Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada is failing Jewish Canadians and announced a new federal council to respond to antisemitism and hate.
Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada is failing Jewish Canadians and announced a new federal advisory council to confront antisemitism and other forms of hate, using a speech at a Toronto synagogue to frame the issue as a test of the country’s pluralism.
Speaking Monday evening at Holy Blossom Temple, Carney said the new Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality and Inclusion would be headed by former senator Marc Gold. The announcement follows pressure on the federal government to do more to protect Jewish communities amid what Jewish organizations and Carney described as a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents.
“Canada’s civic compact is failing Jewish Canadians,” Carney said, according to CBC News. “If that covenant fails for one of our communities, it fails us all.”
Carney cited violence and intimidation targeting Jewish institutions and businesses, including bullets fired at Jewish schools, firebombs thrown at synagogues and attacks on community centres and Jewish-owned businesses. He said antisemitism in Canada has climbed to levels not seen in the postwar period.
B’nai Brith Canada recorded more than 6,800 antisemitic incidents in 2025, the highest figure the group has reported since it began tracking such incidents in 1982. Carney said antisemitic incidents made up more than two-thirds of religiously motivated hate crimes in Canada last year, while Jewish Canadians represent about one per cent of the population.
The council will be chaired by Identity Minister Marc Miller and led by Gold, Carney said. Its work will include assessing antisemitism in Canada, improving research and data collection on hate incidents, measuring the effect of government responses and co-ordinating what Carney called a whole-of-federal-government approach.
Gold, who was appointed to the Senate in 2016 under former prime minister Justin Trudeau and later served as government leader in the Senate, retired from the upper chamber last year. Carney described him as a collaborative and principled voice against antisemitism.
The new council will replace two federal offices that had focused separately on religious discrimination: the Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia and the Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism. The government abolished those offices in February, CBC reported. The Islamophobia post had been held by Amira Elghawaby, while the antisemitism envoy role had been vacant since Deborah Lyons resigned in 2025.
Carney also said the federal response would include legislation to combat antisemitism and additional funding to counter violent extremism. He said the government’s efforts would not restrict free expression or legitimate criticism of governments.
“They are not constraints on legitimate criticism of any government on any subject anywhere,” Carney said.
The speech came after Carney discussed antisemitism in Canada during a phone call last week with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, according to a readout from the Prime Minister’s Office cited by CBC. That call was primarily about the mistreatment of Canadian citizens detained by Israel while taking part in a Gaza-bound flotilla.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, speaking before Carney’s announcement, called on the prime minister to apologize to Canada’s Jewish community for what he described as violence, terror and fear allowed under Liberal governments over the past decade.
Carney, closing his speech, said Canada must respond to the threat facing Jewish Canadians while learning from past injustices against minority communities. The next test for the government will be how quickly the new council defines its work, gathers data and turns its mandate into visible protections for communities that say they are under growing threat.
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