Canadian antisemitism ‘metastasized’ in 2025 with record 6,800 incidents, mostly online

Antisemitic incidents in Canada reached a record high in 2025, with 6,800 acts of anti-Jewish hate reported nationwide, according to a report released by B’nai Brith Canada on Monday.

The report showed that antisemitism has “metastasized” throughout all aspects of Canadian life, the group said.

The vast majority (92%) of recorded incidents occurred in digital spaces, with 6,248 cases of online harassment. The survey recorded 10 incidents of violence, 299 cases of vandalism, and 243 incidents of real-world harassment.

The figure was 9.3 percent higher than the previous record of 6,219 set in 2024, the organization said in its annual audit, which it has published since 1982. The 2025 numbers translate to an average of 18.6 incidents per day.

The report comes several days after Canada’s Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights published a series of recommendations to address rising antisemitism and hate-motivated extremism in the country. That long-awaited statement was welcomed by Jewish organizations such as B’nai Brith Canada and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, which have complained that Canada’s government isn’t doing enough to combat the growing trend.

“Antisemitism is a national crisis and must be treated as such,” the B’nai Brith Canada report said. “[It] has become so normalized in our society that its incidence can no longer be tied directly to the war in Israel.”

The report said that while geopolitical tensions in the Middle East contributed to the spike, antisemitism has moved beyond the “radical fringes” and is becoming increasingly normalized throughout Canadian society. The trend is particularly alarming on university campuses and in public schools, where Jewish students and faculty reported feeling increasingly vulnerable, it said.

Among the high-profile cases cited in the report were the desecration of the National Holocaust Memorial in Ottawa by a former city lawyer; vandalism of two synagogues in Halifax in September; the spray-painting of “Kill all Jews” on a McGill University building in Montreal; a physical assault in a Montreal park where a Jewish man’s yarmulke was thrown into a puddle; and the use of Nazi imagery to deface the campaign materials of Jewish candidates during the 2025 federal election.

Canadian security officials also disrupted a terror plot by supporters of the Islamic State group, inspired by the terror shooting that killed 15 at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, the report said.

The trend seems to be continuing in 2026, with several synagogues attacked in high-profile incidents. Community leaders have warned that a larger-scale attack on the Jewish community seems on the horizon in the country with the world’s fourth-largest Jewish population, of some 400,000 people.

“Our review of the past year’s antisemitic incidents must be understood as a wake-up call,” said B’nai Brith Canada CEO Simon Wolle. “Hate and extremism are a threat to Canadian democracy and civil society, not only to the Jewish community.”

B’nai Brith Canada’s 2025 Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents puts hard numbers behind what Jewish communities across Canada lived through last year.

The findings should not come as a surprise. The warning signs were visible throughout 2025, and the incidents that have… pic.twitter.com/ATjGKBBS2Q

— B'nai Brith Canada (@bnaibrithcanada) April 27, 2026

B’nai Brith is calling on all three levels of government and law enforcement to adopt a “whole-of-government approach” to combat the rise in extremism.

“Canada has vast tools at its disposal to address this crisis,” Wolle said. “The onus to act now falls on leaders.”