Canada’s “National Crisis”:
6,800 Antisemitic Incidents in 2025 —
The Highest Since Records Began
B’nai Brith Canada’s 2025 Audit records the worst year for antisemitism since the annual report began in 1982. Incidents have risen 145.6% since before October 7, 2023 — and experts warn the conflict in the Middle East is no longer the primary driver. Antisemitism, they say, has become normalised throughout Canadian society.
recorded in Canada in 2025
— highest since 1982
A Wake-Up Call Four Decades in the Making: Canada Has Never Recorded This Before
B’nai Brith Canada’s Audit of Antisemitic Incidents for 2025 records a watershed moment in the history of Jewish life in Canada: 6,800 anti-Jewish hate incidents in a single year — the highest figure since the annual audit began in 1982. The organisation’s Chief Executive Officer, Simon Wolle, was unambiguous in his response. This is not a trend requiring monitoring. It is a national crisis requiring action.
The scale of the increase over time places the figure in its starkest context: a 9.4% rise from 2024, already a record year, and an extraordinary 145.6% increase from 2022 — before the Hamas October 7 attacks and the subsequent Middle East conflict. The numbers tell a story that goes beyond a single geopolitical event: antisemitism in Canada has been building for years, and the conflict provided acceleration, not origin.
“Our review of the past year’s antisemitic incidents must be understood as a wake-up call. Hate and extremism are a threat to Canadian democracy and civil society, not only to the Jewish community.”
Simon Wolle · CEO, B’nai Brith Canada · Annual Audit 2025+145.6% Since 2022: A Pattern That Precedes October 7
The most significant analytical finding in the 2025 audit is the decoupling of antisemitic incidents from the immediate context of the Middle East conflict. Richard Robertson, B’nai Brith Canada’s Director of Research and Advocacy and lead author of the report, is explicit: the conflict can no longer be considered the primary driver of antisemitism in Canada. The phenomenon has become so widespread, so deeply embedded in mainstream discourse, that it has acquired an independent momentum of its own.
Most incidents occurred online, reinforcing a trend seen across several years in which digital platforms have become the primary vectors for the spread of antisemitic content. AI-generated Holocaust denial — using artificial intelligence to create false or misleading depictions of historical events — represents a new and particularly alarming dimension of this online phenomenon.
Ontario, BC, the Prairies, Atlantic Canada: Where the Surge Is Sharpest
The 2025 audit documents a geographically uneven picture — but one in which the overall trend is overwhelmingly upward. Several major regions of Canada recorded significant increases in documented antisemitic incidents, while two provinces saw declines.
Holocaust Denial, AI Disinformation, Right-Wing Extremism — and “Anti-Zionism” Used as Cover
The 2025 audit documents a diversified landscape of antisemitic expression — ranging from online hate and Holocaust denial to physical attacks, vandalism, and ideologically motivated exclusion. Several threads are particularly alarming in their implications for the future.
Canada Has the Tools. The Question Is Whether It Has the Will.
B’nai Brith Canada is explicit in its call on government: the scale and breadth of the crisis demands a whole-of-government response, not piecemeal policy adjustments. Canada, Wolle notes, possesses the legal and institutional frameworks to address this crisis — the challenge is political will and coordination across levels of government.
The call parallels recommendations emerging from European contexts — where the EJA conference’s experts, the Council of Europe’s Working Group, and individual member governments have all identified the same gap: between the legal tools available and the political will to deploy them consistently and at scale. In Canada, as in Europe, the problem is not the absence of law. It is the absence of enforcement, coordination, and political leadership willing to name and confront antisemitism without qualification.
From Brussels: The Same Crisis, the Same Pattern, the Same Demand for Action
As Founder and President of the European Association for the Defense of Minorities, I have spent years making the case that the protection of Jewish communities is not a special interest — it is a test of whether liberal democracies are genuinely committed to the protection of all minorities, or only those whose protection is politically convenient at any given moment. The 6,800 incidents recorded in Canada in 2025 are a failure of that test. Not a catastrophic, irreversible failure — but a serious one, demanding a serious response.
Robertson’s observation that antisemitism has become “normalised throughout Canadian society” is the most alarming finding in the entire report. Normalisation is the process by which hatred ceases to shock — and once it ceases to shock, it becomes far more difficult to reverse. Canada, like Europe, is at an inflection point. The tools exist. The legal frameworks are in place. The missing ingredient — in Ottawa as in Brussels — is the political will to deploy them without hesitation and without the instinct to qualify every condemnation with a “but.”
Antisemitism that is tolerated anywhere strengthens antisemitism everywhere. What happens in Canada does not stay in Canada. The same networks, the same ideologies, the same AI-generated disinformation cross borders as freely as any other online content. A whole-of-government response in Canada is not just a Canadian interest. It is a shared democratic interest.
Manel Msalmi · FFN Chief Executive · Founder & President, EADMCanada is home to roughly 540,000 Jewish citizens — one of the largest Jewish communities in the world. They are Canadians. Their safety, their dignity, their freedom to practise their faith and express their identity in public without fear, are not Jewish concerns. They are Canadian concerns. They are democratic concerns. And when 6,800 incidents are recorded in a single year — the highest in more than four decades of record-keeping — the answer must be proportionate to the scale of the failure.
To B’nai Brith Canada, to Simon Wolle, and to every Jewish community leader in Canada who has spent 2025 documenting what should never have had to be documented: your audit is a service not only to the Jewish community, but to Canadian democracy. The question now is whether Canada’s governments — federal, provincial, and municipal — will treat it as the wake-up call it is.
From everything I have seen in Europe, I know that the window for early action is not unlimited. Normalisation, once entrenched, is extraordinarily difficult to reverse. Canada still has time. But the audit makes clear that the clock is running.
About The Author
Discover more from Faith & Freedom News - FFN
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
