Canada is grappling with a troubling surge in antisemitic incidents, with a prominent Jewish advocacy organization documenting nearly 6,800 cases in 2025—the highest number since tracking began over four decades ago.
B'nai Brith Canada released the alarming figures Monday on Parliament Hill, revealing a year-over-year increase from 6,219 incidents in 2024. The cases encompass physical violence, harassment campaigns, and property damage targeting Jewish Canadians and their institutions.
"We cannot allow antisemitism to be rendered into mere statistics that we grow numb to. There was an immense and tragic human cost to the 6,800 incidents recorded in 2025," said Richard Robertson, the organization's advocacy director.
The data paints a disturbing picture of escalating hostility. Reported incidents include a brutal assault on a visibly Jewish man in Montreal—captured on video—where an attacker stripped away the man's religious skullcap and threw it into a puddle. Another case involved the beating of a Jewish man in a public park while his children watched, creating what Robertson described as "generational trauma."
The incidents extend beyond physical attacks. Jewish children report fear of attending school after discovering swastikas drawn in schoolyards. Synagogues, Jewish schools, and community centres have faced gunfire, arson, and vandalism. In one high-profile incident, gunfire struck the Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto synagogue in Thornhill, Ontario, in March.
"A Jewish person that was harassed is not just a statistic. They are a person that was told that they should have been gassed along with their ancestors at Auschwitz," Robertson stated, underscoring the deeply personal impact of hate incidents.
The geographic breakdown reveals concerning regional variations. British Columbia and Ontario saw increases in antisemitic incidents, while Quebec and Alberta experienced declines. Nationally, however, the trend is unmistakably upward—antisemitic incidents have doubled since 2022.
B'nai Brith attributes much of the recent spike to the geopolitical fallout following October 2023's Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent military campaign in Gaza. The organization reports that anti-Jewish hatred is increasingly being framed as anti-Zionism—a rhetorical shift the group argues amounts to demonizing supporters of a Jewish state.
The report also documents incidents that fall short of legal hate crime thresholds but nonetheless reflect systemic exclusion. Montreal's Pride festival's decision to bar Jewish groups over concerns about anti-Palestinian messaging drew national attention before politicians intervened and the decision was reversed.
Robertson's comments underscore a critical concern: that antisemitism is becoming normalized in Canadian discourse, with incidents no longer shocking public conscience but instead blending into an accepted backdrop of hostility.
This article is based on reporting from The Globe and Mail. Read the original story at The Globe and Mail.