For more than two and a half years, antisemitism in Canada has moved from the margins to a daily feature of Jewish life. Synagogues have been shot at, including several Toronto-area congregations this spring (among them the Shaarei Shomayim, the synagogue where I was married). Jewish schools now operate with police at the doors, community events screen attendees and withhold their locations from public disclosure, protesters target Jewish residential areas, and many Canadian Jews have quietly taken the mezuzahs off their doorposts or tucked a Star of David out of sight. Despite antisemitism rates that have attracted increasing global attention, leadership prepared to directly confront Canada’s antisemitism problem has too often been lacking.

That is the backdrop against which many in the community, myself included, hoped Prime Minister Mark Carney would use yesterday’s speech on antisemitism to forcefully call it out and take ownership of the work of confronting it. After years in which too many leaders treated a tweet or a hedged statement as a sufficient response, a Prime Minister standing up to name the crisis without qualification was much needed. Carney rightly acknowledged that the country’s civic compact is failing Jewish Canadians. He noted that more than two-thirds of all religion-motivated hate crimes last year were directed at a community that makes up only one per cent of the population, adding:

They have thrown firebombs at synagogues and attacked community centres. They have targeted Jewish-owned businesses. Harassed Jewish patients at hospitals. They drove Jewish students from the common spaces on our university campuses. And desecrated our Holocaust memorials. Canadian parents must now weigh whether it is safe to send their children to a Jewish day school. Observant Canadians think twice before wearing a Kippah on the subway.

These are facts but given that there are some that deny or seek to justify these facts, it is important that the Prime Minister has called it out without equivocation. No one can say they don’t know.

Naming the crisis is only step one however, and on the parts that matter most, the speech missed the mark. Begin with where he chose to deliver it. Carney told his audience he was speaking in a synagogue but the address was for all Canadians. But a speech for all Canadians that frames antisemitism as a national problem belongs on the floor of the House of Commons, where Canadians are represented and where all MPs – whether or not they are Jewish or represent ridings with large Jewish populations – would have had to sit together and hear the need for the country to take responsibility for antisemitism. I’m happy to see Evan Solomon, Leslie Church, Anthony Housefather, Rachel Bendayan, and Ben Carr in attendance. But we need all MPs, particularly those who have said little about antisemitism since October 7th, to see this as their issue too. MPs from all perspectives sitting side-by-side only happens in the House of Commons, and it did not happen yesterday (as one rabbi noted, a speech in a synagogue was needed months ago in the immediate aftermath of the shootings).

The larger problem is that to hear the speech is to learn that Canada has an antisemitism problem without learning why. The hate is treated as something that simply appeared (or, more accurately, re-appeared as Carney traced back to Canada’s shameful legacy during the Holocaust) and now must be managed. There was no mention of October 7th, no mention of anti-Zionism, and no account of the factors that have left the community exposed. In fact, there was not even a mention of Israel either. The prepared remarks had one reference that sought to assure Canadians that antisemitism guidelines still permitted criticism of the State of Israel, but he skipped that reference on delivery in French. In this regard, Carney’s speech does not compare well with one Justin Trudeau gave a year ago on antisemitism in which he stated “no one in Canada should ever be afraid to call themselves a Zionist. I am a Zionist.”

As I argued when the Senate’s human rights committee released its report this spring, antisemitism in Canada today runs through two channels: Jews targeted for being Jewish, and Jews targeted for being Zionists. When more than nine in ten Canadian Jews regard the existence of a Jewish state as part of who they are, those are not two problems but one, and a response that will not name the way anti-Zionism is used to launder antisemitism cannot address it. Deborah Lyons, the former Special Envoy on antisemitism whose handbook on the IHRA definition exists for precisely that reason, understood this. Carney either does not or, worse, does not believe it.

Having failed to explain the source of the problem, Carney offered little in the way of new solutions. The measures he pointed to are already underway: counter-radicalization projects, additional security funding for community institutions, and the Criminal Code amendments already before Parliament. In other words, erect larger walls to protect the community without targeting the sources of the problem.

The one new element was the announcement of the membership of the Advisory Council on Rights, Equality and Inclusion, the body that replaced the Special Envoy positions the government eliminated in February. That council will be chaired by Culture Minister Marc Miller and includes just one member of the Jewish community, alongside a mix of representatives that includes the lawyer behind a legal challenge against the University of Alberta for calling in police to clear an encampment in 2024 that the University said raised public safety concerns. The council, with no obvious expertise on the issue and membership that some in the Jewish community will view to have been adverse in the past, has been asked to approach antisemitism with more study, research, data collection, and measurement.

But we are long past the time when the community needs more study. It has been living that assessment for many months at its schools, synagogues, community centres, old age homes, hospitals, and residential areas. What was missing from the speech was new policy that might turn the tide: a zero-tolerance standard for antisemitism on campuses or commitment to active prosecution of hate. Active support for extending bubble zone legislation or tackling antisemitism within the government itself. There are no shortage of ideas. Indeed, the recently released Senate committee report on standing united against antisemitism listed 22 recommendations for action, but Carney proceeded to ignore most of them. In fact, he assured that the council’s measures “are not curtailments of freedom of expression. They are not constraints on legitimate criticism of any government on any subject anywhere.”

This is not an argument that speaking out and providing support to the community does not matter. It does and this speech was overdue. But addressing antisemitism must combine words with action and a personal commitment, whatever the political cost. In delivering a speech lacking in urgency, that prioritizes criticism of Israel over the safety of Canadians, and which comes up empty on new ideas or policies, the Prime Minister failed to meet the moment.