Two Jewish men were stabbed after leaving a synagogue in London this week, in the same area where a volunteer Jewish organization's ambulances were torched a few weeks ago. First responders at the latest attack were from a volunteer Jewish neighborhood watch group.
"It's no longer safe to be visibly Jewish on the streets of London," a non-Jewish woman, Jan Bowman, said at a demonstration afterward. Canadians do not want this kind of hatred here, but we are well on our way. Recent examples include a man trying to force his way into a synagogue last weekend just north of Toronto. The next day, a few kilometers south, a stone was thrown through the window of a Judaica shop.
At a bar mitzvah I attended in Toronto recently, the rabbi began the service by explaining the emergency plan in case of an attack—at a synagogue, to beaming relatives and 13-year-old kids.
In case individual events aren't enough to convince the public at large, two reports released in the space of a week have come to the same general conclusion: antisemitism in Canada is at an inflection point, to quote the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights.
Reports Highlight National Crisis
B'nai Brith Canada's League for Human Rights' annual audit of antisemitic incidents for 2025 calls it a "national crisis." Last year, the organization documented 6,800 incidents, the equivalent of more than 18 per day—and the highest number since it started keeping track in 1982. The increase since 2022, the year before the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel that led to Israel's Gaza war, tells the real story: 145.6 percent.
They're not all shootings at schools, and not all hate crimes, but the findings are troubling—or should be. Harassment forms the bulk of the incidents, most of it online, but there were also nearly 300 reported incidents of vandalism and 10 reports of violence.
The hate is coming from the left and the right, the report states—from teachers, student unions, a realtor. Swastikas on election signs, in public schools, on a student's dorm-room door at the University of Guelph. A group of Jewish middle-school students on a bus told by a passenger to go back to the concentration camps. Uber drivers refusing Jewish passengers. "Kill all Jews" scrawled on bathroom walls at Concordia and McGill Universities.
Lest one is inclined to deny the severity of the problem outlined by a Jewish organization's report (which would be in and of itself antisemitic), the Senate Committee's findings are also alarming.
Senate Committee Findings
"Canadian Jews have understandably felt unsafe," the report states. What is beyond comprehension is that this has been allowed to continue. For instance, Revi Mula with Canadian Women Against Antisemitism told the committee that some "rape crisis centres, shelters, and women's organizations have refused Jewish women due to their identity being equated with the actions of Israel."
The committee also heard that increased security does not necessarily deter or reduce antisemitic events. Still, it's necessary.
Australia's Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, created after the massacre at Sydney's Bondi Beach, released an interim report on Thursday that also noted a sharp rise in antisemitism. Among the revelations: days before 15 people were killed at the beach's Hanukkah celebrations, the region's Jewish security organization asked police to beef up security at Hanukkah events in Sydney, given the high threat level. Police said they could not devote additional officers but would send patrols by.
While police and security are now highly visible fixtures at many Canadian Jewish institutions, we're not quite at the point where the community needs to provide its own ambulances. Let's not get there.
Recommendations for Action
Both Canadian reports recommend the creation of a federal antisemitism task force. B'nai Brith calls for more resources to protect Jews and Jewish institutions. The Senate Committee lists 22 recommendations, including education, training, and a public awareness campaign.
Great. The government needs to provide leadership, yes; police need to offer protection, and the courts, enforcement. But top-down can't work alone.
Canadians in general have a role, too: a demonstration of the will required for change. If the urgency of this specific form of hate isn't resonating with the populace, how much will a public awareness campaign accomplish? Yes, education is key. But some tough mirror-gazing is also necessary.
"Do we want Canada to be the nation that succumbed to the forces of hate and abandoned its Jewish community in their time of need?" writes B'nai Brith Canada's Richard Robertson. "Is that the narrative that we want to symbolize this chapter of our collective history?" Every right-thinking Canadian should emphatically answer no—and not just Jewish Canadians. What do we want this country to be?
