The federal government “has yet to appreciate the gravity of the threat” of antisemitism today and there needs to be a co-ordinated action plan to counter the problem, says former special envoy Irwin Cotler.
“We can’t continue to work in silos here or say it’s the others’ responsibility,” Cotler said in an interview with CBC’s The House that aired Saturday morning. “No, this is an integrated and collective responsibility.”
Cotler, who was appointed in 2020 by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as Canada’s first special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combatting antisemitism, spoke with host Catherine Cullen on Friday — one day after an alleged assailant drove a car into people outside a synagogue in northern England.
U.K. police initially said the assailant then began stabbing people, killing two and seriously wounding four in a terrorist attack on the holiest day of the Jewish year.
But on Friday, British police said they may have accidentally shot two victims, including one who died. The police complaints watchdog said it was carrying out an investigation into what happened.
Police have shot and killed a suspect who is said to have driven a car into people outside a synagogue in northern England before going on a stabbing rampage, killing two and seriously wounding four on the holiest day of the Jewish year.
When asked how the news affects Jewish communities in Canada, Cotler said antisemitic hate crimes “reverberate from Manchester to Montreal” and these types of attacks are rising across the world.
“I’ve been in touch with people in the U.K. and they said it was basically a time bomb waiting to happen,” Cotler said. “There’s been an unrelenting explosion of hatred in the U.K. post-October 7th.”
Cotler also said a global rise of antisemitism is not just a threat to Jewish communities around the world, but it’s also “toxic to democracies.”
The House9:05Irwin Cotler on the rise of antisemitism
In the two years since the Hamas-led October 7 attacks on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza, incidents of antisemitism have risen dramatically around the world. What has to happen to stop it? Human rights lawyer and former justice minister Irwin Cotler joins Catherine Cullen to talk about the rise of antisemitism in Canada and how to address it.
“I think we’ve learned only too painfully and too well historically that while it begins with Jews, it doesn’t end with Jews,” Cotler said.
According to Statistics Canada, there were 920 police-reported hate crimes against Jewish people in 2024 — a number that exceeds the total of all hate crimes targeting other religious groups that year and represents a large jump from 527 reports in 2022.
Alongside implementing a coordinated action plan, Cotler said Canada can’t continue to have “pro-Hamas” demonstrations in the streets, which he differentiated from pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
“We have to combat this explosion of hate, and I don’t use that term lightly, but these are wake-up calls, and we don’t want to see a situation in Canada where we’re going to be seeing Manchesters in Montreal,” Cotler said.
Feds working to protect places of worship
Last month, Justice Minister Sean Fraser tabled new legislation introducing four Criminal Code offences, including one that would make it a crime to intentionally promote hatred against identifiable groups in public using certain hate- or terrorism-related symbols.
If passed, the Combatting Hate Act would target symbols used during the Holocaust, such as the swastika and SS lightning bolts, or associated with the government’s list of terrorist entities, which includes the Proud Boys, Hamas and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
It would, for instance, make it a crime to promote hatred against Jewish people using Hamas flags or swastika signs outside a synagogue.
The bill would also make hate-motivated crime a specific offence and crack down on willfully intimidating and obstructing people outside places of worship and other sensitive institutions.
Some organizations like the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, have raised concerns over whether the bill could be used to infringe on the right to peaceful protest and take issue with the use of the Criminal Code.
In August, Liberal MP Anthony Housefather and 31 of his caucus colleagues issued a statement condemning a “deplorable rise of antisemitism in Canada” and called Canadians to stand up against hatred toward Jewish communities.
The statement was posted to social media by Housefather just days after a Jewish woman was stabbed in broad daylight at an Ottawa grocery store. Police have said they consider the incident a “hate-motivated crime.”
In their statement, the Liberals said “from attacks on synagogues, Jewish schools and monuments, Jewish-owned businesses, Jewish community organizations and lately individual Jews themselves, antisemitism is becoming normalized.”
The MPs also said the “spreading hate is a call to action for all Canadians, all levels of government, law enforcement, schools, public institutions and places of work.”
Signatories of the letter included Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon, Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Rebecca Alty, Secretary of State (Children and Youth) Anna Gainey and Rachel Bendayan, parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Mark Carney.
