WATCH: Conservatives shred Liberals over rising Jew hatred in Canada, promise crackdown
The Conservative Party of Canada has accused the Liberals of stoking a wave of antisemitism that has swept the country following the massacre of Jews in southern Israel in 2023 and the subsequent war in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of people.
In a statement released Monday to Twitter/X, the party declared that "after years of the Carney-Trudeau Liberals, antisemitism is rampant in Canada," pointing to firebombing of synagogues, attacks on Jewish businesses and schools, and antisemitic chants in Jewish neighbourhoods.
"Instead of ending these vile acts of hate, the Liberals have fuelled them by funding terrorist organizations like UNRWA, and allowed their MPs to spread hate about Israel," the statement charged, referencing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.
Michael Levitt, president and CEO of Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies says the level of antisemitism in Canada today is unprecedented.
"The dramatic spike in antisemitism since the Hamas attack on Israel has left me, and many in the Jewish community, reeling," he wrote in the Toronto Star.
The Conservatives vowed that a Pierre Poilievre-led government would "crack down on antisemitic hate and support Jewish Canadians’ right to live and worship peacefully."
The past two years have seen a string of alarming incidents targeting Canada’s Jewish community. In May 2023, a Molotov cocktail ignited the entrance of Vancouver’s Schara Tzedeck synagogue, causing damage but no injuries.
That same month, Toronto’s Bais Chaya Mushka Girls Elementary School was hit by gunfire, an attack that recurred on October 12, 2024 — during Yom Kippur — and again on December 20, 2024.
Authorities have described the shootings as hate-motivated, though no suspects have been named.
Montreal has also faced violence. In November 2023, Molotov cocktails struck a synagogue and a Jewish community centre in Dollard-des-Ormeaux, followed days later by gunfire targeting two Jewish schools in the city. The attacks prompted heightened police patrols in Jewish areas, but no arrests have been made public.
Beyond physical assaults, antisemitic rhetoric has flared in public. At a Montreal rally in October 2023, participants reportedly shouted calls to “(eliminate) Zionist aggressors,” according to Jewish community leaders who criticized police inaction.
Similar chants, including “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” have rung out at protests nationwide, widely interpreted by Jewish groups as threats against Israel and its supporters.
The Conservatives zeroed in on Liberal funding of UNRWA as a flashpoint. Canada reinstated $25 million in aid to the agency in March 2024, after pausing it over claims some UNRWA staff were linked to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.
The party has repeatedly slammed the decision as potentially backing terrorism.
In contrast to the Conservative's statement, former prime minister Justin Trudeau publicly decried antisemitism, notably at a May 2024 Holocaust remembrance event where he called the spike in hate crimes since late 2023 “disturbing.”
However, the Conservatives argue his government’s response was inadequate.
Data from B’nai Brith Canada paints a grim picture: 5,791 antisemitic incidents were recorded in 2023, more than doubling the previous year’s tally.
