Anti-Jewism Has Followed Jewish Canadians into the Federal Workplace

By Joseph Marshall

A federal employee survey has found that Jewish public servants are reporting workplace harassment at a rate approximately 50 per cent higher than the public-service average and discrimination at roughly twice the overall rate. The findings show that the continuous wave of anti-Jewism across Canada has also found its way into the federal government.

The findings, highlighted this week by The Globe and Mail, come from the federal government’s own Public Service Employee Survey, conducted during the final months of 2024. More than 186,000 employees from 93 federal departments and agencies participated, giving the survey a response rate of 50.5 per cent. For the first time, employees were able to identify themselves as Jewish both ethnically and religiously, allowing the government to collect information that Jewish public servants had been requesting for years.

Amichai Wise, a steering committee member of the Jewish Public Servants’ Network, presented the results earlier this year during testimony before the Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights. The network represents approximately 700 Jewish public servants and allies across the federal government.

Wise told the committee that the results were consistent with a separate survey conducted by the network in March 2024 involving Jewish public servants across 55 departments and agencies. Employees reported being held responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, accused of disloyalty to Canada, confronted with anti-Jewish stereotypes and told that they could not participate in reconciliation activities because they were “colonizers.” In one case reported to the network, a manager told a Jewish employee that the Holocaust did not happen.

These are not disputes over foreign policy between colleagues. Canadian Jews do not work for the Israeli government and have no more responsibility for its decisions than Muslim employees have for the decisions of governments in the Middle East. There is no legitimate workplace discussion that requires Jewish employees to defend Israel, explain Zionism or prove their loyalty to Canada simply because they are Jewish.

The results also cannot be separated from what has been happening across Canada for nearly three years. Jewish schools have been shot at, synagogues have been firebombed and vandalized, Jewish businesses have been targeted, and demonstrations have repeatedly been brought to Jewish neighbourhoods and institutions that have nothing to do with the Israeli government. Jewish students and professors have described hostile conditions on university campuses, while Jewish doctors, lawyers and other professionals have formed their own organizations after losing confidence in the institutions that were supposed to represent them.

According to Statistics Canada, police recorded 920 hate crimes targeting Jews in 2024. That was slightly below the revised total of 959 recorded in 2023, but far above the 527 incidents reported in 2022. Jews account for approximately one per cent of the Canadian population but were the target of more than two-thirds of all police-reported religious hate crimes in 2024.

The federal workplace is not separate from the rest of the country. The people working in government departments attend the same universities, belong to the same unions, watch the same news and participate in the same political arguments as everyone else. The anti-Jewism that has become acceptable in other parts of Canadian life did not disappear when employees entered a government office.

There were warning signs well before October 7. The Jewish Public Servants’ Network was established in 2021 after Jewish employees said they were being left out of government anti-racism and equity programs. By March 2023, the Canadian Association of Professional Employees had acknowledged reports of anti-Jewish jokes, remarks and stereotypes in federal workplaces, along with union events being scheduled on Jewish holidays and Shabbos. October 7 did not create the problem, but it gave many people permission to become louder and more direct about it.

Jewish employees have also encountered resistance when asking to be recognized within the federal employment-equity system. The Employment Equity Act currently designates women, Indigenous people, persons with disabilities and members of visible minorities as groups requiring proactive measures to address workplace barriers. A federal review recommended adding Black and 2SLGBTQIA+ workers and replacing the term “visible minorities” with “racialized persons,” but it did not recommend specifically identifying Jews.

The Jewish Public Servants’ Network supports the addition of those groups but has asked that Jews also be enumerated under the racialized-persons category. The argument is not that Judaism is a race. Jews are a people with ethnic, cultural, national and religious identities, and the people who hate Jews have never limited their hatred to religious observance. A Jew who converts to another religion, never attends synagogue or does not believe in G-d does not suddenly become immune from anti-Jewism.

Wise described the current situation as a “Catch-22.” Jews have not been explicitly included because the government claimed there was insufficient large-scale information showing that they faced systemic workplace barriers. At the same time, the government was not collecting the information necessary to determine whether those barriers existed. Once Jewish employees were finally permitted to identify themselves in the federal survey, the results showed substantially higher rates of both harassment and discrimination.

Some diversity and equity professionals continue to treat Jews as uniformly white, financially comfortable and privileged, according to the network. That description ignores the diversity of the Jewish population and the long history of discrimination against Jews in Canada. It also creates the strange situation in which Jews can be dismissed as too privileged for employment-equity protection while being accused of controlling government, finance, media and other institutions. The stereotypes have changed very little; only the language used to express them has been updated.

In Quebec, the exclusion of openly observant Jews from public employment is written into law. Quebec’s Act respecting the laicity of the State, commonly known as Bill 21, prohibits designated public employees, including teachers, police officers, prison guards, Crown prosecutors and newly appointed judges, from wearing religious symbols while working. A kippah is prohibited, and an observant Jew who believes he must cover his head is barred from those positions unless he removes it or is protected by the law’s grandfather clause.

The Quebec government describes Bill 21 as a law protecting the religious neutrality of the state, but the state is not wearing the kippah. The employee is. A teacher does not become incapable of teaching because he covers his head, and a police officer does not lose the ability to enforce the law because he is visibly Jewish. Bill 21 does not make the state neutral. It requires religious minorities to hide part of who they are before they are permitted to serve it.

Jewish organizations have opposed the law since it was introduced. After the Quebec Superior Court upheld most of Bill 21, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs said it restricted religious freedom and the ability of Jewish Quebecers to pursue public-sector careers. The law remains in effect, and a Jewish Quebecer entering one of the designated professions must still choose between religious observance and employment.

Bill 21 belongs in the same discussion as the federal survey because both show how governments decide which parts of Jewish identity they are prepared to recognize. Quebec treats a kippah as sufficient reason to exclude an observant Jew from certain public positions. The federal employment-equity system has resisted recognizing Jews as a racialized or specifically identifiable group, while Jewish employees report being blamed for Israel and treated as representatives of a foreign government.

The result is that Jews can be considered too visibly religious for a Quebec public-sector position, too privileged for federal employment-equity protection and sufficiently connected to Israel to be held responsible for decisions made by its government. In each case, the institution defines Jewish identity in the manner that makes exclusion possible.

The Supreme Court of Canada heard the constitutional challenge to Bill 21 in March. The case includes challenges to Quebec’s use of the notwithstanding clause to shield the law from major portions of the Canadian and Quebec charters. A decision has not yet been released, and Bill 21 remains in force.

The federal government has taken some steps to address anti-Jewism within its own workforce. It changed the employee survey to allow Jewish self-identification and worked with the Jewish Public Servants’ Network to develop a Canada School of Public Service course on addressing anti-Jewish hatred in the workplace. A parliamentary committee also recommended that Jews be included in federal diversity and inclusion programs and that government departments receive proper training.

Those measures have not resolved the larger problem. Jewish employees are still asking to be recognized within the employment-equity system, and the experiences reported in the surveys show that workplace protections have not kept pace with the conditions they face.

For years, Jewish public servants were told that there was not enough information to demonstrate a systemic problem. The government has now collected that information. It shows Jewish employees reporting harassment far above the public-service average and discrimination at twice the overall rate, while their own accounts describe Holocaust denial, accusations of disloyalty and demands that they answer for Israel. The absence of data can no longer be used as an excuse.