 watching this that might be saying, yeah, you know, I, I could make a difference without

00:18:29.040 necessarily being a candidate myself. Yeah. I, like, I think the most impressive thing is

00:18:34.880 that people turned out and it's a by-election where everybody was thinking we're going to see

00:18:38.120 20% and low vote voter turnout. And we saw what 40, 44% of my election June. Right. And I think

00:18:45.560 that was, um, so I hope we raised some awareness about what was going on. Although that my, my goodness,

00:18:51.000 the, the by-election ended up getting a lot of coverage, uh, before and before and during

00:18:54.240 and after, um, but yet get involved like, uh, this is a democracy. It's important. Uh, we could

00:19:00.280 talk foreign interference and, and, and strengthening democracy other time, but this is an opportunity

00:19:05.020 to, for us and for our, for our community to, to have a very unique opportunity to have an

00:19:10.280 outsized impact on, um, the conversation on a possible result in a national campaign. Many

00:19:17.680 issues are able to, you know, to, to, to take over. You don't know which way they're going

00:19:21.780 to go. Well, Toronto St. Paul's, we want to raise this one and hopefully it's on, uh, the agenda

00:19:26.660 and that the, the government and other political parties are all taking this concerns, um, to heart

00:19:31.920 and will act appropriately, um, to say, okay, well, maybe we haven't done enough. Maybe we need to do

00:19:37.220 more. Maybe the, the, the people need more support. So I hope that's what comes of it. Um, and yeah,

00:19:43.620 it's, it's been interesting to see kind of first time for me to try, uh, do this and Stephen,

00:19:47.800 obviously, and thank you for his, for support. I thank everybody, um, for their support. You

00:19:52.680 know, it's a Jewish, uh, ally, it's Jews and Jewish allies and people who are concerned and

00:19:58.360 want to support the community. So thank you. Uh, thank you all for your support.

00:20:03.320 Andrew Kirsch, Stephen Taylor, the, uh, men behind jewishally.ca and also unrelated to this,

00:20:09.480 uh, you should definitely check out Andrew's book. I was never here a great glimpse into, uh,

00:20:14.040 uh, the life of a CSIS intelligence officer. Very, it's the good kind of Canadian content

00:20:19.000 because there are lots of like American spy stories. And I think you're like the first,

00:20:22.360 uh, Canadian spy story, uh, certainly writing it in that way. So, uh, Andrew, Stephen, well done on

00:20:27.640 this campaign and good to talk to you both. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Thank you.

00:20:32.200 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton show. Support the program by donating to true north

00:20:36.760 at www.tnc.news.

00:20:44.040 www.tnc.news.com

Juno News - July 01, 2024

Did rampant antisemitism sway the Toronto—St. Paul’s byelection？

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