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The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, August 16,1984 - Page 5
Election Update
Midroney^^^^^w mayor
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JANICE ARNOLD
MONTREAL —
Gerry Weiner, Progressive Conservative candidate for Dollard, is hoping his deep roots in the area and record of community involvement will overcome the 32,000-vote plurality his Liberal opponent Louis Desmarais gariiered in the 1980 general election.
Sidney Ingerman, a McGill eGonomies professor, is the NDP candidate in Dollard.
Weiner has worked for 34 consecutive years in the area, beginning as a stockroom boy in a drugstore. Today he is a pharmaicist, a partner in five pharmacies (four in the riding) and mayor of Dollard DesOrmjeaux.
Weiner says he was surprised when Caspar Bloom of the PC search committee approached him last December to run for the party. After all, Weiner has been arid
: still is an active member of the Quebec Liberal
■,: Party.
PC Leader Brian Mul-roney personally couiied Weiner during a V/i-hour meeting the two had in Montreal and last month he introduced the affable 51 -year-old mayor, as one of his "star" candidates in Quebec.
Weiner is no token Tory on the ticket; he is campaigning hard firom
; door to door and the Dollard PC Association has grown from 38 to over 3^000 members, many of whom he signed up personally. AH, he emphasized, live within the riding.
Among the approximately 13% Jews in the riding —: which takes in DDO, St. Laurent, Rox-boro and Eastern Pier-refonds — Weiner says he senses a disaffection with the Liberal government over its Middle East policy. With press clippings and other documeritation at the ready, Weiner claims a
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PAUL LUNGEN
RED DEER, Alta. —
Former Eckville mayor and schoolteacher Jim Keegstra is again seeking: public office. But this tinie he's running in the Sept. 4 federal election as the Social Credit candidate in the Alberta riding of Red Deer.
Keegstra, the former high school teacher, who is awaiting trial for allegedly promoting hatred of Jews, filed nomination papers just before the deadline expired last week.
Socred riding association president Cecil Speirs stated"I'glad we got a Social Credit candidate and I'm not unhappy it is Jim Keegstra, " according to Alberta sources.
Keegstra will be trying to unsekt Gordon Towers, the Progressive Conservative candidate who has held the riding since 1972. That was also the first time Keegstra sought election to Parliament:
In that election he attracted 3,686 votes, behind the New Democrats and the Liberals.and well back of Toweris, who won with20,9l9votes.
make his theories of a Jewish conspiracy an issue unless he brings it up first.
Joining Keegstra as a Socried candidate (also by acclamation) in We-taskiwin, to the north of Red Deer, is Jim Green. Green is said to be affiliated with the Christian Defense League, an organization that supports Keegstra's views (CJN Feb. 2), and he works for Keegstra in his garage.
Sources indicate some members of the CDL are also affiliated with the Confederation of Regions, a party which advocates a lar-ger Western voice in the federal government.
The COR has nominated a candidate in Red Deer as \yell. Roger Langrick, who ran in the riding for the Socreds in 1979, will make it a 5-manrace.
The founder and leader of the COR is Elmer Knutson, a millionaire Edmonton tractor parts dealer who founded the separatist Western Canada Concept as a provincial party.
tra ran again in 1974, and he again finished a distant fourth with only 2,673 votes to Towers'22,251..
In 1980 Speirs represented the Socreds, and he received only 1,203 talliesTo towers' 31,758.
Sources in Alberta indicate none of the other candidates are taking Keegstra's candidacy seriously. They indicated they wouldn't
Gerry Webier
Jim Keegstra
deterioration in Liberal support for Israel over the past 10 years. •
"There has undoubtedly been a^deterioration in Cani^-lsrael rela-tionsr-1n recent years^ Liberal policy makers have consistently nieddled in the Arab-Israel dispute by issuing dictates to Israel as to how it should conduct its relations with the Arab states." said Weiner.
Instead of leaving the conflict to the parties involved to resolve, Canada, "under Liberal stewardship, has to a greater and -greater extent moved towards the Arab point of view, accusing Israel of exacerbating the conflict while keeping silent on Arab belligerency and reject tionism."
Shocked byPLO
invitation
Liberal governnients have given increasing "support and legitimacy" to Palestinian rights claims and have not concealed their dis-tates for Israeli leaders and their policies, using such descriptive terms as "hard line''and "intransigent," according to Weiner.
Weiner visited Israel tvvice in the past year as well as Egypt.
The invitation of a PLO spokesman to speak before the^Senate this year was an affiont to fair-m in d e d C a n a d i an s, Weiner said,
He was in Israel at that time and saw first-hand the shock felt throughout the country.
Mulroney would never have allowed a PLO representative to have been given that kind of forum i Weiner feels, noting that the Tory leader immediately sent a telegram of protest over the Terzi invitation, even though he was holidaying outside the country.
Weiner calls Mulroney "a friend of our people,'' someone with
whom the Jewish community can be comfortable. "He has not been aft-aid to state his support for Israef even though Jews represent
less than 2% of the electorate."
VVeiner is also outspoken in his defence of multiculturalism — a potentially big issue in a riding where one-third of the people is of ethnic origin. Weiner says there are 39 different ethnic groups in St. Laurentand 23 in DDO.
D e spite a d y a n c e s ^ made, Weiner believes true equality of opportunity does not yet exist in this country. " 1 grew up in the inner city, in the old Jewish district and went to Baron Byng
High School. 1 grew up with prejudice; I knew I couldn't get into McGill unless I had higher marks; 1 knew there were other places I could never get into."
Weiner supports affirmative action pro-grams''and says incentives should be offered to businesses to implement them. The pubHc sector, he said, should set an example by making
"significant high-level appointments in all agencies" of minority members. ■
Weiner and his wife Judith, a travel agent, have livediin DDO since 1965. They have a daughter Roberta, a graduate law student from the University of Sherbrooke, and a son Mark, a graduate of College Brebeuf, who is studying at the University of Ottawa.
Weiner was founding president of Temple Rodeph Shalom [now Congregation Rodeph Shalom] in DDO and has been a member for 30 years of the B'nai B'rith University Lodge. He was elected mayor of DDO in November, 1982 by acclamation, after being a councilor for four years.
About 15% of the city's 40,000 residents is Jewish.
He still works behind the counter of one of his pharmacies, despite his
duties as mayor and the demands of campaign-wig.
Weiner attributes his interest in public affairs to the strong sense of community responsibility that is basic to Jur daism.
His platform includes a review of the old age pension, opposition to Medicare user fees, construction of more cooperative housing, help for small businessmen and homeowners who, like himself, are suffering from high interest rates, retraining of the unemployed and making government more accessible and accountable, as he believes he was in DDO.
Weine'r's determination to end the Liberal hold on Dollard has been given some credence by the fact that four persons, including Councilor Rick Leckner, have stated their intention to seek the DDO mayoralty should Weiner win.
Desmarah cm't see so^
MONTREAL —
Incumbent Dollard Liberal MP Louis Desmarais says a tour of the West Bank with Arab leaders last year left him with the impression that the Middle East conflict is * 'a very serious problem, and I don't know how they are going to solve it."
Desmarais and Robert Corbett, a Progressive Conservative MP from New Brunswick, spent a few days on the West Bank, visiting the UN refugee camps and Jerusalem in the spring of 1983. Corbett was chairman of the Canada-Arab World Parliamentary Group.
The two MPs had earlier been in Baghdad as observers to a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, a worldwide organization of members of parliaments in over 80 countries.
Westmount Liberal member of the Quebec National Assembly Richard French, who met up by chance with Desmarais and Corbett in Amman, Jordan while on a Canadian Professors for Peace in the Middle East tour, told The CJN the Canadian MPs' visit was reported in the English-language Jordanian newspaper.
Desmarais, brother of Paul Desmarais, the head of Power Corp., was first elected in Dolv lard in 1979. A chartered accountant by profession, he was chairman of Canada Steamship Lines from 1970-77, and for the next two years was president of the Council for Canadian Unity.
During his years in Parliament his responsi-
bilities have included being parliamentary secretary for the departments of labor and amateur sport, vice-chairman of the public ac-
TORONTO —
Job creation is the number one issue for the Liberals in this election, says Finance Minister Marc Lalonde,
Although he is leaving politics after this election, Lalonde is campaigning hard. Last week, he visited key ridings in Metro Toronto.
At a breakfast in Liberal incumbent Jim Peterson's Willowdale campaign headquarters, he told 60 workers that policy initiatives already
counts committee, and of the special task force on pension reform, and Canadian chairman of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.
issue:
announced by Prime Minister Turner would help to achieve the goal of job creation while maintaining fiscal responsibility.
The "first chance" program, he said, would give on-the-job experience to 100,000 young people every year.
And small and mediuni size businesses, "the sector that is the top job-creating sector,'' will benefit from a number of initiatives put forth by the Prime Minister, including putting
Desmarais noted one close relationship to the Jewish community: two Jewish grandchildren. His daughter married a Jew and converted.
government services to small businesses under one roof, he said.
Lalonde pledged that a L iber ai govern me n t would reintroduce legis- * lation that died on the order paper "because the Tories refused unanimous consent," streamlining the myriad of laws affecting small businesses.
This leaves businessmen a lot more time to do what thfey are best at doing — doing business instead of filling in forms," he said.
Christie's is seeking Judaica to auction.
Joy Schonberg, Christie's Judaica specialist, will be in Toronto the week of August 20 to give free: appraisals and discuss Judaica to be sold at auction. To make a confidential appointment, please contact our Toronto representative, Murray Mackay, at 415/96()-2()63.
A line Galician Silver Tree-Or-Lifc Hanukkah Candelabrum, circa 1X50. apparently unmarked except lor assay mark. 21!/: in. (54.6 cm.) high. Sold at Christie s New York on June 26. 1984 lor $22,{KK).
CHRISTIES
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