Despite its reputation as a welcoming multicultural haven, Canada is failing its Jewish community.
Earlier this month, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, in a major address at the Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, declared that Canada is facing a severe crisis of antisemitism and that the country’s “civil compact” is failing Canadian Jews. Carney took this opportunity to announce the creation of a new council on “rights, equality, and inclusion.” After Carney’s presentation, an arson attempt took place at a prominent Montreal synagogue, and the next day a window was smashed at a Toronto synagogue.
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“Across our country, antisemitism has surged to levels not seen in the post-war period,” Carney said in his speech. “Last year, over two-thirds of all religion-motivated hate crimes were directed at Jewish Canadians who make up only 1% of the population.” The Canadian prime minister went on to condemn recent attacks against Jewish schools, the firebombing of synagogues, the harassment of Jewish patients at hospitals, and the targeting of Jewish-owned businesses.
Some in the Canadian Jewish community have noted Carney’s relative silence on antisemitism issues before his premiership. Carney’s earliest prominent instance condemning the rise of antisemitism in Canada came in September via a closed meeting with Canadian Jewish community leaders, with this month’s speech representing his only high-profile public presentation on the topic.
“[Carney’s] made it his business to say nothing,” former Canadian ambassador to Israel Vivian Bercovici told the Jewish News Syndicate in March 2025. Bercovici also said that she asked Carney on social media to address the “complete lack of law enforcement with respect to the pro-Hamas demonstrations, particularly those in Jewish neighborhoods,” but reported receiving no response.
Rampant antisemitism is causing prominent Canadian Jews to leave the country. They include bestselling author and evolutionary behavioral scientist Gad Saad, who announced he is permanently leaving Canada to join the University of Mississippi due to persistent safety threats; and Emmanuel Moss, chief of cardiac surgery at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital, who cited a sharp increase in antisemitic incidents across the city for relocating his family and practice to Atlanta.
These examples are hardly anomalies of the bleak situation Canadian Jews are facing. According to the Anti-Defamation League’s 2025 J7 Annual Report on Antisemitism, instances of Jew hatred rose nearly 83% (from 492 incidents to 900 incidents) from 2021 to 2023. Fully 19% of all hate crimes were motivated by antisemitism, and Jews accounted for 70% of religiously motivated hate crimes, making Canadian Jews the most targeted religious minority in the country. Incidents include “shootings targeting Jewish schools, arson attacks against synagogues, and vandalism of Jewish-owned businesses and other community institutions.” In 2025, B’nai Brith Canada documented a record 6,800 incidents of antisemitism, the equivalent of 18.6 instances on average each day.
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Carney believes a new council can counter Canada’s rising antisemitism, but its usefulness is highly doubtful. Among the most controversial members appointed is Omar Alghabra, a politician who once said he did not believe that Hamas “wants the elimination of Israel” and was president of a group that lobbied to have Hamas and Hezbollah removed from Canada’s list of official terrorist entities. Another member is Avnish Nanda, an Edmonton lawyer who previously represented anti-Israel encampment activists at the University of Alberta, where slogans such as “globalize the intifada” were reportedly displayed during demonstrations. That phrase is most closely associated with a callback to the violence of the first and second intifadas, which marked a period of widespread Palestinian protests, civil disobedience, and acts of terrorism against Israelis.
Is it any wonder why antisemitism in Canada is surging? Under Carney, Canada became the first Group of 7 nation to recognize a Palestinian state less than two years after the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre (the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust). Rather than calming tensions, this move helped trigger a global wave of antisemitic violence. Far from reversing that tide, it has emboldened it. After years of ignoring this problem, Carney should seriously consider what kind of country Canada will become if it continues to go in a direction that is inhospitable to its Jewish citizens.
Bradley Martin is the executive director of the Near East Center for Strategic Studies. Follow him on Facebook and X @ByBradleyMartin
