The Canadian Liberal Party’s Anthony Housefather has been serving as the Member of Parliament for Mount Royal since October 2015 and will be running for re-election against the Conservative Party’s Neil Oberman in the April 28, 2025, general elections in Canada.
Housefather, who is Jewish, was first elected as a municipal councilor in his early twenties and then as mayor of Côte Saint-Luc from 2005 to 2015. He has served as chairman of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, as well as parliamentary secretary to the ministers of Labour and Public Services and Procurement and to the president of the Treasury Board of Canada.
Housefather has chaired the Canada-Israel Friendship Group since 2021 and co-founded and co-chairs the International Task Force of Parliamentarians to Combat Online Antisemitism.
In an interview with JNS, he said that “antisemitism was horrible in the world after [Hamas’] Oct. 7, [2023, massacre]. Canada is no exception. The Jewish community was demanding action, and I have done my best as a member of parliament to make action happen wherever I could.
“Last fall, we announced $65 million in new security infrastructure that largely has gone to Jewish community organizations to make all places of worship, community centers and schools safer,” added Housefather.
He elaborated on his achievements: “We listed Samidoun and the Houthis as terror organizations, which was one of my priorities in addition to the IRGC. On top of adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism, the government of Canada was the first government in the world to put out a handbook explaining how to use IHRA’s definition to municipalities, universities, private businesses and labor unions, among others, with concrete examples of what is antisemitic.”
Canada’s Prime Minister and Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau, Housefather said, had a good record of support for Israel from 2015 to 2023. “Between 2015 and 2023, the Canadian government voted against 89% of U.N. resolutions singling out Israel for condemnation. Our record was similar only to the United States among large countries, Australia voted against 33% of them and no country in Europe voted against more than 10%,” he said.
“Many people in Canada’s Jewish community would say that support wasn’t strong enough soon after Oct. 7,” he added. “I went to Israel in November 2023 to show my solidarity along with a bipartisan delegation of MPs, both Liberal and Conservative. I always will, as president of the Canada-Israel Friendship Association and as an MP, use my voice to be a strong supporter of Israel.”
Q: Could you tell me a little bit about yourself, professionally and personally, and the platform you are running on?
I have been involved in this community my whole adult life. I have two law degrees from McGill University and an MBA from Concordia University. I spent my entire career with one company called Dialogic and was a chief administrative officer and general counsel and basically ran, at various times, the legal department, the purchasing department, the real estate department and project integrations. I handled acquisitions, divestitures and investor relations.
Dialogic had employees worldwide. For a long time, our head offices were in the United States, in New Jersey and California and we had an office in Israel with over 200 employees. I got to negotiate contracts with companies around the world and ran a pretty large operation.
When I was in my early 20s, I ran and was elected as a city councilor for 11 years and then as mayor of Côte Saint-Luc for 10 years before being elected as a Member of Parliament, at which time I left my job and left being mayor.
Since 2015, I have been the Member of Parliament for Mount Royal. I served as the chair of the Justice Committee in my first term in parliament and then parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Labour and parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Public Services and Procurement.
In this last term, I served as parliamentary secretary to the president of the Treasury Board. I was also, for the last eight months, the prime minister’s special advisor on Jewish community issues and antisemitism.
I think over my career, whether through building of the aquatic and community center in Côte Saint-Luc, the first municipality where I was mayor, to start composting at homes, being the first one to have an urban agriculture program or the first one to have volunteer citizens on patrol, I have established myself as a strong leader able to advocate for minorities.
In addition to my work and my employment, I was the president of Quebec’s English-language lobby group and I worked in a lot of Jewish community organizations as a volunteer, including the predecessor to CIJA, which was called the Canadian Jewish Congress.
Q: What is the biggest issue of this election campaign?
To me, the biggest issue of this election campaign is the United States. It’s Canada’s relationship with the United States, our closest friend and ally which is now completely rocky because of the way Donald Trump handled the relationship since he became president again in January.
Whether dismissively calling our prime minister ‘governor’, actively claiming that Canada should be the 51st state, or imposing a violation of our free trade agreement with the United States, Trump has managed to create a sense of patriotism and rally Canadians together in a way we haven’t seen in a long time.
Canada has recognized that we export over 70% to the U.S. and we import over 60% from the U.S. We can no longer be this reliant and I think Prime Minister [Mark] Carney with his doctorate in economics and his background as the head of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England is uniquely placed to lead the country at this time because we need to restructure our economy.
Not only do we need to do as best as we can to make the relationship with the U.S. as stable as possible. We need to lobby Congress; we need to lobby American business and American labor and gain allies on the American side because the Trump administration is not going to necessarily listen to Canada. They will listen to American constituents and voters.
I am uniquely placed in that situation because not only did I spend my career negotiating with large American companies and have relationships with American business, particularly in tech and understand American business and Americans, I also have developed many strong relationships with members of Congress.
In 2020, I co-founded, together with Michal Cotler-Wunsh, the Israeli special advisor on antisemitism, and Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the president and CEO of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, Michael Levitt, the interparliamentary task force to combat online antisemitism.
Through that work, I met many members of Congress. Through work within the Jewish community and Jewish parliamentarian groups, I’ve also developed relationships with all the Jewish members of Congress and others. I am also the vice chair of the Canada-U.S. friendship group and have been involved in that group since I first got elected.
To me, there are three things that we need to do with regard to restructuring Canada’s economy. Within Canada, we need to remove interprovincial trade barriers. We probably cost ourselves 12 cents on the dollar with limitations that provinces place on one another with regard to the export of products and the permission of manpower to go across provincial borders.
We need to learn to be more self-sufficient. We learned that during COVID, when we realized that we had exported all of our Canadian technology to create vaccines in the 1980s, and we didn’t have domestic vaccine production. We realized in COVID that we needed to restart this. We have a location in my own riding that is now capable of producing vaccines and we also need to diversify our trade partners.
We are the only G7 country to have free trade agreements with every other G7 country. We have a free trade agreement with Israel and Ukraine and we need to make use of it to have a broader diversification of our exports.
If you ask me what the biggest issue of this election is, it’s who Canadians have confidence in to deal with the United States and to restructure our economy.
Q: Why is this riding important for local Jews and for global Jewry?
The federal riding of Mount Royal is the riding with the second-highest percentage of Jewish constituents. In the 2021 census, it was 25.1%.
With 25.1% of the riding being Jewish, there are many people focused on issues of importance to the Jewish community. I think the Jewish community in Canada is one of the most important communities in the Diaspora. We have the fourth highest number of Jews in any country in the world after the U.S, Israel and France.
I think the Canadian Jewish community has an incredibly proud history going back to the first settler in 1760. Obviously, Jews were not allowed in New France because only Catholics were allowed in. Since 1760, the Jewish community has contributed extraordinarily to Canada in every single way, in every single industry, and we are a very important part of the Canadian population even though we make up just over 1% of the Canadian population.
The Montreal Jewish community, which I have worked for my entire life, is such an important part of the Montreal Island, the province and the country.
Q: Do you think it’s still possible to maintain bipartisan support for Israel?
I have believed my whole life that you need to have bipartisan support for Israel and strong advocates for Israel in all political parties. The Jewish community would be penalizing itself if it relied only on one party because then it would be captive to that party and would be voting only on that issue, which would make no sense.
You need strong supporters of the Jewish community and the state of Israel in all political parties, and that’s what I have always advocated for.
The Canada-Israel Friendship Association is a group that brings together people from all parties that I chair, and the international task force we started in 2020 always had a Liberal member, a Conservative, and a new Democrat from Canada, as well as Republicans and Democrats from the U.S. and people across the spectrum in other countries.
The goal is always to make sure we are bipartisan on issues of antisemitism and support for Israel.
Q: What actions have you taken to curb the explosion of antisemitism in Canada post-Oct. 7?
I was the one who moved last year for the Justice committee to study antisemitism and focus on college campuses, even though that’s provincial jurisdiction, because none of the provinces were doing anything about it.
We had hearings in parliament last year that brought together Jewish students, we had the university presidents, the police, experts, and Jewish community organizations, and we came out with a report that was presented to the parliament, which was unanimous. That report was a report that did not only look at what the federal government should do but also what the provinces should do, the university, the police, the municipality, it was an all-encompassing report and it was multi-partisan.
We had the National Antisemitism Forum that I have been pushing for, I got it to happen in March when we brought together not only the federal government, but provinces, municipalities, the police and universities.
We asked everybody to sign a pledge on antisemitism. The federal government made unilateral commitments, which I was very pleased with, and asked the provinces, the police, the municipalities and universities to also make commitments.
That to me was a lot of important work done on antisemitism that I helped make happen. The goal was always for it to be as bipartisan as possible.
Antisemitism was horrible in the world after Oct. 7. Canada is no exception. The Jewish community was demanding action and I have done my best as a member of parliament to make action happen wherever I could, including for example last fall when we announced $65 million in a new security infrastructure that largely has gone to Jewish community organizations to make almost all places of worships, community centers, and schools safer.
The revised program also encompassed all the asks that I had received from the federations and CIJA, it now allowed for security guards for office spaces and cemeteries to be covered.
We listed Samidoun and the Houthis as terror organizations, which was one of my priorities, in addition to the IRGC. On top of adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism, the government of Canada was the first government in the world to put out a handbook explaining how to use IHRA’s definition to municipalities, universities, private businesses, and labor unions, among others, with concrete examples of what is antisemitic.
Q: You voted no on the motion to cease arm exports to Israel. What did you think of Trudeau’s response to Oct. 7, and would you have done anything differently?
I was very public about the fact that I would have done things differently. We are all, as members of the House, advocates within our caucus and within our government and I do my best to push my positions. I win many of the times, and I don’t win some of the times, and that was a motion I did not win on. I was critical of the government’s position on that.
Justin Trudeau had a very good record of support for Israel from 2015 to 2023. Between 2015 and 2023, the Canadian government voted against 89% of U.N. resolutions singling out Israel for condemnation. Our record was similar only to the United States among large countries, Australia voted against 33% of them, and no country in Europe voted against more than 10%.
Many people in Canada’s Jewish community would say that support wasn’t strong enough soon after Oct. 7. I went to Israel in November 2023 to show my solidarity along with a bipartisan delegation of MPs, both Liberal and Conservative. I always will, as president of the Canada-Israel Friendship Association and as an MP, use my voice to be a strong supporter of Israel.
Q: Do you support sending aid to Gaza?
For me, I have spoken out and voted against funding UNRWA because I believe UNRWA has shown itself to be a non-credible organization. I certainly recognize the humanitarian issues in Gaza, and I recognize that people are suffering in Gaza, and whether they are suffering because of Hamas or not, people need aid. As long as aid gets to people, I certainly support sending aid.