Of the eight Jews elected to the 264-seat House of Commons in 1968, six were reelected yesterday. The most prominent was David Lewis, the Polish-born leader of the New Democratic Party, which follows a moderate Socialist line and won a record 30 seats. The NDP held the balance of power in the immediate aftermath of the election, in which the Progressive Conservatives, the opposition party, won 109 seats to 108 for the Liberals, headed by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. The progressives’ total was 24 seats short of a parliamentary majority.
Lewis, a 63-year-old barrister, said yesterday that he would shift the NDP seats to the party that would “do something to make the tax system more just, something drastic about unemployment and stop the corporate ripoff,” the last a reference to government aid to corporations.
The other Jews re-elected were Max Saltzman and David Orlikow, New Democrats; Cabinet Minister Herbert Gray and Barnett Danson, Liberals; and Jack Marshall, Progressive Conservative. The two Jewish members leaving the House are Robert Kaplan, a Liberal who was defeated, and Philip Givens, a Liberal who had resigned earlier to seek a provincial seat.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
