KINSELLA: Jewish Canadians feel abandoned by own government

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RE’IM, ISRAEL – When you come to this quiet place – where the death cult called Hamas raped, mutilated, beheaded, burnt, slaughtered, and shot 364 young people on the morning of Oct. 7, 2023 – some Canadian visitors inevitably ask themselves: Where is my country?

Because, make no mistake, Canada’s leadership hasn’t been much in evidence around the site of the former Nova Music Festival. Or at any of the other sad places in Israel, really, where 1,200 men, women, children and babies were murdered by Hamas and Gazans on that terrible day.

Did you know that every major world leader has been here to pay their respects, but not Canada’s? It’s true. Joe Biden, then-president of the United States, visited ten days after the pogrom. The top leaders of France, Greece, Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom, the European Union all have come to Israel to pay their respects and bear witness.

But not Canada.

Within Canada, meanwhile, something just as bad has happened – we have become one of the worst places in the world for antisemitism.

It’s been noted, and reported on, in Israel, too.

The schools for little Canadian Jewish kids sprayed with bullets. The Canadian synagogues firebombed. The Canadian businesses owned by Jews firebombed and shot up. Just because they are places frequented by Canadian citizens who happen to be Jewish.

A Israeli TV station recently noted that Canada’s Jews account for 1.4% of the country’s total population but are the target of 70% of the reported hate crimes, which are up nearly 700% since 2023.

B’nai Brith says a Jew is attacked in Canada just about every hour.

When you see those statistics and read about those things, it’s easy to understand why Israelis, too, now ask this question: Where is Canada? Where did our Canadian friends go, at our hour of greatest need?

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All of this probably helps to explain, of course, some of the things that happened in Canada’s 2025 federal general election. Jews felt abandoned by their own government, and they voted accordingly.

Historically, Jews have always been reliable Liberal supporters. The same is true in the U.S. with the Democrats. Around the time of Stephen Harper, Jewish voters started to quietly move towards the Conservative Party.

The trend accelerated, dramatically, after Oct. 7.

In Politico, Mickey Duric has reported on it: “The Conservative Party has done extensive outreach within the Jewish community in an effort to crack Toronto and Montreal in particular – voter-rich areas that typically play a key role in who becomes Canada’s next prime minister.”

To some extent, the strategy worked – although Mark Carney’s Liberals held onto heavily-contested ridings in Toronto’s Eglinton-Lawrence and Montreal’s Mount Royal ridings (where, full disclosure, my friends Vince Gasparro and Anthony Housefather won).

For the most part, however, it was almost impossible to find a Canadian Jew who didn’t vote for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives.

When Carney was declared the victor by the networks, however, those Canadian Jews were very, very upset. They filled my inbox. One said she was “traumatized.” Another said things that can’t be printed in a newspaper.

Quite a few Jews asked me if I knew Carney. They asked if he would ever speak up for them. They asked if he would condemn the antisemitism that is seemingly everywhere in Canada these days.

I told them I didn’t know the man; he’s the first Prime Minister since Mike Pearson I’ve never met. I told them I wrote to his campaign as a journalist, once, to ask if Carney would be saying something about the hostages still being held by Hamas. I received no reply. Not even a “no comment.”

So, in the wake of Mark Carney’s victory, it’s easy to understand why many Jews are pretty worried. For them, under Justin Trudeau, things were bad. Under Mark Carney, will things get even worse?

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When you are at a place like Nova, where hundreds were slaughtered simply because they were Jews, questions like that are not theoretical anymore. They are existential.

This place – a crime scene, a killing ground – forces you to consider what happens when the beast of antisemitism is once again out of its cage, seeking its prey. If you are a Jew, Nova forces you to consider who your friends are.

It also forces many Jews to ask themselves this important question: Who will give me shelter when someone comes to kill us?

That’s the question. And, for many Jews, in Canada, the answer is no longer clear.