U.S. antisemitism envoy calls on Canada to restrict visas, expand terrorism listings

Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun arrives to a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing on his nomination to be the special envoy to monitor and combat anti-semitism, Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

OTTAWA — U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy for fighting antisemitism is urging Canada to revoke visas and expand terrorism listings to curb the rise of anti-Jewish hatred.

Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, who spent seven years of his childhood in Ottawa, was appointed last December as U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, an ambassador-rank position.

“My message is to Canada, you need to do better,” Kaploun told The Canadian Press last week during a visit to Ottawa.

Kaploun said he chose to visit Ottawa because the United States is concerned about the spike in acts of anti-Jewish hatred in Canada documented in crime statistics and by Jewish organizations. Police in Canada reported 788 hate crimes targeting Jews in 2025, up from 492 in 2021.

Across Canada, Jewish schools, businesses and temples have been targeted by frequent shootings and bomb threats.

Kaploun noted that right before his arrival in Ottawa, shots were fired at the American consulate in Toronto for the second time since March and two Jewish-owned bakeries were attacked in Toronto, one by gunfire.

A fire heavily damaged a building housing a kosher restaurant in Montreal on the weekend; police said they are investigating it as an arson but had not identified a motive by Tuesday morning. At least two U.S. congressmen expressed solidarity with Montreal’s Jewish community afterwards.

“The levels of hate in Canada are unbelievably high, and unfortunately with government inaction, I’m arriving here a day after our consulate was attacked with gunfire, (two) Jewish stores were attacked in Toronto — and yet the response seems to be muted,” Kaploun said.

He said his office has been “inundated” with calls from Canadian citizens who don’t feel safe in their country.

Kaploun said it’s a far cry from the Canada he recalls from his childhood; he attended the former Hillel Academy elementary school in downtown Ottawa from 1974 to 1981. He said Canada did a better job at the time of teaching children about the Holocaust and the importance of inclusion.

“When I played in the streets, I played with non-Jewish children. We all played together. And if my kippah (skullcap) fell off, the game would stop and someone would bring it back to me. You don’t see that today, anymore,” he said.

In a media statement, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s office said his government has taken steps to curb antisemitic attacks.

“That is what this government is delivering, through tougher laws, investments in community safety, and strengthened efforts to foster community cohesion,” wrote spokeswoman Renée LeBlanc Proctor, who listed various new laws, funding pledges and counter-radicalization programs.

“This government will continue to work toward a country where our differences are honoured and where Jewish Canadians can live visibly, fully, and joyfully in public life.”

But Kaploun compared the current situation in Canada to the year Adolf Hitler established the Third Reich.

“The levels of antisemitism being seen here in Canada are rivalling the 1933 levels in Germany. And in America we were also having that same problem, and we are confronting it on a daily basis,” he said.

The World Holocaust Remembrance Centre says that 1933 is when Germany became a police state under the Third Reich, which passed racial laws that barred Jews from the civil service, judiciary and cultural spheres before launching a systematic campaign of murder that killed nearly six million Jews by 1945.

Doris Bergen, a University of Toronto professor emerita who chaired Holocaust studies, said that while analogies to the Nazi era are almost unavoidable, the contexts are vastly different -- and comparisons to Hitler’s Germany only distract from the current threats Jewish people face.

“You get soaked up in that discussion instead of the discussion I think we need to be having, which is about what is going on, here and now in front of our face,” she said. “We know these things are happening and they’re terrible.”

Bergen said that that in 1933, the Nazi party focused its repression on communists and targeted disabled people while also supporting boycotts of Jewish businesses. German police encouraged street violence against Jews and other groups, she said, while Canadian police investigate antisemitic attacks as violent crimes.

Kaploun said Canada should emulate the U.S. by using terrorism listings and visa revocations to bar groups and individuals, including Iranian proxies, who are seeking “to sow discord.”

He also argued that Ottawa should punish universities that make Jewish students feel unsafe.

“When you have professors in class being not held accountable for making pro-Palestinian statements or telling people that if you don’t agree with my philosophy, you shouldn’t be in class, those people shouldn’t be educators,” he said.

When asked if he believes supporting Palestinians is anti-Jewish, Kaploun said Jewish people should not be held accountable for the actions of Israel or blocked from accessing community spaces.

“We strongly believe in freedom of speech, but it doesn’t give you the right to impinge on someone’s ability to have freedom of religion and have their ability to worship freely,” he said.

While Kaploun said antisemitic hate is often driven by online rhetoric, he had little to say about the role of American tech giants who are close with the Trump administration.

Elon Musk, the tech mogul behind the X social media platform, has been accused by European regulators of doing too little to combat hate speech and misinformation online.

Kaploun claimed Musk “has reduced the amount of antisemitism on X by close to 25 to 30 per cent” by identifying the countries where accounts on the platform are based. The change has helped identify bogus accounts of atrocities in Gaza, he argued.

“X, I think, is one of the leaders in showing the world that how you can confront some of this,” he said.

The Israeli organization CyberWell, which tracks online antisemitism, reported this year that X is the most reluctant among the four major social media platforms to remove hate speech and Holocaust distortion.

Kaploun was particularly critical of the Carney government’s decision to eliminate the position of special envoy on antisemitism and replace it with a general council on inclusion.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, of which Canada is a member, says its “delegations are chaired by ambassadors, or officials of a senior rank.” Kaploun said Canada should have a special envoy as part of its membership.

He said Canada has wrongly replaced the envoy position with a council that includes “people who have a distinct bias to the Jewish community.” He declined to identify them.

“There are members of the board who have attended pro-Palestinian rallies. That should be a non-negotiable when it comes to who should be sitting on a board to protect the Jewish community,” he said.

When pressed, Kaploun claimed the issue is not support for Palestine but rather a “muted response” from officials on the council when protests against the Israeli government vilify Jewish people.

Carney’s spokeswoman said the prime minister’s inclusion council is meant to foster social cohesion.

“The prime minister specifically directed the council to begin its work responding to antisemitism, including by reassessing its nature, scale, and drivers in Canada, developing a whole-of-government approach to protecting Jewish Canadians, improving research and data collection on hate incidents, and measuring the impact of our efforts,” wrote LeBlanc Proctor.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 4, 2026

Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press