Hear why a non-Jewish senator from Saskatchewan became a champion in the fight against antisemitism.

During the Senate’s year-long study on antisemitism, released a week ago on April 21, Senator David Arnot admits to becoming deeply upset when learning some Canadian Jews want to leave the country because they no longer feel safe.

The study began in Dec. 2024. During the year, Arnot and his colleagues on the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights heard 44 witnesses over seven meetings. They also received 36 written briefs. It wasn’t nearly as extensive a study as one done two years ago on Islamophobia, and the committee had until the end of 2026 to release its findings, but Arnot and his colleagues felt the “clear and present danger” of antisemitism was so serious, they wanted their recommendations for action to come out immediately.

“We’re not asking for the government to sort of dither around and think about it. There’s nothing more to think about. There’s a blueprint right now. Implement that blueprint with immediacy,” he says.

Aside from asking Canada to restore the now-cancelled position of the special envoy on antisemitism, and create a federal task force on antisemitism, Arnot—a former provincial court judge and longtime Chief of Saskatchewan’s Human Rights Commission—believes our education system has failed to produce informed citizens. As a result, he believes young people are more susceptible to misinformation they find online.

On today’s episode of The CJN’s North Star podcast, Arnot joins host Ellin Bessner to explain why he is convinced there’s no more time to waste to fix “this black mark on Canadian society.”

Related links

Transcript:

Sen. David Arnot: This is why it’s so compelling. We have to have action! No dithering. The time’s now.

Ellin Bessner: One week ago, Senator David Arnot and his colleagues held a media conference in Ottawa to release their report entitled “Standing United Against Antisemitism.”

The study launched during the final months of the Trudeau government in December 2024, but after just two hearings, the work suddenly stopped when the former prime minister’s departure triggered an election. Ten months went by.

With Mark Carney elected to Parliament, Arnot pushed for the study to resume. He was successful, and last fall, the Standing Committee on Human Rights held five more hearings. A total of 44 witnesses, plus received 36 written briefs.

The study wasn’t nearly as broad as the Senate’s look into Islamophobia two years earlier. That work involved travel and tripled the number of interviews, but Arnot and his colleagues felt they’d heard enough about anti-Semitism. And mindful of the Bondi Beach massacre and synagogue shootings and Jewish businesses targeted with gunfire in Canada, that their report couldn’t wait even though it wasn’t due until the end of this year.  Arnot and his colleagues admitted to being deeply moved by some of what they heard — Jewish university students telling them why they hide their identities, that foreign-funded groups seem to be behind some of the protests and attacks inside academia, unions, and the street protests, and that Jews remain the biggest target of any religious minority for hate crimes. But what seemed to affect Senator Arnot most wasn’t the data. It was when he heard that some Jewish Canadians no longer feel safe enough to stay here.

Senator David Arnot: You need to work collectively and collaboratively if you’re going to deal with this, and we have to deal with it. It is very acute. And it’s a real black mark on Canadian society to have this level of antisemitism alive in Canada today.

Ellin Bessner: I’m Ellin Bessner, and this is what Jewish Canada sounds like for Wednesday, April 29th, 2026. Welcome to North Star, the flagship podcast of The Canadian Jewish News, made possible thanks to the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.

Before he was appointed to the Senate five years ago, David Arnot was a longtime chief of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission and before that a provincial judge. No Jewish senators were part of the work of this antisemitism study, and in the past, some of the committee members, including the chair, took strong public positions critical of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. But the final report didn’t take any position on the conflict in the Middle East or tackle the definition of anti-Semitism. And that was on purpose. The report also sidelined testimony from a half dozen anti-Zionist and anti-Israel witnesses. Among the 22 recommendations, the top one was to bring back the position of special envoy on anti-Semitism and to fund it better, set up a federal anti-Semitism task force, and get tough with digital social media platforms that push anti-Semitic content and lead to radicalization — which Arnot thinks can be offset by boosting Holocaust education and teacher training, so Canadian kids won’t fall prey to antisemitic posts they see online. Senator Arnot joined me from his office in Saskatoon. This is his first media interview since the report came out.

And welcome to The Canadian Jewish News’ North Star podcast. It’s an honour to meet you.

Senator David Arnot: Oh, thank you very much, Ellin. It’s an honour to be here. I look forward to our discussion.

Ellin Bessner: Senator, we watched the press conference, of course, we read the report. I’ve been following this story for months. I want to ask you before we get into some of the whys, just about the reaction that the report, if any, has had that you’ve been aware of since it came out on the 21st.

Senator David Arnot: Well, I think people realize the seriousness of the report and the need for action. I know that CIJA has responded very well, and I think from what I’ve heard, people understand it, and I hope the Canadian Jewish community sees it as a very strong report and one that can motivate the federal government to address these issues in a really, focused way immediately.

Ellin Bessner: Why did you personally, Senator, want to have this issue studied by the Senate?

Senator David Arnot: Well, a couple of reasons. One is we studied Islamophobia and it calls out to study antisemitism, obviously. But I’ve been engaged in this issue for quite a while. I was the Chief Commissioner of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission for 13 years. One of the things that I’m really proud of about the work we did there is we took the hate speech case to the Supreme Court of Canada.

I know the Saskatoon Jewish community quite well for a lot of reasons. And I really understand, I think, the pain of antisemitism and how destructive it is and how antithetical to democratic values it is, and it needs to be addressed. In my opinion, it’s a very acute issue right now. And so personally, I feel that it’s so fundamentally wrong and discredits our democratic country, a free and democratic society, if we can allow this kind of hate to be pervasive to the extent that it is.

Ellin Bessner: I wanted to go back to what you just said, which is about hate speech. And a lot of it, as your report says, comes from digital misinformation on the internet or digital actors. I think that was a really key recommendation from the committee to tackle this. I even think somebody said — and it might have been you — that the Canadian education system has failed, because students aren’t learning what it is.

Senator David Arnot: It was me. I feel very strongly about this. I really respect the power of education, and I see education as probably the primary way to address antisemitism, because all of these -isms are based on ignorance and fear, and the only way you can attack that, I think, is getting into the schools. And I say it from some experience in the sense that when I was at the Human Rights Commission, we created a set of resources that answer the question: what does it mean to be a Canadian citizen? What are the rights of citizenship, but also what are the responsibilities that come with those rights? And there is one fundamental responsibility of all Canadian citizens, in my opinion, and that is to respect your fellow citizen — no exceptions. And we have a set of resources, Grades K to 12, that does that, and it does that in a very intentional way, because you have to start at a very young age and you have to do it sequentially, intentionally, very purposefully. You know, Canada is described as the best example of a pluralist society by many people. Yet we haven’t invested in education to inculcate in students — in their minds, their hearts — what it means to be a Canadian citizen.

Ellin Bessner: Can I just interject there for a minute? It is a provincial matter. This is a big issue. You may say do this, do that, but it’s the provinces who control the curriculum. Mandatory Holocaust training, which is starting now or has started in several provinces in certain grades — but then the teacher unions are all being sued for their antisemitism and their anti-Israel policies, and that’s the issue: you have other actors between you and the classroom. So how do you deal with that?

Senator David Arnot: We challenge the Heritage Minister, Heritage Canada, to work collaboratively with all education ministers because this is really a collaborative issue. If you look at our report, I believe it’s very strong. I believe it’s very prescriptive. I think it’s the most prescriptive report done by the Senate in a number of years. And it’s not my opinion — it’s the opinion of some others who have spoken to me.

We did that on purpose. You know, you can get hung up in the constitutionality of education, but really there are some fundamental common denominators. One is that the Heritage Minister has a responsibility to educate the whole community, the whole of Canada, about our cultural values, our democratic values. We have failed. It’s unfortunate.

We have such a strong governance model, strong institutions in education, justice, and government. We haven’t done enough to really engage citizens. So you can say that you’re the world’s leader in pluralistic society, a multicultural, multiethnic society, but if you don’t teach that, you’re going to lose it. It’s not going to happen by osmosis. It’s not going to be manna from heaven. You have to do it in a way that’s very purposeful. And if we don’t, we have failed. And I think the evidence of the failure is everywhere.

These are democratic principles, and this is why there’s a real link between anti-Semitism and the weakening of our democracy. And that’s another thing we said in this report. The Senate has a role to play. We’re reflecting the voices of what we heard. I’m not hung up on the constitutionality and the arguments over this space and that space. What I’m saying to all ministers of education, to the federal government, provincial and territorial governments, is there is a collective responsibility in all Canadian citizens to deal with antisemitism, and that responsibility can play out in any number of ways, but it requires collaboration and cooperation.

This Prime Minister — the current Prime Minister we have — is one who can lead us out of a very difficult situation. We have good ministers in the government that I’ve met, and I know they’re engaged in these issues, so I expect a strong response from Minister Fraser, the Minister of Justice, from Minister Anandasangaree in Public Safety, and from Minister Miller in Heritage, Canadian culture. If you’re going to deal with this, and we have to deal with it — it is very acute, and it’s a real black mark on Canadian society to have this level of antisemitism alive in Canada today. And there are tools that we have. If they’re implemented properly with the right spirit and intent of what these 22 recommendations say, it will make a difference. You know, one of the questions I asked in committee of Heritage Canada:”You say you’ve been working on racism, gender discrimination, and anti-Semitism — what’s the result?”

It’s not good enough. Whatever the result is, we need to make a change. We need to make a cultural change in Canada to really understand — we have all these principles, but we have to put the theory into practice.

Ellin Bessner: Mark Miller and the Prime Minister announced in February they’re scrapping the special envoy for antisemitism and the special representative for Islamophobia and wrapping it into some advisory council. Why did your committee recommend bringing this back in a much more focused way?

Senator David Arnot: We felt very strongly about this. I know Deborah Lyons. I know the work she did on these issues. She worked very hard. She made relationships with the business community, with the universities, with the Jewish community. She made a number of relationships. She had a big role to play in education. She did a wonderful job in my opinion, but you have to be funded commensurate with the mandate, and I don’t believe she was.

Why eliminate a champion on these issues when they can be helpful? We need a number of vectors going all in the same direction. There are other players that can play a role in this — university presidents, the business community. So don’t eliminate. And I felt that it was a mistake. It’s like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Why do that? It makes no sense

We’re asking in one of the recommendations for more research, but actually a national education awareness program in Canada. And that’s basically what Lyons was trying to get started. She created the foundation — build on it, don’t throw it out. And to me, there was very little consultation, and I was quite surprised to hear of the elimination of the special envoy.

Ellin Bessner: You mentioned at the start of our interview that the Senate studied Islamophobia —it was the one that came out in 2024. They had 153 witnesses. They traveled; they spent a lot longer in terms of the breadth of who they spoke to. The one on antisemitism — and of course we had an election in the middle of it, so that kind of messed things up.

I’m just wondering, do you feel that you had enough information, that the study on antisemitism wasn’t given short shrift compared to what the one on Islamophobia had?

Senator David Arnot: Yeah, well, I was on the one on Islamophobia, and we did travel throughout Canada, etc. Time was of the essence really on the antisemitism study, but I look at the quality of the report and the quality of the evidence. I have no hesitation in saying we had really powerful witnesses — the right witnesses, very focused, very concise, very professional. I think we heard all the voices that we could in a realistic time frame. If we had done it with many more witnesses and more traveling, we’d still be writing the report. I believe one of the factors is this issue is so acute in Canada. So I don’t see any deficiency in this report or the manner in which we conducted it. I think the quality of the report is high, and I’ll be frank — in my opinion, the quality of these recommendations is much more prescriptive and very, very specific. In the Islamophobia report, we touched on the issue of education, rights, responsibilities, but we didn’t do it in a focused way. And I argued with my colleagues and we got much more precision, and we weren’t fettered by the constitutional siloing arguments of provincial and territorial versus federal rights.

Ellin Bessner: I was shocked that of the witnesses that came, there were at least six, if not eight, who were decidedly anti-Israel, anti-Zionist. Some were Jewish, some were not. And I need to ask: how did they allow those witnesses to get a hearing, when even you and others pushed back and said they’re marginal groups?

Senator David Arnot: I believe the steering committee felt that they were lobbied by a number of individual groups, and I think the committee wanted to err on the side of hearing as many voices as possible, and we did. If you look at the final report, it’s the credibility of the witnesses that we focused on and talked about in the report — that speaks to the way the committee heard the evidence. What I’m saying there is we focused on the strongest voices, the most reasonable voices, and those are what’s reflected in the final 22 recommendations. The credibility of some of these individuals — I think the questioning in some of the committee hearings where we heard those witnesses demonstrated that there was a credibility gap.

Ellin Bessner: One of them said that the Jews are making too much of it — that they’re actually faking the arson and faking some of these attacks. And I know some of the senators, including yourself, pushed back on it.

Senator David Arnot: Well, I think it was disturbing to hear it from the point of view of the senators as well.

Ellin Bessner: There are four colleagues on the committee who, at the start of this study, had spoken out against Israel, signed petitions, spoken in public forums against Israel, including the chair. Did you notice whether they also had a shift in their views as they started hearing this testimony, because the report was unified — you said at the press conference, a unified voice?

Senator David Arnot: The quality of the evidence was such and the emotion, the passion from some of the witnesses was such that you couldn’t help but be moved by it. And I can only speak for myself, so I won’t speak to other colleagues. But I think the reaction, the words that were used at the press conference, are reflective of a real deep understanding of the quality of this hatred and the effect it has on individuals, the effect it has on communities, and the effect it has on the whole of Canadian society. And when you see it from that perspective, I think the report speaks for itself.

Ellin Bessner: The report didn’t go in to define antisemitism. Can you explain why you thought it was not your role to do that in this report?

Senator David Arnot: Well, yeah, we heard about the IHRA definition — ten years to get agreed to and supported by the government of Canada — also the Jerusalem Declaration, New Jersey, etc. Look, we weren’t going to debate the semantics of a definition. It’s just a tool to give people an understanding about what antisemitism is. That’s all you can say.

What we can say is antisemitism and hatred against Jewish people in Canada is on the streets every day in this country, and that’s what we’re aiming at. We weren’t going to be distracted by those voices that wanted us to make some kind of a statement about which definition is better or stronger. It’s the action that we see in the streets that we wanted to address.

Ellin Bessner: The report was being written after Bondi Beach in December in Australia, and then March 7th, the three synagogue shootings, the Jewish businesses in Toronto being targeted with gunfire, which I covered. Was the report still being written at that time? And if so, how did that impact the urgency of your message?

Senator David Arnot: Well, the report is written by a committee, so it was under construction. I know what happened — we mentioned right in the opening that we were shocked, as all Canadians were, about what was happening on the streets in Canada, in Toronto. It just says the urgency and the immediacy is amplified by those very acts that are happening in the space of a few months while we’re writing a report.

Ellin Bessner: So what responsibility did it bring to the whole process — what influence, if any, did it have?

Senator David Arnot: Clearly we’re asking for an immediate response. We’re not asking for the government to dither around and think about it. There’s nothing more to think about. There’s a blueprint right now. Implement that blueprint with immediacy. And in my opinion, there’s no explanation that’s worthy of an excuse not to implement this as soon as possible.

Ellin Bessner: My last question. We have this report come out about a week before the federal economic statement, which comes out April 28th, And the day before that, B’nai Brith’s annual antisemitism audit comes out. So where do you think your recommendations will land?

Senator David Arnot: Well, I’m hoping that the report will be a foundation for other voices — not only the Senate — to amplify the seriousness, build on our report, and hold the government to account on each one of these issues. You look at education, we spoke strongly about all of those points. Digital education — get on with it. We know AI, we’ve got an AI minister, we should be dealing with these things in a very focused way. And I’m hoping that voices will come together, whether it’s from the police chiefs and others who know about these things.

We’re asking for hate crimes units in every large municipality in Canada and certainly in every province and territory.

Ellin Bessner: Ontario’s — I know you mentioned one of your colleagues mentioned — just announced it’s forming one for the provincial attorney general’s department.

Senator David Arnot: These are reasonable responses reflecting the gravity of the concern, and these are incredibly valuable, vulnerable communities. We know that Jewish Canadians are concerned about the lives and safety of their children, their families, their community. And we’ve heard in our testimony Jewish Canadians born in this country, who have lived their whole lives here, are thinking of leaving Canada.

And I saw a report out of the United Kingdom just last week that said that 20% of Jewish people living in the UK are either leaving or thinking of leaving. This is remarkable. This is outrageous. Canadians should be reacting with alarm. How could this be? That’s the extent of the concern, and it’s valid.

Ellin Bessner: I appreciate this really extended interview. Thank you very much for coming on to The Canadian Jewish News North Star podcast.

Senator David Arnot: Thank you, Ellin. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to Canadians about these issues, and I would certainly like to answer any questions that come forward from any of the listeners.

Ellin Bessner: And that’s what Jewish Canada sounded like for this episode of North Star, made possible thanks to the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.

Now that the report is out, there’s no firm deadline for the Carney government to officially respond, but yesterday’s spring economic statement did answer one of the report’s recommendations. The government is boosting safety subsidies for communities at risk of hate attacks to the tune of $75 million over the next five years.

You can read the report for yourselves or watch the press conference through the links in our show notes.

And if you want to write to the senator, we’re at [email protected].

Our show is produced by Zachary Judah Kauffman, with Michael Fraiman as the executive producer, and Alicia Richler is our editorial director. Thanks for listening.

Credits

Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner )Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director)Music: Bret Higgins

Support our show