Big Rig Fatalities on Canadian Roads

"[There has been lax oversight of driver licensing and certification schools]." 

"We found that some students at registered private career colleges obtained [Entry Level Training] certificates without completing all mandatory training hours and elements."

Ontario Auditor General report 

Canadian Trucking Alliance

"Although TFWs [temporary foreign workers] in trucking represent a small percentage of all permits issued under the TFW program, a quick review of online data shows that truck driver is often the 5th or 6th most requested job classification."

"TFW approvals for truck drivers] more than quadrupled [between 2010 and 2024]."

Teamsters Canada report

 

"While there are many commercial vehicle operators who are doing their due diligence and prioritizing safety, unfortunately we are still seeing those who are not properly maintaining their vehicles -- including repeat offenders."

RCMP spokesman

(Source: Government of Canada data)

 

Evidently there is a severe shortage of long-haul truckers in Canada. The result may be that governments are turning a blind eye to inadequately trained drivers. In many instances young men from the Indian subcontinent who travelled to Canada on student visas to attend Canadian universities are likely to be among those classified as temporary foreign workers who are hired by trucking companies that are not too terribly wedded to Canadian trucking requirements to fill the gap in low numbers of truck drivers' availability. These are young men whose presence in the country was for a specific purpose -- higher education -- who have just not bothered to show up for classes. They are also people whose visas have run out with the expectation that they will leave the country.

 

The rash of serious trucking accidents that have been occurring when large transport trailers are being driven irresponsibly can be at least partially attributed to the illegal presence of foreign temporary workers. What is equally troubling is that those who have been involved in, who have caused lethal road accidents, are being handled with undue consideration despite their having been responsible for lost lives as a result of careless handling of big rigs on busy highways. A non-citizen trucker who caused a fiery crash north of Kamloops B.C., killing two people has been handed a $2,000 fine and 18 months of probation, as an example.

 

Lovepreet Singh drove  his truck at full speed into a Toyota Corolla that had reduced speed at a construction zone. Singh's lack of attention caused the death of two people trapped in the burning car. Sukhwinder Sidhu, an Ontario trucker, responsible for a similar collision when he plowed his rig into cars stopped at a construction site that killed a woman was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. A judge in Thunder Bay, Ontario granted Indian trucker Ajitpal Singh an absolute discharge. Singh had caused a fatal head-on collision with another trucker; that lighter sentence helped Singh avoid deportation to India. 

 

Jaskirat Singh Sidhu whose failure to stop at a stop sign at an intersection caused the death of 15 members of the Humboldt Broncos (Saskatchewan) hockey team in 2018, and last month had his deportation deferred. Mr. Sidhu who had served three-and-a-half years of the eight-year sentence ordered for causing the crash can now take advantage of a 17-month pause in deportation to enable him to seek a permanent stay on "humanitarian and compassionate" grounds. He had expressed  his profound sorrow on behalf of those young men who died so needlessly.

 

Photo: Eassons Transport

 

A judge in British Columbia gave 90 days of house arrest to trucker Dalvir Singh Jhatta for a crash that police stated could have killed several people, when he drove his tractor trailer at full speed into a tow truck attaching a Mercedes impounded by the RCMP. "Luckily the tow truck operator, the police officer, and the Mercedes driver were safely off to the side of the road, or they would certainly have been killed" stated Cpl. Michael McLaughlin of the BC Highway Patrol. 

 

In an April 2024 crash, Harpreet Singh pleaded guilty to driving without due care and attention when his tractor trailer crossed the centre line and collided with a CN Rail work truck, causing both vehicles to explode into flames, killing Singh's passenger Dharminder Singh and CN Rail employee Juver Balmores. Criminal charges were not pursued, as Crown prosecutors agreed to a $2,000 fine and 18 months' probation. 

 

While large commercial trucks represented three percent of the vehicles on Ontario roads, 12 percent of all fatal crashes between 2019 and 2023 were caused by these trucks, according to a report produced by an Ontario Auditor General report studying lax oversight of driver licensing and certification schools. A report published last month by Teamsters Canada found disproportionately heavy use of temporary foreign workers in the trucking sector. TFW approvals for truck drivers between 2010 and 2024 "more than quadrupled", the Teamsters report found.

 

The Burnaby RCMP spearheaded an inspection drive on commercial trucks last year throughout the Lower Mainland, discovering that over half of those trucks failed to meet basic safety standards. Police announced that of 2,901 trucks inspected, 1,610 were "placed out of service" for failing to meet provincial safety standards. Statistics Canada found that as a result of a collision involving a commercial motor vehicle, there were 377 fatalities for 2023, the most recent year for data availability. 

TruckNews.com 

 

Canada's Health Care System Groaning Under Levels of Unprecedented Demand

"[The Liberal government's temporary Interim Federal Health Program -- IFHP] has turned into a multi-year, taxpayer-funded entitlement where tens of thousands of bogus asylum claimants are provided health benefits that Canadians are not eligible for."

"The Liberals must explain to Canadians why asylum seekers who have had their refugee claims rejected, are facing enforceable removal orders, and in some cases fail to appear for removal, continue to receive deluxe, tax-payer funded health benefits while they avoid leaving Canada."

Conservative health critic Dan Mazier and immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner

 

"IFHP eligibility is further extended when claimants pursue appeals before the Refugee Appeal Division (RAD) or the Federal Court, as well as during the completion of a Pre-Removal Risk Assessment (PRRA). On average, about 20 per cent of all claims referred to the IRB are appealed at least once at the RAD. Nearly 50 per cent of claimants who ultimately received a negative decision from the IRB in 2019 remained in the system for more than three years following that decision."

"As of February 2026, approximately 74,000 “failed refugee claimants”, defined as individuals who made a claim for refugee protection in Canada and did not obtain protection, were in the CBSA removals inventory."

"Failed refugee claimants may remain eligible for IFHP coverage while their cases are being assessed through ongoing immigration or risk-related processes (e.g., PRRA), and in some cases until their departure from Canada. Together, these factors substantially lengthen IFHP eligibility for a significant share of unsuccessful claimants. 

Parliamentary Budget Office report 

The Globe&Mail.com

 

Over $722 million was spent by the government of Canada in the provision of extensive health care to tens of thousands of asylum seekers, including a large number spent on 'failed refugee claimants' awaiting determination of status in the approvals system, or those who have been actively avoiding removal orders in the last fiscal year, the latest report of the Parliamentary Budget Office points out, in castigating the government for its lax processing and inexplicable devotion to providing migrants with a level of health care often not matched directed toward Canadian citizens.

 

As a result of 'backlogs in the country's asylum system, claimants are left waiting, sometimes for up to three years before their claims are officially either accepted or denied. In the interim their health care needs, at an unprecedented level of coverage, are catered to, and costs continue to rise under the Interim Federal Health Program. A program originally created to provide limited, temporary coverage in health care to foreign nationals considered to be disadvantaged and vulnerable. 

 

"As of December 2025, over 300,000 asylum claims were pending adjudication and  roughly 65 percent of these pending claims have been in the system for longer than a year." 

"This represents a five-fold increase since 2021 and is anticipated to increase in the near-term due to an influx of claims made between 2023 and 2025."

"[The number waiting between to and three years] will notably rise by 2027-27, reflecting elevated past intake and constrained exit rates."

Parliamentary Budget Office 

 

For 2024-25, total spending across all health care categories and beneficiary groups came closer to $822 million, accounting for resettled refugees' inclusion. This category "are selected and assessed abroad, with admission targets set in the Government's Immigration Levels Plan, resulting in relatively predictable intake and processing timelines". Asylum seekers on the other hand, noted the Parliamentary Budget Office, claimed an average of $724 per beneficiary each year on basic care representing doctor visits, hospital care, ambulances, labs, diagnostic testing and immigration medical examinations, in contrast to the resettled refugees' average of $97 for the same period.

 

It was found by the PBO that per-person spending on basic care increased consistently, while spending on supplementary health products and services such as urgent dental treatment, prescription drug coverage, vision care, counselling services, assistive devices and others increased at an accelerated rate. Canada spent $94 million on supplementary benefits across all groups in the 2019-20 fiscal year and by 2023-24 there was a near tripling to $285 million, reaching $457 million in 2024-25.

 

Prescription drugs and urgent dental care in particular accounted for 80 percent of the spending. PBO figures revealed that the number of dental claims rose by 43 percent between 2019 and 2025 (240,000 to 1.4 million claims). Higher average cost per claim combined to drive dental costs from $30 million to $257 million in that time frame. "Elevated intakes" and the "persistent backlogs" that resulted were identified as major drivers of increased expenses. In 2019 there were 64,150 claims -- which by 2024 rose to 173,000.

 

The present time sees about half (47 percent) of claimants in the system between one and two years with that number expected to rise.  Each additional month in processing time, according to PBO calculations, could drive program costs up by $72 million in the approaching fiscal year. Applicants must pass through several review layers to attain asylum refugee status, and if rejected can utilize several appeal avenues, which can take years, during which they they remain eligible for IFHP. 

Canada spent over $722 million on health care for asylum seekers in the last fiscal year as refugee backlogs and failed claims drove costs. Photo by Getty Images

 

Also eligible are the "nearly 74,000 failed refugee claimants" among the the CBSA (Canada Border Services Agency) removals inventory where currently 23, 4289 removals are in process, alongside 27,797 rejected applicants who failed to appear for removal and are in the process of being sought by border authorities for enforced removal.  

"These are  benefits that Canadians who have paid into the system their entire lives can't access."

 "It is undeniable that as the backlog grows, rejected asylum claimants continue adding pressure to a health care system where Canadians are already facing long wait times for care."

Conservative health critic Dan Mazier 

Closing Down Open, Questing Minds

"For me, university was a place where you wrestled with new ideas."

"Sex, politics, religion, war -- we argued about all of it."

"But somewhere along the way, the climate changed. Students didn't just disagree with ideas. They felt harmed by them."

"And the only way to feel safe was to silence the people expressing them." 

Ric Esther Bienstock, film maker

 

"I want to keep my head down. I'm a student.

"I finally got in. I don't want to ask a  question because it might piss somebody off."

"I can't afford to lose marks or lose friends."

Typical response from students

 

"I'm worried about offending someone in the class with a reading, so I'm just going to change my reading list."

"[If they get reported they know the administration will not have their back]."

Untenured professorial class

BifBamPop!

 

A movie has recently been produced by Montreal-born Ric Esther Bienstock, resident in Toronto. She has had interview experiences with students, professors and administrators at such academic institutions as Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Stanford, Penn State, Evergreen State College, the University of Sussex, and New College of Florida. 

 

Previous film work to her credit include Enslaved: The Lost History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (with Samuel L. Jackson), The Accountant of Auschwitz, and Tales From the Organ Trade. The industry recognition she has received include two Emmys, two Edward R. Murrow Awards, and multiple Canadian Screen Awards. She is also an Officer of the Order of Canada. There is gravitas behind her image. 

 

"Students asking for safe spaces from emotional harm -- I found that just interesting, and I thought it would make for a good film." As an example ... former professor of evolutionary biology, Bret Weinstein, at Evergreen State College in Washington opposed the school's 2017 Day of Absence change that demanded whites leave campus. For this, he was called racist. "My filming began during a period of intense protests."

 

Her new film is titled Speechless, to be aired on both CBCGem and the BBC, focusing on the political upheaval that has transformed universities throughout North American and the United Kingdom. The film is a portrait of debates over race, gender and social justice escalating by way of 'viral outrage', 'reputational shrapnel' and 'institutional instability'. It also highlights the focus of campus concerns rolling out past university grounds.

 

New College of Florida, the first American institution to dismantle its DEI office and eliminate its gender studies program, initiates the film footage. "I worried about higher education and what's happening on campus. Higher ed is where we're shaping the minds of the future generation of citizens, leaders, doctors, lawyers, policy makers, politicians and teachers. If you can't engage with ideas that you don't agree with or that offend you, what does that mean?"

 

If questing minds who want answers or perspectives to help them digest information and reach informed opinions are shut down for fear of hurting someone else's feelings how does attendance at an institute of higher learning benefit either individuals or society at large? Where there is an imposition of firm self-censorship, free speech absents itself. Socially sensitive issues such as race, gender, terrorist violence such as October 7 must not be approached, as socially abrasive topics that must remain unquestioned.

 

A protest encampment at the University of Chicago’s Main Quadrangle, featuring a sign reading: “As you go to class, remember that there are no universities left in Gaza.” Photo by wabisabi2015/Flickr.

 

A conservative legal organization, the Federalist Society, with chapters at many elite law schools had invited Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to speak at Stanford Law School. Many of the school's law students protested his appearance, attempting to prevent the event from proceeding, lest Judge Duncan's rejection of same-sex marriage alarmingly disrupt those he would address, claiming the school should not be allowing him a platform.

 

This played against the fact that the Federalist Society chapter at Stanford's president is gay, and though he doesn't agree with the judge's views, he argues that, at a law school, students should have the opportunity to listen to a sitting federal judge in light of the fact that they may some day appear before him to argue cases ending up at the Supreme Court. Lacking that opportunity, they remain fixed in a silo of 'approved' views rather than being in possession of well-rounded information/viewpoint exposure. 

 

Film maker Ric Esther Bienstock, points out what should be obvious to anyone; living in pluralistic societies requires those with the opportunity to gain experience through being guided in a university setting to questions that perplex and answers that render all possibilities of explanations to sift through and find the responses that fit the jigsaw puzzle of appropriateness, exceptionalism, social constructs and a balance that results in that fine-tuning of opinion. 

"When I spoke to students from that law school who would not speak to me on the record in the film -- which says something also -- they said to me, 'why do I have to listen to someone who denies my existence, whose views I don't agree with?"

"I wanted to show you, and take you into that world, and then let viewers decide if they think it's good or not."

"If you want to live in a pluralistic society, you should expose yourself to different ideas, different views, different cultures. You can't have institutions that are all monocultures." 

Ric Esther Bioenstock, ethical/social filmmaker 

Filmmaker Ric Esther Bienstock discusses how bias plays into every conversation we have while she sits down with Piya Chattopadhyay in conversation. Watch Speechless on CBC Gem.

Workplace Antisemism Harassment

"You kind of feel like you're drowning. All the bad feels is what I felt: Lonely, confused,  hurt, isolated. And ultimately it led me to have a really bad breakdown."

"I was confused how these people can be my friends one day and then the next day hate me with a capital H, having not gotten into any verbal arguments, or anything like that previously."

"They knew I was Jewish and they knew that I am a Zionist, that I lived in Israel before."

"It escalated to the point where I wouldn't do my job anymore, not because of the things I was feeling, but realistically, I wasn't getting any calls, which we called leads, which are businesses that you get introduced to to sell your product to." 

"No one should be subjected to this kind of treatment at work for being Jewish."

Amanda Rafael 

Amanda Rafael: “I was confused how these people can be my friends one day and then the next day hate me with a capital H.” Photo by Supplied

 

Filing charges against her one-time employer with Quebec's labour tribunal, 34-year-old Amanda Rafael whose work was in sales with the company, documented the pattern of rabid hostility and psychological harassment she faced at her workplace, a situation that emerged the very day that southern Israel suffered mass deadly attacks by Palestinian terrorist groups led by Hamas. She described receiving antisemitic images as several of her co-workers turned on her with a vengeance with denigrating messages leading to her being frozen out of shared sales leads. When she alerted supervisors at the company, nothing came of it.

 

Lightspeed Commerce Inc. is a publicly traded e-commerce company, with a record of success that saw it labelled at one of those tech rarities, a 'unicorn'. Nothing quite prepared this young woman who worked for the company since 2021, when some of her work colleagues disconnected from her to an extent that was unimaginable to her, disorienting and totally demoralizing. She was so badly affected that when she consulted her doctor over the depressed state she was in, she was advised to take sick leave, to separate herself temporarily from the vitriol emanating from within her workplace against her. 

 

Quebec's labour standards authority investigated her complaint, forwarding it to the province's administrative labour tribunal for a hearing, reflecting Quebec's two-stage occupational complaints schedule. Her allegations at the tribunal are being challenged by Lightspeed. A point-of-sale and payments platform out of Quebec since 2005, the company has since expanded with clients in over 100 countries, with listings on the New York Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange.  

Lightspeed Commerce

"Lightspeed is committed to providing a safe workplace environment and has a zero-tolerance policy toward workplace violence, harassment and discrimination, including hate speech and antisemitism."

"We expect all our employees to treat each other and every member of our communities with respect and integrity and to foster a diverse and inclusive culture."

Lightspeed Montreal, global tech company 

 According to documents filed with the tribunal a Lightspeed manager informed an investigator that the company's internal probe of the situation failed to support a finding of psychological harassment. Memes and posts at issue in the matter, explained the manager, had been sent from employees' private accounts. Accepting that the workplace atmosphere following October 7 was tense "on both sides", management took steps to ensure the workplace remained 'safe'. 

 

Amanda Rafael after having worked at  Lightspeed for two years, encountered an 'unsafe' workplace following October of 2023. She was ultimately terminated in February 2024, and six months later she filed her complaint against the company whose manager denied the company had failed to intervene on her behalf. Rafael documented how a colleague had posted a photograph of Adolf Hitler and with it a quote: "Jews are not people, they are animals", four days after October 7.  Other colleagues called her a "f---king Zionist", sharing social media posts reflecting "kill all Zionists", informing her that her presence was unwanted.

 

 

 

Rafael was asked to remove the flag of Israel from her company online profile, while some colleagues were free to add Palestinian flags to theirs. She was refused a request to be transferred elsewhere within the company, away from these demeaning colleagues. When she logged into the company's internal sales team messaging system she discovered colleagues having informed her clients that she was no longer employed with the company, introducing themselves at the new point of contact. "Is there something I don't know about here?", she had asked.  

"What Amanda alleges is not ordinary workplace friction or a mere political disagreement. It is targeted discrimination against a Jewish employee, coupled with an alleged failure by the employer to protect her dignity and safety."

"Lightspeed is a global public company. Amanda's experience raises serious questions."

Benjamin Ryberg, chief operating officer, the Lawfare Project 

Moscow's War: Terrorizing, Hunting, Killing Civilians -- Human Safari

 

"Located in southern Ukraine on the banks of the Dniepr River across from the Russian army, Kherson has become a hunting ground for what locals call a “human safari”." 

"The Russian forces are using drones to target civilians – whether they are on foot, driving, or even on bicycles. The drones they use are known as FPVs, for “first-person view”, meaning the operators see what the drone sees in real time."

"For residents of Kherson, these drones have become a daily threat."

"At least 577 civilians were killed by short-range drones in Ukraine in 2025, and more than 3,000 were injured, according to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU). Nearly 95% of civilian casualties were recorded in territory held by the Ukrainian government." 

"In an October 2025 report focusing on the Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions, the UN Commission of Inquiry of Ukraine found that 'Russian armed forces’ short-range drone attacks ... amount to a crime against humanity ... and war crimes'."

France 24

 

"It starts in the evening. Sometimes, from 8 or 9pm, they start terrorising us. Sirens go off, drones start hitting."

"But in our practice, based on statistics, the peak is around 2, 3 or 4 am. That is when most strikes occur, when people are peacefully sleeping." 

Maryna Averina, spokesperson, State Emergency Service of Ukraine, Odessa region 

FPV drone with a spool of fibre-optic cable. Image credit: Armyinform.com.ua

 

The buzz of drones alert Ukrainians of incoming drones equipped with cameras, rigged out with explosives and steered by joysticks in the hands of a Russian military operative a mere dozen kilometres' distance. They know from experience that they will be tracked, chased and attacked by these drones. Familiarity with the phenomenon and the drones' random, unexpected presence, they are familiarly named as Russia's 'human safari' scheme of population demoralization. Translated; a terror campaign begun in Kherson which evolved with new technology, then spread to border areas within Ukraine. 

 

This hunting down of civilians for the quite obvious purpose of a reign of terror, part of the Kremlin's 

'special military operation', in Vladimir Putin's obsession with destroying Ukraine as a sovereign state, while annexing southern Ukraine bit by bit as it did in 2022 when it captured Crimea in 2014. The United Nations has recognized the deadly tactic as a war crime, one that has crossed the border from one army battling another, to an army deliberately targeting civilians, in opposition to international prohibitions on targeting civilian populations. 

 

"It's a really horrible problem the Russians are imposing on Ukrainian civilians in these towns where they're using the human safari tactic", observed Robert Tollast, military sciences researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, London. Russians just across the Dnieper River began two years ago deploying cheap commercial first-person view (FPV) quadcopters to stalk and strike civilians as they went about the course of their days; biking, standing at bus stops, walking their dogs.

 

The spool of fibre-optic cable is usually quite large. Image credit: Armyinform.com.ua

 

Begun in Kherson, by April of 2025 the attacks killed 42 civilians each month, injuring close to 300, according to an independent UN human rights commission report. The campaign, determined investigators, was ordered by Moscow for the purpose of systematically terrorizing the population, amounting to "murder as a crime against humanity". At  first Ukraine took to jamming -- flooding the drone frequencies with empty radio noise, which worked for a while.  Until Russia equipped the drones with fibre-optic filament.

 

These hair-thin tethers unspool in flight for 19 kilometres; with small payloads even further, as they carry video to the operator who commands the drone in return. Equipped with these filaments that bypass radio signals, the drones could no longer be jammed. It was  found that if someone knowledgeable, like a soldier, could grasp a filament it could be snapped through a combination of loops and pinches. Someone in the right place at the right time who could muster the speed required to pull off that simple solution could save another person's life, as the drone, the integrity of the fibre-optic threat broken, could no longer relay video and messages back to the operator. 

"The Russian drones are said to “zero in on vulnerable, everyday locations: crowded markets, petrol stations, cafes, post offices, and humanitarian aid centers.” Some days, the drones target ambulances, police officers, nurses, doctors, and garbage collectors. "

"However, most days, the drones “hunt and wound or kill commuters on their way to work, or target pensioners eking out survival in the winter cold.” The drones also scatter butterfly anti-personnel mines “along streets, courtyards, playgrounds and public squares.” These small, camouflaged mines are hard to see, easily blending in with leaves and brush, and have led to a rise in foot amputations."

"The attacks have become so prevalent that civilians are unable to leave their houses during the day unless there is heavy rain or overcast conditions that prevent the drones from flying or decrease their accuracy. When they do venture out, many residents carry radio frequency drone detectors [devices designed to detect the radio frequencies used to control drones] and only travel after dark. "

Articles of War  

Articles of War

 

Canada ... No Longer a Secure Home for Diaspora Jews

Adil Charkaoui's speech has drawn broad condemnation from politicians like Premier François Legault and groups like the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. (Adil Charkaoui/X)

 

"The statistics on hate crimes in Canada are pretty clear on this. It's really in the early 2000s that hate crimes against Jews in Canada started to go up in a significant way."

"By this measure, then, the rate of antisemitic incidents is more than 16.5 times higher today than it was before 2000."

"I did experience quite a lot of antisemitism where I grew up [in Saint John, N.B.]. My golden age didn't start until I was 18 and got out of there. [The promise Canada offered Jews in major cities was real.] I think it's true for most Jews, who grew up in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg from the '60s on." 

"The percentage of Muslims among the most extreme antisemites is considerably higher than the corresponding percentage of non-Muslims." 

Emeritus sociology professor Robert Brym, University of Toronto 

 

"Every time I wake up and I realize that the water's getting hotter, somebody greases the bowl. The level of tolerance that this country seems to have adopted in terms of antisemitism is breathtaking."

"It was wonderful to be a Jew at York [University in the 1990s] . There was a vibrant [Jewish student and professorial] community." 

"[By 2000], it was a completely different place to be a Jew. The anti-Zionist, left-wing academic was already starting to infuse the university."

Talia Klein Leighton, president, Canadian Women Against Antisemitism

 

"It wasn't easy as a Jewish boy walking around with my kippah [in France]."

"Moving to Canada was, for me, a breath of fresh air to be able to bring up my children in a safe and welcoming environment."

"What has happened in the last two, three years, is quite unbelievable. What I saw  happening in Paris in the '70s where you could be walking in the streets and people were screaming slurs at you or driving by and just a feeling of unwelcome and just looking behind your back."

"That, to me, is terrifying, because I was able to see the contrast of being here in Canada."

Menachem Mendel Blum, rabbi, Ottawa Torah Centre Chabad

THORNHILL, CANADA - MARCH 7 : Pro-Israel demonstrators gather outside Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto synagogue hosting 'Israeli Real Estate Event' in Thornhill, north of Toronto, Ontario on March 7, 2024. (Photo by Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu via Getty Images)

 

According to B'nai Brith Canada's statistics, there were 6,800 antisemitic incidents that took place during 2025, an increase from 2,769 that occurred in 2022. During that time, synagogues were shot at and firebombed, 'F---k the Jews' graffiti appeared all too often, Jews have been accosted, berated, harassed, beaten, even shot at with pellets. Anti-Israel, antisemitic protesters marched en masse for months on end through Jewish residential neighbourhoods in Toronto. 

 

The years following World War II saw an enlightened public attitude toward Jews. The majority of Canadians became more accepting of a Jewish-Canadian presence. Prejudice against Jews that had previously manifested in public notices that parks were off limits to 'Jews and dogs', Jewish exclusion from clubs, from buying homes in certain neighbourhoods, Jewish doctors refused hospital affiliations, rental units not available to Jews, slowly underwent a social change.

 

Jews flourished in the new social environment; the numbers limiting Jewish acceptance at universities became history, Jewish businesses thrived, laws were passed prohibiting discrimination against minority groups for employment opportunities, medical treatment, academic admissions, and home rentals made it mandatory that all citizens were treated in equal measure under the law. Just as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guaranteeing equality and freedom of religious expression, freedom of speech and all other civil rights. Antisemitism went underground.

Parliament Hill, Ottawa, Canada (Freepik.com)

 

Jews enjoyed that same sense of security in Canada as all others and the Jewish community thrived on its freedom to explore economic prosperity. Then, suddenly, a mass atrocity that occurred halfway across the world on October 7, 2023, when Palestinian terrorists launched a mass atrocity slaughtering Israeli civilians in southern Israel changed all that. It seemed sudden, but it was a kind of climax that had been building for some time, and October 7 was the signal that the time was right for an explosion of Jew-hate. Up to that time beginning decades earlier, a slow and steady increase of Middle Eastern immigrants bringing with them traditions of antisemitism infiltrated all walks of academia, unions, government and social institutions.

 

Expatriate 'Palestinians' studying in droves in Canadian universities provided the spark as 'victims' of Israeli oppression, which is to say Israeli defensive action against Palestinian terrorism that sought to destroy the Jewish state physically, then resorted to systematically through propaganda destroying Israel's reputation through libelous slander, promulgating lies of 'apartheid' and plans to kill Palestinians to rid themselves of counterclaims to Judean ancestral lands upon which both Israel and the 'Palestinian Territories' sit.

 

TORONTO, ON - December 20 - Shots were fired at a North York Jewish girls school early Friday morning, marking the third shooting at the school this year, Toronto police said. December 20, 2024. 

 

Governments in Canada stood by, unreactive while chaos broke out in the streets and on university campuses as thousands of anti-Israel protests, extended to include Canadian Jews in rejection of their presence as Zionists were called upon to 'go back to Poland' while Palestinians used every vicious tool at their disposal to delegitimize the Jewish state, making great inroads in alliances with the far-left and Liberal 'progressives' who found much to support in those claims, repeating with vigour 'Globalize the Intifada'. 

 

As Muslim populations proliferated through immigration, refugee intake and mass migration throughout Europe, and threats against European Jews ballooned, so too did they in North America, Australia and elsewhere. Jews who once felt secure and accepted for what they are; loyal citizens of the countries they lived in, contributors to the civilized world, outperforming other groups in their literary, scientific, academic, technological proficiency, were hounded by the baying of rousing, mind-numbing levels of expressed Jew-hate.

 

Jews now in Canada, as elsewhere in the world have been forced to resort to security measures to protect their schools, their synagogues, their community centres, vulnerable to attack and indeed experiencing attacks; gunshots, explosive devices at night, and crowds of protesting Jew-haters during the day, harassing, threatening, jeering and smearing Canadian Jews; vandalizing Jewish-owned businesses and property, boycotting and isolating Jews from mainstream society.

 

Michael A. Sachs: Some Jewish Canadians planning exit strategies to more welcoming U.S.

 

The governments whose democratic duty has always been to secure public order, to protect minority rights and guarantee equality of treatment and opportunity for all, have instead merely observed the ongoing diminution of Jewish rights in Canada. Their silence and lack of action have predictably bolstered the hateful resolve of the rioters and hate-mongers. And while all decent people decry the advent of renewed antisemitism and the moral incivility accompanying it, the majority remain silent. The Jews can look after themselves. 

 

Many are trying to do just that. And many are now contemplating wrenching their roots asunder from the soil that once guaranteed them peace of mind, planning to emigrate to the one place on Earth where their survival and that of their children is guaranteed: Israel. Politics in Canada under a succession of Liberal-led governments is such that those at the highest order of governance decry the rise of antisemitism and invariably add that of 'Islamophobia'. 

 

None among them ever contemplate speaking the reality of the situation, that it is the large and growing Muslim population from among whom this rise has resulted. They are prepared to live with the results of deliberately overlooking and bypassing the truth, rather than express it, and risk losing the votes that come with pandering to a segment of society whose values are not those of the prevailing majority, nor of democracy itself. Shame on them all.

 

Portable museum to show at schools, as an educational device, but after October 7, it was deemed too political. Photo by Courtesy of Sam Eskenasi

 

Searching for 14-year-old Esti Absent From Her Toronto Home

"It was Friday night. It was cold outside and she left, and it was dark and she didn't have her shoes. Both of her pairs of shoes are by the door. And she doesn't have her phone. Her phone is in the house."

"I don't know who else she might have contact with. I really hope that she's OK and maybe she's just scared to come home and she has friends or someone helping her."

Shira, mother of missing 14-year-old Esther, Toronto 

Toronto Police Duty Inspector Peter Wallace, with Shira and Joseph, the parents of Esther, who is missing, speak to the media outside the Earl Bales Community Centre, May 19, 2026. (Facebook)

 

"We are currently appealing to the public to please check your backyard if you reside in this area, your sheds and also your surveillance camera."

"We are concerned for her safety."

Toronto Police Duty Inspector Peter Wallace 

The Toronto Police Service announced that the search for a missing 14-year-old Jewish girl has been elevated to Priority 1 status and a dedicated phone line has been set up for tips from the public (647-355-4148). The girl has been identified by her parents (whose family name has been withheld for privacy and security reasons) as having been diagnosed on the autism spectrum. Explaining further that the "only reason we're OK saying it now is because she's still missing". Missing, in fact, for over a week. 

 

Police have assured her frantic family that their daughter's disappearance has seen them committing all available resources to finding her. Community volunteers have enlisted themselves in a joint effort to find the girl. Launching a Priority or Level 1 search represents the highest level of police response in cases of missing children. Last seen on May 15 in North York in the area of Earl Bales Park at Bathurst Street and Sheppard Avenue West, the entire community awaits news of her safe recovery and return home.

 

As well as the concerned local Jewish community volunteering in the search, the Shomrim Safety Patrol, a group committed to ensuring the safety and security of Jewish communities across the Greater Toronto area founded in 2021, has also been involved in the search. At nearby Petah Tikvah Synagogue a command centre has been set up in the parking lot. 

 

Police have deployed a drone along with marine, canine and mounted units in their extensive search for the girl. They have, as well, created a QR code for people to scan and upload any video they may have, that might be of assistance in the investigation. There is, needless to say, an added element of fear when a young Jewish girl is alone and unprotected during this period of  high tension where Jews have become targets of heightened antisemitism and stated threats. 

 

 

"Esti, my love, if you are watching this, please come home. We love you so very much. We miss you terribly. Your family, here, across the country, and around the world, are searching and praying for you every minute. Your friends, classmates, neighbours, and community are all worried about you and hoping to see you safe."

"Please know this dearly: You’re not in trouble. Nobody is angry with you, no matter what has happened. All we care about is knowing that you are okay. If you can contact anyone, family, a friend, police, anyone, please do. We just want to know that you are safe."

Shira, mother of missing 14-year-old Esther