Canadians ‘must not be complacent’ as antisemitism, hatred rise: Trudeau
Global News
Hate crimes targeting the Jewish community have been on the rise. In 2021, there was a 47 per cent increase in police-reported hate crimes against Jewish people.
Canadians cannot be complacent as antisemitism and hatred grow across the country, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says.
Speaking at a Holocaust Remembrance Day memorial in Ottawa on Friday, the prime minister warned that in times of peace, people “look back at this atrocity, bewildered at how it could ever have been permitted to happen.”
“We wonder what could ever have driven people to such cruelty. But hate never overtakes us all at once. It creeps up inch by inch,” Trudeau said.
Lately, he added, “we have seen hateful and anti-Semitic rhetoric coming from dark corners of our society.”
“Canadians were horrified to see Nazi flags brought to Ottawa last year. It had a chilling effect,” he said, referencing the Nazi flag flown during the so-called “Freedom Convoy” protests in February.
“Hate is being amplified online and on other platforms. And so we cannot and must not be complacent. All Canadians, especially those of us here who are leaders, need to stand up and call it out plainly and loudly.”
According to Statistics Canada, hate crimes targeting the Jewish community have been on the rise. In 2021, there was a 47 per cent increase in police-reported hate crimes against Jewish people. Of the 884 religion-based hate crimes reported to police that year, 487 of them targeted the Jewish community.
On top of that, there have been high-profile incidents of antisemitism in popular culture in the last year. Rapper Kanye West publicly praised Adolf Hitler in a spate of antisemitic posts online that spurred a fierce wave of condemnation.