As Canadians suffer through summer heat and threats of damaging tariffs from our neighbour to the south, it’s easy to ignore a growing existential threat to our civil society – antisemitism.
Disruptive street demonstrations, vandalism and violence perpetrated against Jewish businesses and places of worship, social media campaigns against individual Jews, the list goes on. You don’t need to be a student of history to understand what can and has happened to societies that have tolerated the growth of such hate.
We are not immune. Two recent reports should be a clarion call for more action from our governments, police, the courts and professional regulatory bodies.
The first report was released earlier this month by the Special Envoy for Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism. Conducted by Robert Brym, a University of Toronto sociology professor, it surveyed 599 Jewish families and found that nearly 800 antisemitic incidents had occurred in Ontario schools between Oct. 7, 2023 (the date of the Hamas massacre of Jews in Israel) and January 2025.
Worse than the number, however, was the fact that nearly one-sixth were initiated by teachers or took place during school-sanctioned activities. Adding to concern was the fact that nearly three-quarters occurred in just three of Ontario’s largest school boards – Toronto District School Board, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board and the York Region District School Board.
To top it off, the report found that too often, school officials were not acting.
“Little is being done to resolve the crisis,” the report concluded. “In about 6 of 10 reported cases, schools do not investigate, deny that the incident involves antisemitism or effectively punish victims by recommending that they take remote classes or switch schools.”
The environment of fear within schools is getting to the point that 39 per cent of Jewish parents have moved or are planning to remove their children from public schools altogether.
“Jewish schools in Ontario are having a hard time dealing with the inflow of new students abandoning the public system,” Brym observed in a recent media interview.
The second report, released last week by Statistics Canada, contained police data that showed Jews were the largest target of reported hate crimes last year, despite representing just under one percent of the Canadian population. There were 920 reported incidents against Jews as compared to 873 for Blacks, 658 for LGBTQ people, 321 for South Asians, 319 for Arabs and 229 for Muslims.
Where is this growth in hatred against Jews coming from? It would appear that some schools have become breeding grounds. Children learn by what they observe. And when they see classmates being bullied and harassed by other students chanting slogans in support of Hitler’s mass murder of Jews or using Nazi salutes, when children hear a teacher describe a six-year-old as only “half human” because one of the child’s parents is Jewish, or that Jewish children are “baby killers,” they remember.
For this to be happening in Canada, supposedly the home of successful multiculturalism, is alarming. “Canadian multiculturism is ailing and may be on its deathbed,” Brym speculated.
Former head of the Jewish National Fund, Marty Morantz observed that “I never thought in my lifetime, I’d see antisemitism like this in our streets.”
What’s to be done? It will take a wide range of initiatives to respond effectively but clearly schools need to be a special target.
Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra has only been in the portfolio for several months, but he has already taken over the running of several school boards. And while financial mismanagement was the core issue, he also stated that he wants to ensure the boards are focusing on their core mandate of educating – not indoctrinating – students.
Ontario is also developing new curriculum to teach students about the Holocaust during World War II, although circumstances have delayed its implementation. As a starting point, the Ministry issued instructions to school boards to keep “political biases” out of the classrooms to ensure they remained “safe, inclusive and welcoming for all students.”
The Ontario College of Teachers, the professions’ regulatory body, has taken some baby steps by issuing “professional advice” on how to address incidents of hate and discrimination in the classroom. It will follow up later this summer with a series of “real life” case studies to help teachers” respond professionally to acts of hate and discrimination.”
Whether any of this will help, remains to be seen. But at least some action is underway.
Janet Ecker is a former Ontario Finance Minister, Minister of Education, Minister of Community and Social Services and Government House Leader in the governments of Premier Mike Harris and Premier Ernie Eves. After her political career, she served as the founding CEO of the Toronto Financial Services Alliance, a public-private partnership dedicated to building Toronto region into an international financial centre. She currently sits on a number of corporate and non-profit boards, agencies and advisory committees.
Ms. Ecker received the Order of Canada for her public service contributions and was recognized as one of the “Most Influential People in the World’s Financial Centres” by Financial Centres International. She also received a “Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Award” from the Women’s Executive Network and the Richard Ivey School of Business, among other awards. She is also one of the founders of Equal Voice, a national, multi-partisan organization working to elect more women.
