Jerry S. Grafstein, B.A., J.D., Q.C. (born January 2, 1935), is a Canadian lawyer, businessman, and politician who served in the Senate of Canada from 1984 to 2010. Grafstein was the longest-serving member of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. He served as co-chair of the Canada-United States Inter-Parliamentary Group and as a senior officer of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) Parliamentary Assembly for over a decade.
Grafstein is a former partner of Minden Gross LLP, a business law firm in Toronto in communications law, corporate financing, and administrative law.
Grafstein is also known as one of the founders of CityTV, MTV-Multilingual (now Omni TV), YTV, and a series of other media companies in Canada, the United States, South America, and Europe. He served on the board of several enterprises, including Petro-Canada.
Most recently, he co-founded a series of online newspapers, including The Wellington Street Post (Ottawa), The Penn Ave Post (Washington, DC), Israel News Cloud, HollyPost (Hollywood, California), China News Cloud, Africa News Cloud, Brazil News Cloud, India News Cloud, Russia News Cloud, Fashion News Cloud, and Animation News.
Grafstein is well known for his participation in the community and his key role in the organization of events such as "Canada Loves New York" in the aftermath of September 11, "Toronto Rocks" Concert during the SARS outbreak, and the "Canada for Asia" telethon for relief aid of tsunami victims.
Grafstein holds numerous awards, including honorary chief of the New York City Fire Department and honorary commandant of the US Marine Corps by the Canada-United States Inter-Parliamentary Group. He was named one of Canada's 100 most important "public intellectuals" in 2005 by the National Post.
Early life
Grafstein was born Jerahmiel Samson Grafstein in London, Ontario, on January 2, 1935,[1] the son of Solomon S. Grafstein and Helen Rose Grafstein (née Bleeman). His late sister was Pauline Wayne. His father came to Canada in 1927 after he had served in the Polish Army during the First World War and then the Polish-Soviet War (1919-1921). He married in 1930 in Toronto and settled in London that year.[citation needed]
Grafstein was raised in London and attended public primary and high schools. He was active in sports, school governance, and acting and served as an officer in the Army Cadets.[citation needed]
Grafstein graduated from the University of Western Ontario in 1955 and from the University of Toronto Law School in 1958. He was admitted to the Bar of Ontario in 1960.[2] While at law school, he was active in intramural sports at Hart House, debates, and class governance and received the highest standing in international law.[citation needed] He was a member of the Bar of North West Territories for almost a decade in the 1970s and early 1980s.[3] He lectured in commercial law and later instructed in the Bar Admissions Course at Osgoode Hall Law School.[2] He has given lectures to law students on the role of lawyers in civil society.[citation needed] Grafstein is a former partner of Minden Gross LLP, a business law firm in Toronto in communications law, corporate financing and administrative law.[2]
He served as chairman of the Media and Communications Law subsection of the Canadian and Ontario Bar Associations.[2]
Grafstein was appointed Queen's Counsel by the province of Ontario in 1972.[2]
Since his retirement from the Senate on January 2, 2010, Grafstein has served as counsel to Minden Gross LLP in Toronto, a firm he joined in 1960.[2]
Political career
Liberal Party of Canada and Canadian government
Starting in 1961, Grafstein held offices of the Liberal Party of Canada from the riding level to national campaigns.[citation needed] He was active in federal, provincial, and municipal elections for over four decades.[citation needed] He has taken a leading role in mayoralty elections in Toronto since 1960.[4] In 1966, he founded and edited the Journal of Liberal Thought.[5] During 1966-1968 he served in Ottawa as executive assistant to John Turner, then Registrar General of Canada, and later as special advisor to the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs during its founding period.[4]
From 1974 to 1986, he co-founded and was president of Red Leaf Communications Company, the advertising consortium for the Liberal Party of Canada during national elections.[4]
He was elected vice-chair of the Toronto Liberal Caucus and served for over two decades.[citation needed]
Grafstein was the longest serving member of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade,[4] served on the Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, and served from time to time on all Senate committees,[6] including Legal and Constitutional Affairs.[2] He served in the Special Senate/Commons Committee in its review of Canada's foreign policy.[6]
He was a chairman of the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce.[6] During his chairmanship, the committee completed twenty reports, including the following special reports:
Falling Behind: Answering the Wake-up Call; What can be done to improve Canada’s Productivity Performance?[7]
The Public Good and Private Funds: The Federal Tax Treatment of Charitable Giving By Individuals and Corporations.[7]
Passports and PASS Cards, Identity and Citizenship: Implementing the WHTI[7]
Stemming the Flow of Illicit Money: A Priority for Canada: Parliamentary Review of the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act[7]
The Demographic Time Bomb: Mitigating the Effects of Demographic Change in Canada[7]
Consumer Protection in the Financial Services Sector: The Unfinished Agenda.[7]
He also initiated the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce special studies on hedge funds and Canada's interprovincial trade barriers. He was a member of the Special Joint Senate and Commons Committee on a Review of Canada's Foreign Policy.[citation needed]
He has long advocated national standards for clean drinking water and introduced numerous private member's bills on mapping and safeguarding Canada's fresh water resources.[8]
Grafstein was the longest serving co-chair of the Canada-United States Inter-Parliamentary Group (the largest inter-parliamentary group in Canada) for 15 years.[2] In that capacity, he advocated Canadian issues to senators, congressmen, state legislators, governors, and Canada-United States border alliances in states and cities across America.
Grafstein introduced numerous resolutions and a private member's bill to establish a national portrait gallery in Ottawa, co-sponsored a private member's bill in the Senate establishing Holocaust Memorial Day in Canada in 1998, and introduced a private member's bill that established the Parliamentary Poet Laureate in 2001.[4] He also introduced a private member's bill (Bill 215) to amend the Criminal Code for the explicit inclusion of "suicide bombing" as a definition of terrorism, which became part of the Canadian Criminal Code in 2011.[4]
In 1988, he co-chaired the Preparatory Committee for the G7 Economic Summit held in Toronto.[2]
On retirement from the Senate in 2010, he received from Parliament the Canadian flag that flew over Parliament (the "Two Week Flag") and from Congress, the American flag that flew over the US Capitol in Washington (the "One Day Flag") in recognition of his political activities in Canada and the United States, respectively.[citation needed]
International affairs
In July 2007, Grafstein was elected vice president of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) Parliamentary Assembly,[2] the world's largest parliamentary organization dedicated to human rights, democratic rights, economic security and co-operation (after he had served as its treasurer for six years), and served as president of the Liberal, Democratic Reform Group there for a decade.[9] He served as vice chair and chair of the Standing Committee on Economic Affairs, Science, Technology and the Environment. He served on the OSCE election monitoring missions throughout Eastern Europe[10] and, more recently, in Georgia, Ukraine and Montenegro, and on resolving "frozen foreign conflicts."[citation needed] He co-sponsored numerous resolutions condemning racism and antisemitism at the OSCE PA and in the Parliament of Canada.[citation needed]
He served on many Parliamentary Friendship Groups in Europe (east and west), Asia, North Africa and South America. In the fall of 2007, he was elected vice president of the Canada-Pakistan Parliamentary Friendship Group.[citation needed]
In 2009, he was elected vice chairman of the Canadian Armenian Parliamentary Friendship Group. He served as a member of the International Political Committee for Co-existence between Muslims and Jews.[citation needed]
In April 2009, Grafstein helped organize a counter-conference in New York City in the follow-up UNHuman Rights Conference on Durban, held in Geneva, to combat antisemitism and lectured on the topic across Europe, Canada, and the United States. He co-sponsored numerous successful resolutions at the OSCE PA meetings across Western and Eastern Europe against racism and antisemitism.[citation needed]
In May 2009, while he was a senator, he helped organize and was a keynote speaker at the OSCE PA Economic Conference in Dublin, Ireland.[citation needed]
He is currently first vice-president of the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians.[10]
Business career
Grafstein had wide-ranging legal and business experience in all aspects of media, including television, cable, radio, telephony, telecommunications microwave, high speed wireless data transmission, advertising, production, distribution, publishing, and financing.
From 1979 to 1984, he served on the board of Petro-Canada,[12] was a member of the Northwest Territorial Bar, and served as counsel to Northwest Territorial Airways for almost a decade. He then traveled across the far north extensively.
He was a co-founder of a range of media companies, especially broadcasting/communications/ publication enterprises, including: CUC Broadcasting Limited[1] (Canada's fifth largest cable MSO before it was acquired by Shaw Communications in 1995, now Canada's second largest cable MSO); national specialty TV channels in lifestyle, youth (YTV) and music; CityTV (Canada's first independent UHF station); MTV-Multilingual Television (Toronto) (Canada's first independent multilingual broadcasting station – now OMNI TV);[13] CUC Cablevision (UK) Limited (Telecential) (now part of one of the United Kingdom's larger cable MSOs); Northern Communications, Ontario a Northern Ontario Company, comprising cable, TV (CBC and CTV) and radio stations – French and English. He co-founded one of the longest private microwave companies in Canada that ran from Windsor to Toronto to mid-Northern Ontario, Canbras Communications Corporation, (now part of Brazil's third largest cable MSO); and Multivision Communications Corp. (Bolivia's largest MMDS Hyper Cable and cable MSO).[10] He served on the board of Ukraine Enterprise Corporation, which made early investments in Ukraine.[citation needed]
He was also a lead director of Toronto Life Publishing Company Limited, which published Toronto Life (after it merged with Toronto Calendar) and Toronto Life Fashion, two of Canada's leading lifestyle and fashion magazines, and co-founded Toronto Life Fashion File, which is now seen on television around the world.[1]
In 2011 and 2012, he cofounded and currently serves as chair of The Wellington Street Post, The Penn Ave Post, Israel News Cloud and HollyPost, in a network of online 24/7 news sites around the globe.[15] Those news sites use technology to bring together the diversity of the blogosphere and social networks into timely news and information coverage of political news from Ottawa and Washington, and entertainment news from Hollywood. Other international projects include China News Cloud, Africa News Cloud, Brazil News Cloud, India News Cloud and Russia News Cloud. 2013 additions to the network include Fashion News Cloud and Animation News.[16]
Community
For over a decade, Grafstein served on the Board of the League for Human Rights of B'nai B'rith and the Joint Community Relations Committee of Toronto in the 1960s and 1970s.[17][citation needed]
He served as co-chairman of Toronto Committee for the Group of Seven Economic Summit in Toronto in 1988. He served as a member of the executive for the Toronto 1996 and 2008 Olympic Bid Committees.[2]
In 1998, the Grafstein Annual Lecture in Communications was established by Grafstein to commemorate the 40th anniversary of his graduation from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and the 10th anniversary of the graduation of his son, Laurence Grafstein, and daughter-in-law, Rebecca Grafstein (née Weatherhead), both from the Class of 1988. The Grafstein Lecture is hosted by the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy at the Faculty of Law. He and his wife, Carole, established the Grafstein Chair in Jewish Philosophy at the University of Toronto the following year.[18]
Grafstein co-organized "Canada Loves New York" in November 2001, when over 26,000 Canadians visited New York City after September 11, to assist New York City's recovery, which was called "the largest peaceful invasion of Canadians since the War of 1812."[2]
On April 4, 2003, Grafstein co-organized, with Friends of America, a pro-Ametican rally at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto with over 1,000 participants.
In July 2003, he co-created and co-organized "Toronto Rocks" to offset the negative impact on Toronto in the global media as a result of the SARS outbreak.[2] Headlined by the Rolling Stones, it is considered to be the largest ticketed band concert in history and was attended by almost half-a-million people.[4]
In December 2004, Grafstein co-organized "Canada for Asia", a three-hour broadcast telethon in aid of relief for tsunami victims that raised over $15,000,000.[4]
On August 5, 2014, Grafstein led more than 500 Canadians, including five Members of Parliament and a senator, on a solidarity mission to Jerusalem.[19]
In 2003, Grafstein was honoured by the Canadian Society of New York for his dedication to strengthening ties between Canada and the United States. As a senator, he was made an honorary chief of the New York City Fire Department and an honorary commandant of the US Marine Corps by the Canada-United States Inter-Parliamentary Group.[2]
On November 4, 2005, he was named one of Canada's 100 most important "Public Intellectuals" by the National Post in its series "Beautiful Minds."[20] On November 12, 2005 he was made a Duke of Friulani, Italy (Ducato dei Vini Friulani).[2]
On November 27, 2011, he was installed as honorary chairman of the Board of Governors of the Canadian Yeshiva & Rabbinical School, University of Toronto, at its inaugural convocation, the first such rabbinical school of its kind in Canada.[citation needed]
On July 7, 2014, Grafstein was honoured by Chief Ron Cooper of the Mohawk Nation and presented with a handcrafted lacrosse stick.[citation needed]
Grafstein is the president and chairman of the National Board for the Canadian Friends of the Tel Aviv University and a governor of Tel Aviv University.
Author
Grafstein has written numerous articles and delivered papers on broadcasting regulations; communications; computers; travel; international relations; technology; transportation, politics; international trade; and constitutional matters in Canada, the United States, and Europe.
His first book, Beyond Imagination, is an anthology of some of Canada's outstanding authors and poets that he edited; it published by McClelland & Stewart Inc. in 1995.[23] His second book, The Making of the Parliamentary Poet Laureate : Based on a Private Member's Bill , was published by the Porcupine's Quill.[24]
He co-authored his third book, The Passage Through Parliament to Establish Holocaust Memorial Day, in Canada in 2004.[25]
His fourth book, Suicide Bombings: Parliament Speaks, is the parliamentary history of Bill 215, an Act to amend the Criminal Code (Suicide Bombing) and was published in 2012.[citation needed]
Personal life
Grafstein is married to Carole (née Sniderman),[1] a community activist, a volunteer leader, a leading fundraiser for cancer research across Canada, and a member of the Order of Canada. They have two sons: Laurence and Michael.[1]
Laurence Grafstein was a Rhodes Scholar and president of the Oxford Union and is now a New York investment banker married to Rebecca (née Weatherhead) from Winnipeg, a member of the Ontario and New York Bars.
