The Ford government is on the right track when it comes to tackling antisemitism. Pictured: Ontario Education Minister Jill Dunlop. Photo Credit: Jill Dunlop/X.
Lost in the flurry of political news here at home this week was a disturbing news item.
On Monday, the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the notorious Nazi death camp Auschwitz, the Association of Canadian Studies released a Leger poll which found that 18 per cent of Canadians between 18 and 24 years of age think the Holocaust was exaggerated. Among those 25 to 34 years of age, the percentage was 15 per cent.
More than a million people, mostly Jews, were murdered at that camp alone during the Second World War. It was all part of the Nazi regime’s “final solution,” a deliberate campaign that killed six million Jews.
For those paying attention, the poll was just another reminder of the serious deterioration in our very social fabric and the gaps in our education system. Since the Ontario 7th, 2023 barbaric attack on Israel by the Hamas terrorist group, which killed over 1,000 Israelis, antisemitic hate crimes in Canada have increased by 670 per cent, according to the Israeli Ministry for Diaspora Affairs.
Jewish Canadians are the most targeted religious minority for hate crimes in this country according to Statistics Canada. While Jews make up just over one per cent of Canada’s population, they are victims of 70 per cent of religious hate crimes.
Canadians have witnessed Jewish schools, businesses, places of worship and neighbourhoods being targeted by gun shots, rock-throwing, vandalism and aggressive demonstrations. In some communities, parents needed security protection to walk their children to school.
In Canada!
What is to be done? The federal Liberal government’s morally ambiguous statements about both the October 7th attacks and the growing antisemitic violence in Canada have not helped. But wait, late last year, Ottawa announced it would hold a national forum to combat antisemitism in February. Not exactly earth-shattering.
More to the point has been Ontario’s response. Use the education system to teach our children what happened and why it must never happen again.
In 2023, then-Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce introduced new, mandatory learning material about the Holocaust that is now being included in the compulsory Grade 10 history curriculum. The new material, accompanied by $650,000 in new funding, includes critical training for teachers to focus on fundamental Canadian values and the importance of safeguarding democracy from extreme and harmful ideologies, like the fascism of the 1930s and 1940s.
The new course material expands upon mandatory material on the significance of the Holocaust that was introduced into the Grade 6 social studies curriculum. It aims to help students understand, cope with and respond to harmful stereotypes and assumptions.
Ontario’s current Education Minister, Jill Dunlop, continued the investments late last year with another $551,000 in additional funding to support classroom materials, lesson plans and workshops for educators and students focused on combatting antisemitism.
Part of the money is also going to help organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies and the Toronto Holocaust Museum to expand educational opportunities to learn about and prevent antisemitism.
But more is clearly needed as antisemitic incidents increase and those with firsthand knowledge of the Nazi atrocities slowly pass away. For example, only 56 survivors were able to attend this year’s event marking the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz’s closure.
What is needed now, to complement the new curriculum material, is a framework to monitor and assess how well that curriculum is being taught and to measure its impact. Teachers and school boards need to be held accountable for the outcomes, just like they are for other priority curriculum subjects like literacy and numeracy.
Stories of students being taken by their teachers to what turned out to be pro-Hamas and antisemitic demonstrations in the Toronto region, demonstrate how big the challenge is. And history clearly shows how serious the threat can be.
Janet Ecker is a former Ontario Finance Minister, Minister of Education, Minister of Community and Social Services and Government House Leader in the governments of Premier Mike Harris and Premier Ernie Eves. After her political career, she served as the founding CEO of the Toronto Financial Services Alliance, a public-private partnership dedicated to building Toronto region into an international financial centre. She currently sits on a number of corporate and non-profit boards, agencies and advisory committees.
Ms. Ecker received the Order of Canada for her public service contributions and was recognized as one of the “Most Influential People in the World’s Financial Centres” by Financial Centres International. She also received a “Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Award” from the Women’s Executive Network and the Richard Ivey School of Business, among other awards. She is also one of the founders of Equal Voice, a national, multi-partisan organization working to elect more women.
