The 2019 Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents by B'nai Brith, Canada's advocacy arm, the League for Human Rights, recorded 2,207 incidents of anti-Semitism in Canada last year – an increase of more than 8% from 2018 and an average of more than six incidents per day. 

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The greatest increase occurred in Ontario and Quebec, home to Canada's largest Jewish communities, where there were 62.8% and 12.3% more incidents, respectively, than in 2018.

The audit noted that assaults became more blatant and violent in 2019, with several of them taking place in broad daylight and some directly in front of eyewitnesses. There was also an increase of more than 11% in anonymous online harassment.

"The record numbers of incidents we have documented in recent years have become the new baseline for anti-Semitism in Canada – and they are alarming," said B'nai Brith Canada CEO Michael Mostyn in a statement. "These figures, and the brazenness of the incidents we are seeing, would have been unthinkable just a few short years ago. Instead, they have become a loathsome reality in this country. It is not only Jewish people who must be appalled by this pattern. It's any law-abiding, decent human being."

Mostyn added that B'nai Brith is urging government officials "to promptly adopt the steps outlined in our Eight-Point Plan to Tackle Antisemitism in order to put an end to this abhorrent trend."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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The proposed law sets the province's right-leaning Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government on a collision course with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who promotes religious freedom, in a federal election year with Quebec a vital battleground.

"It is unthinkable to me that in a free society we would legitimize discrimination against citizens based on their religion," Trudeau told reporters in Halifax on Thursday.

The legislation, which is expected to pass, will cover public workers in positions of authority, including teachers, judges and police officers. It exempts current government employees and civil servants in the mainly French-speaking province.

Governments in Quebec have been trying for years to restrict civil servants from wearing overt religious symbols like headscarves and Jewish kippot at work in an effort to cement a secular society.

A ban on full face coverings on anyone giving or receiving public services in Quebec passed in 2017, but was suspended by a Canadian judge last June and remains in legal limbo.

The CAQ was elected late last year in part on pledges to restrict immigration and impose a secular charter. Quebec Premier François Legault told reporters on Thursday the bill "represents our values and it's important."

But condemnation was quick, with Jewish advocacy group B'nai B'rith calling the bill "an assault on the fundamental rights and freedoms of Quebecers," while the National Council of Canadian Muslims said it will make Muslims and other minorities "second-class citizens" and overwhelmingly impact Muslim women.

Like France, which passed a ban on veils, crosses and other religious symbols in schools in 2004, Quebec has struggled to reconcile its secular identity with a growing Muslim population, many of them North African emigrants.

While the Quebec legislation does not single out any religion by name, Muslim headwear has long been a source of public debate in Quebec.

Quebec's minister for the status of women drew condemnation from opposition politicians earlier this year after she said the hijab is a symbol of female oppression.

And a Montreal-area municipal politician faced backlash this weekend after she wrote a Facebook post expressing her anger over being treated by a doctor wearing a hijab, calling the headscarf a symbol of the "Islamification of our country."

To shield the new legislation from legal challenges, the Quebec government is invoking a rarely used clause that enables it to override the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom for up to five years.

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