Canadian antisemitism has reached a critical inflection point, with Jewish advocacy organizations warning that Jew-hatred has become so embedded in public discourse that the word “Jew” itself now functions as a slur, according to B’nai Brith Canada’s annual audit released Monday.
The organization documented 6,800 incidents of antisemitic harassment, vandalism, and violence in 2025—a 9.4 percent increase from 6,219 the previous year and the largest number recorded since B’nai Brith began tracking incidents in 1982. The figure represents a 145.6 percent surge since 2022, suggesting an accelerating rather than stabilizing crisis.
“Antisemitism has become so ubiquitous in our society that the word ‘Jew’ is now commonly used as a slur to disparage and malign non-Jews,” Richard Robertson, the organization’s director of research and advocacy, said at a Parliament Hill press conference Monday. “Jewishness itself has become derogatory in contemporary Canada.”
The incidents ranged from Holocaust denial amplified through artificial intelligence to direct threats of extermination and expulsion. Robertson cited examples including a Jewish person told they “should have been gassed along with their ancestors at Auschwitz,” a man assaulted in front of his children at a park, and Nazi imagery scrawled at schoolyards.
Of the 6,800 incidents, 6,491 were classified as harassment, 299 as vandalism, and 10 as violent assaults—though B’nai Brith warned that the violence category likely understates actual physical attacks on Jewish Canadians.
B’nai Brith attributed the escalation to government failures at all levels. “This is what happens when elected leaders at all levels fail to heed the warning signs, decline to act and enable a permissive environment,” Robertson said, adding that “anti-Zionists” are increasingly deploying classical antisemitic tropes traditionally used to dehumanize Jewish people.
The organization proposed a three-tier enforcement response. The federal government should establish a national emergency task force on Jew-hatred, designate violent attacks on Jewish institutions as domestic terrorism, and deploy enhanced security resources to synagogues, schools, and Jewish-owned businesses. Provincial and territorial governments should fund immediate security protection and establish dedicated hate-crime prosecution units. Municipalities should ban events inciting hate or glorifying terrorism, enforce existing hate laws in public spaces, and prioritize policing in Jewish neighborhoods.
The B’nai Brith audit has become Canada’s most authoritative and independent survey of antisemitic incidents, regularly cited by policymakers, journalists, academics, and law enforcement agencies.
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