Victor Goldbloom, a pediatrician by profession, has worn many – and varied – professional and community hats, and made myriad contributions to the fabric of Quebec society. He is both a Companion of the Order of Canada and an Officer of the Ordre Nationale du Québec. Although he will celebrate his 91st birthday this summer, he is still active. He is chairman of the Board of the Regional Council on Health and Social Services of Montreal, and chairman of the National Advisory Council to the Canadian Institute of Child Health. Goldbloom spent thirteen years in provincial politics and served as the first minister of state responsible for the quality of the environment and, later, as minister of municipal affairs and environment minister. After leaving politics in 1979, he spent eight years as president and CEO of the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews, now the Canadian Centre for Diversity. From 1991 to 1999, he was Canada’s fourth Commissioner of Official Languages.

In 2000, Goldbloom became head of a joint Jewish Immigrant Aid Services of Montreal and Federation CJA task force on immigration. The demographics of the Jewish community had been below replacement level for some time, he explained, and as the community had diminished in size, services and institutions had diminished proportionately. Community leader Steven Cummings saw immigration as a source of new human resources. A taskforce chaired by Lynne Kassie and Michael Vineberg had confirmed his hypothesis, and it was in this climate that Goldbloom was asked to head the taskforce that had been promoting immigration as its mandate.

Against the backdrop of a collapse of Argentina’s economy in 2002, Goldbloom and other Jewish community leaders travelled three times to Buenos Aires, home to most of the country’s 180,000 Jews, to meet with community leaders there and to make it clear they weren't being predatory but responsive. “I went with a certain amount of hesitation because, when a community is in trouble, you want to be supportive – and attracting young people away is not supportive,” Goldbloom said. He was prepared to be diplomatic, he said, but it was clear that young people were ready to leave. The economic crisis meant it was difficult for young people to find work and in many cases their parents, who were retired or ready to retire, had lost their savings. “On that basis, we started to receive a flow of people from Argentina,” he recalled. JIAS worked with HIAS, an American charitable organization with offices all over the world, including Argentina. A representative hired by JIAS there “was a wonderful resource,” Goldbloom recalled. “And then we were hit with budget cutbacks, so we didn’t continue. But for two years we were an active presence.”

Around the same period as Argentinian Jews were coming to Montreal, there was also some immigration from France. It was motivated in part by manifestations of anti-Semitism, but also by the attraction of the quality of life offered by Quebec, he said. The majority of Argentinian Jews who came to Montreal arrived between 2000 and 2005; some returned to Argentina once the economic situation had stabilized. According to the 2011 National Household Survey, there were 445 Jews from Argentina living in Montreal, 315 of whom had arrived since 2000, and 1,755 Jews from France. When the stories out of France began to surface about a resurgence of anti-Semitism, Goldbloom recalled, the same kind of contact was undertaken as in Argentina. The psychology of it was different, though. “France is very negative about emigration,” he said, “and the Jewish community goes along with that.”

Although the community has asked the government to be more vigilant about anti-Semitism, Jews are not leaving in large numbers, he said. That said, there has been a fair amount of aliyah, both from Argentina and from France, he observed. French is prominent in Israel, with 15 to 20 per cent of the country’s population able to speak the language. “We always said, ‘Your first choice should be aliyah. If it is not aliyah, think about us. We are a good and welcoming community.’”

In 2008 JIAS Montreal, Jewish Employment Montreal and Jewish Family Services were merged into a new agency, Agence Ometz. Although Ometz has an immigration committee, JIAS ceased to exist as an autonomous organization. Goldbloom had high praise for JIAS, calling it “a dynamic organization, with a strategic sense of how to appraoch different countries.” He had high praise also for Shellie Ettinger, who was executive director of the agency during his term as head of the task force and then later, as president of JIAS. “She was a great leader – intelligent and sensitive,” he said. “It was a top-notch organization under her leadership.”