Montreal’s Bagg Street Shul, defaced by antisemitic graffiti in March, 2023/JNS

By Kevin Lynch and Paul Deegan

July 12, 2024

In a recent op ed in The Globe and Mail, University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist wrote about “the disbelief among far too many in Canada that rising antisemitism is real, alongside the disbelief by many within the Jewish community that antisemitism has returned in a manner unseen since the Holocaust.” He asked Canadians to “simply believe us”. In a similar vein, former CIBC executive Mark McQueen observed months ago, “Corporate Canada needs to take antisemitism as seriously as it’s been taking many other difficult issues over the last decade.”

Yet, there has been virtually no evidence that either has happened.

In the past, many leaders in corporate Canada stood up against antisemitism. A prime example was the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews (CCCJ), an organization formed in 1947 by a broad-based coalition of allies to push back against antisemitism and religious-based hate. It became an important forum for dialogue and understanding between Christians and Jews, with chapters across Canada.

In addition to holding noteworthy events that brought Jewish and non-Jewish communities together with a common purpose, the organization ran the unique March of Remembrance and Hope. This program sends kids from all backgrounds to witness death camps in Germany and Poland and talk about what they had learned with their friends and families.  When this remarkable program was no longer administered through the CCCJ, support for the Council unfortunately waned.  Fortunately, that program continues today under the auspices of the Toronto Holocaust Museum, UJA Federation of Greater Toronto.

The post-9/11 world demanded attention on Islamophobia and other forms of hate and, by 2008, the CCCJ changed its name to the Canadian Centre for Diversity (now the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion). While the goal may have been to be more inclusive, the CCDI lost its focus. Today, the successor organization has nary a mention of antisemitism on its website.

But antisemitism had not disappeared. There were 1,135 antisemitic incidents in Canada in the year the Canadian Centre for Diversity was formed, according to B’nai Brith Canada. The same organization reported that in 2023, as the renewed escalation of the Israel-Palestine conflict following Hamas’ terrorist attacks against Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza fuelled antisemitism, the number reached a record high of 5,791.

What can be done? One example: in response to antisemitic incidents in Toronto and Montreal, then-Bank of Montreal President and CEO Tony Comper and his late wife, Elizabeth, formed a coalition in 2004 pointedly made up exclusively of non-Jewish business leaders to combat antisemitism. The Compers called the group Fighting Antisemitism Together, or FAST. According to Comper, “This is a crisis that must be resolved by non-Jews…non-Jews must join the battle against what has been described sadly, but accurately, as the oldest and longest of hatreds.”

At the time, CEOs of Canada’s leading corporations stepped up. They lent their own names and their companies’ names to full page ads that ran in major Canadian newspapers. The ad read: “This coalition of corporate citizens and business leaders was founded in response to the fact that 2004 was the worst year in more than half a century for vicious anti-Jewish activity in this country, a shocking 857 reported incidents. In the face of this resurgent evil, we felt it was time to speak out.”

In 2021, FAST merged with the Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism. But such coalitions against antisemitism, with leadership from non-Jewish pillars of the business community, are needed even more today.

Geist’s poignant entreaty that “Canadians simply believe us” underscores that Canada needs a new forum for Jews and non-Jews to come together to combat this ancient hatred. This is an issue for non-Jews to address, as Comper wisely noted some twenty years ago, and business leadership can be crucial to progress. With the scourge of antisemitism on the rise, it’s time for today’s generation of CEOs to step up and show real leadership and allyship – not just in their own workplaces, but in the broader community – to ensure that the Jewish community feels not just believed, but supported.

Hon. Kevin Lynch was Clerk of the Privy Council and vice chair of BMO Financial Group.

Paul Deegan is CEO of Deegan Public Strategies and was a public affairs executive at BMO and CN.