Ottawa is now explicitly treating anti Zionism as a form of antisemitism. In a federal progress report released September 24, Public Safety Canada states that “Antisemitism, which includes anti-Zionism, is not always obvious,” and directs Canadian institutions to recognize contemporary forms of antisemitism that include anti Zionism.
The wording appears in the federal government’s latest report on its National Commitments to Combat Antisemitism, a program involving governments, police, prosecutors, educators and Jewish community organizations across the country. Canada has used the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism since 2019, but the September report goes further than the language Ottawa has generally used before, placing anti Zionism directly inside its discussion of antisemitism rather than leaving the relationship to examples and interpretation.
The government did not have to look very far for an example. Earlier this year, Nicholas Vincent Amor of Windsor pleaded guilty to public incitement of hatred and possession of weapons dangerous to the public peace after posting material targeting Jews on Facebook and Instagram. Police also found Molotov cocktails. Amor was sentenced to two years less a day followed by three years probation, the highest sentence imposed in Canada for public incitement of hatred, according to the federal report.
The Amor case also produced two Canadian firsts. Public Safety Canada says it was the first judicial finding that holding Jews collectively responsible for Israel can meet the criminal threshold for hatred, and the first Canadian case where a court found that the word “Zionists” had been used as a pejorative substitute for Jews. Ontario officials added that they are increasingly seeing protesters use the term in an attempt to shield otherwise hateful speech from criminal liability.
The fight over that word has been playing out well beyond criminal court. Earlier this year, Windsor city council candidate Rasha Zaid came under fire after a video circulated showing her declaring that people who announce themselves as Zionists “must be locked up” and referring to Zionists as terrorists. Zaid defended her comments, saying she was referring to Zionism and people she believes support crimes against Palestinians, not Jews.
Liberal MP Anthony Housefather welcomed the federal shift, saying the report “makes clear the Canadian government recognizes that anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism.” University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist also supported the change, arguing that the word Zionist is too often substituted for Jew in language that would otherwise be immediately recognized as anti Jewish.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs has been pushing Ottawa in the same direction, arguing that attacks on Zionism increasingly spill into attacks on Canadian Jews and Jewish institutions. The organization says the demonization of Israel has provided cover for extremists who target Jews in Canada, particularly when Jewish organizations, schools and synagogues are treated as legitimate targets because of their connection to Israel.
Independent Jewish Voices, an anti Zionist Jewish organization, reacted very differently, calling Ottawa’s wording “wrong” and “dangerous.” The group argues that opposition to Zionism is a political position and that treating it as antisemitism threatens legitimate criticism of Israel and advocacy for Palestinians. The Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council raised a similar objection, warning that the new language risks collapsing political opposition to Zionism into hatred of Jews.
The federal report itself says the IHRA definition remains non binding and does not criminalize expression or behaviour. At the same time, police services and prosecutors across Canada are increasingly being trained to use the definition when recognizing and assessing anti Jewish incidents, while Ontario prosecutors already include modern forms of antisemitism and the IHRA definition in hate crime training.
That puts considerably more weight on a word that has become almost routine at demonstrations, on campuses and online. Zionist can mean an Israeli politician, someone who supports the existence of Israel, a Jewish organization or simply a Jew standing in the wrong place when somebody is angry about Israel. In Windsor, Amor used the word while targeting Jews and collecting Molotov cocktails, and the court accepted that the substitution did not make the hatred something else.
Public Safety Canada did not bury that lesson in a footnote. Its report specifically highlights the Amor ruling and Ontario’s warning that protesters are increasingly using “Zionists” to try to place otherwise hateful speech beyond the reach of criminal law. Ottawa has spent years arguing over where anti Israel politics ends and anti Jewish hatred begins; its latest report has made clear that changing one word will no longer automatically settle the argument.
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