TORONTO, - The Jewish community organization charged with monitoring antisemitism in Canada has announced that, once again, Canada has seen record levels of antisemitism according to its Audit of Antisemitic Incidents. The League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith Canada's annual Audit has been recognized for the past thirty years as an authoritative study of patterns of prejudice in the country.
“The overarching finding of the report demonstrates a sustained, ongoing undercurrent of anti-Jewish bias in Canada, with appalling instances of harassment, vandalism and even violence,” said Frank Dimant, CEO of B’nai Brith Canada. “Thirty years after the enactment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we continue to see rocks being thrown at synagogue and school windows, deaths threats being sent via social media, visible Jews being taunted and physically assaulted on route to their homes and places of worship and even a young Jewish girl’s hair being set on fire.
"Across Canada, 1,297 antisemitic incidents were reported to us. We can take no consolation from the negligible decrease of 0.7% over the previous year, when the antisemitism targeting Canadian Jews remains at such all-time high levels. In the thirty years since the League began documenting antisemitism, incidents have
increased more than twenty-fold.
"When Statistics Canada finds that yet again the Jewish community is the most targeted minority in hate crimes motivated by religion, we should be asking ‘why’. We cannot simply stand by passively when death threats are dismissed as insignificant, when targeting Jewish homes is described as ‘just kids acting out’, and when physical assaults are subsequently boasted about on Facebook.
"We fully recognize that, in spite of our findings, Canada today is one of the best places in the world for Jews, as all levels of government work with B'nai Brith and its League for Human Rights to suppress antisemitism throughout the country. Nevertheless, hate-mongering still finds a platform.
Today, the League presented a 10-point action plan to address this problem.
The full text of the Audit can be accessed here.
