Ontario announces new plan, funding to combat antisemitism in schools

Ontario has announced a new plan to combat antisemitism in schools, with $300,000 in funding earmarked for fighting prejudice in classrooms across the province.

The new investment comes as the world marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“I think that there’s probably nothing more powerful that can be done to honour the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and to stand with the survivors than to take action against antisemitism and other forms of hate today,” says Noah Shack, Vice President GTA at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

“We owe it to the memory of those who were murdered and to those who rebuilt their shattered lives to take on that burden.”

CIJA will receive half of the provincial funding to develop classroom resources for students in grades 5-8, focusing on the dangers of antisemitism. The new program will be designed to target that age group specifically.

“There’s a gap in this right now,” Shack tells CityNews. “Particularly for the middle school cohort where we’re seeing a number of these challenges.”

Shack believes that gap in education could be leaving the group vulnerable.

“There needs to be a greater focus on literacy recognizing some of the hate messaging that is included on various platforms and some of the recruitment tactics, frankly, that are used by hate groups to spread their messages that children are unfortunately very susceptible to falling prey to.”

The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies will also be receiving funding from the Ford government to create bilingual classroom resources that will introduce students to the topic of antisemitism, and ways to recognize and address it.

In 2019, Statistics Canada found police-reported hate crimes against Jewish people accounted for the highest number of religion-based hate crimes in the country. There were 321 police-reported incidents targeting Canada’s Jewish population in 2020.