February 13, 2025
TORONTO – B’nai Brith Canada is demanding that Ontario’s Minister of Education open an investigation after a Toronto District School Board (TDSB) meeting Wednesday devolved into a hatefest.
The Board’s Policy and Planning Committee was supposed to receive a report on antisemitism. The report outlines steps such as ensuring “anti-oppression and equity work includes Jewish voices and experiences, emphasizing the intersectionality of Jewish identities with other forms of discrimination.” It also urges the Board to counter narratives that depict Jewish or Zionist students and staff as “colonizers.”
B’nai Brith Canada was among the groups that participated in the consultation process for the report. Our Director of Research and Advocacy, Richard Robertson, attended the Wednesday session, expecting Board Chair Neethan Shan and the trustees to maintain order and allow representatives of the grassroots Jewish community to participate in a fair and democratic process.
Instead, the Board’s Chair “completely failed to enforce the TDSB’s own rules around decorum,” Robertson said, and neglected to intervene when speakers invoked antisemitic tropes, demonized Zionists, and trafficked in disinformation. Shan’s impartiality has been brought into question by past comments he has made on social media.
Despite the TDSB’s 2018 adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, no Board members intervened to prevent delegates from spewing hate in contravention of IHRA.
“In enabling this hate fest, the TDSB marginalized and undermined those it consulted for the report,” Robertson said. “B’nai Brith Canada applauds the student participants who courageously, in the face of hate, spoke up to ensure their voices were heard.”
Trustee Shelley Laskin spoke out at the end of the meeting, remarking that “true harm” was done to the Jewish community.
“There was antisemitism… There was Jew-hatred. This is not acceptable. No form of hate, no form of hate within deputations is acceptable. And I feel compelled to have said this has caused great harm to many of us who have been listening for hours, and it needed to be said.”
Antisemitism has escalated in the TDSB system since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023. Students and staff have, for example, repeatedly discovered hateful graffiti and Nazi Swastikas on school property. In one troubling incident, TDSB teachers brought students to an anti-Israel protest that featured violent and antisemitic rhetoric.
Wednesday’s disgraceful descent into antisemitism demonstrates that the Board’s leadership is incapable of ensuring the rights of Jewish members of its community. B’nai Brith Canada believes that the Ontario government should investigate the TDSB for failing to uphold its own policies, and for its apparent bias.
We are also calling on the Board to adopt B’nai Brith Canada’s Policy for Combating Antisemitism in Schools (PCAS), which its trustees should use as a tool and guide moving forward to protect Jewish constituents from such vile antisemitic discord.
