law

Rule of law broken: councilor

Panelists Rabbi Philip Bregman, left, and Aron Csaplaros. Toronto city councilor James Pasternak spoke via remote link. (photo by Pat Johnson)

A Toronto city councilor, speaking via remote link at an event at Richmond’s Beth Tikvah Synagogue, slammed Canadian society and leaders for permitting – even encouraging – antisemitism.

James Pasternak told the June 23 event that the rule of law has broken down in Canada.

“It’s mostly a result of timid policing, the refusal to physically engage protesters, spineless politicians who are either scraping the barrel for a few extra votes or simply afraid to speak out and, of course, a broken judiciary that has weak bail conditions and drops a lot of the charges,” said the councilor, who is Jewish and is seeking reelection this fall in the York Centre ward, which has a significant concentration of Jewish voters.

Pasternak said anti-Israel protests have cost Toronto police more than $50 million, and yet activists continue intimidating people in Jewish neighbourhoods, harassing shoppers, interfering with subway commuters, and blocking major thoroughfares and rail lines.

“We have seen attacks on synagogues and threats against Jewish daycares and schools, against summer camps. We have seen the shooting up of a Jewish girls’ school, the firebombing of a Jewish-owned grocery store and the arrival of hateful mobs coming up to the area I represent, at Bathurst and Sheppard, every Sunday to harass the Jewish community,” he said. “There are no embassies there. There are no consulates. There are no government buildings. There’s no town square. They are up there to harass the local Jewish community.”

Pasternak directed special condemnation at elected officials who exacerbate the situation by warning that Israel’s prime minister should be arrested if he came to Canada, by diplomatically recognizing Palestine, “and spreading the tropes that the war in Gaza was genocide.”

He named Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow as one who “spreads that same trope … making a bad situation worse.”

Chow has alienated the Jewish community, said Pasternak.

“She didn’t show up to the … anniversary of Oct. 7. She didn’t show up to Walk for Israel. She didn’t show up to the Israel flag-raising. Anything to do with Israel is like a no-go zone. And she’s pandering to these groups that she feels she needs to remain in office,” said Pasternak.

He said he had a conversation with the mayor in which she told him, according to Pasternak, “Any time I take a step to help the Jewish community speak up, I get clobbered.”

“So I said, ‘Oh, clobbered by the crazies?’” Pasternak recounted, “And her answer was, ‘Yeah. Yeah, clobbered by the crazies. The crazies vote for me.’”

A spokesperson for Chow told the Independent via email the mayor hosts an annual Passover reception at City Hall and attends several public menorah lightings and High Holidays receptions. They said Chow toured the Nova Exhibition, joined memorials for the Bibas family, and attended the opening of the Toronto Holocaust Museum and the Royal Ontario Museum’s recent Auschwitz Exhibit. She also visited Congregation Chasidei Bobov, a Toronto synagogue whose congregants were targeted in a hate-motivated assault.

Joining Pasternak on the panel was Aron Csaplaros, BC regional manager for B’nai Brith Canada, who referenced his organization’s most recent annual audit of antisemitic hate crimes.

According to the 2025 audit, Canadian Jews experienced a record 6,800 reported antisemitic incidents last year – an average of 18.6 per day – representing a 9.3% increase over 2024 and a 145.6% increase since 2022. Harassment accounted for 95% of incidents, the vast majority taking place online. There were 299 reported cases of vandalism and 10 violent attacks.

“The one main theme that I keep hearing again and again and again is that Jews feel excluded. They feel unwelcome. They feel unheard,” said Csaplaros, who shared an anecdote about a unionized work environment where coworkers spoke of Zionists stealing, lying and violently killing people. When a Jewish employee reported it to human resources, they were told it was merely a political disagreement.

“That’s just an example,” said Csaplaros, “but that’s something that we hear time and time again – or teachers not understanding what it means to collectively blame all Jews for the actions of a single government.”

He welcomed Bill C-9, which just received royal assent, creating a standalone hate crime offence, among other steps against hate. He also said Prime Minister Mark Carney’s statement that confronting antisemitism requires a “whole-of-government” approach is positive, but still may not reflect the breadth required. Csaplaros said the federal government makes the laws, the provinces oversee Crown prosecutions and municipalities run law enforcement.

“So you can see how there could very easily be a breakdown where maybe the laws exist on the federal level, but, if the province isn’t doing its job in charging these crimes, and if the city isn’t encouraging the local police to make these arrests in the first place, then we’re not going to get anywhere,” Csaplaros said.

Rabbi Philip Bregman, the third member of the panel, recounted experiencing antisemitism during childhood in rural Ontario and at university in Toronto, then, on Jan. 25, 1985, when his synagogue, Temple Sholom, here in Vancouver, was destroyed in a firebombing.

“Today, in the Lower Mainland, we are spending over $100,000 a month on security for our [Jewish] institutions,” Bregman said.

The rabbi reflected on things he’s experienced in the expansive interfaith work he has undertaken, especially since retiring from the pulpit at Temple Sholom. For example, a United Church of Canada minister told Bregman that he reviewed his notes from divinity school in Toronto.

“My God, the antisemitism was right below the surface, right there,” Bregman recalls the minister telling him.

The rabbi credited the Catholic archdiocese of Vancouver with developing very strong relations with the Jewish community, and also commended Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim.

“I may not necessarily agree with all of his policies, but Ken Sim has been there for us,” said Bregman.

Like the other panelists, Bregman did not identify a great many reasons for optimism. Jewish Canadians seeking a Plan B, a place to flee if the situation here gets intolerable, might consider Panama, which he has heard is very welcoming to Jews.

The event was co-hosted by Stan Goldman and Lonnie Belfer.

The burden of defence

Haredi demonstrators protesting the arrest of draft-dodgers block traffic in Bnei Brak on June 17. (photo by Eitan Elhadez-Barak/TPS-IL)

When I celebrated my bar mitzvah in Toronto in 1968 by reading parshat Shelach Lecha about the 12 spies Moses sent to scope out Canaan, my hometown was flooded with US draft-dodgers who had crossed from Buffalo, NY, to Fort Erie, Ont., to avoid being shipped off to Vietnam. As documented in John Hagan’s 2001 book Northern Passage, for those 50,000 Americans, Canada was the promised land of freedom. Most remained in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver even after Jan. 21, 1977, when President Jimmy Carter granted an unconditional amnesty to the young men who refused to fight in the Vietnam War.

Two things were furthest from my mind when I was 13 – that I should ever heed the age-old urging of Joshua bin Nun and Caleb ben Yefuneh to make aliyah, and that another flood of draft dodgers would arise in my new homeland.

Nearly daily this summer, clashes have taken place between Israel Police and some of the 80,000 Haredi men aged 18-24 who refuse to report to

Israel Defence Forces induction centres. Highways and tram routes are routinely blocked, causing massive traffic jams. In a riot on June 3, scores of ultra-Orthodox protesters stormed the home of Supreme Court Deputy President Noam Sohlberg and his wife Meira in Alon Shvut, a town in Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem. Sixty-two Torah students were arrested. Four were indicted on charges of rioting and trespassing with intent to commit an offence. According to the indictment, the rioters threw stones at the villa and tried to break in while the judge and his wife were at home; the rioters chanted slogans like “Nazi” and carried Israeli flags with the Star of David replaced by a swastika.

Police subsequently transferred 19 of those arrested into IDF custody after ascertaining they were draft dodgers. This triggered a new wave of violent protests outside Neve Tzedek Military Prison in the IDF’s Gur base, near the city of Kfar Yona.

As I write this article, the IDF is being crippled by a labour shortage. After three years of conflict in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran, reservists are carrying an impossible burden. The number of soldiers wounded or incapacitated by post-traumatic stress disorder is staggering. Suicide among the ranks is soaring. Even as soldiers have reached their breaking point, the yeshiva study halls are packed with those who have illegally ignored their call-up notice.

One needs some historical background to understand how Israel arrived at this situation.

Dov Yosef, the Montreal-born military commander of Jerusalem when the city was besieged by the Jordanian and Egyptian armies, wrote in his memoirs, The Faithful City, of a meeting in May 1948 with Rabbi Mordechai Weingarten and other Haredi leaders. The rabbis urged Yosef to surrender to avoid further hardship for civilians. Yosef responded, you do what you please and I’ll do what I wish, to which the rabbis asked, and what is it your excellency wishes to do? Yosef responded: to shoot deserters.

Indeed, Haredim participated in the War of Independence. Notably, Rabbi Shmuel Tukachinsky, a son of Haredi leader Yechiel Michel Tukachinsky, was killed by Arab Legion shellfire while fighting for Jerusalem in 1948.

As Israel absorbed more than one million Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab lands, the labour shortage was somewhat alleviated. Thus, on Oct. 20, 1952, David Ben-Gurion, the founding prime minister of the Jewish state, held a meeting in the Haredi city of Bnei Barak with Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz (1878-1953). Known as the Chazon Ish, the Belarussia-born sage was one of the Jewish world’s foremost Haredi leaders. Settling in Mandate Palestine in 1933, he held no official post yet was a global address for guidance in Jewish law. While Ben-Gurion was a socialist and atheist, he had a deep if nostalgic sympathy for the lost world of the Eastern European shtetl he had left nearly half a century earlier.

A blog from the National Library of Israel’s The Librarians magazine (blog.nli.org.il) explains what happened, beginning with an entry from Ben-Gurion’s diary: “This morning I went to Bnei Brak for a meeting with the Chazon Ish…. I asked him the question to which I have yet to receive a sufficient answer from my observant friends. We are divided in different ways; in the matter at hand, we are divided by our views of religious tradition. There are Jews like you and like me, how do we live together? How will we become a unit?”

The Chazon Ish cited the talmudic parable (Sanhedrin 32b) about two camels traveling down a narrow path, one carrying a large burden and the other carrying nothing. The rabbi explained that the unburdened camel was to make way for the one carrying the burden. The Chazon Ish said the ultra-Orthodox community bears the burden of the Torah and its commandments; therefore, the non-religious Zionists must defer to them and move out of the way. Ben-Gurion replied: “And what of the absorption of immigrants? What of security? What of establishing the state? Are these not burdens?”

Though Ben-Gurion acknowledged the importance of Torah study, he wanted the ultra-Orthodox to become integrated with the modern state being forged. The Chazon Ish was appalled at what he saw as the desecration of the Sabbath and the Zionist rejection of the yoke of the commandments – a burden shared by every practising religious Jew. He believed that recreating the world of Torah that was annihilated in the Holocaust was the only way to save the Jewish people.

After that October 1952 meeting, the Prime Minister’s Office issued the following statement: “PM D. Ben-Gurion met privately with Rabbi A. Y. Karelitz (the Chazon Ish) in Bnei Brak yesterday. The purpose of the visit was to exchange general views regarding the following issue: How can observant and non-observant (Jews) live together harmoniously in the state of Israel? The question of recruiting women (to the army) was not discussed, and the visit had no relation to current political matters.”

According to the blog, “Contrary to the report, the meeting was much more than a ‘general exchange of views.’ The prime minister made a gesture towards the ultra-Orthodox community by agreeing to continue the exemption of a limited number of Torah scholars from military service. As early as February 1948, before the state of Israel had even been formally established, a limited number of young ultra-Orthodox men were exempted from being drafted into the armed forces, which were already fighting in what would come to be known as Israel’s War of Independence. On Jan. 9, 1951, the prime minister ordered the Israeli army’s chief of staff to exempt yeshiva students from regular service. Ben-Gurion’s meeting with the Chazon Ish did not set the ground for the current ultra-Orthodox exemption from military service, but it did give the controversial early arrangement a substantial political boost and, equally significant – symbolic support.”

When Ben-Gurion called for army exemptions for the 400 yeshiva students in 1949, he could not have known the number would grow to 80,000 by 2026, triggering resentment among their fellow citizens. Nor could he have envisioned that the detainment of even a token number of draft dodgers would set off rioting in the country’s Haredi enclaves.

The Haredi refusal to help relieve the burden of defence has resulted in the attorney-general and the courts reducing the financial benefits that ultra-Orthodox formerly received. In April, the High Court of Justice ordered the state to take concrete steps to revoke key financial benefits from draft dodgers and to move toward criminal enforcement against Haredi men who evade military service.

A moment of truth is approaching with the Oct. 27 election. If Naftali Bennett forms a centrist coalition, his new government could revoke all benefits for draft dodgers. Short of jail time for 80,000 draft dodgers, these steps could include not issuing passports, driver’s licences and other government documents to those over the age of 18 who don’t have an IDF release form.

Gil Zohar is a journalist and tour guide who lives in Jerusalem.

Sharing stories, advice

photo - Vancouver City Councilor and Deputy Mayor Peter Meiszner holds the city’s proclamation of April 19 as Raoul Wallenberg Day — Vancouver City Councilor and Deputy Mayor Peter Meiszner holds the city’s proclamation of April 19 as Raoul Wallenberg Day. *(photo by Masumi Kikuchi)*

The Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society (WSCCS) hosted its 21st annual Raoul Wallenberg Day event on April 19. Held at the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture this year, its theme was “Confronting Hate Speech and Scapegoating.”

Alan Le Fevre, the society’s current president, opened the proceedings with a brief history of the organization and the annual event.

“Our name is taken from Raoul Wallenberg and Chiune Sugihara, who were two outstanding diplomats who, at great personal risk, saved thousands of Jews in World War II,” he explained. “Our aim is to recognize and remember those who have acted with similar civil courage in the present day.”

Vancouver City Councilor and Deputy Mayor Peter Meiszner read the city’s annual proclamation of April 19 as Raoul Wallenberg Day. He thanked the society “for their leadership in establishing and sustaining this important event and their dedication to recognizing those who act in defence of human dignity.” He spoke of the need for such leadership, when, “across Canada and around the world, we are witnessing the consequences of hate speech, including acts of violence that undermine the safety of our communities.”

WSCCS board member Gene Homel introduced the three speakers, starting with Kim Reclama-Clutesi (Oqwilowgwa), who has served as the elected chief of Kwakwaka’wakw (Qualicum First Nation), and is a Kwakwaka’wakw and Pentlatch knowledge holder and an ethnobiologist.

photo - Kim Reclama-Clutesi (Oqwilowgwa) speaks at this year’s Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society Raoul Wallenburg Day event April 19 — Kim Reclama-Clutesi (Oqwilowgwa) speaks at this year’s Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society Raoul Wallenburg Day event April 19. *(photo by Masumi Kikuchi)*

She shared various experiences with hate and injustice, along with examples of resilience, including work that her father did to protect children in residential schools, and his family. She spoke of how she is always seeking connections. “Even if it’s a thin thread, we have to honour those connections…. A lot of what people are doing today is trying to remove those connections and putting us into different places and categories,” especially regarding treaty and land claims issues, she said.

“You have to remember that this began over 500 years ago, with the Doctrine of Discovery and the papal bull that was issued in the late 1400s,” said Reclama-Clutesi. “It gave permission for European colonizers to ‘discover’ lands if they assumed that the people were ‘not organized’ or were in need of ‘spiritual healing’ – I’m paraphrasing dramatically.”

Prior to colonization, she explained, there was food security through traditional land and water stewardship, there were cultural practices that promoted spiritual growth and community cohesion.

Reclama-Clutesi spoke of the need for compassion. “We share this land with many,” she said.

“The bottom line is education,” she concluded. “Not just education as in taking cultural competency courses. It’s about getting to know each other. It’s about going into each other’s sacred places and understanding them. It’s about looking at things with a different lens.” It’s also about calling out those who spread hate and deny injustices that have happened, she said.

The second speaker was Hasan Alam, a human rights and labour lawyer, president of the BC Civil Liberties Association and co-founder of the Islamophobia Legal Assistance Hotline. He addressed the fact that the relationship between the Muslim and Jewish communities has not always been easy, saying it is important to hold onto “our shared histories and our shared experiences.”

He described the power of words to engender hate, to scapegoat and to “other,” as well as the dangers of silence. As a youth in the post-9/11 era, he experienced and witnessed the increased suspicion of Muslims, including instances of detention without due process “not because of anything they had done, but because of their names and what they believed.”

This not only influenced Alam’s decision to become a lawyer, it also taught him a lesson: “Words are not neutral. They carry weight. They shape how we see each other, how institutions treat us and, when weaponized, they can strip people of their dignity, their safety and, in the worst moments in history, their lives.”

Alam discussed the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as well as the Criminal Code. He gave the R v. Keegstra case as an example of an appropriate and successful prosecution of someone promoting hatred. His focus, however, was the injustices that occur within lawful boundaries. He noted that “the framework, as it operates in practice, too often assumes an equal playing field” between those spreading hatred and the targeted community. Yet, those with the widest platforms, such as politicians and the media, through apparent credibility and through repetition, can generate broad acceptance of their ideas, to the detriment of the “othered,” he said.

photo - Hasan Alam — Hasan Alam *(photo by Masumi Kikuchi)*

Alam warned that the state is not a “neutral arbiter of free expression.” Those in power can select who gets heard, “punishing certain voices while giving others a free pass,” he said, highlighting Canada’s genocide of Indigenous culture, and the internment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War.

The public’s “moral panic” can lead to political rhetoric that eventually results in laws or selective application of laws that target specific communities, said Alam. This can have a “chilling effect,” so that people self-censor – “freedom of expression doesn’t have to be formally taken away to be lost,” he said.

“I think real dialogue works,” he added. “The research on prejudice reduction consistently shows that when people who hold mistaken assumptions driven by fearmongering, driven by misinformation, driven by othering, or maybe just limited exposure, when they actually engage with the community they fear, those views do change.”

Making space for good-faith dialogue, where someone can admit they don’t understand something, might be uncomfortable, said Alam, but “that discomfort, when it’s honestly expressed and when honestly engaged, is often the beginning of understanding, and that’s where change lives … when the person in front of you becomes real.”

Marsha Lederman – a Globe and Mail columnist and author of two books – spoke about how Sugihara saved some 6,000 Jews by issuing them transit visas.

Referring to a statue of Sugihara in Los Angeles that was defaced earlier this year with red paint, she asked, “How, in any way, is this statue, is this man, an appropriate target?” It’s understandable to disagree with the actions and policies of the current Israeli government, she said. “It’s quite another thing to self-righteously target a historical figure whose heroic act was saving Jewish lives.”

photo - Marsha Lederman — Marsha Lederman *(photo by Masumi Kikuchi)*

Since the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks on Israel, there has been increased hostility toward Jews and a greater acceptance of speech that is hateful, if not the legal definition of hate speech, she noted.

Acknowledging that “what is happening in Gaza is catastrophic,” Lederman does not believe it should be compared to the Holocaust. Such comparisons, she said, are being used to delegitimize the state of Israel, and she shared some of her family’s experiences and other Holocaust history as proofs of why this line of thinking is wrong.

Lederman has become a frequent target of hate speech and she read out some of the names she has been called, including “Zionist nutcase” and “blood thirsty ghoul,” and, by supporters of Israel, “traitor” and “self-hating Jew”; she has been threatened. “Both sides have accused me of weaponizing the Holocaust, which my parents survived and which my grandparents [and other family] did not,” she said.

Lederman’s strategy for dealing with hate is to continue to exercise her freedom of speech. “I refuse to stop writing about these wars, about antisemitism, about Gaza, about Oct. 7, about Iran, Lebanon, with context, nuance and, I hope, heart, always trying to come at it from the humanitarian middle,” she said.

A panel discussion and question period followed the presentations, and the program concluded with the National Film Board short For Angela, the true story of a Winnipeg mother and daughter who successfully confronted bullying aimed at their Indigenous identity.

The April 19 event was supported by the Peretz Centre and the Vancouver Jewish Film Centre.

Ann Daskal is an independent writer and a member of Or Shalom.

Legal help for students

StandWithUs Canada executive director Jesse Primerano and lawyer Anita Bromberg, director of the organization’s new legal department. (photos from SWU)

StandWithUs Canada has just launched a new legal department to help students navigate the climate on Canadian campuses.

StandWithUs Canada is an educational organization that works to inspire and educate people of all ages about Israel, challenge misinformation and fight antisemitism within schools and communities. While the organization has always helped students navigate legal challenges, up to now, according to executive director Jesse Primerano, the organization has had to outsource cases to volunteer lawyers on a case-by-case basis. Cases have included incidents of human rights complaint violations by, for example, a university or a student union. With a staff lawyer leading a new department, StandWithUs aims to have greater reach in the legal realm.

Anita Bromberg is a lawyer with extensive practice experience in human rights and constitutional law, including religious freedom, censorship and freedom of speech cases. She has done research and teaching, worked with B’nai Brith Canada as a human rights officer and legal counsel, and served as executive director of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. She has argued before the Supreme Court of Canada.

After Oct. 7, 2023, Bromberg rededicated herself to the Jewish community and fighting antisemitism, heading the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation.

“I hope that, in my position, I will bring that expertise and connections and networking to StandWithUs,” Bromberg told the Independent. “And, most importantly, to me, is to find a way to bring our community together so that we are a lean, mean fighting machine that parallels the type of support that we’re seeing the anti-Israel crowd getting.”

Anti-Israel organizations have lawyers on call, according to Bromberg and Primerano, and Jewish students and their allies need parallel defences.

Students are being confronted on campus, including in classrooms, with aggressive harassment not only from student activists but from professors and faculty advisors, said Bromberg.

In addition to being harassed, students are being doxxed – having their personal information, like home addresses, made public – and access to public spaces like tables and room rentals on campus is being denied to Jewish students based on their political views, said Primerano. Jewish students are being silenced, he said, based on justifications that events, for example, cannot go forward for their own protection, based on security concerns.

“They need legal support to understand what they can do to defend themselves against a machine that’s trying to take them down,” said Primerano.

Launching the legal department has been a longtime goal of StandWithUs Canada, said Primerano.

“It required not only funding, but it required us to make sure the rest of our infrastructure was immaculate,” he said.

Legal avenues are often the only option for students who feel harmed by the actions of an institution or its representatives, he said.

“At the end of the day, very little holds universities to account outside of the law itself,” Primerano said. “That is the one thing that they say that they respect.”

The new legal department, with a single employee, is just the beginning, he maintained. The organization envisions a future with multiple lawyers and several staff members, collaborating with lawyers across the country.

“We’re not planning to solve this problem on our own,” said Primerano. “We’re looking to build a network of pro bono lawyers across Canada who are willing to support us here and there.”

The goal, ultimately, is to make sure that students have somebody they can call that is specifically focused on their issues. From there, StandWithUs might engage with community partners as appropriate, such as the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and others.

“Our goal is to build a real network,” he said. “Our fundamental belief is that the community is stronger when we work together, but we also know that the university students need a point of contact, and all we’re trying to establish here for them is a point of contact with expertise and reliability that can then utilize the rest of the infrastructure that exists, especially with Anita being based in Toronto, to speak to lawyers in Vancouver and say, ‘You’ve already been having these conversations. Let’s work together to make sure that we can effect a change.’”

Bromberg’s deep roots in the Jewish community and legal experience mean she can hit the ground running on complex issues.

“I think that was one reason why I got the nod for this position,” said Bromberg, “because I’ve been in the community, I’ve networked with pretty much every organization and I’ve always adopted a cooperative measure. I think that the unity in the community is probably the most important thing that we have to develop.”

Students can access a reporting tool through the StandWithUs website (standwithus.com) and social media.

“The goal is not entirely reactive,” Primerano added. “Anita will also be developing resources, workshops, webinars and ways for students and community members at large to be aware of what their rights are and how they can defend them.… We’re also trying proactively to help people get a better understanding of what they’re entitled to as Canadian citizens.”

Wrong person rebuked

The City of Vancouver’s integrity commissioner this month declared that Mayor Ken Sim breached the city’s code of conduct by criticizing Councilor Sean Orr’s presence and comments at an anti-Israel rally last year.

The report concluded that Sim misused the influence of his office by holding a press conference to criticize Orr over inflammatory social media posts and his attendance at an anti-Israel protest alongside very problematic speakers and organizations. The report said Sim should apologize to Orr or face censure by council.

Ezra Shanken, chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of British Columbia, said in a statement that the conflict commissioner’s report represented a double standard, and expressed gratitude to the mayor for raising our community’s concerns.

Nico Slobinsky, on behalf of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, criticized Orr for not showing accountability for past social media posts, including claiming that city planners were controlled by a “secret cabal of Jews,” and calling for the “destruction of both Israel and Canada.” While a city councilor, Orr spoke at the “Flood for Palestine” protest organized by Al-Awda, a group with links to the terrorist entity Samidoun.

The brouhaha at city hall is just one in a small avalanche of administrative, legal and political episodes in recent years that have left many Jews feeling abandoned and betrayed by the institutions and legal protections ostensibly in place to protect them and other minority communities.

Many Jews feel under attack and, despite pleasant words from some elected officials, actual tangible responses often seem weak or absent. For example, the flooding of a Vancouver neighbourhood with hate messages against Jews and Israel have been effectively ignored by city officials. Clearing them away has been left to local residents. Nothing, apparently, has been done to reprimand the individual known to be perpetrating the graffiti and vandalism, despite laws and bylaws against precisely this sort of behaviour.

In Ontario, some progress has been seen recently. Toronto authorities responded to demonstrations in Jewish neighbourhoods by tightening enforcement, restricting marches from entering residential streets, and arresting some participants and investigating alleged incidents of hate speech and public incitement. Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford has been vocal in defending Jewish communities and, no doubt, his unequivocal position gave some political cover to police and others to take action.

No similar political leadership has been seen in British Columbia, where the unresolved case of Charlotte Kates remains a sore point for many in the Jewish community. Vancouver police arrested Kates in April 2024 after remarks at a Vancouver rally in which she praised the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and venerated their perpetrators as heroic. Police recommended charges for public incitement and wilful promotion of hatred. Nearly two years later, Crown counsel has still not announced a charge decision. Pressed by the Independent, the premier’s office pointed to prosecutorial independence, arguing that charging decisions rest with the BC Prosecution Service, not elected officials.

This may be fair justification, but piled upon so many instances where words and actions that are perceived by Jews as hateful and inciting go officially unchallenged leave many Jewish people with an overall sense that they are being abandoned by those who should be enforcing anti-hate protections.

Parliament is now considering Bill C-9, a proposed online harms law that carries numerous provisions that Jewish leaders support. But many people are leery of more laws that likely will not be enforced, provisions intended to increase safety for minority communities – Jews, in particular – but that will not have their intended impact, whether because police do not enforce them, the Crown does not pursue charges or, if it reaches that level, courts do not convict. The proposed new federal law has much to recommend itself but, if it is just going to be another law on a dusty legal shelf, it will not change the situation we face.

The case of Vancouver’s mayor, who called out egregious incidents only to be called on the carpet himself – and ordered to apologize – portends a chilling on those who would stand up for the Jewish community.

We have laws in this country, but many of them are not being enforced. Very few Jews in this country, we confidently venture, believe the system is working as it should.

The balancing of rights

Canada prides itself on being a country where free expression is a core value. We have always differed from our American cousins, though, in recognizing a balance between an “anything goes” right to speech and the contending right of individuals and groups to live free from fear and incitement.

Canadian law draws definite lines. Speech that incites violence against an identifiable group, that promotes hatred or that crosses into criminal harassment is not protected. Those limits are not theoretical – they exist precisely because history has shown what can happen when words move from expression into incitement.

Even as governments take steps towards legislation that would create “bubble zones” and strengthen hate crime laws, many Canadians Jews are concerned that limitations already set out in law, intended to protect minority communities, are not being enforced. Rhetoric like “Globalize the intifada,” which is heard as an overt call for violence against Jews by most Jews and other people who can hear clearly, is going uncontested by police and courts, for example.

The Criminal Code is clear: advocating or promoting violence against identifiable groups crosses a line. The question is no longer whether such limits exist. The question is whether they are being enforced. And, increasingly, the answer appears to be no.

What we are seeing is not simply robust debate. It is a climate in which harassment and intimidation are proliferating, often without legal consequence.

There are, of course, consequences. Jewish institutions require heightened security after so many incidents that it is hard to keep up with the grim news. Students and faculty experience actively hostile campus environments. Public demonstrations brazenly cross the line between protest, provocation and hate.

There is no provable causal chain between rhetoric and violence. Democracies are right to err on the side of speech. But, when the same language, the same slogans and the same patterns of escalation appear alongside an unprecedented rise in hate incidents and targeted attacks, the correlation becomes increasingly difficult to dismiss – and demands attention.

Canada is not alone in confronting this tension. The British authorities have begun to draw firmer lines – distinguishing between lawful protest and language and conduct that threatens public safety or targets vulnerable communities.

The approach is not without controversy. It raises legitimate concerns about overreach and the risk of suppressing dissent. But it also reflects a recognition that inaction carries its own dangers.

Canada is facing a similar showdown.

The goal must not be to silence political views, however unpopular. Or to criminalize protest or suppress debate about complex international issues. Those must remain protected. The goal must be far narrower – to enforce the laws that already exist and to ensure that calls for violence, harassment and intimidation are treated as such, regardless of political context. To make clear that free expression does not extend to threatening the safety and dignity of others.

This is a position that seems simple enough, even unquestioned, when it comes to hateful language and physical intimidation against other vulnerable populations. The situation is serious and it demands the willingness to confront uncomfortable truths.

Canada should not abandon its commitment to free expression. But we must recognize, as we always have, that free expression has limits – and that those limits exist for a reason. In this instance, the reason is the evident correlation between rampant anti-Israel, antizionist and antisemitic rhetoric and the violence against Jews and Jewish institutions we are experiencing.

The government of the United Kingdom is now experimenting in enforcing limitations on hate expression. It is a courageous step. It could also be a turning point – in either direction.

The inevitable pushback around “silencing” (itself often founded on antisemitic tropes of Jewish power) and the more legitimate concerns about free speech make this a fraught policy area. However, if the UK, which shares much of our political culture, can find a middle ground, we would be wise to pay attention.

If, on the other hand, more violent protests, adverse court decisions or – more damagingly – if the government suffers internal splits or popular disapproval over its approach to anti-Jewish harassment, it could set a precedent in which politicians in places like Canada learn that it is best not to provoke the harassers. If that happens, it will signal an open season for anti-Jewish agitation and an extraordinary abandonment of free speech’s twin core value of being able to live free from fear and incitement.

What is needed right now is political courage. Some of that exists, but it needs to exist in a sufficient number of decision-makers and in the places of power where it is most needed and can have the most effect. For better or worse, we will know if this is the case soon enough.

Bad behaviour affects us all

Recently, my kids walked home from high school late because of their games club, which meets once a week. On their way, they saw a man on the sidewalk, coming from a pedestrian trail. He wore a sign on his back that read, “Netanyahu, Butcher of Gaza.” They hung back, took photos and alerted me when they got home.

Here’s a good reason to give Jewish teens access to cellphones. I used the “Find My” app to watch them walk home. They used the phone to document this. We found this signage offensive and upsetting, but it hadn’t been an emergency incident, so they didn’t use their phones to call 911.

I reported this incident to B’nai Brith Canada, who suggested also filing a police report. Over dinner, we discussed the sign. Was this antisemitism or just free speech, when using the IHRA definition of antisemitism? Is the test for this, “Would anyone reasonably use this kind of language about other countries’ publicly elected officials?” The answer for us was, “Well, yes.” We don’t approve of it, but, in 2022, we heard all this as part of the truckers’ convoy that came through Winnipeg. They parked (and honked) at the provincial legislature, close enough to our home so we saw their signs and hateful rhetoric.

I Googled the phrase on the man’s sign. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan started using this phrase in November 2023. It’s been used repeatedly in the last 2.5 years of the Gaza conflict. Knowing a phrase’s “origin story” doesn’t make it less virulent. It still didn’t feel OK. Something can be legal, but also shameful, wrong or antisocial, bad behaviour.

As a family, we debated whether we should do a police report. In Winnipeg, it’s not that easy to report something like this. There’s an online form, but it specifically rejects claims due to hate crimes or speech. In situations like this, there is calling 911 to report it or going downtown to the only police station that takes these reports. We chose to leave this one up to B’nai Brith, but the situation remained fresh and upsetting.

First, there’s the debate over whether something hateful and harmful is illegal or immediately dangerous. Our city’s police service is overburdened. Everyone in Winnipeg has heard of someone who has called the cops and been told that, unless the situation was life threatening, no police would show up. This means that squatters without life-threatening weapons aren’t immediately tossed out of vacant homes – but then the homes catch on fire. In one awful case, a panicked teen, trying to protect his grandmother, called the police during a home invasion. He was killed before the police arrived. This horrific incident puts our hate-signage sighting in perspective.

Second, though, is the question of whether we (Jewish people) or teens walking home from school deserve to feel safe. This man wasn’t walking in front of a consulate or legislature in protest. He was near multiple schools, a library, a synagogue, several churches, a hospital and a care home. If bubble legislation existed in Canada or in Winnipeg, it would have been possible to report this and expect a police response. As things stand, it didn’t seem forthcoming.

This incident reminded me of a conversation I had at Kiddush lunch at synagogue. A Jewish family at our table insisted, in alarm, that Bill C-9 (the one for federal bubble legislation) would interfere with their right to free speech. I asked how often they wrote for the press or how this risked interference with their current modes of protest. I asked if they felt that their right to protest was in jeopardy. When I Googled them later, I found that they don’t write widely. Their names don’t appear in the news regarding protests. Their right to free speech or protest was likely not being threatened in any way. It seems they had fallen prey to misinformation. At the table, I brought up multiple incidents that our children face as they leave a public school and walk home past our congregation.

When a protester is outside the synagogue just after school lets out, the police say that it’s public space. The protest is allowed, even though the signage blocks the sidewalk. Kids walking by are exposed to potential hate speech, and normalizing hate speech or graffiti can lead to acts of violence. This kind of protest first happened about two years ago, but, this spring, the signage on a man’s jacket left us in the same quandary.

Well-intentioned allies have asked, “Do you feel safe?” or “What can I do?”

The answer to the first question is, “no.” There are a lot of reasons for that. For one thing, I’d like my kids to be able to walk home without feeling threatened or having to dodge protesters or shoot photos.

I regularly encounter non-Jewish Canadians who ask the second question. I try to help them learn more about the issues, so they feel ready to be “upstanders” rather than just “bystanders.” Calling the police, paying privately for huge amounts of security or shielding children from hateful protest shouldn’t be something Jewish Canadians navigate alone. We’re less than 1% of the Canadian population. It’s necessary to educate and mobilize allies to help.

Political “free speech” can be legal and still hateful. A society that speaks up can make change, even if the offender isn’t arrested. Education happens when we say, out loud, that some behaviours are shameful and un-Canadian. Bad behaviour affects all of us. It’s time to find adults willing to speak up. If somebody wants Jews to feel safe in Canada, then the status quo is not what they want either.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

New law a desecration

Israeli Minster of National Security Itamar Ben G’vir holds up a champagne bottle in the Knesset on March 30, toasting the passage of Israel’s new death penalty law. (screenshot)

On March 30, two days before erev Passover, Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir celebrated the passing of his racist, dangerous, vengeful and unjust death penalty law by raising a champagne bottle and drinking to victory. The customary toast in Jewish tradition, of course, is to exclaim “L’chaim!” (“To life!”) Partly for this reason, the name chosen for the Jewish anti-death penalty group I co-founded, which now includes thousands of members in Israel and abroad, is “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty.” Those members of the Knesset who support this law have upended the phrase meant to evoke Judaism’s core life-affirming principles.

While Ben-Gvir claims to be a pious and observant Jew, his actions once again reveal his blatant disregard for Jewish values, and an essential mockery of Jewish ritual symbolism. He might as well have screamed “Lamavet” (“To death”) for his celebratory toast. Make no mistake: the passage of this death penalty law will certainly bring death for both convicted terrorists and innocent Israelis and Jews across the world. It is an abomination that will prove disastrous for multiple reasons.

Wine at Passover

One of the most well-known facts about the Passover seder, which both Jews and many non-Jews are keenly aware of, is that it traditionally involves drinking four cups of wine or grape juice. These four cups are a mandatory rabbinic commandment, representing the four expressions of redemption God used in Exodus 6:6-7 to promise freedom to the Israelites. Consumed at specific intervals in the seder, they symbolize freedom, joy, and key stages of liberation, from slavery to becoming a nation.

Perhaps one of the most widely understood reasons for drinking wine on Passover, as on Purim and on any Jewish holiday, is its symbolism of life, joy, sanctification, and transformation used to elevate holy moments like Shabbat, holidays and weddings. It signifies “cheering the heart,” redemption (specifically the four cups at Passover) and divine blessing, while also serving as a reminder of the need for temperance and balance. By lifting a glass for death just ahead of Passover, Ben-Gvir has effectively desecrated this sacred tradition with inverted, grotesque symbolism.

Another tradition of the Passover seder highlights the extent of the sacrilege of Ben-Gvir’s celebration. It is customary for seder-goers to remove 10 drops of wine, one for each of the plagues they chant, symbolizing how the suffering that each affliction produced for our people’s enemies diminishes our joy. This list culminates in the 10th plague of the death of the firstborn of Egypt at the hands of Malakh Hamavet, the Angel of Death. Instead of honouring this Passover ritual, Ben-Gvir profaned it by using wine to glorify killing.

The 10 Plagues

It is most fitting, with Passover only recently having ended, for L’chaim to use the 10 Plagues – with which God cursed the Egyptians in response to Pharaoh’s “hardened heart” – as symbols of the many reasons to oppose the death penalty. We align these biblical maladies with 10 damning strikes against the death penalty to highlight that capital punishment itself is a plague on any society that enacts it. Capital punishment condemns any government that wields it, including Israel now, infinitely more so than any of the individuals it condemns to death.

Dam (Blood): Israel’s death penalty law could increase terrorism, making it more enticing to would-be martyrs (shahids).

Tzifatdeiya (Frogs): It will undoubtedly endanger Jews worldwide.

Kinim (Lice): From Adolf Hitler to Donald Trump, Machiavellian politicians wield the death penalty as a political tool, particularly for election campaigns, and that is the case with this law. Consider the recent examples in Israel of Ben-Gvir’s noose-shaped lapel pin and his video promoting the death penalty law, illicitly filmed at a gallows museum in Jerusalem, as well as Limor Son Har-Melech’s Nazi-inspired Purim costume featuring an injection syringe.

Arov (Wild Animals): Jewish tradition makes the death penalty virtually impossible to carry out. Passage of this law has betrayed the life-affirming core of that tradition.

Dever (Pestilence): Terms like “deterrence,” which is a fallacious delusion when applied to the death penalty, and “retributive” or “proportional” justice, are veils for vengeance. Unequivocally, revenge does not bring closure for murder victims’ loved ones.

Sh’chin (Boils): The death penalty is racist, and this law in particular is viciously discriminatory.

Barad (Hail): The death penalty inherently violates the human right to life. Relatedly, it often results in physical torture, and always is psychological torture, for individuals counting down to their execution day. There is no humane way to execute human beings against their will.

Arbeh (Locusts): Many execution methods are direct Nazi legacies, including firing squad, gassing and lethal injection.

Choshech (Darkness): Capital punishment will traumatize the executioners within the Israel Prison Service. This law also risks placing anyone involved in contravention of human rights treaties.

Makat Bechorot (Death of the Firstborn): The death penalty inevitably risks executing the innocent.

Onward toward repeal

On March 30, the same day that the Knesset passed this barbaric law, a vast coalition of Jewish organizations across Israel and the world immediately petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court to repeal it. The next day, the Supreme Court ordered that the state must respond to the petition and the request for an interim injunction by May 24. The members of L’chaim, together with Jews of good conscience and all of civilized humanity, will continue to do all we can to support this vital, sacred effort.

None other than death penalty abolitionist Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) aptly referred to capital punishment as the “Angel of Death.” It is high time to banish this medieval plague from Israel once and for all. The final uplifting song of the Passover seder is “L’shanah haba’ah b’Yerushalayim” (“Next year in Jerusalem”). It is our consummate hope and intention that next Passover, Jerusalem will see the repeal of this monstrous legislation.

Cantor Michael Zoosman is a certified spiritual care practitioner and received his cantorial ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He sits as an advisory committee member at Death Penalty Action and is co-founder of L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty. Zoosman is a former Jewish prison chaplain and psychiatric hospital chaplain. He lives with his family in Vancouver.

New bill targets hate crimes

At rallies held across Canada after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and during the Israel-Hamas war, there were protesters holding antisemitic signs and hollering antisemitic slogans. Bill C-9 would amend the Criminal Code to strengthen existing hate-related offences. (photo from Canadian Handbook on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism)

Parliament resumed last month after its winter break and one of the bills on the agenda for the new session could have significant repercussions for Jewish Canadians.

While Jewish organizations welcome most components of the proposed legislation, the most important message that its passage would send is that political leaders take hate crimes seriously, according to Jewish organizational spokespeople who were interviewed by the Independent.

Bill C-9 would amend the Criminal Code to strengthen existing hate-related offences. But legal experts and advocacy agencies admit there is no quick fix for the explosion of antisemitic rhetoric and violence in Canada and around the world.

The proposed legislation, which is now in committee stage, would create new offences for intimidation and for intentional obstruction of access to religious or cultural institutions, schools, daycares, seniors residences and cemeteries. It would also create a new hate-crime offence tied to crimes motivated by “hatred,” add a definition of “hatred” and create an offence related to publicly displaying certain hate or terrorist symbols in ways that promote hatred. If passed, the law would remove the requirement of provincial attorneys general to approve police-laid charges and instead place that decision on Crown prosecutors.

In a rare joint statement in December, five national organizations – the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre, B’nai Brith Canada, the Alliance of Canadians Combatting Antisemitism, and Canadian Women Against Antisemitism – welcomed the bill. They also called for additional steps, including increased funding for community security and closing gaps in the country’s anti-terror laws. The statement further called for existing laws to be more vigorously and consistently enforced.

Despite the advocacy of community voices, and existing and proposed legislation, many Canadian Jews feel that antisemitic rhetoric and acts are getting worse, not better, and that few of the actions taken to stanch them are having the desired outcomes.

In British Columbia, for example, Vancouver police recommended charges against Charlotte Kates, a Vancouver resident who publicly called the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks “brave and heroic” and who led a rally in chants of “Long live October 7.” The recommendation has been on the desk of BC’s attorney general for more than 18 months. In an interview with the Independent late last year, Premier David Eby committed to providing an update on the case. Despite repeated follow-ups, the premier’s office has not yet responded with an explanation as to why no action has been forthcoming.

The Independent interviewed leaders in Jewish advocacy organizations, and a clear consensus emerged that expressions of political will may be as important as any particular piece of existing or new legislation.

While many people may feel things are on a downward trajectory, Dylan Hanley, senior vice-president, public affairs, for the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, noted some areas of progress. For example, though the situation on Canadian university campuses is not perfect, he said, there have been improvements in terms of how administrations respond to problems.

Hanley also said credit should be given where due, and intelligence agencies and law enforcement have, crucially, prevented several potential disasters from happening in Canada. More must be done, however, including additional immigration screening around connections to terrorist groups, and maintaining vigilance around foreign interference in politics and civil society, he said.

Further investigation is required around possible foreign support for domestic agitators, said Hanley. Although there is no solid evidence, there has been much speculation about external funding of anti-Israel activities, especially given the apparent preparedness of domestic groups immediately after the 10/7 attacks, he said.

“Has anybody shown us the smoking gun?” Hanley asked. “No. Do we suspect at least that there are foreign funds going into some of these campaigns? Sure.”

Ensuring government support for community security is an ongoing issue, as funding is cyclical. But Hanley noted that, while this support is necessary, it is also a response to the problem, which requires leadership and action that gets at the root of the issue – radicalization combined with a major increase in antisemitism.

The proposed changes contained in Bill C-9 are largely a step in the right direction in his view, but Hanley says no single approach can eliminate the underlying problem of antisemitism and hatred.

“None of these things are silver bullets on their own,” he said. “And we don’t want to raise community expectations that there is a silver bullet here.”

The Jewish community is feeling very alone, he said, and is looking for someone to fix the problem. The consensus among all those interviewed for this story is that political leadership must set the tone.

“I think the biggest piece – and we deliver this message at every level of government in every interaction – is we need to see clear leadership on this,” Hanley said. “We need our leaders to come out and say, clearly, this isn’t OK. You can’t target communities in Canada because of anger or frustrations from conflicts going on overseas, and what starts with our community isn’t going to end with our community.”

photo - Even before Oct. 7, 2023, antisemitism was an increasing problem in Canada – this photo comes from a Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs’ post about Ontario’s 2022 election. A lack of political will at all levels of government is one reason the problem continues to worsen — Even before Oct. 7, 2023, antisemitism was an increasing problem in Canada – this photo comes from a Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs’ post about Ontario’s 2022 election. A lack of political will at all levels of government is one reason the problem continues to worsen. *(photo from cija.ca)*

Jewish Canadians are frustrated with what appears like constant buck-passing, he said.

“The university says, ‘Well, actually, this is the police’s job.’ The police say, ‘Well, you know, we haven’t gotten any political cover from the city.’ The city says it’s the province. The province says it’s the feds,” Hanley explained. “And then you go around in the circle again and the feds say, ‘We don’t get involved in law enforcement in individual cases.’”

Aron Csaplaros, BC regional manager for B’nai Brith Canada, echoed several of Hanley’s comments and lauded the Bill C-9 provision that would create a law that most Canadians probably think already exists.

“In Canada, we do not right now have a freestanding hate crime offence,” he said. Instead, the Criminal Code prohibits wilful promotion of hatred and public incitement of hatred. At present, acts motivated by hate are usually prosecuted under general offences like mischief or assault, while bias or hate can be treated only as an aggravating factor at sentencing.

With Bill C-9, prosecutors would be able to lay a specific hate-crime charge that makes bias or hatred part of the offence itself. This means that prosecutions can centre explicitly on antisemitic or hateful motivation, and sentencing may be more severe because the hate element would be built into the crime rather than treated as secondary.

Bill C-9 would also create a prohibition against harassing people outside religious institutions.

“Everyone has the right to freedom of expression and protest,” said Csaplaros. “But, at the same time, those rights cannot come at the expense of the freedom of others.”

His views about the way things are handled – or not – are similar to Hanley’s.

“I think there’s a lot of passing the buck and finger-pointing going on between various levels of law enforcement and government,” said Csaplaros.

Like the other spokespeople the Independent interviewed, Csaplaros said he is not criticizing law enforcement.

“Law enforcement really needs to be empowered. They need to ensure that officers are using all of the resources available to them,” he said. “That means that all levels of government – federal, municipal, provincial – need to support law enforcement by ensuring clear directives and ensuring that they have the mandate.”

Officers on the frontline may need more awareness of the laws and the extent or limitations of those laws, he said. Crown prosecutors and the

judiciary might benefit from refreshers as well, he added.

Education is key, he said, not just for people at the frontline of law enforcement but for all Canadians. B’nai Brith is calling for a national digital literacy campaign so that all people, but especially young people, have the tools to be able to differentiate fact from fiction, disinformation from legitimate disagreement.

Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, senior director of policy and advocacy for Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said education is a core mandate of her organization. In this context, she has seen how the realities facing Jewish Canadians are questioned or discounted.

The centre educates a broad range of audiences, including law enforcement, government officials and civil society leaders. Almost invariably, she said, when trainers show statistics of antisemitic hate crimes, hands shoot up in the audience to contest the numbers, to question the methodologies or otherwise call into doubt the prevalence of attacks on Jews. Part of this, she believes, is due to the pervasiveness of the myth of the “powerful Jew.”

“This sort of racist understanding of the Jew has compromised the ability of the society to really understand that, in fact, we are the targets,” she said.

Even when people are not challenging the evidence, said Kirzner-Roberts, there seems to be a fundamental disconnect between approaches to antisemitism and reactions to other forms of racism.

“The response that we so often hear is, ‘Well, it’s a free country,’” she said. “This is not the kind of expression that you would get if the target were, in my opinion, anyone other than Jews.” This societal double standard is a challenge, she said.

Like the others interviewed, Kirzner-Roberts believes that leadership and political will are crucial to turning the tide. That includes legislation like Bill C-9 and also enforcement of existing laws. “There is a lot of legislation already that is being far underutilized,” she said.

Systemic issues, though, are addressed by leadership at the political level.

“We’re seeing a lack of political will across the board, and I’m talking here [about] cities, provinces and on the federal level,” said Kirzner-Roberts.

In addition to addressing the rise in hate-motivated crime and closing loopholes in existing laws, she said, Bill C-9 is important because it drives home the message of political will onto police and prosecutors.

Human rights in sport

Before the 2004 Summer Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece, organizers installed an elevator in the Acropolis. (photo from greecehighdefinition.com)

What does sports have to do with human rights? This was the question posed by Vancouver Jewish community leader Zena Simces as she and her spouse Simon Rabkin launched the seventh annual Simces and Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights Oct. 23 in a national online event.

There is evidence of discrimination and exclusion, racism, sexism, ableism, athlete exploitation and maltreatment, labour rights violations, sex eligibility and gender identity issues and safety concerns in sport, Simces said. There are also funding issues, such as the high cost of participation in sport, including at the community level.

Sport is about more than just an active and healthy lifestyle, Simces noted, though it is about that, too.

“It can help to address social isolation and loneliness, which have been identified as major health concerns, not only for older adults, but also for children and youth,” she said. “Sports can be democratic, as it invites everyone to belong and contribute to strengthening and building community, but there is a dark side.”

The dialogue was moderated by Wendy MacGregor, a consultant, educator and lawyer who is the founder and executive director of Athlete Zone, a nonprofit that provides Canadians with support, guidance and education in the pursuit of healthy sports environments.

“Unfortunately, with all those wonderful attributes that sports brings, it is not accessible to everyone worldwide and not even to all Canadians,” said MacGregor. She cited statistics indicating that youth participation numbers “are dropping off a cliff and especially girls are dropping out of sport.”

Some of the reasons for this include increased costs, travel time, difficulty of access to facilities, discrimination, maltreatment or abuse in sport and the increased commercialization of sport.

Panelist Bryan Heal, the social impact research lead at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, spoke about a program his organization is involved with, called Change the Game, which advances youth access, equity and outcomes through sport.

Change the Game has engaged more than 25,000 young people around Ontario, he said, addressing factors of race, gender, ability, household income, geography and other factors around access and barriers.

More than 80% of young people who have participated in the program, he said, have experienced themselves or are aware of a problem in these areas but do not feel like they have anyone that they can talk to about it.

“There’s a culture and strategy of silence that is employed by default,” said Heal. “In a team environment, it can be incredibly isolating and deflating when you’re harbouring something like that. It draws people away to other sports, sometimes to leaving sports entirely.”

Jeff Adams, a lawyer specializing in labour, employment and human rights issues, is a decorated Paralympian, having won three gold medals in wheelchair races.

Accommodating different needs is fundamental and, too often, he said, excuses are made, such as the argument that sports facilities are often in buildings that are too old to be made fully accessible.

Before the 2004 Summer Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece, organizers installed an elevator in the Acropolis. “You want to talk about the most historically relevant building in the world,” he said. “It’s the cradle of civilization, and they put an elevator in it.”

An attitude exists that basic Canadian laws, embodied in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, do not apply to the playing field, he argued.

“We are not applying the fundamental supreme law of Canada to athletes who are bleeding for their country in competition,” Adams said. “We have laws that work. We have anti-violence and harassment legislation baked into labour and employment laws.”

Amreen Kadwa, founder and executive director of Hijabi Ballers, a Toronto nonprofit creating positive experiences in sport for Muslim girls and women, said her group’s programs provide more than just access to sport.

“They create safe, culturally affirming spaces where women can play without judgment,” she said. “They can learn new skills, they can grow in their confidence and, beyond sport, we nurture leadership. It really is human rights in action.”

Female athletes face far more violence and discrimination in sport than their male counterparts, Kadwa said.

“But this number is even higher for racialized women,” she said. “Muslim women, a lot of them who are hijab-wearing Muslim women, are often seen as outsiders, whether through their outfits, their clothing, the stereotype, a lack of cultural understanding.”

The annual dialogue event is a partnership with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and Equitas, an international centre for human rights education.