ONTARIO (JNS) – Canada’s Jewish community faces a “realistic possibility” of a “violent extremist attack” within the next six months, according to a Canadian federal intelligence organization assessment obtained by JNS.

“The most likely scenario of an attack targeting the Jewish community is a lone actor using unsophisticated methods against easily accessible targets,” according to a March 18 report by the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre.

ITAC, a specialized organization in the Canadian intelligence community, provides threat assessments for decision-makers and security partners. Hosted at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Canada’s equivalent to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, ITAC answers to the director of CSIS.

While a violent attack on the community is a credible threat, the report assessed as “unlikely” that Canadian Jewish public officials, as a specific group within the Jewish community, would be targeted for attack. Still, those officials, together with non-Jewish pro-Israel officials, would face a heightened threat compared to other public figures.

“The convergence of ideologically, politically and religiously motivated violent extremist threats to the Jewish community and, by extension, Jewish public officials drives this elevated threat,” it said.

That threat would most likely take the form of “criminal harassment and intimidation,” acts that would not qualify as violent extremism. They would remain criminal matters, ITAC said, referring to media reports about vandalism at constituency offices of officials “due to their identity or perceived support for Israeli actions in the Middle East.”

“Iranian lethal operations” against Jewish public officials, which ITAC described also as “unlikely,” may change as the conflict continues, it noted.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service did acknowledge the threat of lethal violence is real, telling JNS in an email that CSIS had countered “the actions of Iranian intelligence services and their proxies” over the last year. “In more than one case, this involved detecting, investigating and disrupting potentially lethal threats against individuals in Canada.”

Mike Fegelman, executive director of HonestReporting Canada, a group promoting accuracy in Canadian media coverage of Israel, the Middle East and Canada’s Jewish community, told JNS that the ITAC report is “both alarming and not surprising.”

He said the deepening crisis is a “direct result of numerous avoidable failures—failures of leadership, failures of policy. And failures of people at all levels and places of taking escalating antisemitism seriously.”

It’s a failure that extends to the media, he said. Canada’s press has downplayed, contextualized and inadequately notified the public “to clearly name what is happening.”

“Even in reporting this threat, there remains a tendency to treat it as something emerging, rather than something that has been building, visibly and predictably, in plain sight,” Fegelman said.

“Jewish Canadians have been sounding the alarm for more than two years,” he said. “At this point, continued inaction is not a failure to understand the problem; it’s a choice. And the consequences of that choice will be measured in more than headlines.”

‘These are not random acts’
Canada’s Jewish community has already come under attack. Two synagogues in Toronto’s Thornhill and North York neighborhoods were targeted in shootings on March 6. Those shootings came just days after a North York synagogue was hit by gunfire on March 2.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog, in a Zoom call with leaders of the Canadian Jewish community on March 8 stated that “all eyes are on Canada to halt this unprecedented wave of Jew-hatred.”

Herzog echoed comments from Amichai Chikli, Israel’s Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister, who warned that Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney “continues to turn a blind eye to rampant antisemitism in the country.”

In February, Chikli had sent an urgent letter to Gary Anandasangaree, the country’s minister of public safety, revealing that Canada’s government itself had warned that “the scale and severity of the incidents in Canada were clear warning signs before a disaster.”

Antisemitic incidents have surged in Canada by approximately 670% since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

In Toronto, Jews are the most targeted group in the city, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) has said. On May 14, 2025, the Toronto Police Service’s 2024 Annual Hate Crimes Statistical Report revealed that although Toronto’s Jewish community made up less than 4% of the population, anti-Jewish hatred accounted for 40% of the city’s hate crimes and 81% of religiously motivated hate crimes.

“These figures represent a systemic failure to deter antisemitic violence,” Chikli said.

The results are already evident. Jewish schools in Montreal and Toronto have been hit by gunfire, and synagogues in Montreal and Vancouver have been targets of arson. An elderly Jewish woman was stabbed in an antisemitic attack in Ottawa in August 2025, while an Orthodox Jewish father was physically assaulted in front of his children in Montreal.

“These are not random acts; they are unmistakable warning signs that antisemitic violence has become normalized,” Chikli said.

He called on Canada’s government to take “immediate and decisive action,” including boosting intelligence-gathering, monitoring extremist Islamist networks, aggressively enforcing laws against incitement and expanding security protection for Jewish institutions.