With Justin Trudeau's announced resignation as prime minister and Liberal leader this week, media pundits wasted no time in penning their reflections, looking back at nine years of how Trudeau changed the Canadian political landscape. One such pundit is Jonathan Kay, an editor at the online magazine Quillette, whose article, "Shame on Us for Ever Believing Him", describes the evolution of Trudeau's brand from optimistic patriot to "Canada’s Chief DEI Officer," embracing American-style culture wars and identity politics.

And he'd know: Kay openly ghostwrote part of Trudeau's memoir Common Ground, spending ample time with the future prime minister in the run-up to the 2015 election. Kay now returns to Bonjour Chai to describe the Trudeau he knew and how the political landscape has shifted among the left in recent years—especially among Canadian Jewish voters.

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy (@BovyMaltz)
• Production team: Michael Fraiman (producer), Zachary Kauffman (editor)
• Music: Socalled

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This week's abrupt resignation of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland from cabinet has rocked the federal government. It happened the same day Sean Fraser, the minister of housing, infrastructure and communities, stepped down; both he and Freeland join a long and growing list of cabinet members and Liberal backbenchers either resigning their cabinet positions, deciding not to run again in the next election, or outright calling for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to step down.

They're not alone: all signs point to the federal Conservatives crushing the Liberals in next year's election. Multiple recent byelections, including the heavily Jewish Toronto-St. Paul's in midtown Toronto, have swung from red to blue in recent years. And it's against that backdrop that Hal Niedzviecki, the author and founder of the recently-in-the-news, now-defunct Broken Pencil magazine, posted on social media, "For the first time in my life I'll be voting Conservative."

One week after discussing the Israel-induced implosion at Broken Pencil on this very podcast, we invite Niedzviecki to discuss the changing political climate, how the progressive left is losing support, and his side of what happened at the indie publication he founded in 1995.

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy (@BovyMaltz)
• Production team: Michael Fraiman (producer), Zachary Kauffman (editor)
• Music: Socalled

Support The CJN

• Subscribe to the Bonjour Chai Substack
• Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
• Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
• Subscribe to Bonjour Chai (Not sure how? Click here)

This week, the New Israel Fund of Canada, JSpace Canada and Canadian Friends of Peace Now released a survey of 588 Jewish Canadians that aimed to figure out the community's relationship to Israel. In short: it's complicated.

The survey, managed by Leger, found that 94 percent of respondents agreed Israel "has the right to exist as a Jewish state"—yet only 51 percent self-identified as "Zionist". This startling contradiction could reveal how tarnished the brand of Zionism has become, regardless of Jewish Canadians' opinions on Israel itself, and dispels the myth of the Jewish community being monolithic about its opinions towards the Holy Land, its voting patterns and its values. Can Zionism be saved? Or should we all just ditch labels and talk about the issues?

To learn more about the key takeaways, we invited Ben Murane and Maytal Kowalski, the executive directors of the New Israel Fund of Canada and JSpace Canada, respectively, to come on Bonjour Chai and explain their motivations for commissioning the survey and how we can digest the data. Listen to that interview above.

After that, Avi and Phoebe dig into the anthology book On Being Jewish Now, which Phoebe had previously not read—then was called out for—and has since read every page of. Avi read it, too, and they dig into the politics of not paying Jewish writers for their work while purporting to support Jewish artists.

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy (@BovyMaltz)
• Production team: Michael Fraiman (producer), Zachary Kauffman (editor)
• Music: Socalled

Support The CJN

• Subscribe to the Bonjour Chai Substack
• Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
• Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
• Subscribe to Bonjour Chai (Not sure how? Click here)