Deborah Lyons, former Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, left, and Amira Elghawaby, Canada’s Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia.The Canadian Press
Last week, a Jewish-owned restaurant in Montreal was vandalized. “You [expletive] Jew” was painted on its front door, with a Jewish star added for good measure. It was just one of too many antisemitic – and Islamophobic – acts shaking Canadian lives in recent years, most of which don’t make it to the news.
Also last week, the federal government announced it is dissolving the offices of Canada’s Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia and the Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism.
The envoys will be replaced by an advisory council on rights, equality and inclusion comprised of academics and community leaders. Its responsibilities include a feel-good, if fuzzy, mission “to foster social cohesion, rally Canadians around shared identity, combat racism and hate in all their forms” and advise the federal government.
Sounds great, right? Who could oppose combating racism and fostering social cohesion? Any fight against hate is welcome.
But right now, antisemitism is a serious problem requiring a strategy of its own – along with a person with matzah balls of steel to oversee it.
Former antisemitism envoy warns abolition of the post could make Canadian Jews less safe
The Jewish community is consistently the most targeted religious group in the country when it comes to reported hate crimes, according to Statistics Canada. The volume of these acts is at odds with the group’s tiny percentage of Canada’s population, and such acts have grown significantly in number since Oct. 7, 2023. The Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and Israel’s resulting war in Gaza have also led to a rise in anti-Palestinian racism, Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism, a report from York University’s Islamophobia Research Hub shows.
Islamophobia in Canada has been deadly. Six people were killed in the 2017 Quebec City mosque attack. In 2021, four members of the Afzaal family were murdered while out for a walk in London, Ont.
Any community putting up with this level of terror and hate requires dedicated advocates of its own. The situation calls for urgent and informed attention. We’re not going to kumbaya our way out of this.
Canada’s first antisemitism envoy, Irwin Cotler, worries Ottawa’s new strategy “will end up, however inadvertently, making Jews in Canada less safe, and feeling less safe.”
At a time when antisemitism remains a crisis, this position has been vacant since July, when Mr. Cotler’s successor, Deborah Lyons, left the job. After two difficult years, she was exhausted. “This was every day waking up to a fight,” she told The Canadian Jewish News. She said she had left with a strong base for her successor. But there was no successor.
In his statement, Mr. Cotler said he is concerned, based on his own experience, that while a council like the one the government has announced is necessary to combat “all forms of hate,” such a body “tends to marginalize or erase the singularity of anti-Jewish hatred, its globality, and its descent into standing threats of intimidation, harassment, violence and even terrorism.”
Yes: In whatever mixed progressive spaces remain, concerns of the Jewish community are too often deemed less concerning.
Meanwhile, Amira Elghawaby, who has led the anti-Islamophobia office with passion, intelligence and a calm vigour, told The Globe she’s hopeful Ottawa will continue to build on its strong foundation “to ensure the safety and dignity of Canadian Muslims, alongside Canadians of all backgrounds.” (One does wonder if controversies around her office may have contributed to Ottawa’s decision, including a co-authored article written long before her appointment regarding anti-Muslim sentiment in Quebec for which she later apologized.)
Why not keep these envoys and have them report to the council?
Granted, the status quo wasn’t working. And it’s fair to question why a government assigns these roles to only specific groups. Why not for Black people – who are the most targeted for hate crimes in Canada – or Indigenous people, or LGBTQ+ folks?
But the way hatred aimed at Jews is being accepted, mainstreamed or shrugged off these days, all around the world, is astounding.
Canadians are fortunate to have a government that cares enough about discrimination to create this council. But this is crisis time for the Jewish and Muslim communities. Specially designed roles are required, with strong people in them willing to take on all that hate; I don’t know how Ms. Lyons did it, or how Ms. Elghawaby has been doing it. Kudos to them both, and to Mr. Cotler.
It is imperative that the voices representing these communities do not get drowned out, watered down, or disqualified in a council dealing with what shouldn’t be, but sadly and certainly at times will be, opposing concerns.