Features
New book by Winnipeg-based refugee advocate Shauna Labman delves into Canada’s refugee resettlement program
Shauna Labman (second from right) & familyBy MYRON LOVE
In launching her first book, “Crossing Law’s Border: Canada’s Refugee Resettlement Program”, at McNally Robinson earlier this year, Shauna Labman took a somewhat different approach to this particular book launch. Rather than just reading an excerpt from the book, she invited one of her former students and one current student as well as the executive director of the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization of Manitoba Inc. (IRCOM) – all of whom came to Canada as refugees – to share their stories.
“We had a huge crowd for the launch,” Labman recalls. “I wanted to provide some personal perspectives.”
She adds that the book, which examines the intersection of international rights, responsibility and obligation in the absence of a legal scheme for refugee resettlement, was ranked by The Hill Times as among the best 100 Canadian non-fiction books for 2019 and reached second place on McNally’s best-seller list under paperback non-fiction for the week of January 12-22 following the book launch.
“The book has received a great response,” she says. “Crossing Law’s Border” is raising awareness of who refugees are, why it’s important to protect them, and the different ways that refugees seek protection through resettlement and asylum.
“The book has been of particular interest to those working with and sponsoring refugees in Canada as well as Canadian officials overseas working on resettlement.”
The author has devoted most of her working life to the twin causes of human rights and refugees. This writer previously profiled her in the pages of this newspaper about ten years ago. At that time, she had recently returned to Winnipeg after 15 eventful years away.
The Ramah School and Balmoral Hall graduate and eldest daughter of Cyril and Jean Labman left Winnipeg right after high school for UBC and, later, the University of Victoria. While studying law at the University of Victoria, Labman was exposed through a co-operative law program to the work of the now defunct Law Commission of Canada which dealt with issues such as the Residential Schools cases, same sex marriage, workers’ rights and human rights and discrimination.
After graduation, she began her legal career at the Federal Court of Appeal, working on issues ranging from immigration to tax and patent law. “I soon realized,” she said in that earlier interview, “that I wasn’t interested in working in a traditional law practice. I had done some work in Ottawa with refugees. So I applied to the United Nations and I was posted to India for a six-month consultancy with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).”
Her work with UNHCR involved conducting refugee status determinations of Burmese asylum seekers and preparing resettlement referrals for Afghan refugees. Labman was struck by the reality that most refugees never make it to countries such as Canada, which might be willing to offer permanent protection, and instead remain in protracted states of limbo.
Following a stint at the Canadian Embassy in Beijing where she gained an appreciation of Canadian diplomacy and policy considerations, she returned to Canada with a clear cause and career goal. Using the academic avenues open to her, she began exploring how the voluntary programs of government resettlement and private sponsorship operate alongside of Canada’s obligations in international law to refugees who claim asylum. Her research examines, analyzes, and ultimately advocates for the protection needs of the refugees she left behind in India, as well as those of other refugees who wait patiently, but powerlessly, around the world.
Labman reports that “Crossing Law’s Border: Canada’s Refugee Resettlement Program” grew out of her Ph.D. thesis, which she completed in 2013. The focus of the future book, however, changed considerably after the Trudeau Government introduced its Syrian refugee resettlement program in 2015, she notes.
“My work,” she points out, “is bookended by the resettlement of Indochinese refugees in the 1970s and the recent Syrian arrivals.
“While both moments were driven by a humanitarian impulse to help unknown refugees, in the intervening years much of the private sponsorship program has involved family reunifications.”
Labman notes that most private sponsorships over the past few years have involved family re-unifications. Private sponsors voluntarily accept financial responsibility for the care and integration of the refugees that they adopt.
She adds that her family and several friends in their Wolseley neighbourhood have privately sponsored a family from Colombia.
Labman is concerned about the Federal Government’s shift in refuge policy more to private sponsorships in recent years. It used to be, she says, that government took responsibility for two-thirds of refugee sponsorship with private sponsors the remaining third. Currently, private sponsors account for two-thirds of refugees coming to Canada.
“There is a danger in becoming overly reliant on individual Canadians,” she as-serts.”
She also writes and advocates for the suspension of the Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the United States, under which refugees must claim asylum in the first country they reach. Labman argues the United States is not a safe country for refugees.
Labman is greatly concerned about the effects of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic for refugees. “There is a lot more uncertainty and disappointment,” she says. “Many refugees have been waiting a long time already to be re-united with family in Canada. But our borders are closed.”
For refugees already recently arrived in Canada, she points out, the lockdown only adds heightened challenges as they adapt to a new country.
And Labman is wondering what Canadian refugee policy will look like after the pandemic is over. “Will a financially-strapped government be willing to bring in thousands of refugees from all over the world?” she asks. “Will private sponsors have the financial means and ability to support refugee families?”
About a year ago, Labman shifted from teaching law at the University of Manitoba to taking up the position of Associate Professor of Human Rights at the University of Winnipeg’s Global College. “The position encourages greater community engagement and I get to work with students from a broader range of backgrounds and perspectives while spending all my time talking about refugees, international law and human rights.”
With a young family – her son, Hugo, is eight and her daughter, Yael, is five – the move also lessened her commute and allows her to bike and walk to work until she, like many others, moved to working from home in March.
She continues to works closely with the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization of Manitoba and currently sits on their Board of Directors.
Labman reports that she will have a second book coming out in August – “Strangers to Neighbours: Refugee Sponsorship in Context” – this one a b edited collection that offers the first dedicated study of refugee sponsorship policy. She notes that one of the chapters is being written by Madison Pearlman (who, this writer profiled in the December 7, 2016, issue of the JP&N).
As Labman’s research assistant at Robson Hall, the two women co-authored an article on refugee sponsorship and now, as a newly-minted young lawyer, Pearlman is contributing a chapter on Operation Ezra, our Jewish community’s successful effort to sponsor more than 50 Yazidi refugees and reunite them with family here.
Features
Rabbi Gary Zweig’s new book provides humorous and moving accounts of making minyans in unlikely circumstances
By MYRON LOVE The recitation of the kaddish is a central tenet of Jewish religious life. Even members of our community who are largely secular will likely recite the words of the kaddish for a parent, sibling or spouse at some point in their lives – even if only at the grave site.
The kaddish can only be recited publicly in the presence of a minyan – a gathering of ten (men in the Orthodox tradition. The number, as explained by Rabbi Gedalia (Gary Zweig), stems from the number of spies – as written in the Torah – whom Moshe rabbenu sent into the promised land and who came back with negative reports as compared to the two spies – one of whom was Joshua – who said that the land was flowing with milk and honey.
It is this challenge of putting together minyans for a mourner to recite the kaddish in different locales and circumstances – when a minyan in a shul is not possible – that is the subject of Zweig’a newly released book, “Kaddish Around the World” – a 90-plus page compilation of short stories – some humourous, some heartwarming – of successful efforts to recruit enough daveners for a kaddish minyan, ranging in time and space from a Super Bowl game in San Diego to the middle of a game reserve in South Africa to a Jewish museum in Cordoba in Spain – in a city largely devoid of Jews.
Zweig, who hails from Toronto, was in Winnipeg over Yom Tov to lead services – along with Toronto-based Chazan Manny Aptowitser – at the Chavurat Tefila Talmud Torah Synagogue. On the Tuesday just before Yom Kippur, the synagogue hosted an evening to provide the rabbi with a venue to discuss his new book – a sequel to his first book, “Living Kaddish,” which he released in 2007 (and has been translated into Russian and Spanish).
Zweig is one of the original Aish Hatorah-trained rabbis – having attained his smicha in 1982 from Rabbi Noah Weinberg, the founder of Aish Hatorah. He (Zweig) is much travelled, himself having led Yom Tov services in such exotic locales as Bermuda, Barbados and Curacao in the Caribbean, Mexico and Sweden.
Zweig noted that he was inspired to write “Living Kaddish” after his mother passed away in 2002 when, on one occasion, he was not able to find a minyan so that he could say kaddish.
In his presentation at the Chavurat Tefila, he observed that the first Jew to mention kaddish is purported to be Rueven – about 3,500 years ago – on the passing of his father, Yaacov (Israel). About 900 C.E., Zweig continued, kaddish became part of the liturgy and, 200 years later, was included in the siddur.
It is interesting, he noted, that kaddish is said not for the deceased, but, rather, the living. There is no mention of the Lord in the kaddish either. Kaddish is actually a prayer for hope and the future.
For a parent, one is required to say kaddish three times a day – morning, afternoon and evening – for 11 months. For a sibling, child (God forbid), relative or others, the requirement is just 30 days.
One of the stories in “Kaddish Around the World” tells of one of Zweig’s own experiences – after his father died in 20201 at the age of 101. The author happened to be at a family bar mitzvah in Orlando several months later. He fully expected that in a city with a Jewish population the size of Orlando, he wouldn’t have any trouble putting together a minyan for a Sunday morning. He felt even more confident when he noticed that an AMOR Rabbis convention was being held at the same hotel. On inquiring which sort of rabbis these were, he learned that AMOR stood for “Association of Messianic Rabbis”.
Come Sunday morning, most of the bar mitzvah guests had gone home. He could only muster eight for the minyan. He thought he could try the messianic group in the hope that some of them may have been born Jewish. Four of the group offered to help. A Chabad rabbi suggested that Zweig ascertain that each had two Jewish parents. Two qualified.
Zweig quoted one of the two messianic rabbis who said, after the service that ”this was the most moving service I have ever experienced.”
“Maybe Hashem brought me to that particular hotel at that particular time so that I could provide them with little spark of what Judaism is about,” Zweig said.
Another of the stories in the book concerns a shopkeeper in an American mall where many of the other store owners were also Jewish. The individual, Yossi, needed a minyan for mincha (the afternoon prayer) but couldn’t afford to close his business. He figured he could round up enough of the other store keepers to form a minyan. Everyone he approached was willing to come if he were to be the tenth. (In my own years organizing minyans, that was something I heard often enough – “call me if I will be the tenth”). Yossi’s solution was to assure each one he asked that, yes, he would be the tenth.
“Kaddish Around the World” is available on Amazon and also in digital ebook format and as an audio book.
In addition to being a rabbi and author, Zweig also is a singer/songwriter working in his own genre – Jewish rock and roll. He has a band called “The Kiddush Club,” and a CD called “TOYS.” In addition, he has recently launched a YouTube channel called “Living Kaddish”.
Features
The Gaza Peace Plan is not a Done Deal, but an Opening
By HENRY SREBRNIK (Oct. 23, 2025) The idea that Hamas will voluntarily disarm, that international forces will deploy in the Gaza Strip, and that the process of building a Palestinian government by people like former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in which a disarmed Hamas does not participate, are false hopes, if not fantasies. But does this mean U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan was useless? Of course not.
Trump understood the necessity of bringing the war to an end. But he also believed that endless debate among experts or, worse, historian and lawyers, would never produce an agreement. He presented an offer – actually, an ultimatum – to Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas that neither could refuse: immediate, unconditional and complete release of all hostages and missing persons, something the Israeli public longed for, in exchange for a final end to the war, which a humbled Hamas needed.
Two years of war has left Hamas weaker than it had been in decades. Israeli bombardments had shattered the group’s military capabilities and depleted its arsenals. In many neighborhoods, control had drifted to local clan networks and tribal councils. This hinted at something that could one day replace Hamas’s iron grip. To prevent this, Hamas has been ruthlessly murdering all potential rivals in the areas of Gaza it controls since the ceasefire went into effect.
Despite the severe degradation of its military capabilities during the war, Hamas still has more soldiers and weapons than all its rival factions in Gaza combined. Hamas has managed to redeploy approximately 7,000 militants to reassert control over the territory. They have publicized photographs and videos of their forces murdering and torturing; the victims include women and children.
The ceasefire is a temporary reprieve for Hamas: a chance to regroup, rearm, and prepare for the next round of fighting. In Islamist political thought there’s a word for it, hudna — a temporary truce with non-Muslim adversaries that can be discarded as soon as the balance of power shifts. Then the time for jihad will arrive again. Hamas was established in 1987 and isn’t going to disappear.
In fact Hamas also says it expects an interim International Transitional Authority to hire 40,000 Hamas employees, and Hamas spokesman Basem Naim says he expects its fighters to be integrated into a post-transition Palestinian state.
Still, Trump has succeeded in ending the current war in Gaza, where Joe Biden failed. Biden’s national security team, drawn almost entirely from his supposed expert class, didn’t even see the crisis coming. Just five days before the attack, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan had published an article in Foreign Affairs in which he wrote that “the region is quieter than it has been for decades.”
Biden also had insulted the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, by publicly condemning the 2018 murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. And, of course, there was Biden’s poor relationship with Netanyahu, and his chronic inability to get the Israeli prime minister to do what he wanted.
By contrast, Trump returned to office with substantially more influence in both the Gulf and Israel, based on his first-term successes in the Middle East, especially the Abraham Accords (for which he’s never been praised by his political enemies).
Four Arab countries formally recognized Israel, beginning with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, followed by Sudan and Morocco. The next stage was intended to include Saudi Arabia. One motive put forward by some analysts for the October 7 attacks was that they were intended to provoke Israel into a response that would derail Saudi Arabia’s admission.
Instead of sitting Israelis and Arabs in a room and expecting them to negotiate an outcome, Trump’s approach has been to exert leverage through other players in the region, especially, Egypt, Turkey, and – most importantly – Qatar.
In Jerusalem, they call Qatar “the spoiler state.” Israelis describe the emirate as two trains running behind the same engine. One, led by the Qatari ruler’s mother and brother, supports the Muslim Brotherhood and is an unmistakable hater of Israel. The other, led by the prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani and several other senior figures, seeks rapprochement with the West.
The Qataris were shocked when Israeli jets on Sept. 9 conducted an airstrike in Doha targeting the leadership of Hamas. They then signed onto Trump’s peace plan at a meeting in New York Sept. 23, hosted by Trump and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim Ibn Hamad Al Thani, and attended by the leaders of eight Arab states, along with members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
Netanyahu was then browbeaten into accepting the plan (and also forced to apologize to the Emir for the airstrike). It was somewhat ironic that the airstrike made the peace plan possible. As well, Trump’s attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June gave this negotiation some very sharp teeth.
“If you would rather leave peacemaking to the historians and diplomats, then you may wait a long time for wars to end,” suggested Niall Ferguson of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, in an Oct. 15 Free Press article. His advice? Go to the “deal guys: They get the job done.”
In a sense, both Israel and Hamas had accomplished their goals. Israel had broken the Iranian axis of terror by eliminating Hezbollah and Hamas as a fighting force, along with the Iranian nuclear threat. Hamas had succeeded in luring Israel into a trap that led it to become hated and isolated around the world. This included the labelling of Israel as genocidal and the global call for a Palestinian state.
The rest of the 20-point peace plan will be addressed in a step-by-step fashion. Meanwhile, Israel must ensure that it retains freedom of action in Gaza, by decisive action against any attempt by Hamas to rebuild its army, its rockets, its battalions and its divisions.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Features
Why Fitness Routines Fall Apart — and How to Rebuild Yours
Every spring, gyms see a flood of hopeful faces. New shoes, fresh playlists, unwavering intentions, by mid-summer? Half of them vanish into the fog of abandoned routines. The story repeats year after year until it starts to feel almost scripted. Why does enthusiasm evaporate? The easy answer involves willpower but that explanation misses the point. Habits don’t fail because people are weak. Life stress, boredom, and monotony ruin routines. Timely lever pulls can change narratives. The hardest part is persevering when motivation wanes.
Mistaking Motivation for Momentum
Most chase that opening surge, the lightning strike of motivation, but then stop searching once enthusiasm fizzles. A scroll through sites like PUR Pharma (pur-pharma.is/) or a glimpse of an influencer’s progress triggers a burst of action: new workout gear ordered, plans scribbled in planners destined for dusty drawers. Yet momentum fades when small setbacks pop up (a late meeting here, rainy weather there). Real progress comes from building systems stronger than any fleeting pep talk. Those who frame fitness as something owed to motivation end up back at square one every time life interrupts, which it always does.
Overcomplicating Everything
It’s tempting to turn wellness into a science fair project with spreadsheets and specialized equipment lined up on day one. This is the allure of complexity disguised as seriousness, a new diet paired with seven types of supplements and four color-coded bottles. Simplicity gets lost in the noise almost instantly. Most successful routines rely on two principles: keep it simple and keep showing up even when everything else is chaos outside those gym walls. Anyone insisting that perfection is required before taking step one has already constructed an excuse not to begin at all.
Forgetting Fun Completely
Who decided exercise must hurt or look like punishment? Somewhere along the line, fun got swapped out for grind culture and “no pain, no gain.” That isn’t just unappealing, it’s unsustainable over months or years. If sessions feel like torture devices borrowed from medieval times, nobody should be surprised when commitment falters fast. Seek activities that actually spark some joy or curiosity, a dance class instead of yet another treadmill session, maybe, or play a pickup game rather than slogging through solo circuits again and again.
Ignoring Recovery (and Reality)
Sleep deprivation, disguised as discipline, fools anyone, except perhaps uncritical Instagram followers. Ignoring recovery turns ambition into tiredness faster than any missed session. Because bodies break without rest, routines must breathe with owners. Cycling, real leisure, and honest self-checks regarding weekly goals build endurance, not continual pushing.
Conclusion
Change rarely arrives by force alone but usually grows quietly from patterns repeated imperfectly over time, even if last month looked nothing like this week so far. Drop the hunt for nonstop inspiration. Instead of breaking behaviors at the first hint of stress or boredom, build habits that last. People who rebuild methodically after every stumble or detour make progress, not those who peak and then fall.