Instances of Jew-hatred rose nearly 83% in Canada from 2021 to 2023, from 492 incidents to 900, according to the J7 Annual Report on Antisemitism 2025 released last week.
The report, which addresses Jew-hatred in the seven countries with the largest Jewish communities outside of Israel—Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States—is compiled by a representative group in each of the seven countries.
The Anti-Defamation League is the group in the United States, and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs is its Canadian partner.
“Since Oct. 7, Canada has experienced a wave of antisemitic attacks, with Jewish schools shot at, synagogues firebombed, Jewish-owned businesses vandalized and neighbourhoods targeted,” stated Noah Shack, interim president of CIJA.
Shack added that “immense” challenges face Canadian Jews.
“In the wake of last week’s federal election, we have a clear expectation that the next Parliament will move urgently to advance serious and impactful solutions to combat hate and protect Jewish Canadians,” he said. “What is at stake is not only the safety and well-being of our community, but the future of a Canada where everyone can live free from fear and discrimination.”
Shack told JNS that the newly elected government of Prime Minister Mark Carney “rightfully recognized the crucial importance of a federal response to protecting Jewish and other vulnerable communities.”
CIJA is encouraging the Carney government to introduce legislation soon that would make it a criminal offence to intentionally obstruct access to a place of worship, school or community center.
Jewish Canadians are turning increasingly to legal, policy and advocacy channels to respond to institutional failures, Shack told JNS.
“That includes filing human rights complaints, advocating for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism to be adopted and implemented across education systems and launching litigation when necessary,” he told JNS.
Schools also must treat antisemitism with the same degree of seriousness that they do other forms of hate, according to Shack.
“Confronting hate in education is not just about Jewish students,” he told JNS. “It’s about upholding the fundamental values of Canadian democracy.”
Casey Babb, a senior fellow at the MacDonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa and a fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, wrote this month in the Free Press that “while the outbreak of antisemitism throughout the West has been precipitous in virtually every country—the tenor, violence and extremist nature of Jew-hatred in Canada has ratcheted up in a way few other places on Earth have experienced.”
Babb noted a May 6 report from the Israeli Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, which found that Jew-hatred surged 670% in Canada from Oct. 7, 2023, until the end of 2024.
“Further, between Oct. 7, 2023, and Oct. 7, 2024, there were 1,500 pro-Palestinian rallies in Toronto alone,” he wrote. “That’s over four a day—every day—for a year straight.”
The rallies and other instances of Jew-hatred have led to “the suppression of open Jewish life in Canada, the hiding of Jewish symbols, the need to host Jewish events in secret or with even more intense security and even some people fleeing the country,” Babb wrote.
“Canada now faces a moral test. Our institutions—from police and prosecutors to politicians and civil society—must decide whether to confront antisemitic threats firmly or equivocate and excuse them as protest,” he added.