Mark Carney, Canadian Jews, and more words

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL - More than 9,000 kilometres away from where Mark Carney gave his big speech, the guy selling T-shirts in the Carmel shuk regards his Canadian inquisitor.  After a pause, he allows that his best friend lives in Canada, in Vancouver.

Does he like it?

“He likes it,” the man says, then he pauses. “He also says there are many antisemites there.” He shakes his head.

It’s like that a lot, here. Those who will talk, those who know something about Canada, will mention its natural beauty, its winters, and how vast it is. And then, sometimes, they will say what the man in the Tel Aviv market says: that Canada has a big antisemitism problem.

Israel’s government has certainly noticed. Canada is “one of the centres of antisemitism globally,” its ambassador to Canada has said. Statistically, this is true. The three countries that have experienced the biggest growth in Jew hatred are the United States, France and then Canada. The human rights organization B’nai Brith says there were at least 6,800 antisemitic incidents in 2025, an increase of nearly 150 per cent since 2022.

And these are all things that have happened in Canada: schools for Jewish kids - some as young as four years old - being sprayed with bullets, once, twice, thrice. Synagogues and community centres and businesses being attacked - one Vancouver synagogue firebombed while people were praying inside.

Beatings, threats, intimidations, more threats. All those things, and more, have happened in Canada. No Jews have been killed yet, but it’s not for lack of trying. The police have arrested scores of young Muslim men who had been planning what are antiseptically called “mass casualty” events. Targeting Jews.

So, it was with all that in mind, perhaps, that Mark Carney surprised many of us, last week. Word leaked out that the Canadian Prime Minister planned to give a speech at a Toronto synagogue. A speech he had written himself, like his historic Davos speech was.

Some - B’nai Brith, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and others - expressed guarded optimism. Others, like Tafsik, sounded like blinkered partisan fools, actually attacking fellow Jews who were willing to listen to what Carney had to say.

And what did Mark Carney have to say?

He quoted the Hebrew prophet Amos. He referenced Aristotle and philosopher Charles Taylor. He cited Jewish tradition. Inter alia, all these made clear that Carney, not some twenty-something in the bowels of the Langevin Block, wrote the speech.

And then…quite a bit of sound signifying further study.

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