By Howie Silbiger
Prime Minister Mark Carney said this week that Canada is failing its Jewish community, a blunt admission from a government now trying to present itself as serious about combating Jew hatred after years of deterioration on its watch.
Speaking at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, Carney announced new federal measures and said Jewish Canadians are facing a level of hatred not seen in generations. He pointed to attacks on Jewish schools, synagogues and businesses, and to the fear many Jewish students now face on university campuses.
The statement was significant, but it also exposed the central problem for the Liberals. They are not new to government. They have been in power through the rise of this crisis. The same party now promising action was in office while Jewish institutions were attacked, campus hostility intensified and Jewish communities repeatedly warned that the situation was getting worse.
That is why Carney’s announcement felt less like a clean break and more like an attempt to contain the political damage of a failure the Liberals helped allow.
The government is turning to the Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality and Inclusion, directing it to begin its work with anti-Jewish hate. The council, however, was not created as a dedicated body to fight anti-Jewism. It was launched with a broader mandate that includes racism, hate, Islamophobia, social cohesion and national unity.
There is nothing wrong with governments addressing hate broadly. The issue is that Jew hatred in Canada is no longer an abstract inclusion concern. It is a security and civil rights crisis affecting Jewish schools, synagogues, campuses, businesses and community life. Carney’s own speech made that clear.
Yet the structure chosen by Ottawa places anti-Jewish hate inside a larger federal framework rather than treating it as a specific crisis requiring a specific response. That approach is familiar. Liberal governments have often condemned hatred of Jews while folding it into wider language about hate and inclusion, avoiding the harder political questions about where much of the current anti-Jewish hostility is coming from and why institutions were allowed to look away for so long.
The council’s membership will add to those concerns.
Former senator Marc Gold, who has a long record of Jewish communal involvement, is an appropriate choice. His inclusion gives the council someone who understands the Jewish community from the inside.
The broader membership is harder to read as a targeted response to Jew hatred. Several members bring experience in rights advocacy, law, public service, dialogue and community work. Those backgrounds may fit a general inclusion council, but they do not answer why Ottawa did not build a table more visibly rooted in the people and institutions dealing directly with anti-Jewish hate since October 7.
Jewish schools, campus advocates, synagogue security networks, Holocaust educators, civil rights groups and community professionals have spent the last several years navigating threats, complaints, institutional failures and rising fear. Their experience should be central to any serious federal response.
The appointment of former Liberal minister Omar Alghabra complicates the council’s credibility further. Alghabra has a long and controversial history on Israel-related issues, including his past leadership of the Canadian Arab Federation and criticism over the years from Jewish and pro-Israel voices. Some allegations circulated online about him are overstated and require context, but the political issue is straightforward: his appointment was always going to raise concerns among the very people the government says it wants to reassure.
That decision suggests Ottawa is still trying to balance constituencies rather than rebuild trust with Jewish Canadians.
Trust is the real problem. Jewish Canadians have heard repeated condemnations of Jew hatred from federal leaders while watching the situation worsen in schools, on campuses and in the streets. Universities were slow to act. Public officials often avoided naming anti-Jewish hostility when it came wrapped in anti-Israel language. Institutions that are usually quick to identify racism became cautious when Jews were the target.
This did not happen in a vacuum. It happened under a Liberal government that too often treated Jewish concerns as one political pressure point among many.
Carney deserves credit for acknowledging that Canada has failed Jews. but an admission is not a plan, and a broad advisory council is not a substitute for enforcement, protection and accountability.
A serious federal response would explain how Jewish institutions will be secured, how universities will be pushed to protect Jewish students, how harassment will be handled, and how Ottawa will confront anti-Jewish hate even when it appears under the banner of anti-Israel activism and marching through the streets.
That is where the Liberals have been weakest. They have been willing to condemn Jew hatred in principle, but far less willing to confront the political spaces where much of it has been allowed to grow.
Carney’s announcement may mark a change in tone. It does not yet look like a change in instinct.
The Liberals helped preside over the conditions that brought Canada to this point, now they are asking Jewish Canadians to believe that a broad inclusion council will help fix it.
For a community that has spent years warning that the situation was becoming dangerous, that is not enough.
Howie Silbiger is the host of The Howie Silbiger Show on truetalkradio.com and Political Hitman on israelnewstalkradio.com. He is the Editor in Chief of The Montreal Jewish News.
