Casey Babb’s recent piece in The Free Press documents a trend that should unsettle anyone who cares about Canada’s social fabric. A growing number of Jewish Canadians are packing up and leaving the country, driven by a sharp rise in antisemitic violence and a sense that authorities and institutions are failing to confront it.
The numbers are shocking: B’nai Brith recorded 27 violent antisemitic incidents in the first half of 2026 alone, compared with 10 for the entirety of the previous year. Jews make up roughly one percent of Canada’s population yet were the targets of more police-reported hate crimes in 2024 than all other religious groups combined. Aliyah from Canada rose 51 percent between 2023 and 2025, reaching record levels. Organizations helping Jewish families relocate report hundreds of Canadian households making inquiries.
High-profile departures underline the human reality behind the statistics. Author and psychologist Gad Saad, who has lived in Canada since his family fled Lebanon decades ago, publicly announced he was leaving, citing the exponential increase in Jew-hatred and the difficulty of being a high-profile Jewish academic who supports Israel’s right to exist. Other professionals, physicians, educators, and community leaders have followed similar paths, some to the United States, others to Israel. Many describe a post-October 7 environment in which open hostility has become normalized on streets, campuses, and social media, while political responses have been slow, hesitant, or absent.
Babb argues that open immigration policies without adequate integration or security screening have contributed to the problem, importing attitudes that treat Jews and Israel as legitimate targets. Combined with institutional reluctance to name antisemitism clearly when it comes from certain quarters, the result is a climate in which Jewish families no longer feel secure in the country they helped build.
Canada has long prided itself on being a place where minorities could live free from fear. When a community that has contributed disproportionately to medicine, science, business, and culture begins to conclude that it is safer elsewhere, something fundamental has gone wrong. The departures are not abstract statistics. They represent lost talent, eroded trust, and a warning about the kind of society we are becoming. Ignoring the pattern will not make it disappear. Confronting the sources of the hostility, enforcing the law without hesitation, and refusing to excuse antisemitism under any ideological banner are the minimum requirements if Canada wants to reverse this trend.
