Antisemitism in Canada has reached the highest levels on record by two national measures. Statistics Canada counted 920 police-reported hate crimes targeting Jewish people in 2024, nearly triple the 331 recorded in 2020. B’nai Brith Canada’s annual audit logged 6,800 antisemitic incidents in 2025. Over the same period, Toronto has seen gunfire at a Jewish girls’ school, shots fired at synagogues and attacks on visibly Jewish residents.
Police-reported hate crimes against Jewish Canadians
Statistics Canada’s Uniform Crime Reporting Survey, which draws on police services covering more than 99% of the population, recorded 492 hate crimes against Jewish people in 2021 and 527 in 2022. The count then jumped 82% to 959 in 2023 before easing 4% in 2024. Jewish people were the target of 70% of all religiously motivated hate crimes in 2024, according to the agency’s report released March 30, 2026.
The agency’s monthly figures show when the sharpest change occurred. From January 2021 to September 2023, police reported an average of 45 hate crimes against Jewish people per month. In the last three months of 2023, after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, the monthly average rose to 159. The 2024 average fell to 77 per month, which was still 69% above the pre-October 2023 level, Statistics Canada said.
B’nai Brith audit shows a record year in 2025
B’nai Brith Canada’s League for Human Rights has published an audit of antisemitic incidents every year since 1982. Its 2025 total of 6,800 incidents is the highest in the audit’s history and works out to about 18.6 incidents a day. The total was 2,769 in 2022, 5,791 in 2023 and 6,219 in 2024, which means the 2025 figure is 145.6% higher than in 2022.
The audit counts reports sent to B’nai Brith through its hotline, app and website, along with data from law enforcement and other sources, so it measures something different from police statistics. Most of the 2025 incidents occurred online. In a brief to the House of Commons finance committee, B’nai Brith broke the 2025 total into 6,419 cases of harassment, 299 of vandalism and 10 of violence. Ontario accounted for 3,194 incidents, the most of any region.
Toronto attacks on schools, synagogues and residents
Bais Chaya Mushka Girls Elementary School in North York, a Chabad school with about 250 students, was hit by gunfire three times in 2024. The shootings happened overnight in May, on Yom Kippur in October, and on December 20, each time when the building was empty. No one was injured. In the December shooting, police said a passenger got out of a vehicle and fired six rounds at the front of the school. A 20-year-old man and a 17-year-old boy were arrested on firearms charges over the October shooting.
On March 6 and 7, 2026, synagogues in Vaughan and in Toronto near Bathurst Street and Glencairn Avenue had their front entrances struck by gunfire. Two people were inside the Vaughan synagogue and were not hurt. York Regional Police said on May 6 that an 18-year-old had been charged with two counts of discharging a firearm into a place. Police later announced charges against a second and a third suspect.
On April 30 and May 7, 2026, people whom Toronto police described as “visibly identifiable as Jewish” were shot with an imitation gel-blaster gun from a passing SUV. The second incident took place outside the Congregation Chasidei Bobov synagogue near Bathurst Street and Highway 401. Police charged an 18-year-old Vaughan man and then four more people. “These incidents were not random,” Chief Supt. Katherine Stephenson told reporters, according to CBC News.
Jewish-owned businesses have also been targeted. In January 2025, the Markham office of La Briut, a kosher restaurant business, was broken into and sprayed with antisemitic graffiti. York Regional Police’s hate crime unit investigated. Its Toronto restaurant was broken into two days later, and Toronto police said the two cases were related.
What Toronto police statistics show
Toronto Police Service figures went down in 2025. The service recorded 81 anti-Jewish hate crimes, down from 180 in 2024, as total hate crimes in the city fell by half. Even so, Jewish residents remained the most frequently targeted group. Anti-Jewish cases made up 35% of all hate crimes and 82% of religiously motivated ones in 2025.
The trend has turned upward again in 2026. In its release on the 2025 report, the service said reported hate crimes so far in 2026 were up 40% compared with the same period a year earlier. “The data shows that Jewish, Black and 2SLGBTQI+ communities remain most impacted, year after year,” Chief Myron Demkiw said.
For comparison with New England, see our report on antisemitism data in Massachusetts and our history of Boston’s Jewish community.
Additional details
- Statistics Canada says police data covers only incidents that come to police attention. Its 2019 victimization survey found that about 22% of incidents people perceived as hate-motivated were reported to police.
- B’nai Brith’s online harassment category accounted for 6,248 incidents in 2025, according to its House of Commons brief.
- Mischief was the most common anti-Jewish offence in Toronto in 2025, with 72 occurrences. Toronto police also reported more than 375 protests related to the Middle East conflict that year, with 84 arrests.
- After the December 2024 shooting, Toronto police said they would set up a command post outside Bais Chaya Mushka and keep an officer there around the clock.
- Toronto police’s 2024 total of hate crimes appears as 443 in the news release and as 462 in the full report. This article uses the full report’s figures for anti-Jewish cases.
- More Canada coverage: a 2026 guide for Canadians visiting Boston.
Charts: The Boston Report, built from the published figures cited under each chart. No numbers were estimated, and years without published data are left out.
Sources
- Statistics Canada: Police-reported hate crime in Canada, 2024
- Statistics Canada: Hate crimes motivated by religion, 2020 to 2024
- B’nai Brith League for Human Rights: 2025 Audit, Analyzing the Numbers
- B’nai Brith Canada: A National Crisis of Antisemitism
- B’nai Brith Canada brief to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance
- B’nai Brith Canada: 2021 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents
- Toronto Police Service: 2025 Hate Crime Report news release
- Toronto Police Service: 2025 Annual Hate Crime Statistical Report
- The CJN: Toronto Police hate crime figures
- CBC News: Gunshots fired at Toronto Jewish girls school for 3rd time
- Global News: Shots fired at Jewish elementary school in Toronto
- York Regional Police: Suspect charged in Vaughan and Toronto synagogue shootings
- CBC News: 4 more charged in suspected hate-motivated assaults
- CBC News: Kosher restaurant business broken into
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