For the better part of two years, I have written about antisemitism on Canadian university campuses from the vantage point of personal experience: a post I never thought I would need to write on the right of Jewish students to feel safe on campus, the normalization of antisemitism at encampments including at my own university, the trepidation that accompanied a new academic year, and the chilling effect on expression that I described to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. Those accounts, alongside those of many students who shared their experiences, were often downplayed by some as exaggerated or unrepresentative. Yet this week, the release of the Canadian Heritage-backed Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences (CASE) report, conducted through the Office of the former Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism and produced by the Association for Canadian Studies and the Metropolis Institute, puts that claim to rest. The report, for which I served as a member of the advisory board, provides the most comprehensive national data to date on the experiences of Jewish students at Canadian post-secondary institutions. The report makes for difficult reading as it confirms that Canada is facing an antisemitism crisis on campus, with the overwhelming majority of the Jewish students surveyed stating that they had experienced or witnessed at least one instance of antisemitism over the prior year.
Latest Posts
Why the Answers to Hateful Content Online are Hiding in the Platforms’ Own Rules
The Canadian government has a two-pronged legal strategy to counter rising hate: New Criminal Code provisions to address offline harms, such as intimidation or protests outside schools and places of worship, and the digital safety bill introduced in June, which targets online harms. A new legal duty to act responsibly, which would require internet platforms to publish digital safety plans, provide greater transparency on their efforts to counter harms, and occasionally remove content, serves as the foundation for fighting back against the spread online of illegal content such as non-consensual distribution of intimate images, cyberbullying, terrorist content, and content that incites violence or hatred.
These are worthwhile measures. But for those concerned with antisemitism, Islamophobia, or other forms of hate, my Globe and Mail op-ed notes that stricter rules against illegal content are basic table stakes. The bigger challenge is the far larger category of content best described as “awful but lawful”: the tropes, conspiracy theories, and coded dehumanization that cause serious harm but remain constitutionally protected expression. A law mandating this material’s removal would invite an immediate Charter challenge. Instead, we need to figure out how to address harms without overstepping constitutional safeguards for freedom of expression.
From CCH to ChatGPT: How Canadian Copyright Law Played the Key Role in Deciding a Leading AI Training Data Case in India
The Delhi High Court has released what may be one of the most consequential copyright decisions yet on artificial intelligence, ruling in ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. v. OpenAI that OpenAI’s use of copyrighted news articles to train the models behind ChatGPT is prima facie fair dealing. The 135-page decision of Justice Amit Bansal, released last week, dismissed an Indian news agency’s application for an interim injunction, and while it is expressly not a final ruling on the merits, it features valuable analysis of the copyright implications of machine research, market harm and the public interest. The case is particularly notable from a Canadian perspective since it is the 2004 landmark CCH Supreme Court of Canada copyright case that provides the decision’s fair dealing foundation.
Starting Over: Court Filing Confirms the CRTC’s Streamer Contribution Decisions Are Dead With a Full Online Streaming Act Reset to Come
When the government announced plans last month to kill the CRTC’s Online Streaming Act ruling, it left a critical question unanswered: was the target only the Commission’s decision to increase streamer contributions to 15 percent, or did the reversal extend to the original base contribution decision requiring foreign streamers to contribute five percent of their Canadian revenues? A new court filing confirms it is both. In a letter to the Federal Court of Appeal dated July 17, 2026, first reported by the Wire Report, Department of Justice Senior General Counsel Michael Morris advised the court that “the Government’s intention is to eliminate the base contribution requirement on streaming services and to provide government funding to replace those contributions.” The entire contribution framework the CRTC has built since 2024 is therefore dead, with taxpayers covering the costs while the government develops a replacement.
The Name on the Window Was Enough: The Attacks on Kiva’s and the Normalization of Antisemitic Violence in Canada
Kiva’s, the well-known Toronto Jewish bakery, was struck by gunfire and smashed windows in two locations over the weekend. This one is personal as Kiva was my grandmother’s cousin. Both were Holocaust survivors who rebuilt their lives in Toronto, and though he sold the business years ago, the owners have kept his name on the window ever since. Whoever fired at that window almost certainly knew none of this, since for those responsible the Jewish name on the storefront was evidently reason enough.
For me, the sense that the violence keeps landing close to home is not new. The Pride of Israel synagogue, where I grew up and where my parents have been members for decades, was vandalized in 2024, and last summer an elderly Jewish woman was stabbed in a hate-motivated attack at my local Ottawa grocery store, a Loblaws known for carrying the city’s largest selection of kosher food. The attack on Kiva’s makes three incidents with a direct personal connection, which might seem like a remarkable string of bad luck were it not for the reality that the volume of antisemitic violence in Canada now ensures that many Jewish Canadians can tell a similar story about their synagogue, their school, their grocery store, or their family. For anyone wondering why so many Canadian Jews describe feeling vulnerable and unsafe, that is the answer.
Recent Posts
Canada’s Campus Antisemitism Crisis: National Survey Finds Antisemitism Nearly Everywhere and University Responses Nowhere 
Why the Answers to Hateful Content Online are Hiding in the Platforms’ Own Rules 
From CCH to ChatGPT: How Canadian Copyright Law Played the Key Role in Deciding a Leading AI Training Data Case in India 
Starting Over: Court Filing Confirms the CRTC’s Streamer Contribution Decisions Are Dead With a Full Online Streaming Act Reset to Come 
The Name on the Window Was Enough: The Attacks on Kiva’s and the Normalization of Antisemitic Violence in Canada
