Read Mark Carney's speech arguing that the crisis of antisemitism is 'severe and demands a targeted response'

In a speech in Toronto on Monday, Prime Minister Mark Carney declared that the country’s civic compact “is failing Jewish Canadians,” who are being “brutally targeted” amid a crisis of antisemitism in the country.

Carney said that more than two-thirds of all religiously-motivated hate crimes were directed at Jewish Canadians last year, even though they only make up one per cent of the population, and argued that it “demands a targeted response.”

Thank you, Leslie and Evan, for that introduction.

I would like to thank Cantor David Rosen for welcoming me to Holy Blossom Temple, and Rabbi Splansky for her video greeting, and her stewardship of this synagogue of belonging, learning, and spirituality.

For three thousand years, Jewish tradition has taught us that a society should not be judged by its wealth or its power, but by how it treats its most vulnerable.

The Hebrew prophets returned repeatedly to this lesson.

Isaiah called on rulers to “Learn to do good. Devote yourselves to justice; aid the wronged. Uphold the rights of the orphan; defend the cause of the widow.”

Amos warned against societies that prosper while neglecting the weak.

The message of the prophets to us was that a just society is sustained, not merely by law, but also by the obligations we owe each other.

Centuries later, Aristotle described this as civic friendship – the bond that holds a state together.

By friendship, he did not mean intimacy, affection, or fellow feeling.

He meant something more demanding and durable: the mutual recognition between citizens that each is pursuing a good life under the same political roof, and that the conditions of your flourishing are the same as mine.

This is the covenant that makes Canada possible.

And this is the covenant being tested today by the scourge of antisemitism.

I want to speak today about that terrible reality and how we can restore the full promise of Canadian citizenship to all.

Canada was not founded on a single creed, race, language, or faith.

Instead, we have held our differences in common, beginning—after a long period of struggle and oppression—with the French and English accommodation.

This deepened with Confederation.

It has carried through successive generations of immigration from every continent and of every faith. It continues to be travelled in the long journey of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, the original stewards of this land.

(Translated from French) Respect for—indeed, celebration of—differences is enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, specifically in section 27, which states that any interpretation of the Charter must be consistent with the objective of promoting the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.

This commitment rests on a concept that one of Canada’s great philosophers, Charles Taylor, called “recognition.”

According to him, recognition is more than mere tolerance.

It is rather about actively recognizing that each citizen is constituted, in part, by the identity they carry within them—through their faith, language, traditions, and history—and that their dignity is preserved only when these aspects of their identity are taken into account.

To be recognised is to be received as who you are.

Pluralism in Canada is not the exception to the framework. Pluralism is the framework.

Our secularism is open. The state takes no side in matters of belief, and the institutions of public life are not captured by any particular faith.

In Canada, state neutrality does not empty the public square but ensures that no conception of the good — including humanism or atheism — is privileged by state power, and that every Canadian has the freedom of conscience to live as they believe.

This means that the state—above the responsibilities we all have as citizens—has a special responsibility to ensure that no culture, faith, race, gender, or identity is threatened or suppressed.

And it goes further to the responsibility of ensuring that that everyone can be their whole selves in Canada.

Canada’s fundamental insight is that unity is not uniformity.

That our differences are strengths to be nurtured, not risks to be managed.

In Canada, faith, language, heritage, and tradition are not concessions to citizenship.

They are expressions of it.

In Canada, the visibility of our differences is not an obstacle to belonging, but the substance of our mutual respect.

This is how we hold ourselves together.

I do not pretend this is always easy. Differences generate friction.

Accommodation of competing claims is real work. We will always have our legitimate debates about where the lines properly fall. But those debates are part of how our pluralistic country sustains itself.

Today, that nature is being tested, as one of our communities is being particularly and brutally targeted.

Across our country, antisemitism has surged to levels not seen in the post-war period.

Last year, over two-thirds of all religion-motivated hate crimes were directed at Jewish Canadians who make up only 1% of the population.

Antisemites in Canada have fired bullets at Jewish schools.

They have thrown firebombs at synagogues and attacked community centres. They have targeted Jewish-owned businesses. Harassed Jewish patients at hospitals.

Drove Jewish students from the common spaces on our university campuses. And desecrated our Holocaust memorials.

(Translated from French) Canadian parents are now having to ask themselves whether it’s safe to send their children to a Jewish school.

Observant Canadians are thinking twice before wearing a kippah on the subway.

The same scourge is raging in Europe and the United States. It is also affecting the United Kingdom, where the terrorist attacks in Heaton Park and Golders Green deeply shook Jewish communities.

And Australia, where, last December, fifteen people were murdered at Bondi Beach on the first night of Hanukkah.

Let me personalise this. Last October, I attended the opening of the Chabad Jewish Centre at the University of Ottawa.

This Jewish student centre made possible by the philanthropy of one of Canada’s leading entrepreneurs, Harley Finkelstein, who, as a student, had benefitted from the teachings and friendship of Rabbi Chaim Boyarsky, who remains the heart of Jewish student life at the University.

The otherwise joyous event occurred under heavy police presence and was interrupted by angry shouts of some passers-by.

I would next see Rabbi Boyarsky on a bitterly cold Sunday afternoon in December as we lit the first Menorah candle at Ottawa city hall and mourned the victims of Bondi beach which included his friend and Chabad colleague, Rabbi Eli Schlanger.

The pain, threats, and fears can appear relentless.

The horror and shame are global. Our actions must be local.

They start with clearly admitting that Canada’s civic compact is failing Jewish Canadians.

And they extend to all Canadians recognising that, if that covenant fails for one of our communities, it fails us all.

Since being elected a little over a year ago, our government has been acting first and foremost on the most fundamental responsibility of government: protecting our citizens.

We have introduced six pieces of legislation to bolster public safety and to combat antisemitism and other forms of hatred.

Foremost of these, Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, addresses directly the rise in antisemitism, hate-motivated violence, and the targeting of communities.

It significantly strengthens the Criminal Code by creating new offences for intimidation and obstruction at places of worship, schools, community centres, and other institutions used by identifiable communities.

(Translated from French) We also reaffirmed the importance of the working definition of antisemitism formulated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and adopted by Canada in 2019 as part of its Canadian Anti-Racism Strategy.

This definition allows for legitimate criticism of any government, including the government of the State of Israel, while also naming hatred against Jewish people for what it is.

We are advancing work to confront hate online and violent extremism, including through the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence, which leads Canada’s work on countering radicalisation to violence and supports prevention, research, and front-line intervention through the Community Resilience Fund.

Last year, the Government announced more than $36 million for projects to help counter violent extremism, including early prevention in schools and communities and work to understand and respond to extremist movements online and offline.

This April, we committed an additional $75 million through the Canada Community Security Program — for synagogues, for Jewish day schools, for community centres, and for the institutions of every faith community whose safety is at risk.

We are working with provinces, municipalities, and with our intelligence and law enforcement agencies, to coordinate that protection.

And I would like to commend Chief Carrique, Deputy Commissioner Larkin, and Chief Demkiw and the Toronto Police Service for their efforts for enforcement.

(Translated from French) These measures are necessary. However, they are far from sufficient on their own.

A country where Jewish schools require security guards, where synagogues need barriers, and where Jewish children attend schools secluded within a protected perimeter is a country that protects its citizens but fails to uphold its civic duty.

The deeper work is the renewal of the Canadian covenant itself.

To that end, I am pleased to announce the launch and membership of Canada’s new Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality, and Inclusion to be chaired by the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, Marc Miller.

The Council has a clear mission: to combat racism and hate in all their forms, and to guide the Government of Canada as we build a fairer, more just, more inclusive country.

I am also honoured to announce that Senator Marc Gold, one of Canada’s most collaborative, effective, and principled voices on the scourge of antisemitism, has agreed to join the Council.

I have directed the Council to begin work by addressing antisemitism from four different directions.

First, the Council will reassess the nature, scale, and drivers of antisemitism in Canada – including across our public institutions, workplaces, campuses, public services, professional bodies and online spaces.

These are the places where the habits of civic life are formed, and where, if those habits fracture, the fracture spreads.

Second, the Council will coordinate a whole-of-federal-government approach to antisemitism because combating antisemitism is a responsibility we all share.

This will ensure that federal policies, workplaces, public safety programs, and community initiatives are aligned in protecting Jewish Canadians, confronting hate and promoting inclusion.

Third, the Council will improve research and the collection of data on hate incidents.

It will build stronger data-sharing systems, so all orders of government, schools, and police services are working with the same facts.

Finally, the Council will measure the impact of our efforts, to reinforce those investments in education, prevention, training, and community safety that are delivering real results and helping to build a safer, more inclusive Canada for all.

I want to be clear about what these potential measures are, and what they are not.

They are not curtailments of freedom of expression. They are not constraints on legitimate criticism of any government on any subject anywhere.

They are the basic standards we owe one another, in our shared public institutions, to ensure that no Canadian community is driven from those institutions by hatred.

Institutional measures, even the strongest ones, cannot do the deeper work of true recognition alone.

That deeper work falls to each of us, and to all of us in how we treat each other.

As the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel once observed, “The opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference.”

Canadians must stand up for each other.

This means all Canadians must speak out when we see antisemitism creep into our social media feeds, our classrooms, and our workplaces.

Because history teaches us that hatred metastasises when a society grow indifferent to it, when intimidation becomes routine, when conspiracy becomes discourse, and when citizens choose to look away.

We must learn from our history, from our times of love and indifference.

(Translated from French) At Pier 21 in Halifax, over the past century, nearly a million people have set foot in Canada.

They came from Europe in the aftermath of two world wars, from countries torn apart by conflict, from regions plagued by poverty and persecution.

They arrived with their stories, their beliefs, their languages, and their hopes. They arrived with a heritage that has since become Canada’s.

And the pact they made—the pact that has since become the very essence of Canadian citizenship—is clear.

We welcome the peoples of the world and their diversity in all its splendour.

We do not welcome the world’s hatreds.

When you come to Canada, you bring your faith, your tradition, your language, your story. You leave behind your wars and your animosities.

We have not always lived up to that promise. In 1939, the M.S. St. Louis, carrying 907 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany, sailed up the Atlantic coast seeking refuge.

Cuba turned them away. The United States turned them away.

And Canada? We looked away, too.

The ship returned to Europe, and hundreds of those passengers were murdered in the Holocaust.

The St. Louis is the face of the promise denied. Prime Minister Trudeau rightly apologised for it in 2018.

The covenant we must renew today is, in part, the covenant we failed to honour then.

What does that require, in this moment?

It requires that we do not transpose foreign conflicts onto each other.

It requires all of us to stand up and protect our fellow citizens.

It requires all of us to raise our voices in disgust and defiance when we see the ugly face of antisemitism.

It requires that no Canadian child goes to school is seen as a representative of any foreign state.

(Translated from French) This means that no Canadian going about their daily life should be held responsible for the actions of any government, wherever they may be.

Whether they are on the subway, in a store, at a hospital, at a university, in a synagogue, a mosque, a gurdwara, or a temple.

This requires holding political debates in Parliament and in the public sphere, and not targeting private businesses, homes, and communities.

The covenant runs in every direction.

Antisemitism breaks it. Islamophobia breaks it. Burning churches breaks it.

Transphobia breaks it.

The targeting of any Canadian for their faith, their origin, or their identity breaks it.

I want to be clear, particularly to the Jewish community: naming these assaults is not equivalence.

The crisis of antisemitism in Canada today is specific, severe, and demands a targeted response. Our government is fully committed to that response.

But the covenant we are renewing is comprehensive. It protects all of us by binding all of us.

That is its strength; the source of its legitimacy. It is all our responsibility.

Let me close where I began.

Canada was summoned into being by peoples who learned, imperfectly and over time, to hold their differences in common.

That has not always been easy, and we have, at times, failed.

We failed Indigenous peoples. We failed the Acadians and French settlers. We failed the passengers of the M.S. St. Louis.

Each failure has taught us something about what it means to be the country we aspire to be.

That means protection. That means outlawing and policing hate. That means preventing radicalisation and addressing institutional biases.

That means restoring Canada’s promise by ensuring each of us has the space and confidence to be their whole selves and thrive.

Canada promises a country in which Jewish Canadians can be visibly, fully, joyfully Jewish in public life — at school, at work, on the street, in synagogue, in the academy, in the arts, in every place that is theirs because Canada is theirs.

Canada promises a country in which Indigenous Peoples, Muslim Canadians, Black Canadians, Sikh Canadians, Christian Canadians, Queer Canadians — every Canadian — can be visibly themselves without fear.

Canada promises a country where our differences are nurtured, not managed.

Where our differences are honoured, not suppressed.

Where our differences are lived out in common, not pushed to the margins.

That is the covenant we are renewing today. And which we must all honour with our actions.

Thank you.

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