Teachers Linked to 17 Percent of Anti-Semitic Incidents in Ontario Schools: Federal Report

Teachers and school-sanctioned activities have been at the origin of many anti-Semitic incidents in Ontario’s K-12 school system, according to a new federal report.

The report was commissioned by Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Anti-Semitism and conducted by Robert Brym, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Toronto.

The report found a sharp rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Ontario schools between October 2023 and January 2025, and said around 17 percent of the incidents stem from “teacher or school-sanctioned activities expressing a point of view that made Jewish children feel unwelcome because they are Jewish.”

In addition, the report found that 49 percent of the total anti-Semitic incidents reported were not investigated by school authorities. 

The report is based primarily on a survey conducted of 599 Jewish parents and their reports of 781 antisemitic incidents in Ontario’s K-12 schools, occurring between October 2023 and January 2025. The survey aimed to examine the “prevalence, nature, and impact” of anti-Semitic incidents in elementary and secondary schools across Ontario, where over half of Canada’s Jewish population resides.

While the most frequent type of anti-Semitic incidents (around 35 percent) were harassment, threats, inciting violence, and insults delivered in person or online, in second place, at more than 17 percent, fell into the category of “teacher or school-sanctioned activities.”

The anti-Semitic incidents linked to teachers mentioned in the report include teachers who wore shirts meant to deny Israel’s existence by displaying a map of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza that lacked boundaries between regions and was overlaid by the colours of the Palestinian flag or emblazoned with the slogan, “From the river to the sea.” In 2024, one Ottawa teacher noticed a six-year-old Jewish girl’s necklace displayed a pendant in the shape of a map of Israel. She informed the child it is a map of Palestine. When a fellow Jewish student responded, “It’s Israel,” and explained it was a gift from their Hebrew school, the teacher said: “Your Hebrew school teachers are lying.”

In other incidents mentioned in the report, teachers invited speakers to talk about the Israel-Palestine conflict from a “radical Palestinian point of view” while failing to invite counterparts to offer “a more nuanced interpretation of the complex history” of the conflict. In addition, several school trustees sported keffiyehs at school board meetings where parents were expected to raise issues about the mistreatment of their Jewish children. The mother of a grade 12 student in Ottawa reported a November 2023 school assembly in which a speaker minimized the atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.

Brym’s report finds that more than one in ten Jewish students in Ontario have experienced an anti-Semitic incident in the time period surveyed, with the vast majority of the incidents occurring in Toronto at 60.8 percent, followed by Ottawa at 20.9 percent. 

Nearly three-quarters of reported anti-Semitic incidents took place in schools under the authority of the Toronto District School Board, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, and the York Region District School Board.

According to the report, the majority of incidents occurred in English public schools, causing 16 percent of parents whose Jewish children were harassed to move to a new school, most commonly to Jewish private schools. Brym’s assessment also notes that 14 percent of anti-Semitic incidents involved bomb threats targeting Jewish private schools. 

The report noted that fewer than 60 percent of anti-Semitic incidents referred to Israel or the Israel-Hamas war, and instead involved Holocaust denial, assertions of excessive Jewish wealth or power, or “blanket condemnation of Jews,” saying they were “the kind of accusations and denunciations that began to be expunged from the Canadian vocabulary and mindset in the 1960s and were, one would have thought, nearly totally forgotten by the second decade of the 21st century.”

Among those surveyed, the primary reactions to experiencing anti-Semitic harassment were anger (31 percent), fears about being bullied if they returned to school (around 27 percent) and worrying about social isolation or losing non-Jewish friends (over 27 percent). 

In addition to highlighting the challenges faced by Jewish students in Ontario’s K-12 system, the report says that Ontario school boards “significantly underestimate” how many Jewish students are in their care and the severity and frequency of anti-Semitic incidents. 

Brym writes that the real number of anti-Semitic incidents is likely higher because, while conducting his survey, he experienced numerous parents worried for the safety of their family if they reported what had happened, despite assurances of anonymity. Furthermore, he noted that many kids don’t want to tell their parents about anti-Semitic incidents because they believe that if it reaches school authorities it will “become common knowledge in the student population and lead to ostracism, harassment, or physical assault.”

The report concludes that Ontario has a significant problem with anti-Semitism in its English public schools in particular, and that it’s not only among students, but also facilitated by some teachers. 

“In short, the picture illustrates the way some Ontario school children treat their Jewish classmates and the manner and degree to which some teachers and school administrators in Ontario disrespect, exclude, and devalue Jewish children, not just by doing little to prevent, stop, and punish antisemitic actions, but also by initiating actions that make Jewish students feel unsafe and unwanted,” the report said.

“The status quo for Ontario Jewish students is unsustainable and unacceptable,” said Josh Landau, Director, Government Relations for Ontario at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) in response to the report.

“The government must act to implement robust, system-wide reforms that will ensure schools are safe and inclusive for all students, including those targeted because of their Jewish identity.”

The report comes amid a nationwide surge in anti-Semitic harassment, violence and hate crimes, including an arsonist’s attempt to burn down the Schara Tzedeck Synagogue in Vancouver in May 2024 and three incidents of gunfire against a Jewish girls’ school in Toronto last year. Further incidents include a series of bomb threats against Canadian synagogues and community centres, disruption of a terrorist plot to murder Jews by a Pakistani national, and the December 2024 firebombing of the Beth Tikvah synagogue in Montreal. Last month a City of Ottawa employee was fired after defacing a Holocaust memorial in Ottawa with spray paint.

According to B’Nai Brith Canada, there were 6,219 anti-Semitic incidents recorded in 2024, the highest figure ever documented since the organization began recording anti-Semitic incidents in 1982, and a 7.4 percent jump since 2023.