Canadian authorities waiting until the eleventh hour to combat antisemitism.
Canadian authorities waiting until the eleventh hour to combat antisemitism.
Sean Ward, the assailant who critically wounded Belleville police officer on duty to protect the congregation of the Sons of Jacob Synagogue on September 20, 2026, was a member of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light infantry from which he was discharged in 2022 for refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Sean Ward believed, among other outrageous conspiracy theories, that the Jews invented COVID-19 virus. Yet, his encounter with the Belleville police officer was an obstacle to his mission to murder as many Jewish worshippers as possible, who were at the time observing Yom Kippur, the holiest event in Judaism. Was the above episode the only incident targeting Canadian Jews?
B’nai Brith Canada, the country’s oldest independent Jewish human rights organization and advocacy group, alerts that antisemitism in Canada has increased dramatically in the last several years. B’nai Brith Canada is issuing an Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents. The Annual Audit of Incidents for 2024 states 6,219 cases of hatred targeting Jews in Canada. The Annual Audit of Antisemitic incidents for the year 2025, further displays Canada as a country in the paroxysms of national epidemic of antisemitism. For 2025, B’nai Brith recorded 6,800 cases of hostility towards the Jews, the highest count Jewish advisory group has recorded since 1982. Simon Wolle, B’nai Brith Canada’s Chief Executive Officer, warns:” Our review of the past year’s (2025) antisemitic incidents must be understood as a wake-up-call”. He emphasized the responsibility of all three levels of government and law enforcement agencies to initiate the actions to prevent the spread of antisemitism. “Canada has vast tools at its disposal to address the crisis of antisemitism. Our findings support the need for a whole-of-government approach to combating hate, antisemitism, and extremism in Canadian society”.
The Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) wonders, the same as B’nai Brith Canada: “The question is not whether Canada has the tools to fight antisemitism, but whether it has the will to use them”. Presenting cases, where political sensitivity, lack of training and evidentiary problems had affected the proceedings, MLI demonstrates that serious antisemitic attacks were reduced in significance or dismissed. They pointed to the underuse of the Criminal Code (Criminal Code, RSC 1985, c C-46, s. 320) which are seldom utilized systematically to follow up the antisemitic offences. Macdonald-Laurier Institute, while discussing Canada’s Anti-Terrorist Act, points to the provisions of the Act which allow to confront antisemitic assaults derived from the support of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Proud Boys. Delivery of financial or other help to such entities, or being part of their violence, is punishable by sentences from 10 years to life imprisonment (Criminal Code, RSC 1985, c C-46, ss.515(6) and 83.26).
Despite there are considerable, yet underused, legal instruments to counter antisemitism in Canada, there is a point of interaction between Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and local police which require close inspection and revision. RCMP usually leads criminal investigation into terrorism and violent extremism in Canada. The investigation of hate crimes falls under the jurisdiction of local enforcement services. It is the local police that is the first one to receive complaint of the antisemitic incident and, unless local police staff is adequately trained to distinguish hate crime from the case of terrorism, the episode of antisemitic terrorism or violent extremism can be lost. The researchers of Macdonald-Laurier Institute emphasize that present day’s antisemitic attack is” armed, patterned and purposeful’ and should be considered as terrorism rather than a hate crime. “Hate crime prosecutions, however important, address individual acts, while terrorism investigations engage Canada’s national security architecture-including specialized RCMP units and CSIS, which have the tools needed to trace ideological networks, foreign influence and patterns of radicalization”.
If we view antisemitic violence as terrorism, it is important to know which government entity determines Canada’s National Terrorism Threat Levels, and which organization follows up on it. The Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre (ITAC) performs strategic intelligence analysis and threat assessment and securely relays it, among other pertinent agencies, to The Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams (INSETs), which have full law enforcement and criminal investigation powers. There are five Canada National Terrorism Threat levels: Very Low, Low, Medium, High, and Critical. Canada’s current terrorist threat level is Medium.
Dead end activities of Canadian Government to combat antisemitism.
On June 1, 2026, Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, spoke at the Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. In his address titled” The Canadian Covenant” the politician proclaimed that “Canada’s civic compact is failing Jewish Canadians”, lamenting the unimaginable rise of antisemitism in the country he is leading. In his speech Mark Carney officially launched The Special Advisory Council on Rights, Equality and Inclusion, a Canadian government advisory group. The Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality and Inclusion has only an advisory capacity and represent an entity without the authority to punish the instigators of hatred and lies toward Jewish people and Israel. The Mark Carney’s tepid address on June 1, 2026, carried the message of constrained approach to use government resources to confront antisemitism in Canada.
The root difficulty to fight antisemitism in Canada is the indifference of government and public to the problem.
Deborah Lyons, Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism, resigned on July 17, 2025, due to physical and emotional exhaustion and deep despair over a lack of public solidarity against anti-Jewish hate. Describing her challenges as a Canada Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism, Deborah Lyons pointed to several areas of concern. She was “waking up every day to a fight”, to battle the indifference and hostility of the Canadian business leaders, religious mentors and politicians who were refusing to listen to her appeals to support the Jewish community. During the interview with The Canadian Jewish News podcast “North Star”, Ms. Lyons deplored:” This is where I spent many frustrating days: getting the three levels of government, the federal, provincial, and municipal, to work together on the issue of growing hate (to Jews and Israel) why it was so much easier for them to come together around car theft, auto theft, and have a massive, important summit on it and put in place dedicated prosecutors right across the country. Again, it’s tangible, it’s concrete, they could address that. But we have not been able, I think, to get the three levels of government yet coming together in a common front to address hate (to Jews and Israel)”.
Canadian authorities waiting until the eleventh hour to combat antisemitism.
If the person mentioned at the beginning of this article, Sean Ward, would’ve been successful in his mission to kill as many Jews in Sons of Jacob synagogue in Toronto as he could, under Canadian law, a successful mass-casualty attack might be qualified as both a hate crime and a terrorist attack. May be then, the Canada’s Terrorist Threat Level would have been elevated from Medium to High or Critical. This would reflect rightly the current unprecedented level of antisemitism in Canada.