By Dan Laxer
The Suburban
Sonny Moroz, the Ensemble Montréal councillor for the Snowdon district, put forth a motion at the recent Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough council meeting, calling on Canada to seek the presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). The motion was supported by Darlington councillor Stephanie Valenzuela. The motion passed unanimously with one noted absence.
As reported in The Suburban last March, United Against Hate Canada (UAH) addressed a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney. With the IHRA plenary session in Jerusalem coming up on June 23, the letter asks Carney “to mandate our delegation to alert the plenary of Canada’s desire to seek the Presidency of IHRA for 2027 or 2028.”
IHRA is an intergovernmental organization with 35 Member Countries, including Canada, and eight Observer Countries. Its mandate is to strengthen, advance and promote Holocaust education, remembrance, and research, based on the 2000 Stockholm Declaration.
Marvin Rotrand of UAH says that having the presidency will give Canada “access to information, scholarship, tools that are effective in educating civil servants, law enforcement, decision makers about what is antisemitism, and how we can fight it.” The United Kingdom held the presidency in 2024, and has said said that it helped in developing its national strategy on antisemitism.
“We strongly believe,” the UAH letter reads, “that having Canada act as Chair will aid stakeholders in our country to significantly advance Holocaust remembrance, combat Holocaust denial and distortion while building effective tools to blunt the unprecedented wave of hate targeting Jews in Canada.”
The UAH letter is signed by 135 elected officials, academics, spiritual and community leaders. There were also letters of support from Rabbi Alan Bright of the Shaare Zedek Congregation, Kyle Matthews of the Montreal Institute for Global Security, and the Jewish Community Council.
Cote des Neiges councillor Magda Popeanu was not present for the second portion of the meeting and so could not vote on any of the motions put forth. “It was not an abstention,” Loyola councillor Despina Sourias said to The Suburban, explaining that Popeanu was called away to see to her mother, who is ill.
However, Popeanu’s absence was noted because she had indeed abstained in 2021, when the borough voted on the motion to accept the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
That definition played a part in getting the motion passed, as council agreed to support the motion if it made clear that criticism of Israel does not constitute antisemitism. It was unclear why council wanted the addition, given that it is already part of the IHRA definition. Council insisted on the clarification, Sourias said, because the definition was part of the motion. For his part, Moroz was willing to make changes “to find at least common language that we’re willing to support as a council.”
The IHRA definition holds that while “the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived of as a Jewish collectivity” is indeed considered antisemitic, “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”
After indicating that the definition has been adopted by more than 1,000 entities worldwide, the motion highlights the rise in antisemitic incidents in the Montreal region, “particularly in the Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough.”
The City of Montreal has refused to adopt the definition.
UAH is hoping that more municipalities and provinces adopt similar motions by the end of the month. There are already several municipalities that have. A request will also be sent to the Senate asking for its support. Rotrand says he is confident that Prime Minister Carney will be on board. n