Carney calls on Canadians to reject antisemitism that is testing country’s values

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The values underpinning what it means to be Canadian are being tested by a crisis of antisemitism, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Monday as he urged all citizens to stand up for the Jewish community.

Mr. Carney said the compact upon which Canada was built – that each citizen recognizes each other’s value and worth – is failing, and that has dire consequences for the country as a whole.

“The horror and shame are global. Our actions must be local. They start with clearly admitting that Canada’s civic compact is failing Jewish Canadians,” Mr. Carney said.

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Mr. Carney spoke Monday at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, a city where crimes against the Jewish community represent the largest share of hate-related crime.

Attacks explicitly targeting Jewish people and institutions in Canada rose after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas militants inside Israel, which killed more than 1,200 people, led to a retaliatory military campaign by the Israeli government that has killed tens of thousands in the Gaza Strip.

The number of confirmed and suspected hate crimes targeting Jewish people that were reported to police across the country increased nearly 75 per cent between 2022 and 2024, according to data from Statistics Canada.

Pro-Palestinian protests held near Toronto’s Jewish neighbourhoods have become a particular flashpoint. On Monday, the Toronto Police Service announced five new arrests for “willful promotion of hatred targeting members of the Jewish community” in connection with one such demonstration in March. Synagogues and Jewish schools in Toronto have also been shot at.

Mr. Carney’s speech, his first to focus on the topic of antisemitism, was met with polite praise from those in the audience, which included MPs, local and provincial politicians and religious leaders. He had faced pressure to speak in person directly about the issue.

But Jewish leaders criticized him for not addressing his government’s foreign policy toward Israel, which has included condemning the country’s conduct in Gaza and recognizing a Palestinian state – moves that some in the Jewish community have said further inflamed domestic tensions.

“When Canadian elected leaders publicly condemn Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, Jewish Canadians pay the price,” Holy Blossom’s Rabbi Yael Splansky said in recorded remarks played before Mr. Carney began speaking.

The Prime Minister did not explicitly mention the Middle East conflict in his speech, though he alluded to it in a call for Canadians to stand up against hate to restore the civic compact.

“It requires that we do not transpose foreign conflicts onto each other. It requires all of us as Canadians to stand up and protect our fellow citizens,” he said.

“It requires all of us to raise our voices in disgust and defiance when we see the ugly face of antisemitism. It requires that no Canadian child goes to school being seen as a representative of any foreign state.”

A report last year by the now-shuttered antisemitism envoy’s office detailed stories of Jewish elementary schoolchildren being told they were responsible for the Israeli government’s actions, among other incidences.

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The positions of the Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism and the Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia were eliminated by the Carney government, and are being replaced by an advisory council on rights, equality and inclusion.

The Prime Minister unveiled the makeup of the council Monday. It will be chaired by Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture Marc Miller, and other members will include former Liberal MP and cabinet minister Omar Alghabra and retired Olympic speedskater Catriona Le May Doan.

Mr. Carney said the council is being asked to address antisemitism from multiple directions, including reviewing previous reviews and studies to assess the scope of the issue and co-ordinate a whole-of-government response.

He also spoke of other measures the government has taken to safeguard the Jewish community, including efforts to strengthen hate-related Criminal Code offences, programs to combat extremism and additional funding for community security.

“It pains me that we had to commit $75-million to this, any dollar to this,” he said.

Rabbi Steven Wernick, senior rabbi of Beth Tzedec Congregation, one of the largest congregations in North America, said there were things he liked about Mr. Carney’s speech, including the “unequivocal naming” of Jews being targeted in Canada, which he said was “well overdue and needed.”

But he said it was unfortunate that the Prime Minister didn’t acknowledge the connection between foreign policy and antisemitism in Canada.

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“One can disagree with a particular government, in this case the Israeli government, from a government-to-government relationship, but still not fall trap to all of the tropes that are being used against Israel, where anti-Zionism has become a substitute for antisemitism,” he said.

“I think that what the Prime Minister was trying to do was to bifurcate foreign policy from domestic policy, and I think it didn’t work.”

Noah Shack, chief executive officer of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said he has concerns about the new council and whether it just further delays much-needed action.

Earlier this year, The Globe and Mail reported on a finding from the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre that a violent extremist attack against Canada’s Jewish community is a “realistic possibility” in the next six months.

Mr. Shack said national-security agencies have been clear about the drivers of hate, and that they are the same that were at play in a deadly attack on a Jewish gathering in Australia in December.

“We need urgent action from all levels of government immediately, because this is a ticking time bomb,” he said.