In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here.Americans rightly spend little time thinking about Canada. Occasionally, however, our northerly neighbor deserves our attention.In June, Dr. Emmanuel Moss, chief of cardiac surgery at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, announced that he was leaving Canada for the United States. A Canadian doing this isn’t normally newsworthy. Many upwardly-minded Canucks have taken their talents to America. Yet the thing about Dr. Moss is that he’s Jewish at a time when his people are increasingly unwelcome in the Great White North. “The rise of antisemitism in Montreal” compelled him to leave, Dr. Moss wrote in a letter explaining his decision.
Moss is one of a growing number of Canadian Jews who are packing their bags. Others include Gad Saad, a popular social commentator and author of the book Suicidal Empathy, who now teaches at the University of Mississippi. The sorry truth is that many Canadian Jews see no future for themselves in their home and native land. This should be a cautionary tale for other countries, not least the U.S.Canada has the fourth-largest Jewish population on earth (some 400,000 people), trailing only Israel, the U.S., and France. Its Jews once thrived. Their story approximated that of American Jews. Many had fled the antisemitism of Eastern Europe for greener pastures on this side of the Atlantic. Accorded freedom and equality in Canada, they made significant contributions in medicine, law, education, the arts, and other fields. The community’s most prominent members include musician Leonard Cohen, journalist Morley Safer, and actor William Shatner. Jews were proud to be Canadians, and other Canadians were proud to call Jews their compatriots.Jew-hatred killed that modus vivendi. By some measures, Canada has become one of the most antisemitic countries on earth. Just look at the data.Last year, Canada saw a record 6,800 antisemitic incidents. In other words, there is roughly one antisemitic incident per 59 Jews. Compare that to the U.S., where the ratio is one antisemitic incident per 1,116 Jews — the American Jewish population is approximately 7 million people, and there were 6,274 antisemitic incidents in the U.S. last year. That means Canada experiences around 19 times as many antisemitic incidents as the U.S. on a per capita basis. For all the talk about surging antisemitism in the United States, the situation is far graver in Canada.Antisemites have targeted synagogues and Jewish schools with alacrity. In June, Toronto’s police chief told the press that youth were being recruited to carry out attacks on Jewish institutions around the city. “It is clear that some of the people hiring these criminals want to create a sense of fear in our communities, including in the Jewish community,” he said.Toronto’s Jewish community, which accounts for roughly half all Canadian Jews, has been fearful for some time. In 2024, shots were fired on three separate occasions (including on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar) at Bais Chaya Mushka, an elementary school for girls.Acts of Jew-hatred are hardly confined to Toronto. Over in Montreal, home to the second-largest Jewish population in Canada, Jews arguably have it worse. In June 2026, there was an attempted arson attack on Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom, a Reform congregation in Westmount. In November 2023, Montreal’s Yeshiva Gedola, a school for young men, was targeted by gunfire two times in one week. In May 2024, the entryway of Vancouver’s Schara Tzedeck synagogue was set on fire. Synagogues elsewhere have been defaced with swastikas and other graffiti.Canadian universities have experienced a groundswell of Jew-hatred as well. Since the October 7 attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza, Jewish students have been harassed for simply being Jewish. As in other rich countries, activists professing to oppose “Zionists” invariably target Jews. Calls for “intifada,” meaning the death of Jews, have been omnipresent on Canadian campuses. Agitators have violently disrupted events hosted by Jewish students. Over 100 Jewish physicians at the University of Toronto said they would no longer list their institutional affiliation in their professional work as a result of the school’s “failure… to defend Jewish learners and faculty.” The exhortation “kill all Jews” was reportedly scrawled on a bathroom wall at Concordia University in Montreal. All of this was unthinkable in Canada just a few years ago.As is the case in Western Europe, mass migration explains a great deal of Canada’s new antisemitism. The policies of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau encouraged millions to come to Canada, where immigrants now comprise 23% of the population, compared to 15% in the United States. Although many of these newcomers aren’t antisemitic, many are, and some put their hatred of Jews into action.Canadian authorities have thwarted several terror plots by migrants against Jews. In 2024, they apprehended a Pakistani national in Quebec who intended to attack a Jewish center in New York City — the man later pleaded guilty in a U.S. district court. Last year, they arrested three young men who allegedly planned to kidnap Jews in Toronto, among other crimes. One of them, an Afghan national, is accused of having ties to ISIS.People gather to listen to Britain’s Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Wes Streeting, as he speaks to the media in London, Monday, March 23, 2026 after an apparent arson attack on four vehicles belonging to a Jewish ambulance service, Hatzola Northwest, in London.(AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)
