The roots of anti-Semitism in Canada are deep, tangled and growing. Nowhere in western democracies has the rise been so swift, obvious and evident.
B’Nai Brith’s annual report tracking anti-Semitic incidents across Canada with impeccable statistics prove the point. Toronto Police statistics also confirm this fact. There are more per capita hate incidents against Jews and Jewish institutions than all other minority groups in Canada together. Per capita, the anti-Semitic incidents in Canada is highest in the western world. Toronto leads the world in per capita anti-Semitic incidents.
The cancer of anti-Semitism, like a pandemic, is evident in public unions, amongst many teachers, at all levels of schooling, especially universities, and amongst administrators at all federal and provincial and municipal levels of government. Using the term “university” to describe egregious institutions of higher learning may be misleading advertising.
Obviously, Canadian union leaders have no historic memory. Have they forgotten politicians like David Croll, a Jewish mayor of Windsor then minister of public works and municipal affairs in Ontario who decided to resign and said during an auto strike in the 1930s that he would rather walk with the workers than drive with General Motors. Or union leaders like Kalman Kaplansky, NDP leader David Lewis, or Louis B Fine, a deputy minister in Ontario in the 1950s who led Canada in implementing hours for work and other workers rights. And where are public union leaders and members who breach their own bylaws when they discriminate against Jewish workers?
There was recent outrage by the federal food inspection agency that outlawed kosher meat. A federal court injunction was granted to slow down this incredible regulatory act of lawlessness. Not so with halal meat.
Recent and regular vandalization and burning of synagogues and Jewish schools was met with mostly silence from most government leaders and from most leaders of other faiths.
Some years ago a well documented report on systemic anti-Semitism at University of Toronto Medical School was released. To this day no reported changes were made – no egregious faculty members or administrators were dismissed. None. The medical school has neglected their three operating principles – the Doctors’ Hippocratic Oath, the University of Toronto rules of ethical conduct and the systemic failures to uphold the rights and freedoms under Canada’s constitution.
A recent egregious NDP motion in Parliament condemning only Israel was met with a loud, standing ovation by all but a few members of Parliament.
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow refused to attend a long established Israeli flag raising ceremony. Chow seems to believe she is mayor of only some of Toronto’s people. Obviously she chose to forget that Nathan Phillips Square where her office is located is named after the first Jewish mayor who prided himself as being “the mayor of all the people.” Chow obviously was not aware that the third largest gay pride parade in the world is in Tel Aviv. Nowhere else in the Middle East or even countries like Turkey. Why else would she choose not to attend a tradition of raising the Israeli flag yet days later attend the Gay Pride flag raising?
But Mayor Chow can redeem herself. The police are overworked, underfunded and have done a good job investigating anti-Semitic incidents. Certainly not the top of their agenda, with Toronto flooded with crime. She could set up a special unit as police have done for drugs, gangs and car thefts, dedicated to solely prosecuting egregious anti-Semites.
The University of Toronto recently signed an “amnesty” agreement with protestors who spewed vitriol and manifested aggressive conduct, surely if not an act of obstruction of justice, an action contrary to all their own rules of conduct. No doubt this agreement will only invite further egregious conduct on the campus in the future.
Are some universities across Canada have now quietly instituting de facto “quotas” against Jewish students?
The Liberal caucus in Ottawa has isolated some Jewish members and their few supporters. The NDP with no exceptions have broken with their revered founder Tommy Douglas who was a fervent supporter of Israel. The Green Party expelled its first black and Jewish leader contrary to its own rules.
Perhaps, like others, the Minister of Transport has forgotten what triggered a tax on each traveller across the globe after 9/11.
Recently a six-year Jewish student luckily accompanied by her father was attacked on a school bus in British Columbia only because she was Jewish. Not a word from any in authority.
Why are church or other leaders silent? Silence is complicity. When a synagogue in a small town in France was firebombed, President Emmanuel Macron immediately declared that “any attack on a synagogue is an attack on France.” The French Prime Minister, when a Jewish student was recently attacked, declared “any attack on a Jewish student is an attack on France.”
Since 9/11, there are security measures in every synagogue across Canada to protect its members. My own synagogue, Beth Tzedec Congregation, the largest in Canada, requires that members go through a guarded backdoor. Not so for Timothy Eaton Church just a kilometre or so away in mid-Toronto. Or the steadfast critic of Israel, the United Church.
Where is the Black community, itself subject to systemic racism in the federal public service? It was a Jewish hotel owner in Toronto that opened its rooms to Jackie Robinson, Joe Louis, Louis Armstrong and other Black entertainers when other hotel doors were closed in Toronto in the 1950s.
And the CBC is regularly in breach of its mandate by its biased coverage of the Hamas-incited war in Israel. Follow Honest Reporting on this issue.
Another Canadian scandal is the attack on the Giller Prize for novelists by writers who have caused Scotiabank to withdraw its public sponsorship. The litany of bias continues amongst writers. The late Ms. Giller was a staunch supporter of Israel. Support for Salman Rushdie was voracious by writers who forgot who savagely attacked him for his novels and attacked twice for his views. And who were his attackers? All writers know.
But what can be done?
Arif Virani, the erudite federal justice minister, can fulfill his sworn duty to uphold the law. He can immediately call together joint strike forces of RCMP intelligence agencies and provincial police forces as rapid response teams in each province to prosecute these egregious breakers of the criminal code, just as the federal government did during the Emergency Act crisis – an emergency that was not nationwide. The activist Minister of Public Safety Dominic LeBlanc, at the next federal-provincial meeting, could persuade the premiers to have their police forces join these joint strike forces to prosecute relevant egregious protestors in each province.
The war against Jews now rages across Canada nationwide. Every synagogue and Jewish institution recently received threatening messages. The enforcement of the criminal code – the one great barrier to criminal behaviour protecting Jews and others – should be strenuously prosecuted. Surely Canada is not a democracy if it allows anti-Semitic hate to become normalized. And it could prosecute those who call for breaches to the Canada-Israel Free Trade or Investment Agreements, both now federal laws, and bring it to public attention. Perhaps a non-partisan task force could quickly probe this issue headed by a bipartisan trio of respected public figures such as Bob Rae (who probed the Indian Air affair), Jason Kenny and Tom Mulcair.
Jews ask why is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms under the Canadian Constitution not vigorously enforced? A democracy is not a democracy unless it upholds the rule of law equally for all.
A democracy is defined by its equal treatment of all its citizens under the rule of law. O Canada, does it no longer stand on guard for all?
— Jerry Grafstein is a former Liberal Senator and the author of a number of books including “A Leader Must Be A Leader – Encounters with Eleven Prime Ministers”. His most recent book is “The Fractured 20th Century”.