# Canada warns of unprecedented threats against Jewish community
Senior Canadian national security officials are warning that the country's Jewish community faces unprecedented threats in both severity and scale, following Hamas's October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel.
In an interview with The Globe and Mail, officials from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Public Safety Department and the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre (ITAC) revealed that the pace of radicalization in Canada has reached levels not seen since the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.
According to the officials, the Jewish community is now facing a dangerous combination of threats from several directions: white nationalists, individuals inspired by Islamist terrorist organizations, Iran-directed threats, and online communities seeking to radicalize young people and encourage them to commit acts of violence.
The senior officials, who spoke anonymously because of the sensitive and classified nature of their work, said the radicalization process has accelerated significantly. In the past, they explained, it would take several months for an individual to progress to the stage of planning or attempting an act of violence.
Today, that process can take less than a month.
To illustrate the severity of the situation, the officials said Canadian security agencies have foiled five terrorist plots directly targeting the Jewish community over the past three years.
The cases included the arrest and indictment of minors in the capital, Ottawa; the arrest of a father and son in Toronto; and the arrest in Quebec of an individual who planned to cross the border into the US to carry out an attack against Jews there.
The rise in antisemitism is also reflected in police figures reported to Statistics Canada. In 2022, authorities recorded 527 hate crimes targeting the Jewish community.
In 2023, the year the war broke out, that figure nearly doubled to 959 reported incidents. In 2025, 788 cases were reported.
Jews make up just around one percent of Canada's population, yet they are the most frequently targeted religious group in hate crimes.
Security officials say that while the October 7 attacks served as a catalyst for the surge in antisemitic incidents, the phenomenon has become so widespread and deeply entrenched that the threat level is expected to remain high even if the situation in the Middle East changes.
Recent incidents include a shooting in Belleville, Ontario, where a former soldier opened fire on a small synagogue and shouted at police officers before being arrested. In a separate incident that same month, a 19-year-old man in Ontario was arrested on charges related to hate-motivated threats and planning an attack on a synagogue.
Against this backdrop, sources report that Canada's federal government is expected to unveil a new national security strategy, the first in more than 20 years, focusing on terrorism, foreign interference and the protection of national sovereignty.
Recognition of antisemitism as a strategic threat has already featured in a recently published government report, which describes the phenomenon not merely as a threat to public safety, but as a direct assault on the country's social cohesion and democratic values.