Police work the scene of a shooting outside the Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Belleville, Ont., Sept. 21.Ian MacAlpine/The Canadian Press
Senior Canadian national-security officials are warning that the Jewish community in Canada is facing unprecedented and unparalleled threats, both in severity and number, in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.
The officials told The Globe and Mail that the speed of radicalization in this country is creating risks to the Jewish community at a pace not seen since after the 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S.
Officials from CSIS, the RCMP, Public Safety Canada and the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre said a convergence of threats now faces the Jewish community: white nationalists, people inspired by Islamic terrorist groups, threats from Iran, and online communities that specifically target young people to persuade them to carry out violent acts.
The Globe is not naming the officials because of the sensitive and often classified nature of their work.
Their stark analysis was provided to The Globe in response to a request for a briefing on the scope of the threat posed by antisemitism in Canada.
Shooting at Belleville synagogue an escalation of antisemitic violence, advocates say
On Thursday, the federal government is set to unveil a new national-security strategy, the first in more than 20 years, according to eight different sources who spoke with The Globe. None of those sources were involved in The Globe’s background briefing with security officials.
The strategy will lay out the government’s view on what constitutes national security and how Canada can operate in the rapidly shifting geopolitical environment. It is expected to drive Ottawa’s foreign and defence policies. Terrorism, foreign interference and sovereignty are expected to be significant themes.
Last month, the federal government said in a report that it views antisemitism as a matter of national security.
“Beyond the very real and immediate threat to Jewish individuals and communities, antisemitism is a core component of many violent extremist ideologies,” the report stated.
“Antisemitism is both an indicator and an accelerator of radicalization and its spread – as history shows – and it is not just a threat to public safety but to social cohesion and democratic values.”
Jewish communities have been pressing the government for years to take antisemitism more seriously and commit more resources to protect them and to counter radicalization.
The security officials said the speed of radicalization has increased markedly. They said it used to take several months before a person tried to carry out a violent act, and now it can happen in under a month.
The officials noted that their agencies’ work on violent extremism in Canada and not on the full range of hate and criminality facing the Jewish community.
They declined to provide the specific number of cases they are investigating, though one official noted having been up until after midnight dealing with one case and then back at work the next day before 7 a.m. to start work on another.
The officials also cited the disruption in Canada of five terror plots targeting the Jewish community in the past three years, including the arrests and charging of minors in Ottawa, a father and son in Toronto, and the arrest in Quebec of a man who was planning to travel to the U.S. to attack Jews there.
And they pointed to the police-reported hate-crimes data captured by Statistics Canada to illustrate the scope of the problem.
In 2022, there were 527 hate crimes targeting the Jewish community that were reported to police, according to Statscan.
In 2023, Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people. Israel responded with a sustained military campaign that killed more than 70,000 people.
In Canada that year, there were 959 reported incidents of antisemitism.
In 2025, the last full year of data available, there were 788.
The officials said that while the post-Oct. 7 environment has seen an explosion in antisemitism in Canada, it has become so pervasive that the threats will remain high even if conditions in the Middle East change, as not all of the attacks have direct connections to that conflict.
Jews make up roughly 1 per cent of the population in Canada but are the most targeted group for hate crimes linked to religion.
In March, an assessment prepared by the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre and obtained by The Globe noted that a violent extremist attack against Canada’s Jewish community was a “realistic possibility” in the next six months.
ITAC is an independent body staffed by members of Canada’s various intelligence networks, as well as the RCMP, National Defence and the Canada Border Services Agency.
Last month, the small Jewish community in Belleville, Ont., was targeted by a former soldier who attacked a synagogue as people gathered for a Jewish holiday.
In a video circulated by police, the shooter can be heard yelling, “you are going to die for the Jews,” before opening fire on a police officer stationed outside the building.
Also in September, a 19-year-old from Whitby, Ont., was arrested and charged with hate-motivated threats after allegedly posting threats that he was going to attack a local synagogue.
The security officials declined to say if the two incidents were linked. They said they are working with the Ontario Provincial Police on the Belleville shooting.
Some media outlets have reported that the shooter was radicalized online by COVID-19 related conspiracy theories, but the security officials would not discuss what they knew of his past.
The security officials said they are seeing cases of radicalization pop up in places they would never have expected before in Canada, stating that the threats are coming online and everywhere, from Newfoundland to the North.