This article originally appeared in the Toronto Star.
By Jessica Shadian, Dan Pujdak and Max Skudra, February 2, 2026
For the past two years, Jewish communities across Canada have lived in fear of being the next Bondi Beach, Manchester or Pittsburgh.
Almost daily antisemitic incidents are unrelenting reminders for Jews of how unwelcoming Canada has become. Our leaders in Ottawa must actively confront what the government has recognized as “a threat not only to Jewish individuals and the Jewish community, but to society as a whole.”
Serious action requires concrete measures. Our leaders must fill two key vacancies: appoint a new Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, and a Chief Commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
July 17 marked the retirement of former special envoy Deborah Lyons, while it’s been three years since the Canadian Human Rights Commission had a chief. The last appointment ended in failure when the candidate’s alleged history of antisemitism became public.
This means Canada has no leadership and independent authorities to research, raise awareness or advise policymakers on domestic human rights violations and antisemitism, including how our justice and policing systems respond to hate crimes and attempted terrorist attacks against Jews, one of Canada’s fastest growing threats to national security according to CSIS.
Meanwhile, continued protests on Canada’s streets see calls to “globalize the intifada” using “any means necessary,” there is only “one solution” and “all resistance is justified.” Protesters patrol Jewish neighbourhoods. Others march waving flags of Canadian designated terrorist organizations with official mandates to kill Jews.
Rarely have police intervened. Our justice system sits on the sidelines. Canada’s own Handbook on Antisemitism states these actions constitute antisemitism.
Harassment is often treated as protected speech against the war in Gaza. However, Hamas’s founding charter calls on its supporters to “fight the Jews and kill them … There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.” To attract wider appeal, its 2017 charter replaced “Jews” with “Zionists.”
We need the leadership of the special envoy and chief commissioner to remind our politicians and police that the rhetoric is antisemitic hate, and a threat to the safety and security of all Canadians. It must stop.
Instead, the violence grows. Jewish day schools are shot at, Jewish businesses are firebombed and synagogues defaced. Shopping at an Ottawa kosher grocer, a Jewish woman was stabbed, while another thrown out of a Toronto Uber for being Jewish now faces regular death threats. Following the Bondi massacre, protesters overtook the Eaton Centre and Montreal’s Christmas market.
Ottawa police disrupted a teenager’s plot to kill Jews. Toronto police arrested three men targeting the Jewish community, one with alleged connections to the Islamic State. A Canadian resident was arrested for plotting terror attacks against Jews in the United States. The RCMP foiled a planned Toronto-region terror attack.
Statistics Canada’s numbers are clear: it’s unsafe to be Jewish in Canada.
In 2023, 70 per cent of reported religiously-motivated hate crimes targeted Jews, who comprise one per cent of Canada’s population. A federal report on antisemitism in Ontario’s K-12 schools found 781 reported antisemitic incidents over a 16-month period. Of the total cases, 40 per cent targeted Jews, making no reference to Israel.
While Canada’s special envoy and chief commissioner positions remain vacant, no one is responsible for educating and advising our policymakers, educators, police, judiciary and Canadians at large. Those responsible for holding accountable perpetrators and enablers of violence and hate against Jews are not themselves being held to account.
It’s no secret violent extremism is growing. Let’s not wait for our luck to run out before acting.
