OTTAWA – Irwin Cotler arrives for lunch on the same day that Justice Minister Peter MacKay announces he’s leaving politics.
Cotler, who is also stepping down this fall, characterizes their relationship as a good one: he works with MacKay’s wife, Nazanin Afshin-Jam, on Iranian human rights issues.
But the Liberal MP hints that MacKay, with his ham-fisted approach to the courts, may not have had much of a choice.
“Justice is a crucial ministry whose independence must be safeguarded,” says Cotler.
“The Harper government is a very centralized and centralizing government. Within that centralizing orbit includes justice. So you have the (prime minister’s office) people giving directives to the justice minister, etc. That to me is unacceptable,” he says.
“I think Peter was put in a difficult position.”
Cotler notes that when he was justice minister under former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin, he consulted with the opposition about upcoming legislation.
Not so anymore.
Case in point: the Conservatives’ anti-terror bill, C-51, which Cotler says the Liberals supported on the basis of elements such as increased information sharing and modernizing the no-fly list.
But the third party, led by Justin Trudeau, wanted substantial amendments, including more oversight mechanisms – once supported by MacKay while he was an opposition MP.
The Conservatives shot down major amendments to the bill, which is expected to pass in the Senate. Trudeau has said he’ll amend the bill if elected.
But the damage may already be done.
“We ended up with a bill that I think was even worse than we appreciated it to be,” Cotler says.
Cotler says his party was “caught in a quandary.”
“You never know, had we voted against it, how the Conservatives – who had not collaborated or cooperated with us to amend the bill so we wouldn’t get to that point – might have used it to make a wedge issue and say, these guys are soft on crime, they’re soft on terror. They can’t form the government,” Cotler says.
“So at a certain point the choice becomes either, you know, are you going to be in a position where you can form the government, or are you going to vote against C-51 and then may not be able to form the government?”
Ironically, Cotler says his party’s suggestions to improve the bill have worked against them.
“The more that people began to learn about what’s in the bill, us included, the more that we began to propose amendments to the bill, the more Canadians got concerned about the bill,” Cotler says.
“Some of our advocacy convinced Canadians that the bill is not a good bill.”
If he could have seen what would happen, would he have advised his party to make a different decision?
“Maybe, yeah. Maybe,” Cotler says.
Set to retire in October, I ask Cotler what disturbs him most about his time in politics.
“The erosion of civility in the Parliamentary discourse,” he answers, without hesitation.
He points to omnibus legislation, time allocation on bills, disrespect to experts testifying in Parliamentary committees, and the pattern of introducing “constitutionally-suspect” legislation.
“Our fundamental constitutional and democratic institutions are worthy of independency and respect. That includes Parliament, the courts, the Charter of Rights,” Cotler says.
Does he think we can get it back?
“I think that the institutions are stronger than the government that is in power at any given moment,” he answers.
A work in progress
Cotler is late, but it’s not his fault. He’s just run into some Burundi-Canadians, who are urging him to raise awareness for their east African nation, which is on the brink of civil war – or worse.
“They see this as a kind of precursor to a Rwanda-type situation,” Cotler says, hovering at the edge of the table.
“What made the genocide in Rwanda so unspeakable was not only the horror of the genocide, but that it was preventable. Nobody could say we did not know.”
Breathless as he arrives at the Parliamentary restaurant, carrying a green folder with the clues “boarding pass/calendar” written in block letters on the front, Cotler references the poisoning of Russian dissidents and Iran’s abysmal human rights record before he’s even had a sip of his virgin Mary.
It clearly weighs on him, this world.
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“It’s like when I joke to my wife, I tell her, I have a crazy day,” says Cotler, a “90 per cent” vegetarian who only eats Kosher when meat is involved.
He’s in between bites of a vichyssoise that takes him nearly 45 minutes to finish – good thing it’s already cold – while a bruschetta flatbread sits neglected in the corner.
“She says, ‘What difference is this day from any other day?’”
It’s not uncommon for the 75-year-old MP, who represents the riding of Mount Royal in Montreal, to return to the office at 2 a.m. to catch up on some work from one of his “green books” containing notes or articles gathered by his staff.
Dressed in a grey jacket, blue shirt and grey pattern tie to match his glasses, slightly askew, Cotler doesn’t use a computer, but he does have a flip phone, which goes off three times at lunch.
“If I take a look at my day timer, which lists the things I do, I just can’t get it done in the time,” Cotler says, pulling out a palm-sized notebook jammed with tiny handwritten scrawl.
“It’s Thursday, and I didn’t get that many things done.”
“Look at Tuesday.”
“That day, 62 items, so it’s not going to get done.”
After 16 years of cramming it in, Cotler is bowing out of politics this fall.
But he still plans on fighting for the human rights and justice issues he’s championed all his life, as a lawyer, writer, activist and at times, the lone attendee at one of his press conferences for political prisoners.
“For me,” he says, “every day is a work in progress.”
‘An anomaly’
When he first arrived in Ottawa, fellow Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett invited Cotler to the Liberal women’s caucus.
Turns out no men had ever been before.
“For me, that was one of the most important weekly meetings,” Cotler says. “I found that the discourse amongst the women were more collaborative.”
Cotler counts his friendships, including Bennett, as the most rewarding part of political career.
There is no other reason he is leaving, he assures, but to pass the torch to a younger generation.
“We need people who can reflect and represent their contemporaries,” he says.
But it remains to be seen if the Liberals can hang on to Mount Royal, a seat once held by former Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau.
Liberal candidate Anthony Housefather, a former mayor, is expected to get a run for his money against former Quebec politician Robert Libman, the Tory candidate.
Cotler’s popularity has steadily declined since he was elected in 1999 – from 90 per cent to about 40 in the last election.
In 2011, Cotler won by less than 2,300 votes to Conservative Saulie Zajdel, who recently pleaded guilty to breach of trust and corruption charges in relation to land deals. Cotler also complained that Zajdel was working as a “shadow MP” in his riding.
A Conservative pollster was subsequently slapped down for sending robocalls in the riding which falsely suggested Cotler was retiring.
“I wasn’t surprised that my popularity had gone down,” Cotler says. “My riding has been consistently targeted, and has been targeted for years.”
The riding’s high percentage of Jewish voters has also gone to the Conservatives, but Cotler believes the shift has stopped.
“For the last two campaigns the attacks in my riding have been that I’m anti-Israel and anti-Jewish,” Cotler says.
“It ignores the fact that I have had a long involvement in the Middle East. I have been a proponent for two states for two peoples long before it was ever fashionable to support that, going back to the late ‘60s.”
READ MORE: Irwin Cotler won’t comment on allegations he was banned from event in Israel
He says the last election was an anomaly: the late NDP leader Jack Layton’s popularity was surging to unprecedented levels, and former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff was deeply unpopular in Quebec.
“I think Justin (Trudeau) will poll much better in Quebec, particularly in Mount Royal, because that’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s riding. The name Trudeau will still resonate positively in that riding.”
Then there is the matter of the NDP.
Leader Tom Mulcair is rising in the polls, buttressed by the provincial NDP’s recent win in Alberta.
“Considering that (the Liberals) only have 35 members in our party, we’re doing very well in the fact that we can be considered as an opposition that may be forming a government,” Cotler says.
“But I think that the NDP has been helped by what has happened in Alberta, and they represent a credible alternative.”
Whatever happens, Cotler won’t be around to see it – unless it’s as a guest at a Parliamentary committee.
His dream before he went into politics was to open a Raoul Wallenberg centre for international justice, named after Canada’s first honourary citizen, who rescued Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary.
“That is something that I hope I’ll be able to establish, and that will continue what I would call the pursuit of justice work,” Cotler says.
He explains his dedication by quoting Soviet dissident and human rights defender Andrei Sakharov: “I don’t know what will help the cause of human rights. I do know it will not be helped by silence.”
Or rather, the summarized words of a hometown hero.
“It’s like Leonard Cohen says, open up cracks so that the sunlight can come in.”
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