PFEX: New update: CPCCA report delayed until Fall 2010

[Mary-Jo Nadeau]

Dear PFEX,

 

Just fyi ... see below for a message posted on the Globe blog yesterday.

 

Basically, the Canadian Parliamentary Committee to Combat Anti-Semitism appears to

be delaying the release of their report until the Fall. As decided at the last PFEX meeting, we

will set a next meeting date when we hear news of the report's release.  Given this, it looks like we

can set a meeting for mid- to late- September.  Stay tuned for proposed dates!

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/why-were-census-obsessed/article1649356/

 

2. Snail's pace. A controversial report of a committee of MPs who have been studying anti-Semitism in Canada was supposed to have been completed in May. But Mario Silva, the Liberal who is the vice chairman of the committee (Conservative Scott Reid is the chair) says it will likely be several more months before it’s released.

“For all intents and purposes, it’s pretty much done,” Mr. Silva told The Globe this week.

But it has to be properly formatted, he said. And Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, who provided much of the impetus for the investigation, is currently reviewing one section.

The report should be completed in a week or two, Mr. Silva said. Then it must be sent to all of the committee members. “I would say we are a couple of months away from making it public.”

The panel is not an official committee of Parliament. Rather, it is an independent and multi-party group of politicians who are concerned about hate crimes directed at members of the Jewish faith.

It arose out a conference called the Inter-parliamentary Committee for Combating Anti-Semitism that was held in London in February of last year. Eleven Canadian MPs of different stripes attended that meeting and returned with a resolve to create a coalition against anti-Semitism in this country.

Primarily, the committee is looking at what has been termed the “new anti-Semitism” which is defined, in part, as excessive criticism of the state of Israel – comparing Israel’s actions to Apartheid or those of Nazi Germany, for instance.

There are a number of groups that take issue with that definition. And many of them argue that the committee did not permit them to testify at its hearings.

The Bloc Quebecois quit the committee in March saying it was biased and partisan. MP Luc Desnoyers, one of the two Bloc members who sat on the committee, said his party was concerned about "the refusal of the steering committee to hear groups with opposing viewpoints."

But those MPs who remain on the committee insist that, whether or not groups were permitted to testify, their submissions will be taken into account in the final report and it will be a fair reflection of what has been learned.

The committee also plans to host the next international conference of parliamentarians on anti-Semitism in Ottawa in November.

So, the plans for the release of the committee’s report have been changed, Mr. Silva said. “It was supposed to be launched in the summer for a government response for the conference, [and instead] it is going to be launched just before the conference.”