NP View: Canadian Jews deserve better

It is so damn obvious that it feels unnecessary to say it: the Jewish people have given so much to Canada.

Their names are on many of our leading institutions, some of our best-known literature, music and art, and on Nobel prizes. They are leaders of some of our most successful businesses. They are our doctors, our teachers, our lawyers. They are our friends and our family.

Canada owes much to its Jewish community who, in recent decades at least, found this country to be among the very best places to live a full and openly Jewish life.

And yet, all Canadians need to understand that the community’s future here is at risk. Many Jews say they are contemplating leaving, or have already left, because of the sudden and largely unchecked rise of antisemitism. How Canada responds will determine what kind of country this will be.

The perversion of public perceptions of the Israel-Hamas war sparked by the October 7 massacre, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, has echoed around the world, but few places have changed as much as some Canadian cities.

The stories are well-known: Jewish institutions and businesses have been firebombed and sprayed with bullets. People have been accosted in the street for being openly Jewish. Many Jews feel ostracized from their workplaces, especially if they work in academia.

“None of this has ameliorated the suffering of Gaza’s inhabitants or helped ‘free Palestine’ — whatever that means,” Torontonian Harry Khachatrian wrote in the Wall Street Journal this week in a story headlined, Canada Has An Antisemitism Problem.

“Yet politicians at every level keep responding with the same platitudes: ‘Antisemitism is vile and unacceptable.’ ‘Hate has no place in Canada.’ Apparently it does. Antisemitism has secured a comfortable suite at the Four Seasons.”

There is now a divide among Canadian Jews.

There is a growing and noisy cohort who are leaving Canada amid rising antisemitism, or considering doing so. The Canadian Press reported this week that a group out of Oklahoma called Tulsa Tomorrow is aiming to recruit Canadian Jews to the city, amid calls for the Trump administration to offer asylum to concerned Jewish-Canadians.

But there is another cohort that sees the same symptoms, and has decided to stay and fight.

This dichotomy was illustrated this week in an exchange between two prominent Jewish-Canadians. Gad Saad, a best-selling author and academic, wrote on social media that he left for the United States, in part because “Jew-hatred” in Montreal “is palpable, at the soccer field, on university campuses, in street protests.”

In response, Harley Finkelstein, the president of Shopify, Canada’s biggest tech company, acknowledged that his family had thought about leaving, but added: “We decided to stay because Jews do not secure a better future by abandoning it. We build it.”

A network of civil society groups have brought together non-Jews for the cause of building that future, Upstanders Canada and Allies For A Strong Canada among them. In June, dozens of senior business and political leaders who aren’t Jewish signed an open letter seeking stricter enforcement of anti-hate laws.

The letter, which appeared as an advertisement in newspapers including National Post, features a quote from Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech to Jewish community leaders on June 1 at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto: “It requires all of us to raise our voices in disgust and defiance when we see the ugly face of antisemitism.”

The business leaders’ call to action includes three recommendations for “our roadmaps forward,” which include a “zero tolerance for hate,” “consistent enforcement of anti-hate laws” and “discipline in public discourse.”

“Words from political leaders matter. This is not about restricting free speech,” the document reads. “No Canadian should be threatened, harassed or attacked because of their faith.”

All Canadians need to hold Mark Carney — and every political leader who has called out antisemitism and followed up with little else — accountable.

At Holy Blossom, Carney admitted that Canada is failing its Jewish community and launched the Advisory Council on Rights, Equality, and Inclusion, which he tasked with “addressing antisemitism.”

Some of the people Carney chose to run the council are not popular choices. This includes Omar Alghabra, former head of the Canadian Arab Federation — an organization that, after his tenure, advocated for Hezbollah and Hamas to be removed from Canada’s terrorist watch list.

The prime minister also said the council’s first order of business would be to “reassess the nature, scale and drivers of antisemitism in Canada,” even though the root causes of Jew-hate are, by now, well known. All this gave the impression that the advisory council was intended to do little more than create the appearance that the government is taking this issue seriously, when in fact very little is actually being done.

And indeed, two months after Carney’s big announcement, Jewish businesses are still being shot at and burnt to the ground, Jewish athletes are subjected to racial slurs and synagogues continue to be vandalized.

Carney and other political leaders need to get behind those who believe in Canada and start treating this as the national emergency that it is. This nation is already worse off for the people who have fled.

Pat Johnson of Upstanders Canada says: “We are not outnumbered. We are out-shouted.” The vast majority of Canadians who support their Jewish friends, family and neighbours need to shout louder, and to demand action.