Marches in the streets, harassment on campus, arson, attacks on businesses and violent assaults. These are what we have enabled through our silence on antisemitism.
Silence and inaction feeds the antisemitism that infects Canadian urban life, enabling it to fester and infect the body politic. The silence is undergirded by the often not-so-quietly held, deeply misguided convictions of our urban elites and soft leftist dilettantes: “Well, the Jews brought this on themselves,” and, “After all, Israel is committing ‘genocide.’ ”
Now our country is being called out for the silence and inaction of our governments and institutions. After watching the rise in hate crimes targeting our country’s Jewish citizens, U.S. President Donald Trump has hinted that he might be open to creating a special immigration program for Jewish-Canadians fleeing antisemitism.
Given our strained relationship and often knee-jerk anti-Americanism, this is particularly galling. It exposes the vacuity of our smugness. Our civic self-worship echoes with “no space for hate” and “diversity is our strength” — empty mantras chanted by those who fail to act. They are our country’s shame.
Our inaction stands in the face of reality: a Canada in which Jews are the target of more than 70 per cent of all religion-motivated hate crimes despite representing about one per cent of our overall population. Jews experienced more police-reported hate crimes in 2025 than every other faith, more than those who reported a hate crime based on their sexual orientation and more than all racial minorities except Black-Canadians.
If that wasn’t enough, a recent report commissioned by the Department of Canadian Heritage found that almost 96 per cent of Jewish post-secondary students surveyed said they had experienced or witnessed at least one antisemitic incident in the preceding 12 months, with 18 per cent of cases involving faculty members.
Antisemitism in Canada is a challenge we at Cardus have been trying to help address in recent years, most notably through the Simeon Initiative , which brought together Christian leaders and their Jewish counterparts to build a foundation of solidarity, mutual respect and action against hatred. This flowed from the Canadian Christian Declaration on Antisemitism in hopes of engaging more Canadian Christians in the fight against Jew hate.
Yet the problem is ultimately not a problem for Jews to solve. It is a problem for the 99 per cent of Canadians who are not Jewish. It is our problem because it shows that in a fundamental test for our common life as citizens, ensuring the respect and defence of every person’s human dignity, Canadians are failing. And now we are being called out by the last person we would want to do so: Donald J. Trump.
In June, Prime Minister Carney announced a new council to combat racism and hate in all forms, and these esteemed individuals were assigned a variety of behind-the-scenes tasks to help combat antisemitism, among other priorities, with no public timetable. The prime minister also tied Bill C-9, the Combating Hate Act, into this announcement despite a tenuous connection to the problem of antisemitism. All of this is insufficient and is more ragging of the puck than decisive action.
At the time, these measures were already seen as inadequate — now, the problem is more severe and time-sensitive. What can the Government of Canada do?
Firstly, the prime minister should implement the recommendations of the Senate’s recent report on antisemitism, which include establishing specialized police hate-crime units and improved training for prosecutors.
Secondly, the government should take decisive action to block foreign influence, both by state-sponsored actors and transnational Islamist networks. These nefarious influences foment antisemitism and disrupt our common life while also posing a public safety threat within the Canadian Muslim community.
At the provincial level, attorneys-general should provide clear, unequivocal direction to police forces to break up violent and hate-motivated protests, initiate arrests and prioritize the investigation of hate-motivated crimes. Crown prosecutors should be directed to prosecute such crimes to the fullest extent of the law. Our peace officers and Crown attorneys need to know that our elected officials have their backs.
Groups like the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and B’nai Brith Canada have gone further on digital safety, suggesting social networking companies like TikTok and Meta must be held accountable, to ensure they are not platforming and fuelling antisemitism.
They have also called for more security infrastructure to support vulnerable Jewish day schools and synagogues. This latter call exposes what is a public scandal. Bubble zones around synagogues and Jewish schools should be seen for what they are: a public embarrassment for which our elected officials are answerable.
While some Jewish-Canadians will leave — and some already have, in high profile fashion — this should not be a call to surrender to the fomenters of hate. If we mean what we say and that Canada is “no space for hate,” we must respond forcefully and decisively on behalf of our Jewish friends and neighbours or risk losing them for good. What could result is a Canada in which I would not wish to live.
National Post
Father Deacon Andrew Bennett is a senior fellow at Cardus, leading its Simeon Initiative, Canada’s former ambassador for religious freedom and head of Global Affairs Canada’s Office of Religious Freedom from 2013 to 2016, and Canada’s former head of delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
