solidly pro-Israel have begun to say to me, What do we do? How do we deal with this? ” Public opinion research conducted in early 2024 by the University of Toronto’s Robert Brym confirms Farber’s as- sessment. “On the whole,” his survey found, “Canadian Jews have experienced a reduction in their emotional at- tachment to Israel because of the Israel-Hamas war and the rightward drift of Israeli government policy.” For a party that has sought to appeal to Jewish Canadians since Harper was prime minister, that drift seems like a problem.
I THINK IT’S A BIG COMPONENT OF WHAT WE’RE MISSING IN THIS COUNTRY: THE FREEDOM TO PRACTISE YOUR RELIGION WHILE STILL INTEGRATING INTO CANADIAN SOCIETY.
N A FRIDAY IN LATE SEPTEMBER, I met Lantsman for lunch at the Bagel World near her constituency office in Thornhill. In a place like this, she’s treat- ed like a celebrity, and has to make numerous stops at tables as we’re shown to a quieter spot in the back. A waiter comes up and, evidently continuing an
earlier conversation from another day, fills her in on his son’s decision to go to Western University’s Ivey Business School. “I didn’t stage that,” she says, a bit sheepishly, after he leaves, and then adds, “I wish I had gone away to university.” When I canvassed various Ottawa watchers about where she fits into the party that Pierre Poilievre built, I heard a range of theories: that she’s a kind of foil to Poil- ievre and his Nixonian resentments, or that her political role is to show that the Conservatives are actually more in- clusive. “She’s one of their most effective communicators,” says Scott Reid. “Look, she can be acidic sometimes in her partisan focus. Arguably, that’s part of the job [and] it is almost inevitably part of the current political milieu, par- ticularly for Conservatives. But she still manages to capture some of that ‘happy warrior’ [persona]. You know it, the cameras click off, the microphones go down, and a smile comes to her face.” He says she reminds him of politicians like Brian Mulroney or John Baird — politicians who could, as the saying goes, disagree without being disagreeable. In an age of virtually unprecedented polarization — a time when many politicians and their social media signal boosters actively encourage voters to see politics as a war rather than a contest of ideas — the happy warrior skill set seems like a necessary corrective, particularly for a party that’s led by a guy who was punished at the polls partly for his contemptuous demeanour. I asked Lantsman, who was picking through a plate of pumpernickel bagel with tuna salad on the side, about this matter of their sharply contrasting political personas. “I think he’s good for the country,” she said of Poilievre. “I think he’s good particularly for our party.” “You’re very different politicians,” I replied. “It’s really striking.” “I like people,” Lantsman responded with a shrug. But then she quickly pivoted to perhaps safer ground: “I like the fact that you can come from nowhere in this country [and end up in Parliament]. I don’t think that’s ever lost on me.”
the only non-government MPs who’s had that level of security, although many Liberal MPs were on the receiving end of relentless abuse and harassment from convoy anti-vax activists. While the home she shares with her wife in Toronto has not been targeted, Lantsman says she’s been on the receiving end of many threats, although she won’t dis- close the details. She contends that she gets targeted more by the left than the right, but acknowledges that antisemitism today “ex- ists right across the spectrum.” Lantsman’s position on Israel, says David Cooper, senior lobbyist for the Centre for
Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), “is obviously different from some of her Jewish counterparts in the Liberal party.” The Tories’ stance, he continues, echoing a comment she made to me in our interview, “is [that] we need to be enforcing the existing [hate] laws, not putting new legis- lation forward.” Bernie Farber, founding chair of the Canadian Anti- Hate Network, points out that among many Jews, Lants- man’s and the Conservatives’ take on Israel and the war on Gaza resonates. But, he adds, “public opinion and Jewish public opinion is, if it’s not turning away, it’s certainly turn- ing to questioning. People that I once knew that were very
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