\u201cThere is a loud group in this country,\u201d Mulroney said. \u201cThey have decided that you have to choose \u2013 that standing with the Jewish community means standing against someone else. That is a false choice. That is a manufactured choice. That is a lie.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A son of the late former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, Ben Mulroney spoke of his marriage to Jessica Brownstein and how their three children experience Mulroney\u2019s Irish Catholic heritage and holidays, as well as those of his wife\u2019s Jewish family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He cited spiralling anti-Jewish hate crimes in Canada, including the 2024 arson attack on the synagogue he was speaking in, and quoted a survey indicating that 61% of community members avoid wearing anything that identifies them as Jewish in public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mulroney, who has a law degree from Universit\u00e9 Laval and a degree in history from Duke University, contested the idea that antisemitism is just a Jewish problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen 1% of the country has to hide who they are to walk down the street, that is a Canada problem,\u201d Mulroney said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He drew a sharp historical contrast. Every other prejudice in the Western story \u2013 against the Irish, the Italians, the Ukrainians, the Japanese \u2013 has a beginning, a middle and an end, he said. Antisemitism alone \u201chas a beginning, and a middle, and a middle, and a middle. It does not run out of fuel. It just changes its fuel. It was about religion, then it was about race, then it was about money. Now it\u2019s about a country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He traced that pattern from the Dreyfus Affair in turn-of-the-century France \u2013 where a Jewish army officer was convicted of treason on forged evidence and exonerated only after non-Jewish allies risked their careers and freedom \u2013 to Theodor Herzl, who, as a journalist, witnessed Dreyfus being stripped of his rank and humiliated. Herzl concluded that Jews would never be secure even in the most enlightened of nations and so he effectively launched the modern movement of political Zionism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mulroney connected his father\u2019s legacy on apartheid \u2013 facing down Margaret Thatcher at the 1987 Commonwealth summit in Vancouver, and earning a phone call from Nelson Mandela the day after Mandela\u2019s release from prison \u2013 to a broader principle: \u201cThe arc of history does not bend on its own. It bends because someone grabs it with both hands and pulls.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Jewish community\u2019s record of showing up for others demands reciprocity, said Mulroney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He catalogued the Jewish community\u2019s history of allyship: immigrant Jewish women who founded Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto when no hospital would hire Jewish doctors, a hospital that today describes itself as \u201cthe Jewish community\u2019s gift to the city.\u201d Kalmen Kaplansky, whose Jewish Labour Committee organized joint anti-discrimination committees that led to Canada\u2019s first fair employment law. Jewish co-founders of the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, murdered in Mississippi while registering Black voters in 1964. Rabbis forming rings of protection around mosques after the 2017 Quebec City shooting, and the Muslim community reciprocating around synagogues after the 2018 mass murder at Pittsburgh\u2019s Tree of Life synagogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDo not let anyone tell you that the Jewish community only shows up for itself,\u201d Mulroney said. \u201cThe record says otherwise. For a century, in every moment of civil unrest, in every fight for somebody else\u2019s dignity, there was a Jew in the front row who had no reason to be there except they knew in their bones that it was right. You have been the ally over and over again. Now, you need allies, and I think you are entitled to ask where the heck they are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n After visiting Israel \u2013 a mission he acknowledged was funded by that country\u2019s government, while joking that some people suggest the free trip is a devious secret \u2013 a coalition of groups announced a boycott of every program Mulroney hosts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSpoiler alert,\u201d he said, \u201cthey failed spectacularly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the boycott failed, Mulroney said there was an important lesson in the attempt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t about things I had said. It was where I had been. From that alone, people decided they knew exactly what I believed and exactly what kind of person I must be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He noted the impact a similar attack might have on someone less familiar with the rough and tumble of politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m a public figure with a microphone and skin as thick as a rhino.\u2026 If this is what people are willing to do to somebody with a platform, imagine what they\u2019re doing to people without one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He returned to his father\u2019s words: \u201cAntisemitism is born in ignorance and nurtured in envy,\u201d and \u2013 in what Mulroney called the wisest thing his father ever said \u2013 \u201cNo child comes into the world with hate. Hatred is learned. Therein lies both the problem and the solution. Education, education, education.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier in the evening, Federation leadership framed its annual campaign in concrete terms. Eighty-five percent of housing needs across the province remain unmet. Fifty percent of mental health needs are unmet. Twenty percent of food security needs are uncovered. Seniors\u2019 programs are operating beyond capacity. The campaign aims to grow its unrestricted funding to more than $10 million \u2013 money that can be allocated wherever the need is greatest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Federation also marked its structural evolution, transitioning from the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver to the Jewish Federation of British Columbia, reflecting a mandate that now stretches from one end of the province to the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Michael Mann, an animation director and improv coach from Salt Spring Island, spoke about Jewish life beyond urban centres, including the intentionality required to build community when there is no Jewish Community Centre down the street. After the sudden death of his father last year, Mann said, it was Jewish friends who showed up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCommunity isn\u2019t about celebrating together. It\u2019s about knowing that, when life gets hard, someone will show up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mann credited Federation\u2019s regional communities initiative with enriching Jewish life across the province. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJewish life shouldn\u2019t depend on how close you live to a Jewish institution,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ezra Shanken, Federation\u2019s chief executive officer, interviewed Mulroney on stage after the keynote address and thanked the volunteers, Federation staff, partner agencies and donors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier in the evening, Sue Hector, campaign chair, and Lisa Boroditsky, women\u2019s philanthropy chair, each spoke about the centrality of the work Federation and its partner agencies do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mulroney closed with a challenge, evoking Martin Luther King. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe arc of the moral universe is long,\u201d he said. \u201cIt does bend towards justice, but it bends because people bend it, and it only stays bent as long as they keep holding on. The Irish are proof that it bends. The Jewish people are proof that you can never let go.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"photo](\"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/sep-25-cov.25.Mulroney-Federation-Vanc-FACO-2026.jpg\")