This Week in Canada: A Welcome Mat for Jewish Canadians?

Welcome back to This Week in Canada, where Jews who want to leave are gaining more support from Americans, the reality of the Canada-U.S. trade war sounds like a reality show, and the September 11 terrorist attacks are not “terrorist attacks.” Let’s jump in!

More than 10,000 people from South Africa have entered the United States as refugees since President Donald Trump opened the country to Afrikaners who “are victims of unjust racial discrimination,” as he put it last year. Pressure is now growing for the president to do the same thing for Jewish Canadians.

A group of American lawmakers, faith leaders, and conservative activists asked Trump in a letter in August to “establish an appropriate, lawful immigration and humanitarian pathway for Jewish Canadians who are experiencing persecution or who credibly fear for their safety because they are Jewish.”

The letter cited the widely documented surge in antisemitism in Canada, including 27 violent antisemitic incidents between the start of this year and mid-July, compared with 10 during all of 2025, according to B’nai Brith Canada. As I reported in June, Jews account for roughly 1 percent of Canada’s population, but are “69 percent of all hate crimes reported by police in 2024 that were motivated by religion. Jews were the targets of more hate crimes than all other religious groups combined.”