No sooner did JNS find a seat at a kosher Toronto cafe with Anthony Housefather, who will mark 100 days as the Canadian special advisor on Jewish community relations and antisemitism on Oct. 13, when an admirer of the Jewish parliamentarian interrupted the interview.
“You could sit anywhere, including my house,” the middle-aged woman told Housefather. “I recognized you. I follow you online. I love what you’re doing, and you are one of our heroes.”
“Oh, you’re one of our warriors,” she further gushed at Housefather, who has spent a decade in service in the Canadian Parliament. “Thank you so much for everything you’re doing, and we need it.”
Housefather, 54, has indeed done a lot. Before his election to Parliament in 2015, he worked as an executive vice president for corporate affairs and general counsel at a multinational technology company after earning two law degrees from McGill University and an MBA from Concordia University.
He first entered public service in 1994 as a 24-year-old, when he was elected as a municipal councilor in the Town of Hampstead. He worked his way up through local government to be elected, 11 years later, the mayor of Côte Saint-Luc. He served in the latter role for a decade.
In Parliament, Housefather represents the riding (district) of Mount Royal in Quebec. He has served as chair of the House of Commons Justice and Human Rights Committee (2015 to 2019), after which he was appointed Parliamentary secretary to the Canadian labor minister. After the 2021 election, he became Parliamentary secretary to the public services and procurement minister.
In his new role addressing Jew-hatred, Housefather collaborates closely with Deborah Lyons, Canada’s special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism, including working with the presidents and senior administrators at 15 large Canadian universities on fighting Jew-hatred and hate speech broadly, and seeking to penalize organizers of antisemitic encampments.
“I found honestly that in talking to universities, they were happy to work with us—happy for the clarity lessons learned from last year, and were intent on making things better,” he told JNS over coffee at the Prosserman Jewish Community Centre cafeteria.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed Housefather—a Montreal-area parliamentarian who is also part of the Liberal Party—to his new role on July 5. Housefather told JNS that in his new position, he addresses rising Jew-hatred nationwide and concerns about the safety and well-being of Jewish Canadians and enhances the government’s actions against antisemitism.
A defining characteristic of Housefather’s political career has been his willingness to speak out against his party about its positions on Israel, and he was one of just three Liberal parliamentarians who voted against a nonbinding House of Commons motion, which called for a two-state solution and a halt to further arms transfers to the Jewish state.
“As Iran launches missiles at our ally Israel, I ask my colleagues who voted for a motion to not authorize arms sales to Israel, which would include defensive ones, whether they understand the implications of what they voted for,” he wrote on April 13. “This misguided policy must be reversed now.”
Housefather also expressed disappointment when his colleagues gave a standing ovation to the New Democratic Party member who sponsored the original anti-Israel motion, and he has criticized the government’s actions on U.N. votes, the International Court of Justice and funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which Israel has said has a widespread problem of staff with ties to Palestinian terror groups.
Despite disagreements with his party, including about the conditions leading to a two-state solution in Israel and Jew-hatred at the United Nations, Housefather told JNS that he remains a Liberal in his core values.

Defending Trudeau
Many Canadians have accused the prime minister of being soft on antisemitism, and Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative Party leader who is running against Trudeau, often attacks the latter for his record on antisemitism and Israel.
Housefather told JNS that Trudeau’s “heart is in the right place.”
“He is as upset about this surging antisemitism in Canada as anyone else. I’ve criticized publicly our government for not moving fast enough on these issues,” Housefather said. “I tried not to make my role partisan. I think in Canada, the Liberal Party and Conservative Party have strong voices and strong advocates for our community that are not Jewish, and ideally, we would have them in more parties.”
The problem of “street antisemitism,” he said, is more the fault of police or prosecutors, who aren’t arresting or trying offenders.
There is also a “misplaced feeling” in the Canadian Jewish community that everything is about Trudeau and the federal government, according to Housefather. The prime minister “is actually of the three levels of government, one who has the least power in these areas,” Housefather said, “but it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t show moral leadership.”
He hopes that provinces and municipalities will soon enact “bubble legislation” barring demonstrations within a certain number of feet of Jewish institutions, including schools. The antisemitism advisor is also supporting a new federal criminal code charge that would make it illegal to block access to a building exit or to intimidate people from entering a building.
Politicians have some power to combat Jew-hatred, but regular citizens also have “a lot of leverage,” as alumni do when contacting a school president.
“If you live in Toronto and you’re very concerned, and you have children in elementary and secondary school, run for school trustee,” Housefather advised. “Have input into their consultation process.”
Samidoun
Housefather’s social-media account of late has taken a page from Cato the Elder, who is said to have concluded all of his speeches before the Senate in ancient Rome, “Carthage must be destroyed.”
The Canadian politician has consistently drawn attention to Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. “Samidoun must be listed as a terrorist organization. I have been working on this file for a year and pushing on it almost every day,” he wrote on Oct. 9. “After its words and actions over the last few days, getting this done expeditiously is a necessity and I won’t rest until our government does it.”
The prior day, Housefather wrote that one of his “biggest priorities is getting Samidoun listed as a terrorist entity. Its words and actions over the last couple of days just give added evidence to our security services and the cabinet that this needs to be done, and I follow up on this on a daily basis.” (He made similar calls on Sept. 15 and April 21.)
Housefather told JNS that he is “taking the lead in terms of discussions” with ministries of public safety and justice on listing Samidoun as a terrorist group.
A registered Canadian nonprofit, Samidoun is tied directly to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Canadian-designated terror group since 2003.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, which has focused on getting Samidoun listed, states that the latter has a “significant and active presence in Canada, where it holds events, raises funds, runs advocacy campaigns and organizes activities on university campuses.”
“Regularly, Samidoun officials call for violence and glorify terrorist organizations at these events,” adds CIJA, the advocacy arm of the Jewish Federations of Canada-United Israel Appeal.
Housefather told JNS of Samidoun that “obviously the security apparatus has to determine that they meet the criteria” of being a terror entity, “but I think we provided a lot of information that would give them food for thought that it does.”