More calls to action. How effective these calls are on the ground remains to be seen:
In response to more than 100 Jewish institutions across Canada receiving identical bomb threats, Deborah Lyons, Canada's Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, wrote, "These threats against the Jewish community are intended to intimidate and sow fear. The vast silent majority of Canadians finds the harassment and intimidation of the Jewish community of Canada vile and unacceptable. It is past time to stand up and say NO MORE."
While largely silent today, we have seen courageous acts of leadership from the non-Jewish community in the past. In 1947, a broad-based coalition of allies came together to form the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews — an organization whose mission was to push back against antisemitism and religious-based hate. With chapters across Canada, it became the leading forum for dialogue and understanding between Christians and Jews.
In 2004, in the wake of antisemitic incidents in Toronto and Montreal, then-Bank of Montreal President and CEO Tony Comper and his late wife, Elizabeth, formed a coalition called Fighting Antisemitism Together or FAST. It was pointedly made up exclusively of non-Jewish business leaders. The CEOs of Canada's leading corporations lent their own names and their companies' names to full page ads that ran in major Canadian newspapers.
The October 7th terrorist attacks by Hamas and the increase in antisemitism have brought back painful memories from the horrors of the Holocaust and millennia of dangerous demonization and discrimination. Today, Canada urgently needs a whole-of-society commitment to denouncing and eradicating antisemitism, and that takes courageous leadership.
Our business leaders need to speak up and push back. The chamber movement can play a critical role through its local chapters across Canada. Our national business organizations should be speaking up too.
Our university leaders especially need to push back. Every Jewish student needs to feel safe from harassment and violence on and off campus. And all students, and their professors, must demonstrate tolerance for, and even curiosity about, the views and cultures of others. That's, arguably, the core mission of universities. At the moment, too many of our universities are failing in that regard.
Municipal leaders need to ensure that their police forces have the resources they need to uphold and enforce our laws.
Our provincial political leaders need to follow the lead of Ontario and British Columbia and ensure that teaching curriculums provide facts and context about antisemitism and the Holocaust.
Federal leaders need to communicate clearly that antisemitism is antithetical to Canadian values, and it is an affront to democratic norms and freedoms everywhere. So too do our senior public servants.
Faith leaders from across the spectrum need to use their pulpits to promote unity and understanding across all peoples of faith.
Canada has been deeply enriched by its Jewish community, which has made tremendous contributions to every aspect of our society. Our leading universities, hospitals, and research institutes have also benefitted incredibly from cooperation, collaboration, and people-to-people exchanges with their counterparts in Israel.
Every Jew in Canada should feel safe, protected, proud and unhindered from religious practice, welcomed and supported by their classmates, colleagues and community. Simply put, there is no place in Canada for antisemitism.
The poem First They Came by Pastor Martin Niemöller should be a cautionary note to all minorities in Canada. Where antisemitism flourishes, so too do other forms of hate and intolerance. It threatens not just the Jewish community, but all of us and our social fabric.
As non-Jews, we believe this is no time to be a bystander. It's time for non-Jewish leaders from all walks of life to speak up and push back against antisemitism as they have in the past. As Tony Comper told the Empire Club two decades ago, "Non-Jews must join the battle against what has been described sadly, but accurately, as the oldest and longest of hatreds."
All Canadians need to communicate clearly to their Jewish neighbors, classmates, and colleagues that they are not alone: Canadians stand with the Jewish community and have their backs against antisemitism.
Hon. Paul Tellier was Clerk of the Privy Council and president and chief executive officer of CN and Bombardier, Hon. Kevin Lynch was Clerk of the Privy Council and vice chair of BMO Financial Group, Andrew Molson is Chair of AVENIR Global, Paul Deegan is CEO of Deegan Public Strategies
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