Despite a backlash evocative of those who defended the Jim Crow US South, Green Party members recently voted in favor of a resolution calling on Ottawa to stop subsidizing racist land covenants. Next weekend the Greens will make a final decision on whether they support the principles underlying a half-century old Supreme Court of Canada decision outlawing discriminatory land-use policies.
Two months ago Green Party member Corey Levine put forward a resolution calling on the Party to pressure the Canada Revenue Agency to revoke the Jewish National Fund’s charitable status. The Independence Jewish Voices activist crafted a motion criticizing the JNF’s “discrimination against non-Jews in Israel through its bylaws which prohibit the lease or sale of its lands to non-Jews.”
In response to this exercise in party democracy, B’nai B’rith and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs asked their supporters to email Party leader Elizabeth May to condemn “anti-Semitism”. After thousands denounced the Green Party, the Jewish Defence League, a far right group banned in the US and Israel for a series of killings, said it would protest at the Party’s August convention in Ottawa.
Backlash aside, the Green’s JNF resolution affirms a principle enunciated by the Supreme Court 60 years ago. Into the 1950s restrictive land covenants in many exclusive neighbourhoods and communities across Canada made it impossible for Jews, Blacks, Chinese, Aboriginals and other…