A couple of years ago, when the blueprint for the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA) was being laid out, the architects of the agency determined that community organizations should move beyond simply reacting to crises.

They determined that it is important for the Jewish community’s resources to mobilize to respond more effectively to ongoing developments but that the community should also anticipate upcoming issues.

With almost a year to go before the World Peace Forum convenes in Vancouver, CIJA affiliates on the West Coast are already developing strategies to address the possible detrimental affects of the international meeting on Canadian Jews.

The World Peace Forum, said CIJA CEO Hershell Ezrin, is a direct spinoff of Durban, the one-word shorthand for what is widely regarded in the Jewish community as an anti-Semitic hate fest. Already 45 per cent of the program suggested by NGOs for Vancouver focus on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, he said.

Personnel from the Pacific region of Canadian Jewish Congress and the Canada-Israel Committee (CIC) are working with the local federation to develop strategies and marshal resources to best respond to the event.

Ezrin pointed to that co-ordinated effort as an example of how CIJA, which was established to streamline, improve and fund Jewish advocacy organizations, can best “leverage” community resources for maximum impact.

“Leverage” is a word that comes up frequently in a conversation with the well-connected Ezrin, who was chief of staff to the former Ontario premier David Peterson. One of the mandates of the organization is to employ community resources more effectively and to be able to demonstrate in an empirical manner that its efforts are bearing fruit.

Despite its growing pains, CIJA has succeeded in streamlining processes, eliminating redundant back- office operations and employing community resources more efficiently, Ezrin asserts.

Whether that sort of “leverage” has been successful will, no doubt, be one of the factors to be examined in a review of CIJA being conducted by UIA Federations Canada, the national organization under whose umbrella CIJA operates. CIJA receives community funds through UIA and, in turns, allocates them to three recipients, Congress, the CIC and National Jewish Campus Life, and monitors how the funds are spent.

When CIJA was conceived, there was widespread concern that traditional community advocacy didn’t seem to be responding effectively to challenges.

A who’s who of the Jewish business establishment put their weight behind the new advocacy organization and CIJA was born. CIC was reorganized and a national campus organization was established to respond to particularly vicious anti-Israel agitation at Canadian universities. Congress, which had qualms about coming under the CIJA umbrella, also saw its internal structure modified.

Ezrin believes the reorganization has worked. Costs across the board have been reduced, with some services such as information technology, accounting and payroll consolidated. In addition, the organizations communicate better among themselves. By reducing costs, more money is left over for actual program delivery, he said.

CIJA and its affiliated organizations operate on an annual budget of $10 million, almost double the amount available before CIJA’s creations – a sum that no doubt, staffers in both organizations wish had been available to them pre-CIJA.

Ezrin acknowledged that Congress has seen its overall budget reduced substantially, but he said the organization’s program budget has gone up. Program money is pooled and each agency must compete for it by demonstrating its use best advances the core goals of community advocacy – among them, improving Canadians’ attitudes to Israel, Ezrin said.

Ezrin rejected suggestions that CIJA has added a layer of bureaucracy to Jewish communal organization and reduced the funds available to advocacy groups. CIJA, he said, has been “additive” and thanks to CIJA, more funds are flowing from donors into community coffers.

Part of CIJA’s strategy is to foster grassroots political action committees to advocate for Israel in local communities, by emphasizing the “shared values” that bind Israel with Canada.

Ezrin said CIJA had a role in supporting the creation of Fighting Anti-Semitism Together, a project spearheaded by Bank of Montreal CEO Tony Comper and his wife, Elizabeth. The organization attracted the participation of 21 senior business executives from Canadian blue-chip corporations.

Working in conjunction with Congress, the Compers plan to launch an educational project this fall targeted at public schools.

Ezrin said CIJA played a role in other major events of the past year, including Prime Minister Paul Martin’s reference to seeking justice for Jewish refugees from Arab lands, a shift in Canada’s voting pattern at the United Nations away from automatically siding with critics of Israel and the statement by Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew that Canada and Israel see eye to eye on Hezbollah.

Ezrin acknowledges Canada’s UN voting pattern has not changed as much as he’d like, but “we consider it a first step.”

Ezrin claims polling commissioned by CIJA proves attitudes of Canadians are changing toward a more positive perception of Israel, but he would not release specific findings.

He said the Jewish community is improving relations with other groups, such as the Chinese, Sikh and First Nations communities.

Still, he said, the Jewish community faces many challenges, on campuses, in labour movements and from demographic shifts that sees the country’s Muslim population growing, making opposition to Israel more palatable to politicians.

“No doubt there are a lot of concerns, but the people who supported CIJA realized early on that we always faced a negative numbers game over the centuries and we have to work in as effective and efficient way as possible. We have to work smart.”

CIJA, he continued, “is all about collaboration. We’re a small community in a very large country geographically. We’re a small percentage of the population. We have to collaborate. CIJA gets people to sit down and work together.”