Opinion: Mark Carney, antisemitism is not a public relations problem

Bullet holes are seen in the windows of the Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto Synagogue in Vaughan, Ont., on Thursday. Photo by Peter J Thompson/National Post

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It is time to say plainly what too many in Canadian public life still prefer to obscure. 

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Prime Minister Mark Carney’s expected announcement Monday on antisemitism is not simply about antisemitism. It is about pressure. 

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It is about the fact that the situation facing Canadian Jews has become so bad, so visible, and so indefensible that Ottawa can no longer manage it with sympathetic statements and carefully staged concern. It is about the growing alarm south of the border over what life has become for Jews in Canada. And it is about a government that ignored, minimized, or slow-walked this crisis for years, only to discover urgency when the political cost of inaction began to rise. 

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Canadian Jews have not been quiet. They have not failed to explain what is happening. They have not failed to document the harassment, intimidation, vandalism, violence, institutional cowardice, and public abandonment that have marked Jewish life in Canada since October 7. 

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They have said it in meetings. They have said it in letters. They have said it in testimony. They have said it through schools, synagogues, parents, students, business owners, and ordinary Jews who simply want to live openly and safely in the country they call home. 

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For years, the answer has been some version of the same thing: We hear you. We stand with you. Antisemitism has no place in Canada. 

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And yet, somehow, antisemitism kept finding its place. 

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It found its place outside synagogues. It found its place on campuses. It found its place in public schools. It found its place in the streets. It found its place on Jewish-owned businesses, on the walls of Jewish institutions, and in the silence of people who would have known exactly what to say if any other minority community had been treated this way. 

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Ottawa is not suddenly discovering that antisemitism exists. It is discovering that others have noticed Ottawa’s failure to confront it. 

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That matters because Canada can no longer assume that its treatment of Jewish citizens will remain a domestic embarrassment. The United States has been paying attention. American lawmakers, Jewish leaders, commentators, and communities have begun asking what was once an almost unthinkable question: Are Jews in Canada safe? And if they are not, what responsibility does the free world have to say so? 

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Countries that lecture the world about human rights should expect to be judged by how they protect vulnerable citizens at home. 

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And on this file, Canada has failed. 

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Not because most Canadians are antisemites. They are not. Most Canadians are decent people who do not want their Jewish neighbours to live in fear. But decency without courage does not protect anyone. And too many Canadian leaders have spent the last several years trying to appease the loudest radicals while asking Jews to accept abstractions about tolerance in place of actual safety.