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Federal budget should include funds to combat hate, protect communities, groups argue
Three weeks after Ottawa unveiled new measures and legislation to combat hate, Jewish groups want Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government to put its money where its mouth is.
Leading up to the Nov. 4 federal budget, B’nai Brith Canada and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) are seeking action on community safety—but at opposite ends of the security pipeline.
B’nai Brith made recommendations to proactively combat antisemitism in its July submission to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance (FINA) while calling on the federal government to use the Budget Implementation Act (BIA) to eliminate a loophole that allowed listed terrorist entity Samidoun to continue operating as a non-profit corporation.
The brief called for investments to counter violent extremism with more funding for national security agencies; requiring all federal grant recipients to comply with Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy (which references the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance antisemitism definition); enhancing young Canadians’ understanding of contemporary antisemitism; and making existing antisemitism training for federal public servants mandatory.
In its December 2024 report, FINA endorsed reviewing all grant programs to ensure only projects aligning with Canada’s Anti-Racism strategy receive federal funding. (That report also recommended continued financing and increasing contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency [UNRWA].)
Tying grants to anti-racism
Conditioning grant eligibility isn’t new; the Canada Summer Jobs Program already excludes companies and activities that discriminate in any way, advocate intolerance or discrimination, or actively work to undermine access to sexual health services.
B’nai Brith Canada’s research and advocacy director, Richard Robertson, told The CJN that his organization worked with the government and others following the Laith Marouf scandal, which saw the Department of Canadian Heritage fund a known anti-Israel activist and antisemite to offer anti-racism training to media outlets in Canada. That led to a declaration/attestation for Multiculturalism and Anti-Racism Program grants.
“We’d like to see that replicated across all government agencies involved in grant programs,” said Robertson, “so that all individuals and programs receiving federal funding commit to abiding by Canada’s anti-racism strategies.”
Nor is the call for mandatory training reinventing the wheel, says Roberston, noting the Treasury Board already developed training. “It’s just about making sure that it’s undertaken by all of our public service, so public servants are able to properly identify and address instances of contemporary antisemitism that may arise through the course of their work.”
There was no ask involving physical security and infrastructure through the Canada Community Security Program (CCSP), Robertson insisting maintaining that the rise in extremism and radicalization is the greatest threat to the long-term vitality and well-being of Canadian Jews. “Our submission was strategically designed to implore the federal government to invest in resources that will combat the growth of extremism radicalization in this country,” he said, “for training for the public service, attestation forms—all of these designed to ensure that our government is investing in the fight against racism and hatred proactively.”
In other words: first lines of defence, rather than last. “I hope to one day live in a Canada where security funding for institutions is no longer needed, because our government has proactively combatted rising levels of extremism, radicalization, incitement and division. That is where we believe the funding is most urgently needed.”
In the crosshairs
Meanwhile, CIJA CEO Noah Shack wrote to Prime Minister Carney, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne and Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree in the hours following the October 2 Yom Kippur terrorist attack at a synagogue in Manchester, England.
He reminded them that “Jewish Canadians have been in the crosshairs” since October 7, 2023, with schools shot at, synagogues firebombed and desecrated, Jewish-owned businesses targeted, coordinated efforts to exclude Jews from public life, and violent assaults. “The numbers speak for themselves: a Jewish Canadian is 25 times more likely to experience a hate crime than any other Canadian.” (According to Statistics Canada, there were 920 police-reported hate crimes against Jews in 2024, exceeding all hate crimes targeting other religious groups that year combined.)
Following the announcement of new legislation to protect access to places of worship, schools, and community centres, he urged the government preparing its first budget “to consider the urgent need to invest in strengthening security for the Jewish community—to help safeguard lives within these institutions.”
The CCSP, which replaced the Security Infrastructure Program last year, has been a crucial resource to enhance security, disbursing more than $40 million to more than 940 projects helping all Canadian communities at risk of hate-motivated crimes to date.
That’s a sum equal to the annual amount spent solely by Canada’s Jewish community, which comprises less than one percent of the country’s population. Security costs for Canadian Jewish communities total more than $40 million due to the spike in threats and attacks, Shack told The CJN, the cost extending beyond financial, but also affecting Canadian Jews’ ability to live Jewish lives and pass on traditions to their children.
The U.K. model
CIJA is suggesting significant budget increases, similar to the United Kingdom, whose Jewish population totals some 300,000, about two-thirds the size of Canada’s. The U.K. government this year announced a four-year funding package of approximately CAD$33.5 million annually to the Community Security Trust (CST), whose mandate begins with the physical protection and defence of the country’s Jews, and which gained charitable status in 1994.
According to a statement from the Trust to The CJN, the CST relies almost entirely on direct community donations for core funding, as there is no centralized federation funding structure in the U.K. Those funds pay for CST’s operating costs and for contributions to the cost of security equipment and infrastructure at community buildings, including more than 500 synagogues and Jewish community sites across the country.
Separate from its operating costs, the Trust administers annual state funding on behalf of the U.K. Home Office to pay for Jewish schools, synagogues and other premises to hire security guards from private firms. In 2024, CST, staffed by some 100 employees and 2,000 volunteers, managed government funding for commercial security guards to over 200 educational establishments, summer and winter camps for 28 youth movements, over 260 synagogues, nearly 50 high-profile communal buildings, and multisite operations that covered over 100 Jewish communal and commercial sites within close proximity to each other.
Public Safety Canada spokesperson Noémie Allard told The CJN that the 2025-26 CCSP core budget funding for all communities is $16.6 million but may be bolstered in response to emerging priorities or evolving community needs, “determined through broader government initiatives or budgetary decisions.”
Mount Royal MP Anthony Housefather notes that the program allocated some $81.5 million, beginning in 2023 until 2029, adding, “we had gotten many of the community’s requests for changes to the program accepted, but these are additional needs that still need to be met.” He told The CJN his budget priorities are “funding for 24 by 7 operations centers and permanent security guards as well as consideration of direct funding of a community trust type operation as exists in the U.K.”
The CCSP emphasizes proactive measures to enhance safety without isolating physical barriers, said Allard, based on principles of crime prevention through environmental design. That means rather than barricading or fortifying locations, eligible enhancements “focus on visibility, access control, natural surveillance and environmental design to deter threats.”
The program supports expenditures such as modest security hardware; minor renovations; developing security assessments and emergency plans; training activities for security equipment; preparing for and responding to hate-motivated incidents; and time-limited hiring of security personnel.
Moving beyond individual institutions
Shack says increased funds are required for more than simply hiring extra security for high holidays, installing gates or cement bollards. “It’s all of it, together, with new infrastructure for a coordinated approach to security in places like Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, taking our security posture as a community to the next level.” That means moving beyond individual institutions, but looking after the most vulnerable communities, like the Community Security Network in Montreal and the Jewish Security Network in Toronto.
Earlier this year, Deputy Opposition Leader and Thornhill MP Melissa Lantsman wrote Anandasangaree about “continued concerns” with management of the CCSP and its SIP predecessor, which she says remain unaddressed. “Applications for items previously covered by the CCSP and the SIP, including internal security blinds, automated vehicular gates, emergency crash bars, and the ancillary fees for security cameras, continue to be denied by your government with little to no explanation.”
Consequently, she says, synagogues, community centres, and other places are often forced to go without needed security infrastructure while “crimes against Jews are skyrocketing across Canada by triple digits or more.” This budget round, Lantsman’s office is asking for increased funding for security infrastructure and for Ottawa to fully review its funding, “and end any arrangements where money could end up supporting terrorism, (ex. ceasing all funding to UNRWA).”
Without specifying a dollar amount, Shack says the point is that the threat facing Jewish Canadians is no different than that facing Jews in Britain, France or Australia, “and it’s important that we’re doing everything we can to address that. We shouldn’t have to shoulder that all on our own.”
Nor is there a single magic wand: “We need to make sure that police have the resources they need to be present and do their jobs, and we need to make sure that the right cops are available to do the right jobs to keep our community safe.” It’s not about shuffling resources around, but something sustainable until the threat level changes. That means money for prosecutors, money for cops, “not just for them to exist, but also to be properly trained. You can’t just throw a body at the problem.”
Draw lessons from Manchester
The warning signs are here, says Shack, “and we should draw lessons from Manchester, and ensure that we are looking after these critical components.” While Manchester is an ocean and several time zones away, “it’s almost like it’s just next door… I wish it wasn’t so, but this is the reality and we need government to be our partner. We should absolutely not wait for the worst to take place before we prepare to deal with it.”
He insists there’s an important distinction between being prepared and resolved when facing challenges and being fearful: “Everybody is entitled to their feelings and how they’re going to respond to the moment, but we have to look at how we can keep ourselves safe and continue to thrive as a community. Not hiding, not fearing, but being prepared and having eyes wide open to the threats.”
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Jewish man attacked in Montana by self-proclaimed Nazi on Oct. 7
A Jewish man in Missoula, Montana, was assaulted on Oct. 7 by a self-proclaimed “Nazi,” according to the Missoula Police Department.
On Tuesday, the suspect, Michael Cain, 29, got into an argument with the victim who had a visible tattoo of the Star of David on his forearm. Cain asked the victim about his tattoo and allegedly identified himself as a believer in the teachings of the Nazi party.
When the victim, who told Cain he was Jewish, then asked Cain to show him any Nazi-related tattoos on his body, Cain allegedly kicked and punched the victim, who was seated on the ground.
Missoula police then responded to the Poverello Center, a local homeless shelter where the assault took place, and later apprehended Cain who had fled the scene.
While en route to the local detention center, Cain disclosed to the arresting officer that he was a member of the “4th Reich” and said that while he did not attack the victim because of his Jewish identity, he would have if he had been more adamant about his beliefs, according to court documents obtained by local news outlet KGVO.
Cain was charged with felony malicious intimidation or harassment relating to civil or human rights and his bond was set at $50,000. Missoula police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Montana is home to just under 1,500 Jews out of a general population of over 1.1 million. In 2023, the Anti-Defamation League recorded just 21 antisemitic incidents in the state.
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US Jews who revile Trump’s domestic policies say he must be praised for Gaza deal
Walking and chewing gum. Nixon and China. Fighting against the British in Palestine while fighting with the British in Europe.
All are cliches signifying two seemingly contradictory actions that are possible — and potentially preferable — to do at the same time. And all were cited this week by Jewish critics of Donald Trump as apt metaphors for what they are doing this week in the wake of Trump’s successful brokering of a ceasefire in the Gaza war.
Jewish Americans are reeling as a president many blame for undermining democracy brokered a deal that appears poised to return the Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Unlike many jubilant Israelis, some reliably liberal Jews here are having a hard time praising Trump and his team for the kind of diplomatic breakthrough that his Democratic predecessor couldn’t bring about. But they are largely figuring out how to do it.
“It’s important to recognize that the vast majority of American Jews, just as Israelis, want a return of the hostages, and they want this war to end, and if Donald Trump and his team can help to bring that about, they deserve credit for doing so,” said Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, the leading Democratic group in the community.
Trump in his second term is deeply unpopular with American Jews. Prior to the announcement of a long-awaited ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, his backing for Israel did not dent the disapproval he draws from a demographic that votes overwhelmingly Democratic.
A poll in April found 72% of Jewish voters disapproved of Trump. A robust majority opposed his signature policies, including deportations and retaliating against political enemies. A majority even opposed his efforts to combat antisemitism.
At the same time, Trump also has not hidden his disdain for legacy Jewish groups: The FBI earlier this month cut off all ties with the Anti-Defamation League, and its director, Kash Patel, likened the group’s tracking of right-wing extremists to terrorism.
Abe Foxman, the former ADL CEO, was appalled by Patel’s actions against his former colleagues and campaigned in 2020 for Joe Biden, the Democrat who ousted Trump after his first term. But he said the community should praise Trump for the peace deal, and he was surprised the praise was not more robust.
“The American Jewish community needs to walk and chew gum at the same time. We should be able to differentiate and say, ‘Thank you, Mr. President’ and ‘No thank you, Mr. President,’” Foxman said in an interview. “He did something so many of us yearned for in the last two years, and he made it happen, and Biden didn’t make it happen.”
Rabbi Jonah Pesner, who leads the Reform movement’s advocacy arm, the Religious Action Center, said there was a Jewish ethical obligation to thank Trump, based on the Jewish imperative to publicly “recognize the good,” hakarat hatov, even if the administration does not reciprocate.
“We would look at it through the lens of Jewish learning and Jewish wisdom,” Pesner said. “We have a president who has done exactly what we asked, bring the hostages home, end the war and the suffering in Gaza, both for the sake of the innocent in Gaza, but also for [Israelis], and get back on a path to a sustainable, lasting peace so that both sides can live in peace.”
That does not mean opposition to Trump’s domestic policies should flag, Pesner said, noting the Reform movement’s activism in opposing the deportations and Trump policies targeting transgender people.
“Our people are in the streets in Los Angeles and Chicago, trying to be a human buffer between troops that are being deployed [to arrest undocumented migrants] and the people who will be impacted,” he said.
Pesner’s predecessor at the RAC, Rabbi David Saperstein, said Trump “deserves to be commended for an extraordinary achievement” – but the Trump administration’s strident hostility to groups that might disagree on some issues made it hard to express. (Earlier this month, Trump shared on social media a meme calling Democrats “THE PARTY OF HATE, EVIL, AND SATAN.”)
Saperstein lamented the passing of an era when Jewish organizations would be comfortable working with a president whose policies they mostly opposed. He recalled being present at the White House, as RAC CEO, when President George W. Bush signed RAC-backed bills on human trafficking, on Sudan and on prison rape.
“While we staunchly supported a number of the efforts of the [Bush] administration, both domestically and in terms of Iraq, one always knew that the White House would accept that dichotomy as a norm of how American politics functions, and wouldn’t stop that from working collegially in places we could find common ground,” Saperstein recalled. “This administration is woefully different.”
Joel Rubin, a deputy assistant secretary of state during the Obama administration, drew two historical analogies to explain why Democrats and Jews should more robustly praise Trump on his Mideast diplomacy: Richard Nixon, who brokered peaceful relations with China while under even as he faced investigation for spying on Democrats, and David Ben-Gurion, who in 1939 said Jews in Palestine should resist British oppression with the same dedication they showed in joining the British in fighting Nazis.
“I think it’s been a very, very difficult thing for Democrats to admit that, you know, Nixon went to China on this one,” said Rubin, who in 2020 was the Jewish community liaison for the presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the de facto leader of progressives.
Trump, Rubin said, was able to do what Biden was not: pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to defy his far-right coalition partners and make a deal by enticing him with unfettered military and diplomatic support.
“Biden didn’t have the leverage to pressure Bibi [Netanyahu], the way that Trump has the leverage to pressure Bibi.” Biden, he said, “failed to capitalize on the window that he had opened after Oct. 7,” when the Democratic president expressed unalloyed support for Israel. “He kind of sat passive, and he just didn’t know how to do it. And Trump didn’t take any of the recommendations from the ‘pressure Israel’ crowd. He didn’t cut off military aid. In fact, he accelerated it. And that built up huge equity inside the Israeli body politic.”
Jewish political conservatives have been beyond effusive in their praise. The Republican Jewish Coalition has not only called for Trump to win the Nobel Peace Prize, it said the prize should be renamed for Trump.
Jo-Ann Mort, a public relations consultant who has worked with liberal Jewish and non-Jewish groups, said Trump deserved thanks, but the deal was not the game changer that Trump and his acolytes were claiming. Its terms have been on the table since the Biden administration, she said, and keeping the peace in the Middle East has been part of the presidential brief since at least Israel’s inception.
“It was an agreement that was on the table a year ago that Bibi didn’t take,” she said. “This is what the president of the United States is supposed to do in a place where the U.S. has so many interests and is so deeply involved – it would have been contrary to his role as president if he hadn’t tried to solve it.”
Soifer, the Jewish Democrats’ CEO, said that even as the deal deserves praise, its elements needed further scrutiny, particularly the ensuing enhancements in security cooperation between the United States and Qatar, a country that has backed Hamas. She noted for instance a deal he brokered with Yemen’s Houthi militia earlier this year that stopped attacks on U.S.-flagged ships – but allowed them to continue on Israeli flagged ships. On Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that Qatar would establish a military installation within the United States, which has also offered Qatar security assurances designed to prevent Israel from striking Hamas leaders living there.
“Israel’s security has not been a part of every calculation in terms of foreign policy of this administration and the Houthis are one example,” Soifer said. “This deal with the Qataris may be another, and we do need to consider Israel’s security. His tunnel vision may serve his short-term interests” of securing a Nobel Peace Prize, “but it doesn’t necessarily serve our long term national security interests as well as that of Israel.”
Betsy Sheer, a leading Florida-based fundraiser for Jewish causes and for Democrats, said praise for Trump’s deal should be unstinting — as should be resistance to his domestic policies.
“Trump has figured out a way, unlike his predecessor, who I thought was extremely supportive of Israel – he’s figured out a way through knocking heads and embarrassing people and promising God knows what that got us to this moment, and I don’t think we can overlook that,” she said.
“His domestic policies are abhorrent, and you know, I’m not going to let up on that at all,” Sheer said. “You still have to look at the shutting down of civil liberties and voting rights and the authoritarian stance and the punitive way of suing everybody that’s ever been an enemy.”
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Opinion: Why Canada must keep pushing for peace in the Middle East
Oct. 7, 2023, was a day that changed Israel—and Jewish communities across the world—forever. The murder of more than 1,200 people and the kidnapping of hundreds more by Hamas terrorists marked not only the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, but the beginning of a tragedy that has since displaced over 1.5 million Palestinians, forced nearly 100,000 Israelis from their homes, and left tens of thousands grieving on both sides.
In the two years since, grief and anger have filled every corner of Jewish life. Yet out of this devastation, one truth has become painfully clear: there is no alternative to peace. The cost of abandoning a two-state solution is too high, and the moral and human consequences are intolerable.
Canada, for decades, has stood firm in its support for two states for two peoples—a policy rooted in diplomacy, compassion, and justice. Successive governments, of every political stripe, have recognized that Israel’s long-term security is inseparable from Palestinian self-determination. While the region and its politics have shifted, the vision must remain constant: a sovereign Israel living in security alongside a sovereign Palestine built on dignity and equality.
Disarming Hamas is not enough. The terror organization that launched the barbaric attack of October 7 can have no place in whatever comes next. Israelis must know they are safe and secure. Palestinians must have the agency to demand leadership that is committed to a collaborative path—one that builds governance for the people they serve, not vengeance or victory, but safety, stability, and normalized relations.
As fragile as it is, the most recent agreement between Israel and Hamas has once again placed both peoples in a tense waiting game. Hostages may soon come home. Violence may slow. Humanitarian aid may finally reach Gazans who have endured unimaginable suffering. Israelis and Palestinians alike are waiting to exhale—to imagine, perhaps for the first time in years, what “normal” might look like.
But peace requires courage. It demands leadership willing to risk political consequence for moral clarity. I know this from experience.
During the height of the war, I travelled to Ramallah—not because it was politically convenient, and certainly not because it was easy as a Canadian-Israeli and a cabinet minister—but because it was necessary. That meeting was one of the few quiet steps that helped build a foundation for the difficult conversation that continues today: what conditions must the Palestinian Authority meet to open a genuine path forward?
Those conditions are not new. They include transparent elections, an end to corruption, the dismantling of the welfare system that rewards terror, and the rebuilding of a generation through education for reconciliation and mutual recognition—not violence. These are the steps that make peace possible.
Hope, I have learned, is not naïve. It is strategic. It is an act of defiance in the face of adversity. Hope is how we persevere through despair, how we shape policy that serves people rather than politics. It is how we remind ourselves that courage does not come from certainty, but from conviction.
Leadership and agency must also come from within. Hamas has led the Palestinian people into ruin. Their unrelenting pursuit of violent resistance—at the cost of their own citizens’ lives—has turned Gaza into a place of devastation and despair. For Palestinians to have a future, their national movement must reject Hamas’s ideology of annihilation. The Palestinian people deserve leaders who understand that a viable, independent state can only exist alongside a safe and secure Israel.
This truth lies at the heart of the matter. If we are to rebuild trust and establish a lasting peace, Israelis and Palestinians alike must confront a simple, uncomfortable reality: our lives are intertwined. Our safety depends on one another.
For Jewish communities here in Canada, this truth carries a parallel responsibility. We have lived through two years of fear, mourning, and rising antisemitism. Many of us have felt isolated in our grief and anxious about our safety. But even in those moments, we cannot lose sight of our values—the belief that peace, security, and justice are not mutually exclusive but mutually dependent.
We are tired, yes—but we are not broken.
This moment, fragile as it is, offers an opening. It calls for moral courage—not only from leaders in the region but from allies like Canada who can help nurture reconciliation, rebuild institutions, and ensure accountability. Canada must be part of that work.
It is not enough to stand with Israel in solidarity; we must also stand with Israelis and Palestinians who are willing to build a different future. Peace is not inevitable, but it is possible—if we insist on it.
As our sages taught: “Lo alecha hamelacha ligmor, v’lo atah ben chorin l’hibatel mimena”—“It is not upon you to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”
That teaching has guided the Jewish people through millennia of hardship, and it must guide us now.
We cannot complete the work of peace—but we must never stop trying.
Ya’ara Saks is the former Member of Parliament for York Centre and the former Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, and Associate Minister of Health.
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