Jews here are delighted by a Canadian Cabinet reshuffling last weekend that removed the controversial Joe Clark from the office of minister for external affairs.
Prime Minister Brain Mulroney replaced him with Barbara McDougall, who has been minister of employment and immigration. She was lauded by Canadian Jewish leaders for her empathy with Jewish concerns.
McDougall is expected not to be critical of Israeli policies, as Clark often was, but to be more in line with Mulroney’s policy of supporting Israel’s existence within clearly defined, secure borders, while at the same time pushing for Palestinian self-determination.
B’nai Brith Canada’s president and executive vice president, Marilyn Wainberg and Frank Dimant, sent a telegram of congratulations to McDougall on Sunday.
Alan Rose, executive vice president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, said McDougall “has been closely associated with the Jewish community for some time and has been very supportive.
“We are very pleased about her appointment to external affairs,” he said.
Clark, who served in the post for six years, has been named constitutional affairs minister, once an extension of the Prime Minister’s Office but now a full-fledged ministry. It is not clear how much clout he will have in his new position.
Clark was not well-loved by Canadian Jewry. When he served as prime minister in the late 1970s, he failed to honor an election pledge to move the Canadian Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
As external affairs minister, he repeatedly accused the Jewish state of intransigence on the Palestinian issue.
Little more than a month ago, after the Palestine Liberation Organization was discredited internationally for its support of Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, Clark told an audience in Amman, Jordan, that the PLO remained a viable participant in future peace talks with Israel.
That contradicted an earlier statement by Mulroney that Canada no longer saw the PLO as a player in the Middle East peace process.
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