By Virag Gulyas, JNS
A country with a proud reputation for stability, civility and multicultural openness is facing pressing internal challenges.
I’m not Canadian. I don’t live there. And I don’t pretend to be an expert in its domestic affairs. But I’ve spent enough time reading, listening and visiting to see the bigger picture.
When I visited Vancouver in the spring of 2024, the synagogue I spoke at as a non-Jew had an airport-level of security. On my way to the venue, I videotaped a mass of people waving “Palestinian” flags and chanting the then-so-trendy, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Before the election in Canada in April, I read through policy proposals of now-elected Prime Minister Mark Carney and his opponent, Conservative politician Pierre Poilievre, on issues such as housing, immigration and economic reform. What I found left me not just concerned but confused.
Canada was then and is now at a crossroads. A country with a proud reputation for stability, civility and multicultural openness is facing pressing internal challenges: soaring housing costs, a strained health-care system, crumbling infrastructure, unseen spikes in antisemitism and public disorder.
Carney has noted economic growth as a key component of his administration, as it was during his candidacy. The reality is that the systems meant to support integration—housing, health, transportation—are under severe strain. The average Canadian experiences this firsthand, particularly in urban centers like Vancouver and Toronto.
Yet Carney has signaled support for continued high levels of immigration. Poilievre, in contrast, proposed a shift toward a skills-based system with more moderate numbers—a position that, in most democratic countries today would be considered pragmatic, not radical.
It's not just about numbers but cultural diversity. Not because anyone is a racist bigot, as they like to label more conservative-leaning thinkers, but as I wrote in an earlier piece, the real war is between civilizations.
But this election didn’t turn on policy. It turned on perception.
In the end, many Canadians weren’t voting against Poilievre’s ideas. Many were voting against an image of U.S. President Donald Trump that they feared he might embody. The irony, of course, is that Poilievre’s proposals in areas like housing and fiscal restraint were often more detailed and centrist than his opponent’s ideas seem to be.
And then there’s the growing climate of antisemitism. In 2023, Canada recorded 5,791 antisemitic incidents, a 109% increase from 2022.
Canada has experienced a surge in antisemitic attacks in recent years, many of them violent and targeting Jewish institutions. On Nov. 9, 2023, gunfire struck two Jewish schools in Montreal in overnight shootings. Later that month, on Nov. 27, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a Jewish community center in the same city. In Toronto, a girls’ school was attacked three separate times by gunfire, most recently on Dec. 20, 2024. In Vancouver, a synagogue was the target of an arson attack on May 31, 2024. And on Aug. 21, 2024, more than 100 Jewish institutions across Canada received bomb threats in a coordinated threat campaign. Sadly, these are not isolated events, they reflect a growing and deeply troubling trend of antisemitism nationwide.
For Jewish Canadians and their allies, this is not a political talking point. It's their daily existence. Yet judging by the national conversation and media coverage, this bell isn't loud enough to change votes.
What does it take for a nation to wake up to its spiraling instability? More attacks? More fear in schools, on campuses, in synagogues? More women harassed in the streets? Are more citizens afraid to speak?
You don’t have to be Canadian to know where this goes next.
We must recognize that in our interconnected world, no country gets to live in a bubble forever. What Canadian citizens enabled with their recent election is a choice that influences the rest of the world.
