Toronto police officers look on as people take part in a pro-Palestinian demonstration on Nov. 29, 2025.Doug Ives/The Canadian Press
The provincial government and the Toronto police are butting heads. The subject is how to manage pro-Palestinian protests in the city. The province says that the police are not doing enough. The police say they are doing everything they can within the law. The police, in this case, are right.
The clash comes against a background of rising antisemitism across Canada. The Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel and the ugly war in Gaza that followed were the match that lit the tinder.
Two-thirds of hate crimes in which religion was the issue were aimed at Jewish targets in 2024. Synagogues have been defaced and firebombed. A Toronto girls school was shot at repeatedly. Some pro-Palestinian demonstrators have even taken to marching through Jewish neighbourhoods, a revolting tactic with historic echoes that are hard to ignore.
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Jewish leaders say their community is feeling profoundly shaken and they want authorities to step up. The police, some say, have failed in their duty to curb hate crime, maintain public order and keep the community safe. The Progressive Conservative government led by Premier Doug Ford seems to agree.
On Dec. 30, Ontario Solicitor-General Michael Kerzner released a letter about what he called “the lack of consistent enforcement when it comes to intimidation, harassment and other hate-motivated offences.” He said that incidents like a Boxing Day protest at the Eaton Centre shopping mall and marches through residential neighbourhoods had left many people in a “state of heightened fear and anxiety, concerned about a lack of visible response.”
Last week, Police Chief Myron Demkiw and police board chair Shelley Carroll fired back.
They said that police responded within minutes to the Eaton Centre protest, which went on for only 12 minutes and was already breaking up when they arrived. Chief Demkiw said police had been resolute in standing up to hate and antisemitism. Over the past two years its officers had made more than 460 arrests and laid more than 1,000 charges.
“Demonstrations engage Charter-protected rights, and police can lay charges only when they have reasonable grounds to believe a criminal offence has taken place. That is the law, and it is the framework within which every officer must operate,” they said.
Exactly. We should thank our lucky stars that the police understand that.
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We can see right before our eyes in real time what happens when politicians tell law enforcement whom to pursue, arrest and charge. The president of a country with one of the world’s strongest constitutions is weaponizing the law to persecute his enemies and pursue his personal vendettas. Immigration police are his attack dogs. The Justice Department goes meekly along.
Our Constitution, like theirs, protects the right of citizens to express their beliefs, no matter how radical, unpleasant or even despicable. Political demonstrations are legal in this country. Chanting nasty slogans is legal in this country, even on the sidewalks of a quiet street (as long as they don’t amount to slander, libel or a direct incitement to violence).
As Chief Demkiw points out, police regularly consult Crown prosecutors about whether charges should be laid over protest activity. Often the Crown will say no, because no obvious law was broken.
In the case of the Eaton Centre protest, authorities reviewed footage of what happened and, “while this incident has understandably caused distress, the evidence in this case does not rise to the level of criminality.”
That is a crucial line to draw – between what is upsetting or offensive and what is illegal. At heated times like this, when hurtful words are flying back and forth, it is easy to step over that line.
Or simply to move it. Under pressure to crack down, Toronto passed a “bubble-zone” bylaw last year prohibiting protesters from committing “an act of discouragement” within 50 metres of places of worship, daycares and schools. The Liberal government in Ottawa is moving to make it a crime to display a Nazi or a Hamas flag with the intention of promoting hatred against identifiable groups.
It is not hard to see where all this could lead. If a Hamas flag can be banned, why not a Russian or Iranian or Cuban one? Who defines what an act of discouragement is? Threats, obstruction and so on are already illegal.
Of course police should do their utmost to make Jewish community feel safe. The situation it faces is profoundly disturbing. But police have broad powers to keep public protests peaceful and orderly, to investigate potentially dangerous individuals and groups and to provide security for events and institutions.
What they do not and should not have is the power to throw someone in jail for shouting a slogan or waving a flag. Politicians with any grasp of how our democracy works should know that. Instead of scolding the police, they should be congratulating them for respecting the laws of the land.