Antisemitism envoy says resignation prompted by frustration over ‘not connecting’ with anti-hate message

2025/07/25 Leave a comment

Dispiriting. But kudos for Lyons for opening sharing her frustrations and critiques regarding the silence of business and faith leaders. Most despairing comment to me was this reference to silos:

“Lyons told The Canadian Jewish News that Amira Elghawaby, the federal government’s special representative on combating Islamophobia, tried to work with Lyons on fighting hate, citing an apparently shelved plan to visit provincial education ministers together.

“Neither my community, nor her community, were happy all the time to see us in pictures together,” Lyons said. “There were often people who just simply didn’t want me participating in respectful dialogues, or wouldn’t come into the room.””

Ottawa’s outgoing envoy for tackling antisemitism is accusing Canada’s business sector and civil society of failing to call out a rising tide of hate against Jews and other minorities.

In an extensive interview with The Canadian Jewish News, Deborah Lyons also said she could not get a meeting with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre during her nearly two-year term.

In a statement sent to The Canadian Press, the Conservatives said that Lyons was “powerless” in her job.

Lyons resigned early in her term as Canada’s special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism. She said her decision reflected her “despair” over the growing gulf in society over violence in the Middle East and the failure of many Canadians to find common ground against hate.

“People were listening and hearing on different frequencies, and so we just were not connecting,” said Lyons. “That was where the big despair comes from.”

She said her work wasn’t made any easier by the silence of corporate leaders “whom I asked many times to stand up,” and by faith leaders who seemed to keep quiet on the suffering of people from other religions.

“I was incredibly disappointed with business leaders,” she said.

“We have a tendency to want to blame politicians all the time, but where have the faith leaders been? Where have the priests and ministers and rabbis and imams and so forth (been)?”

Lyons said that some community leaders did ask for her help in finding the right words to speak out against hate — because they feared that they would offend one community if they stood up for another.

“I’ve been really quite amazed — and often become quite despondent and despairing — about the fact that it was hard to get people to speak up. To speak with clarity, to speak with conviction,” she said.

“The mark of a country is not the courage of its military. It is the courage of its bystanders.”

The Canadian Press has requested an interview with Lyons but has not yet had a response.

Lyons told The Canadian Jewish News that Amira Elghawaby, the federal government’s special representative on combating Islamophobia, tried to work with Lyons on fighting hate, citing an apparently shelved plan to visit provincial education ministers together.

“Neither my community, nor her community, were happy all the time to see us in pictures together,” Lyons said. “There were often people who just simply didn’t want me participating in respectful dialogues, or wouldn’t come into the room.”

She said that indicates a “weakening” in the ability of both Canadian society and the broader western world to stand for common human values.

Lyons said she lacked the energy at times to bridge that gap.

“I held back from having some discussions, because I knew there was going to be animosity, or I wasn’t going to be welcome in the room. It disappoints me,” she said.

Lyons said she could not get a meeting with Poilievre despite requesting one and having a cordial chat with him during an event.

“I tried to meet with Mr. Poilievre when I was in the job, and in the end I got a response that he was too busy to meet with me,” she said.

In a statement attributed to Conservative deputy leader Melissa Lantsman, the party did not dispute Lyons’ version of events.

“While communities face increasing threats, vandalism, intimidation and violence over the last 20 months, the Liberals deflected responsibility to a powerless envoy,” says the statement.

“We are ready to meet with the government at any point, because they’re the only ones with the power, the tools and the responsibility to do something — and they have done absolutely nothing to date.”

Statistics Canada reported this week a slight increase in police-reported hate crimes in 2024 compared with a year prior, and a very slight drop in those against Jewish people, who remain the most targeted group in Canada.

Lyons accused all three levels of government of failing to adequately co-ordinate their responses to hate, saying that issues like car theft or tariffs are seen as more tangible.

She said Prime Minister Mark Carney seemed engaged and requested a meeting with her, though she added it was not possible to meet with him before the July 8 date of her departure.

Lyons said she is leaving her job three months early not for health reasons but rather to restore “a little bit of the joy back into life” through retirement.

She said she would have liked to continue, but described the envoy role as more difficult than her stints as ambassador to Afghanistan and Israel.

“It was without question the toughest job I ever did.”

Source: Antisemitism envoy says resignation prompted by frustration over ‘not connecting’ with anti-hate message

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Federal envoy urges Ontario to act on antisemitism in its public schools

2025/07/16 Leave a comment

Of note:

Canada’s special envoy on antisemitism says Ontario school boards need to take seriously incidents of anti-Jewish bigotry targeted at students in public schools.

Deborah Lyons commissioned a survey of nearly 600 Jewish parents in the province, and found hundreds of children were subjected to incidents including antisemitic bullying and blame for the carnage of Israel’s military conduct in the Gaza Strip.

The survey logged 781 incidents between October 2023 and January 2025 that Jewish families reported as antisemitic, such as children chanting Nazi slogans and giving salutes, and teachers telling students that Israel does not exist.

Of the reported incidents, 60 per cent involved what the survey deemed “extreme anti-Israel sentiments,” such as describing Israel as “fundamentally a racist state, that it is committing genocide in Gaza.”

The other 40 per cent involved anti-Jewish attitudes writ large, such as denying the Holocaust, or describing Jews as cheap or having control over the media.

Lyons’ office approached various Jewish groups to promote the survey to their members and ask them to complete it.

Some parents reported moving their children to different schools, or having their children remove things that identified them as Jewish while attending school.

The report marks a rare move of federal rapporteurs singling out issues outside of Ottawa’s jurisdiction.

The Ontario government said antisemitism is unacceptable in its schools.

“We expect school boards across the province to focus on student achievement and creating supportive classrooms,” wrote Emma Testani, press secretary for provincial education minister Paul Calandra.

“We will continue working with our education partners to keep politics out of the classroom and ensure schools remain focused on helping students succeed.”

Michael Levitt, a former Liberal MP who runs a Jewish advocacy group, called the survey “a searing indictment” of how the education system treats Jewish students.

“While the Ontario government and some school boards are making an effort to bring antisemitism training and Holocaust education to staff and students, our education system must do more to root out antisemitism and hold perpetrators accountable,” wrote Levitt, head of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Canada has endorsed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which has attracted controversy among academics and free-speech advocates.

The IHRA definition says it is anti-Jewish to single out Israel for criticism not levelled at other countries, to deem the creation of Israel “a racist endeavour” or to compare Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

Pro-Palestinian groups have said the definition could be used against those who accuse Israel of implementing an apartheid system and intentionally starving people in Gaza.

Source: Federal envoy urges Ontario to act on antisemitism in its public schools

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Lyons, Cotler and Lew: To counter antisemitism, Canadians must first be able to recognize it

2024/11/13 Leave a comment

Op-ed promoting the antisemitism guidebook:

…Canadians should unite to combat antisemitism not only because it is an abhorrent, dangerous, and deadly prejudice, but because it is toxic to the very fabric of our democracy and society. Antisemitism is known as the “canary in the coal-mine” for all forms of hatred and intolerance – a weathervane for growing societal intolerance and prejudice – because what starts with the Jews does not end with the Jews.

Simply put, antisemitism is a threat not only to Jewish individuals and the Jewish community, but to Canadian society and democracy as a whole. Our hope is that the Canadian Handbook on the IHRA Definition will be a valuable tool for Canadians seeking to combat this threat and address the rising tide of antisemitism.

Source: To counter antisemitism, Canadians must first be able to recognize it

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‘What is it about the make-up of our society?’ Deborah Lyons on antisemitism in Canada

2024/08/10 Leave a comment

Of interest:

What have the last 10 months been like in your role?

It has been intense, extremely difficult, with the many challenges that, frankly, we hear about every day. It has been disappointing, in part because I don’t feel that the rise in antisemitism is getting the attention or response from leadership across the country, at all levels, that it should be getting, and that’s been very disappointing. And it’s been quite troubling, because as much as I’ve worked in conflict zones before and difficult environments, to be here, in my own country and to experience the horrific rise, unprecedented rise, of antisemitism in Canada and the lack of a real response to it, causes me to worry about the future of our country.

It’s been, on the one hand, a very meaningful period. But, on the other hand, it’s been, in some ways, very discouraging and concerning about where are we headed. But, frankly, I wouldn’t have wanted to have missed it, because it’s important.

What would you like to see done? 

A lot more. A lot more of leaders at all levels — federal, provincial and municipal, local level — speaking up, speaking out, condemning, clearly, antisemitism. This is not a hard thing to do when you see hatred happening on the streets, in schools, at universities, in the business environment. When you see protests that maybe intended to be peaceful, but truly do get out of hand, with hateful slogans and chants and actually threatening slogans and chants. You really need leaders, community leaders, political leaders, business leaders, faith leaders, academic leaders, standing up and clearly speaking out against this surge of ugliness that seems to have taken over our country.

I would like to see a situation where the fullness of the legal system is being applied, where we have police well-trained on hate crimes, which I think we’re seeing now in some of the major centres across the country, where we’re recording well and fully the incidents that are happening and ensuring that we’re getting a strong sense of this new level of intimidation and fear that has been created in the last year. And that we are making sure that we have our educators, our teachers and our security, our police, well trained to recognize antisemitism and to respond to it.

Do you fear that there is any risk of allegations of antisemitism stifling legitimate political speech?

I’m less worried about that, and more worried about the level of hatred that is growing and where that could take us. Now, having said that, I am a huge supporter of freedom of expression, of academic freedom, freedom of speech.

One of the things we’re working on right now is the fulsome definition of antisemitism that has been developed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, that Canada has endorsed. And we’re going to be coming out with a guidebook, a handbook on explaining that definition and trying to demonstrate to people, criticize whatever you want to criticize, criticize Israel, criticize any government in the world. You want to criticize them? That’s what we want, in terms of democracy. We want freedom of expression. We want the boundaries of knowledge to be pushed. But there has to be an understanding of where that is treading into, either hateful speech or a demonstration of a particularly threatening bias.

I want to emphasize my concern about protecting freedom of expression, and, particularly, academic freedom, but, at the same time, we have to have a clear moral clarity about what we consider to be hateful speech or hateful incidents.

What does a day in your job look like?

It probably starts off around seven in the morning with a review of the latest crises or catastrophe or incidents, either from the mainstream media or from social media. It then goes through many, many meetings or calls with people across the country, because this is not an Ottawa-centric job, even though I am based out of Ottawa. So I’m travelling across the country a lot. We meet with provincial government people on a regular basis. We meet with federal ministers. So the whole (equity, diversity and inclusion) program is one that we’re looking at. We work with law enforcement on training on antisemitism for police officers across the country. We’re looking at the fullness of the legislation to make sure that it is adequate in addressing hate crimes. We’re looking at the data-collection process, so I’m often engaged with StatCan and others on, are we collecting the right data? Are we getting a good, comprehensive picture so we can have honest conversations about what is really happening there, and provide that to the political leaders?

We’re doing work on social media. (On Tuesday) we were spending some time with social media research companies to identify what is happening in terms of hate crimes throughout that platform. We’re doing work with the universities, of course, so we’re preparing right now for the return to campus in September. So I’m spending time with Universities Canada and specific universities on how they’re going to be working to ensure that the year ahead in the university environment is a more constructive and calmer one.

It does appear that Canada is one of the countries that is actually actively tackling antisemitism, openly, overtly, dramatically, intensely. We’ve seen a huge increase in antisemitism in many parts of the world. I think that we’re seen as a country that is really trying to address it; we’re not having the success I’d like to see us have, but we are at least pushing and actively struggling to try to get to a much healthier place.

Do you see any different textures to antisemitism in your travels and conversations across the country?

I guess I would say that what we’re seeing is a mix of motivations that seem to be driving antisemitism. Some of it comes from the far right, maybe, some of it, maybe, from the far left. Some of it from people who are confusing Canada’s foreign policy, and what they are expressing here in the country is an anti-Jewish hatred, which is completely, I think, all mixed up together.

One of the things, again, as somebody who’s travelled a lot internationally, is, why is Canada having this unprecedented surge in antisemitism right now? What is it about the make-up of our society? What is it about our push for diversity and inclusivity? And what is it about our demographics? What is it about our country that is seeing such a level that has actually caused other countries, to say ‘What’s going on in Canada? We wouldn’t have expected this from Canada.’

I don’t think the faith community has stepped up. I don’t think we’ve seen the non-Jewish, non-Muslim faith communities step up to say, ‘Wait a minute. This is unacceptable in Canada. We don’t endorse this level of hatred and  animosity toward one another. This is unacceptable. This is not who we are as children of God.’

Anthony Housefather, the Liberal MP, was appointed early last month as special adviser on Jewish community relations and antisemitism. Are you stepping on each other’s toes?

I’d say we’re dancing together rather than treading on each other’s toes. Anthony has a very particular role and it’s very important and it’s complementary to my role. We work very closely together, I know him very well. I work very closely, though, with all members of Parliament. Frankly, I can do with more people working actively on this file and I know how committed Anthony is. We’re in touch somewhere between daily and weekly.

Does it make your job easier or more challenging when there are different offices? There’s you, there’s Housefather, there’s Amira Elghawaby on the Islamophobia file. Under former prime minister Stephen Harper, it was the one office of religious freedom.

We talk about that from time to time. I think it was actually prescient, really forward thinking on the part of the present government to have put in place the special envoys and special representatives such as my counterpart, Amira (Elghawaby). No one knew that things were going to get this bad in Canada. It turned out to be prescient, because there is just so much specific work that we have to do, and hopefully we can get that done in spite of the fraught environment that everyone is working in right now and since October 7.

I think the configuration we have right now is actually one that we need for the time right now, because I think there’s very specific work that needs to be done to deal with Islamophobia, to deal with anti-Muslim hate. And there’s no question that there is a huge amount of work that we have to do to combat antisemitism here in Canada. And I don’t know if you would get that done with the same intensity if you were part of a larger, more general approach.

Is there anything specific you’d like to see that might lower the temperature when class returns at universities?

We want to try to see the administrations provide the students, and particularly working with the faculty, who could be playing a much larger role here, in creating safe spaces for debate, for argument, for learning from one another. For exchanging of views, that type of thing, so that the students have the opportunity to challenge the boundaries and come up with new knowledge and come up with new ways of understanding one another and communication.

And then, certainly, I would say that one of the big concerns that we’re seeing, not just at universities, but frankly in work environments generally, the whole EDI (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) philosophy and approach often does not include antisemitism at all. In fact, it dismisses it almost. And what we found was that many students who were having issues on the campuses after October were going to and we’re told to ‘go to student services, the EDI counsellors are so good,’ and we’re not getting any real responses. And we’ve spoken to university administrations about that, and we’re hoping that we’re going to see some improvements there, where the EDI and student services offices will actually take more seriously the concerns of Jewish students who went to them to seek recourse or support or solace or whatever.

How optimistic are you about the future of your work?

We’re still in the middle of a very challenging time. I think we thought that we would have been in a better place by now. We’re not. So that’s concerning. But I think that you can feel the momentum building, more people coming on stream to be supportive, to be engaged, members of the non-Jewish population who are stepping up.

I don’t even know if I’d use the word optimist or pessimist. I would just say, I think we’re all very determined to come out of this. I’m hoping in a better place than we’ve been, not even the same as we were before, because I think this experience has taught us so much that we have no choice but to find a way to have a better Canada out of this. Because, if we don’t, that alternative is unacceptable.

Source: ‘What is it about the make-up of our society?’ Deborah Lyons on antisemitism in Canada

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Deborah Lyons: Courageous leadership is needed to combat antisemitism in Canada

2024/07/27 Leave a comment

Reasonable recommendations, highlighting the benefits of appointing a former public servant compared to a former activist as is the case with the representative on combatting Islamophobia:

…Lean into a proactive rather than reactive approach:

Leaders often wait for antisemitic incidents to take place before responding. To shift from a reactive to a proactive approach, leaders can establish a relationship underpinned by trust with Jewish individuals in their organizations. This could be a network, an adviser position, or a recurring meeting with a group representing the Jewish community. Combatting antisemitism works best when it is continuous, and not only when a problem arises. Nurturing relationships built in trust with Jewish individuals, actively listening to them and proactively engaging on issues is helpful in preventing antisemitism.

Encourage interfaith and inter-community dialogue:

I have seen a lot of pain in the eyes of Jewish Canadians, particularly after October 7. Much of this pain has come from the loss of friends and allies, and the silence and lack of support they’ve received from other Canadians, including from other faith communities. Community and faith leaders should understand that empathy and understanding for one group should not preclude empathy and understanding for others. Faith and community groups should extend their hands in support, as the Jewish community has so often done for others in past crises. Leaders should remember that we can be pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian at the same time. Leaders should encourage interfaith and inter-community dialogue, by creating spaces for these difficult but important conversations to happen. If done with mutual respect, compassion, and rooted in our shared values as Canadians, these spaces can help bring us back together rather than continuing the divisive dialogue and binary thinking that is destroying our civility.

Advocate for Jewish Canadians through allyship:

As a non-Jewish person, what I have learned most clearly is that antisemitism cannot be solved by the Jewish community alone. Jews did not create antisemitism and as with any other marginalized group, it is not on them to fight it alone. Being an ally means being present, an active listener, and a support system. Most importantly, it means believing Jewish Canadians when they speak. And taking action. A simple way for leaders to demonstrate their allyship is to ask Jewish neighbours, friends or individuals in their organizations: “What does support look like for you” and “How can I help?”

Discover modern day manifestations of antisemitism:

To address antisemitism, we must first define and understand it. In 2019, the Government of Canada formally adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of antisemitism as part of Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy. The IHRA Definition is the product of a 16-year-long democratic, iterative process, and as of the date of publication, has been adopted by 42 other countries and multiple international organizations. It is a tool for recognizing antisemitic expression, behaviour, intention and impact. The IHRA working definition — particularly through its 11 examples — serves as a helpful tool for leaders to understand the many forms of antisemitism and how to meaningfully address them.

Much work remains to be done. If this vacuum from faith, political and business leaders continues it may become too difficult to find our way back. It is our role as Canadians to stand now with our Canadian Jewish family across our country. It is what our Jewish family deserves. It is what Canada needs, now.

Deborah Lyons is Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism. She previously served as Ambassador of Canada to Israel, Ambassador of Canada to Afghanistan, and the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

Source: Deborah Lyons: Courageous leadership is needed to combat antisemitism in Canada

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Removing religion as hate speech defence worth exploring: anti-Semitism envoy

2024/05/25 Leave a comment

Worth consideration but of course not without contention (Andrew Bennett, the former ambassador for religious freedom, currently at Cardus, appears to be ruling it out, unlike Lyons):

Canada’s special envoy for combating antisemitism is “very interested” in exploring the idea of removing religion as a possible defence against hate speech charges, she said Thursday, raising concern about creating a possible chill on religious expression.

Deborah Lyons, whose title also includes preserving Holocaust remembrance, made the comment before a parliamentary committee that is studying antisemitism on university campuses.

“I am very interested in exploring (it) as an option because I think, frankly, we are seeing it used in this country and in other places as a defence that frankly does not stand the ground in these very difficult times,” she testified Thursday.

Still, Lyons said she is not ready to offer a final opinion on the matter, and is still discussing it with Justice Department officials.

Jewish leaders, students and faculty have for months been voicing concerns over an increase in hate speech and violence since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war last fall.

Lyons said she believes universities’ equity, diversity and inclusion strategies are “failing Jews in this country” because they don’t make much mention of antisemitism specifically.

Her office is working to develop better training to counter anti-Jewish discrimination, which she hopes institutions, including governments, will use.

Members of Parliament also asked Lyons about the role police and prosecutors play in laying hate speech related charges, and whether Criminal Code changes are needed.

They pointed to a recent decision by Quebec prosecutors not to charge Montreal imam Adil Charkaoui over comments said during a prayer — a scenario Lyons says she is discussing with the government.

The comments were delivered at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Montreal, and led to a complaint alleging threats and incitement of violence, which was investigated by the RCMP.

Leading a prayer in Arabic, Charkaoui had called on God to “take care of aggressor Zionists,” adding “O God, don’t leave any of them.”

Last week the province’s director of public prosecutions announced that a committee of three Crown attorneys found the evidence insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the words amounted to an incitement of hatred toward an identifiable group, as defined in the Criminal Code.

Using the case as an example, Bloc Québécois MP Rhéal Fortin asked Lyons whether she supports his party’s proposal to eliminate a section of the Criminal Code that allows the use of religious beliefs or a religious text as a defence against the promotion of hatred and antisemitism.

The Criminal Code states that people shouldn’t be convicted of the willful promotion of hatred or antisemitism — defined as downplaying or denying the Holocaust — if, “in good faith,” they expressed an opinion “on a religious subject” or “based on a belief in a religious text.”

Fortin says his party wants to ban “exceptions” to hate speech based on religion.

“Certainly I think that it’s something we’ve got to continue to examine,” Lyons said.

Justice Minister Arif Virani’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

He is already seeking to increase the punishments for existing hate-related offences — including increasing the maximum consequence for advocating genocide to life imprisonment — in the Liberals’ legislation against online harms, tabled back in February.

The stiffer criminal justice reforms have fallen under harsh scrutiny from critics, including civil liberty advocacy groups, who say it could stifle free speech. Justice officials say criminal charges would only be laid in the most extreme examples.

Removing religion as a possible defence to a hate speech charge would likely be welcomed by those who oppose religion, but would create “genuine fear” for those who have deeply held religious beliefs about what they could say in the public square, said Rev. Dr. Andrew Bennett, who works at the public policy think tank Cardus.

“Often, religious people privatize their faith because they’re afraid that if I speak about what I believe, in good faith, in the public square, I’m going to be cancelled, or I’m going to be shut down,” said Bennett, Cardus’s faith communities program director.

He says if a “chill” is placed on religious expression it risks marginalizing a sizable part of the population, including many new Canadians for whom “religion is not just some sort of cultural relic” but “informs all aspects of society.”

“In many cases, they’ve come here because of the religious freedom we enjoy, and so to then say to those new Canadians in particular, ‘Oh, by the way, you can’t speak about your religion publicly for fear of being censured,’ I think that’s a very bad message to send.”

Bennett said the debate raises questions of how hate is defined and what makes a hateful view “different from a peacefully-held opinion that someone might profoundly disagree with?”

In the case of Charkaoui’s comments, Marco Mendicino, a Liberal MP, said he found the call by Quebec’s Crown not to press charges against the imam “incomprehensible and deeply problematic.”

Charkaoui’s comments were “perhaps one of the most egregious offences that I have seen” he told Thursday’s committee.

Mendicino, a former prosecutor who previously served as public safety minister, also cited other examples of demonstrators chanting offensive language, including glorifying Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks.

He believes “Zionists” fit the Criminal Code’s definition of an identifiable group, which refers to “any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or mental or physical disability.”

Source: Removing religion as hate speech defence worth exploring: anti-Semitism envoy

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Canada’s envoy on the Holocaust departs and has a final warning

2023/10/18 Leave a comment

Of note. Lyons good replacement given her extensive experience:

Former Liberal cabinet minister and global human rights advocate Irwin Cotler exited his role Monday as Canada’s special envoy on Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism with a warning: hatred against Jews is the “canary in the mine shaft” of human evil.

Cotler said his three years in the role have seen a marked escalation of antisemitism around the world. He cited the hate flourishing on social media, rising numbers of people who hold antisemitic beliefs, and an increase in hate crimes being carried out against Jews.

The attack last week in Israel by the militant group Hamas must also be understood to have global implications for hate, he said.

He called the organization, which Canada and other countries consider a terrorist group, not just an enemy of the Jewish people but of Palestinians as well.

“It’s an enemy of peace itself,” he said.

“And that’s what we’re up against, and regrettably, the Palestinian people end up being human shields and end up themselves being hostages to this murderous terrorist, antisemitic group, letting us understand once again that while it begins with Jews, as we say, it doesn’t end with Jews.”

Cotler has now passed the baton for the role to Deborah Lyons, who has been both Canada’s ambassador to Israel and also the head of the United Nations’ mission in Afghanistan.

“Our world is hurting. We’re a little bit broken. And we are hurting,” she said in her inaugural remarks at a press conference Monday.

“But as we make our way together, through this permeating sense of helplessness, I know that as Canadians, with our wonderful leaders, we will come together, we will see the challenges, and we will face that incredible work that needs to be done.”

Lyons said she’ll emphasize antisemitism education, both on university campuses and in the corporate sector, as well as ensuring more robust data collection to help improve the safety and security of the Jewish community. She also called upon faith leaders and politicians to do their part.

“Please unite us and inspire us through your actions to continue to build that diverse and inclusive Canada, which all your constituents deserve,” she said.

Lyons was asked Monday what, as a non-Jewish person, she brings to the job, and she pushed back saying that all Canadians have a role to play supporting one another.

“What I bring to this job is a commitment as a Canadian.”

The Liberal government created the special envoy role in 2020, following through on previous commitments to international Holocaust remembrance efforts. Lyons is the second person to hold the job, after Cotler. Her’s is a two-year appointment.

The announcement she is taking over from Cotler came at the start of a two-day conference in Ottawa organized by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs on fighting antisemitism.

Former Conservative cabinet minister and Alberta premier Jason Kenney, among the speakers Monday, said that while for now there is cross-partisan consensus in Canada around the moral need to combat antisemitism, there is a blunt reality: the Jewish community is small, and must remain vigilant.

“Do not take for granted the positions being expressed here in Ottawa today,” he said.

“You must redouble your efforts intelligently to build coalitions across the pluralism of this country and to be voices of clarity and courage.”

Source: Canada’s envoy on the Holocaust departs and has a final warning

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