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Irwin Cotler (born 8 May 1940) is a retired Canadian politician who was Member of Parliament for Mount Royal from 1999 to 2015. He served as the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada from 2003 until the Liberal government of Paul Martin lost power following the 2006 federal election. He was first elected to the House of Commons of Canada in a by-election in November 1999, winning 92% of votes cast. Historical 301 Electoral Districts Database
Cotler received his B.A. (1961) and BCL (1964) degree from McGill University and was an editor of the McGill Law Journal. He then graduated from Yale Law School with an LL.M.
As Minister of Justice, Cotler presided over many legislative changes concerning national security. This included proposed changes to privacy legislation known as "Lawful Access" to give police and intelligence officers the tools to conduct surveillance of electronic communications for law enforcement and national security purposes.
In early 2005, Cotler intervened in the senate review of Canada's 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act, as mandated by section 145 of the bill. This law, adopted in the wake of the September 11 attacks, had been criticized by some human rights groups and defense lawyers, as an unreasonable trade-off between security and freedom. In his speech to the senate committee on the matter, Cotler rejected these concerns, arguing that "there is no contradiction in the protection of security and the protection of human rights".
Cotler was re-elected to Parliament in the 2008 election to represent the Mount Royal riding in Quebec with 55% of the vote, 2008 re-election to Parliament, cbc.ca; accessed 20 June 2015. In January 2009, Cotler was named Special Counsel on Human Rights and International Justice for the Liberal Party, under Michael Ignatieff, and subsequently Critic for Human Rights.
He was re-elected again in the 2011 election, fending off a serious challenge from former city councillor Saulie Zajdel, a longtime Liberal supporter running as a Conservative who lost by only 2,500 votes. It was only the third time that the Liberals had been seriously threatened in Mount Royal since 1940, and the closest that a centre-right party has come to winning anywhere in Montreal since 1993.
In May 2011, Cotler was named Justice and Human Rights Critic by interim Liberal leader Bob Rae. Cotler also chaired the Inter-Parliamentary Group for Human Rights in Iran, the Inter-Parliamentary Group of Justice for Sergei Magnitsky, and the All-Party Save Darfur Coalition.
In 2013, Cotler was chosen to represent the Liberal Party of Canada at the funeral of Nelson Mandela in deference to the work he did for and with Mandela in fighting Apartheid. Party Leader Justin Trudeau gave up his seat for him.CTV News Network, "Memorial of Nelson Mandela", airdate 10 December 2013 circa 4:30am EST
On 5 February 2014, Cotler announced he was not running in the 42nd Canadian federal election. He said he would remain "active in public life, lecturing and writing on the issues of the day, advancing the causes of human rights and international justice, and advocating on behalf of political prisoners."
In November 2024, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told Cotler that it had stopped an assassination attempt on him by the Iranian government the previous month. Cotler, a fierce critic of the Iranian government, confirmed that he had been under police protection for more than a year.
In 2025, Cotler endorsed the Bloc Québécois'
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In 1986 he was named chief counsel to the Canadian Jewish Congress at the Deschênes Commission of Inquiry on Nazi war criminals.
Cotler worked with a group of international jurists to indict Iranian President Ahmadinejad for incitement to genocide under the UN Charter and the Genocide Convention, saying that the Iranian government used anti-Jewish rhetoric similar to the Nazi Party. When asked how he would distinguish between hate speech and incitement to genocide, Cotler contended in 2009 that what he described as Ahmadinejad's calling for the "elimination of the Zionist regime" in 2006 amounted to advocating for "the extermination of a state and its people". In 2006, Ahmadinejad was reported as saying "The Zionist regime will disappear soon, the same way the Soviet Union disappeared”. The correct translation of a previous 2005 speech by Ahmadinejad on Israel's future has been the subject of considerable debate. He has been quoted as having called for Israel to be eliminated by MEMRI, an organization which was co-founded by a former Israeli intelligence officer., or by multiple news outlets as having called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" while many Persian speakers have stated this was a mistranslation. In a 2012 interview with Aljazeera, Israel’s then minister of intelligence and atomic energy suggested that neither Ahmadinejad nor Iran's ruling cleric Ali Khamenei had stated "We’ll wipe it out" but rather "It will not survive". Cotler chaired a commission called the "Responsibility to Prevent Coalition", which released a petition in 2009 entitled "The Danger of a Genocidal and Nuclear Iran: A Responsibility to Prevent Petition". The petition was signed by Elie Wiesel, Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, and the former Swedish Deputy Prime Minister Per Ahlmark, and historian Yehuda Bauer. Cotler is an advisory board member of United Against Nuclear Iran and the Counter Extremism Project.
In 2012, Cotler advised Canadian foreign minister John Baird on rejecting the recognition of the State of Palestine during a United Nations meeting.
Cotler is a close friend of American lawyer Alan Dershowitz; the two met at Yale University in the 1960s. Dershowitz's book Abraham was dedicated to Cotler, who Dershowitz described as "a modern-day Abraham." In 2016, the two were named by The Jerusalem Post as "perhaps, the two most eloquent international advocates for Israel and human rights." Dershowitz nominated Cotler for the Nobel Peace Prize the same year.
In 2016, Irwin Cotler drafted the "'Never Again' Declaration", which has been signed by justice ministers, parliamentarians, jurists, and Luis Moreno Ocampo, former International Criminal Court prosecutor.
Cotler has been criticized as being anti-Palestinian, though he denied the description, saying he supports a two-state solution and criticized the Palestinian National Authority, saying "unfortunately, the Palestinian leadership has never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity." Cotler was one of a group of legal scholars who unsuccessfully argued that the International Criminal Court should not have jurisdiction over crimes committed in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem because Palestine should not be understood as a "state" within the meaning of Article 12(2)(a) of the Court's Rome Statute or international law generally.
In January 2024, he criticized South Africa's ICJ genocide case against Israel, saying that "Israel consistently seeks to minimize harm to civilians in using measures including leaflets, messages and phone calls to urge civilians to evacuate targeted areas, creating humanitarian zones and corridors, and facilitating humanitarian aid."
In 1981, Cotler visited South Africa after being invited by anti-apartheid activists, being detained after giving the speech titled "If Sharansky, Why Not Mandela?" At the request of Nelson Mandela's South African legal team, Cotler allegedly took on the role of "Canadian counsel" to Mandela at the end of the visit, participating in anti-apartheid activities in Canada and advocating on Mandela's behalf with Amnesty International. The claim that Cotler was arrested or ever represented Mandela in any capacity has been disputed by the Nelson Mandela Foundation and two prominent South African lawyers, including a surviving member of Mandela's legal team. However, in 1986, United Press International reported that Alan Dershowitz had claimed he, Cotler and an unnamed person were working on an attempt to negotiate Mandela's release through a prisoner exchange. Dershowitz has since written that on Thanksgiving Day 1985 he had "agreed on the parameters of an exchange of prisoners that also involved South Africa" during a meeting in Europe in a meeting with a Soviet "spy trader" but that Mandela had refused to participate in any prison exchange.
Cotler went on to represent other imprisoned individuals, including Jacobo Timmerman in Latin America, Muchtar Pakpahan in Asia. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an democracy activist imprisoned by the Egyptian government, was represented by Cotler and acquitted in 2003. He acted as counsel to Maher Arar during part of Arar's imprisonment and supported demands for a public inquiry. He has also defended both Palestinians and Israelis against their own governments, and participated in a minor role in the Camp David peace agreement between Israel and Egypt.
Imprisoned Venezuelan opposition politician Leopoldo López chose Cotler to serve as an attorney on his defense team in 2015. In 2017, Cotler was then asked to join a panel of independent international experts designated by Luis Almagro, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, to determine whether there was reasonable ground to believe that crimes against humanity have been committed in Venezuela.
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