Standing united against antisemitism in Canada

OTTAWA, ON, Jan. 27, 2026 /CNW/ - To mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Charlotte-Anne Malischewski, serving as Chief Commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, issues the following statement:

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Canadian Human Rights Commission joins people across Canada and around the world in honouring the six million Jewish lives taken during the Holocaust. Today marks the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, which alone claimed the lives of over one million Jewish people.

We call on everyone in Canada, to stand united today -- and every day -- against antisemitism.

We also remember the many others targeted by Nazi persecution, including ethnic Poles, Roma and Sinti communities, Soviet civilians, 2SLGBTQI+ people, people with disabilities, and political and religious dissidents.

We must never forget or deny the scale of the Holocaust, or how these horrors were allowed to happen. They were the result of deliberate state actions that normalized dehumanization, exclusion, violence and hateful rhetoric.

The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights treaties emerged from these atrocities. The post-war international legal order Canada helped to build was designed precisely to constrain these risks of catastrophic harm. Over the decades that followed, these international commitments have become part of our domestic human rights ecosystem. And just last week in his address to the World Economic Forum, while speaking about how Canada will adapt to new realities, Prime Minister Carney affirmed respect for human rights as a fundamental Canadian value.

We must make these commitments real in the daily lives of people in Canada. This includes standing strong against antisemitism. Statistics Canada reported a 178% increase of police-reported hate crimes targeting Jewish people from 2020 to 2024. And we know also know that manifestations of antisemitism also go unreported, out of fear or a lack of trust in the system. The recent antisemitic massacre on Australia's Bondi Beach reminds us of the devastating consequences when unchecked hate and intolerance incite and embolden people to commit acts of violence.

Hate divides us and eats away at the foundations of our democracy and our social fabric. When hate manifests in our communities, it is a threat to public safety and to who we are as a nation. It silences people, shuts down debate, reinforces prejudice, and dehumanizes individuals and communities. In doing so, it makes discrimination easier and desensitizes us to threats and violence.

As Canada's National Human Rights Institution, we urge the Government to expand on its 2024 Action Plan on Combatting Hate. Canada needs a proactive regime capable of addressing the root causes of intolerance, to stop hate before it escalates into violence.

Government action alone cannot replace our collective responsibility to stand up for the safety of our neighbours. It is the responsibility of every person in Canada to speak up, refuse to look away, and reject antisemitism – and all forms of discrimination and hate.

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SOURCE Canadian Human Rights Commission

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