In less than two months on the job for Noah Shack, the interim CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) has had to speak out after someone shot at a Jewish girls’ school in Toronto; decry a repeated arson attack on a Montreal-area synagogue; and oversee the response in Winnipeg after five swastikas were spray-painted on a community centre in a Jewish area during the final days of Hanukkah. But none of those moments marked his true national introduction, which came on Jan. 27, when he delivered a televised speech from Ottawa’s Holocaust monument as part of the official ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Shack—who spent nearly 15 years working for CIJA in Ottawa and Toronto—has now risen to become the organization’s public face, following the exit of Shimon Koffler Fogel, who managed Jewish government relations in the capital for approximately 40 years.
Insiders have told The CJN that CIJA’s board wanted a change of leadership ahead of an expected change in government in the coming federal election. Shack is also clear that CIJA is eager to combat anti-Israel policies, such as federal funding for the UN-backed Palestinian relief agency UNRWA—but insists CIJA isn’t hitching its wagons to the Conservative party.
On today’s episode of The CJN Daily, Shack sits down with host Ellin Bessner to explain why he took the job, why he’s calling for unity among Canada’s Jewish organizations, and why he hopes Jews soon won’t need to think about fleeing Canada for their own safety.
Related links
- Read more about Noah Shack’s Holocaust survivor relatives, the late Zalman and Pola Pila, of Toronto, in The CJN.
- Read Shimon Fogel’s outlook for the Jewish community, in The CJN archives.
- Watch Shimon Fogel’s final testimony to the Canadian Senate about antisemitism, on Dec. 2, 2024.
Credits
- Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
- Production team: Zachary Kauffman (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
- Music: Dov Beck-Levine
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Transcript
EB: This is a big debut for you on a national live stage.
NS: Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. I’m looking forward to being in a position to represent the community and make sure that our voice is heard loud and clear as part of the national commemoration.
There’s always a willingness for people in power and community leaders to come to these events [the Jan. 27 International Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony near Parliament Hill]. It’s not as controversial or politicized as the current Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. So I’m wondering if you can give us a little preview of your message, since I’m sure you’re going to talk about both that and the situation here in Canada, right?
Well, I think you can’t help but think about the lessons of the Holocaust and the experience of the Jewish people without looking at what’s happening today and seeing some very disturbing signs of what is becoming of Canadian society. I plan to speak about the promise of Canada that my wife’s grandparents had when they came here as survivors of the death camps of Europe. The promise of Canada that they contributed to in building community here, not just in the Jewish community, but more broadly, and how that promise is imperiled right now, not just for the Jewish community, but for all Canadians.
When we see hate in our streets, when we see hate being tolerated in our institutions, and in our schools with our children, on our university campuses, in our workplaces. This is an alarming time. The stakes are high. And it’s important for Canadian leaders who are participating in this memorial to understand that the Holocaust wasn’t something that happened a long time ago that we commemorate. Yes, that’s important. But it’s the lessons of what came after the Holocaust, the lessons that we learned and implemented in order to build a better future for the survivors and for all Canadians that we need to hold onto.
And we need to make sure that those values stay strong and we continue to strengthen them at a time when they’re under threat.
I’ve seen you a million times on the news and in person reacting to all these synagogue arsons and school shootings, when the police are there. And we’ve heard these words from government leaders so many times: ‘This isn’t who we are, this is deplorable, we condemn antisemitism and all hate.’ So what do you think can be done? Because it’s not getting better.
Listen, there are a lot of challenges that our community is facing and that our society is facing. And I like to look at every challenge as an opportunity. And there are a lot of opportunities to do things, to change the course, and to right the ship and bring things to a much better place in the future. Yes, we have to care about the here and now and react to these things in order to drive change, but ultimately we can’t just be reacting to the incidents that are happening around us. We have to be thinking forward, not in terms of days and weeks and months, but in terms of years.
I’m concerned about what Canada will look like for my kids when they grow up and God willing, when they have children.
This is a fundamental moment for our community and for our country to take those actions, to take those steps forward. Whether it’s ensuring that there are sufficient resources being deployed for keeping our community safe, whether that’s to empower our community to keep ourselves safe, and for police to get the job done, or whether that’s supporting hate crime units or public order units. And we need to make sure that the laws that exist are being enforced. And also that whenever there’s a gap, we’re identifying that gap and moving forward constructively with concrete policy and legislative steps that can fill that gap and ensure that there’s accountability. Because fundamentally, if we don’t have accountability here in Canada for antisemitism, if our governments and our public institutions, if our schools, hospitals and universities don’t draw a clear and unequivocal line in the sand, about what’s acceptable and what’s not, and make it very clear that Jew hatred has no place in this country, not just saying so, but acting on it and making it so, it’s a bleak future ahead of us.
The good news is, I think that there’s a lot of people out there beyond the Jewish community who feel the same way and who want to join us in common cause. So the first step is we have to come together and unite and take a stand. Because if we won’t stand up for ourselves, nobody’s going to join us.
So you’re saying we, the Jewish community, have to speak with one voice?
Absolutely. This is a time for unity. This is a time for coordination. This is a time for us to come together. Yes, CIJA has an important role to play in all of this. We have a clear mission to make sure that governments and other public institutions are making choices and taking actions that are going to support the Jewish community and enable Jewish life in Canada to continue to thrive. But it’s not for us alone to advance that mission. There are lots of organizations in this community that are doing great work and a lot of individuals in this community who are doing phenomenal things and a lot of people who want to do more. And we need to find a way to unify all of these efforts in order to apply as much pounds per square inch of pressure where it’s needed to drive change.
There are many individuals and Jewish community groups that have sprung up after October 7th that didn’t exist before. And in the CIJA chairman’s recent email, for the very first time, he signalled there seemed to be a new opening. A willingness to work with those new people. Are you changing strategy and making CIJA a big umbrella, versus beforehand, it was ‘We know what’s best. We’re in Ottawa. We’re the lobbyists. We’re the legacy organizations.’
We’re either going to ride this wave together or we’re all going to sink. Our adversaries want nothing more than for us to be a divided community. That’s the best thing we can do to ensure that they’re successful. I’m not here to have influence or to exert some sort of power in the community. I’m not here to make CIJA look good. I’m here to win. My only objective is to win, for our community to win. And in order for us to do that, we have to come together and we have to all recognize that we have a shared challenge. The shared challenge is the skyrocketing of antisemitism. And if we don’t tackle that together, if we don’t recognize that we all have value and treat each other with respect to move that forward, we’re not going to succeed. So it’s deeper than sort of a re-evaluation of policy or approach. It’s fundamental for our success as an organization and our success as a community that we do this.
Why did it take until now – do you think – for this new thinking to come forward?
I think the stakes are really high. The stakes are really high. We’re at a pivotal moment now. Look at this time of change that we’re in, where we are likely to be in the middle of a provincial election here in Ontario when this airs, that there’s a [federal] Liberal leadership underway, that there’s going to be a federal election before too long. Our prime minister has announced that he’ll be resigning, sparking all of this. This is a time of significant change in Canada and an opportunity for us to make an impact. And so the imperative of us coming together to do this has never been stronger. And I’m excited to be part of that.
When CIJA made the announcement on December 9, 2024 that Shimon Koffler Fogel was stepping down, after nearly 40 years, and we were told it was effective immediately, and you were taking the president and CEO position on an interim basis, it came quite as a big shock. You know, a week later, Christya Freeland did what she did, and this was the Jewish community’s big Christya Freeland moment! What happened? What precipitated it? How should we see this?
Well, first, I just want to make clear the tremendous respect that I have for Shimon on a personal level as a personal mentor. Shimon was the person who first hired me to work in Jewish community advocacy, I think it was about 18 years ago. And I’ve learned a tremendous amount from him and he’s inspired me to pursue a career in this field and to continue to fight this fight, as he has for so many. His impact on the community, on advocacy in Canada, is immeasurable. He has so much to be proud of, from his 40 years leading advocacy for the Jewish community.
This is the natural course of things, that there is change, and that organizations evolve. It’s not unique to CIJA. And I think we’re all drawing inspiration from the lessons we’ve learned from Shimon over the years and drawing strength from his mentorship and moving forward to try to fill those shoes and build a better future for all of us.
And I think if we look at the history of advocacy in Canada, I think the first Jewish advocacy organization was founded in Montreal in 1915. It was focused on bringing Jewish World War I veterans to Canada as part of its mandate and obviously advocating for the creation of a Jewish state. Things have changed quite a bit from 1915 to 2025. And the community has consistently evolved its approach and its infrastructure over time, even while I’ve been in this field, starting at the Canada-Israel Committee [one of CIJA’s predecessors], to the point where we are today. It’s healthy for us to consistently be evaluating how we can set ourselves up for success in a future-oriented way while learning as much as we can from where we’ve come and building on our strengths.
What I was told was, and I saw the post on X (formerly Twitter) that was issued the day that Chrystia Freeland resigned, there was a nice tweet by CIJA, and then Melissa Lansman posted “Are you kidding?” on her social media – And then the CIJA tweet disappeared. Did the CIJA board say that this [change] has to happen now? Was this something that was building that they needed a new approach, because as you said, we’re in a time of change.
And what will the change in strategy of CIJA be? The Liberals have been in power for a long time. And CIJA lobbied everybody, all the parties. It seems to me from your speeches that the old approach may be changed, and you’re hitching a wagon to the new [Conservative] government that’s expected. Is that fair?
No. It’s absolutely imperative that the Jewish community is actively working with all political parties. Ultimately, CIJA is about advancing the policy interests of the Jewish community. My goal is to be able to articulate clearly what it is that the Jewish community needs from the government, whether it’s in terms of the fight against antisemitism or restoring and elevating the relationship with Israel, or making sure that the fundamentals of Jewish life here in Canada are protected going forward. And ultimately, it would be wonderful if all political parties bought into those core fundamental principles that are, if not 100 % supported by a consensus in the Jewish community, accrue significant support from the Jewish community.
But two days ago, you said something different about that. You said it’s time for a policy change. You said that on Monday at your ZOOM community update. You talked about political change, but it’s also time for policy change.
Correct. Absolutely we need policy change.
I mean, it’s not about the Conservative Party of Canada. We’re not saying we need Conservative policies. We need policies that are friendly to the Jewish community. We would hope that all political parties would adopt those policies as fundamental to their platform because as far as I’m concerned, these are not unique to the Jewish community. These are fundamental Canadian values that everybody should be advancing.
But I don’t think it’s any secret that we’re not happy about where the current government has taken the Canada-Israel relationship. We’re actually suing the government over its funding of UNRWA and let me be very clear, we won’t leave anything on the field. We are going to deploy every tool at our disposal to ensure that the interests of the Jewish community are made clear and advanced and will hold people’s feet to the fire. No matter what political party you’re part of, if you’re doing something that’s harmful to the Jewish community, we are going to make it clear that that’s not acceptable to us.
Can you update us quickly on where that lawsuit is?
Well, the last update was that the government tried to quash the suit and we were successful and the suit is moving forward despite those efforts. So I’m very glad that we quickly overcame that hurdle and we’re waiting for the courts. Unfortunately, you know, the wheels of justice do not turn quickly, but we’re confident that that’s moving forward as it needs to. If there’s a change in government or a change in policy, we’ll welcome that. I don’t think that it makes any sense whatsoever for Canadian taxpayer dollars to be going to an organization that has been proven to be infiltrated by Hamas, by the terrorists who attacked on October 7th and who have been diverting aid and critical resources from people who need it in order to bolster Hamas’s position of power in Gaza.
Holding Israeli hostages in UN homes, which we just found out yesterday…
Absolutely. This is egregious and that’s to my point. This isn’t just about what the Jewish community is thinking and feeling. That should be offensive to all Canadians. That is not what we should see happening with our tax dollars. There are other ways that we can express our support for different groups of people to ensure that humanitarian aid flows to people who need it. This makes no sense.
Going back to earlier things you said about Shimon and the change. You mentioned actions are needed. CIJA said “We’re done”. What do you specifically need to see happen from the powers that be, that isn’t happening, in terms of protecting our community?
Number one, we need to see the laws that are on the books enforced consistently. And that requires an end to the buck passing. Very often we’ll see police point the finger at municipal leaders, municipal leaders point the finger at provincial leaders, provincial leaders point the finger at federal leaders. It’s really mission critical that everyone acknowledges that we have a problem in this country and to start taking it seriously and enforce the laws. And if everybody’s willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with one another instead of pointing fingers and trying to avoid blame, then, that’s an important step forward. That doesn’t involve any policy change. It doesn’t involve any new legislation. That’s something that everybody can do right now, today, if they just put their shoulder into it and lean into getting the job done.
The second thing is we need resources to flow to support Jewish communities in ensuring security. The existing program has been great for many years, but it’s bureaucratic. It’s cumbersome. It takes a long time to get money into institutions to put infrastructure into place. And they just changed it in the last few months.
It used to be called SIP and now it’s called the CCSP. And it included a lot more resources. money, more percentage of what’s covered, less red tape. So why is that not good enough?
And we’re grateful for that. And it is an improvement. But we can never just sort of sit back and say it’s been improved so there’s nothing left to do. There is still more work to do. to further improve and refine the program, to make sure that security enhancements are being deployed as quickly, efficiently, and effectively in a coordinated way. It’s mission critical. We don’t want to wake up the day after an attack to say, if only the program had been improved, people’s lives could have been saved.
Is this one of the reasons that you have been lobbying the federal government for the tax deduction or tax rebate idea? So that synagogues who hire security guards, can claim it on their taxes at the end of the year?
I think there’s a lot of different policy approaches to this. There are a lot of opportunities that are emerging with Federation-led security initiatives in order to get resources out, deployed in the community quickly, effectively, and in a strategic manner. There are a lot of different ways that we can be doing more and advancing it. And that’s our job, is to make sure that we’re not just saying ‘Mission accomplished’ before we’ve gotten to the ideal outcome.
I’ll give you an example of this with the Hizb-ut Tahrir conference. You know, this was an incident where the organization that has been banned as a terrorist group in the UK and Germany was going to be hosting a conference in Mississauga. We deployed a government relations strategy, a media relations strategy, a digital strategy. We even mobilized community members.
You’ve got 15,000 people writing to the Public Safety Minister, David McGuinty.
That’s right, including people in his own riding with whom he had a personal relationship calling him up. And we had, in concert with a range of Jewish community organizations who were very active in this, some organizations from other communities as well who took up the charge. They canceled the conference. The government spoke out. Governments at all levels spoke out. The federal government announced that they were starting the listing process to add them to the terrorist list. And so that’s a very good outcome.
But it’s not the final outcome. We’re not done yet. Because until Hizb-ut Tahrir is listed as a terrorist organization, the job’s not done. We have to keep working to ensure that we get that final outcome, we get that impact. That’s the approach that I’d like to take across the board.
The specific vehicle sometimes doesn’t matter as much as making sure we have the impact at the end of the road.
What about the bubble legislation? Toronto is studying it. Ottawa’s studying it. Vaughn had it. Didn’t work. So is that still a priority for CIJA?
Absolutely. We need to make sure that people who want to harass and intimidate Jewish Canadians going about their daily lives are not allowed to do so. We should be free to pray, to take our children to school, to go to recreational programs and a JCC without having to deal with protesters interrupting us. I remember earlier on in all of this, meeting with parents who had to pick up their kids from a Jewish daycare going through hate-filled protesters in order to do it. That is not something that should be tolerated. So whether we need bubble zone legislation in order to accentuate the point and empower police to keep people away from our community infrastructure, or they’re going to do it on their own anyway, again, it’s the impact that matters.
I know you guys pushed for the coming federal forum on antisemitism March 6. What do you hope will come out of it?
We have been very clear from the outset. The imperative with this is to have it result in concrete action. We don’t need another talk shop. We don’t need an antisemitism summit 2.0., where the Jewish community comes together to talk about how antisemitism is impacting our lives. I think the message is clear. We have a problem in this country, a public safety issue in this country when it comes to hatred targeting Jews and extremism and terrorism that is being fomented and whipped up in our country. There have been, I think, six terrorist plots foiled in the last year, a number of them explicitly targeting Jewish community institutions here in Canada
And in the United States.
Thankfully those were intercepted. We shouldn’t be waiting for one of these guys to be successful. We need to get to the root causes of this. We need to deal with radicalization, the glorification of terrorism that’s happening, and really come up with concrete solutions at all levels of government and with policing to tackle this problem. And if this forum fails to lead to concrete action and concrete results, it won’t have fulfilled its purpose. And that’s the position we’ve taken from the outset. This is not a mission accomplished moment that they’ve announced a forum. The action that will be taken to fight antisemitism is the objective. Hopefully we’ll see some action coming.
You mentioned glorification of terrorism. There has been some important legislation that CIJA backed these past couple of years that we’re now not going to see go forward in the House of Commons, because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has prorogued Parliament until late March, and there could be a change in government after that. These include the online hate bill, and also changes to the criminal code that would remove protection for hate speech based on religious beliefs, such as if you are an Imam or a clergy person and saying hateful things that you believe to be true. What does CIJA plan to do about all these important pieces of legislation?
We want to deal with the problem of people being radicalized on the Internet. So what are some of the other opportunities that may be out there while we don’t have a legislative process, or while we’re trying to figure out the right balance in terms of what a public policy solution to this might look like? The bottom line is how are we going to have an impact?
So I think as we move towards a new government that has a legislature that’s meeting, where legislation is possible, where funding of programs becomes possible again, those are some of the questions that we’re going to be bringing forward to all political parties to help us.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said that if they get into power, they will cut the office of the Special Envoy for fighting antisemitism, and also the Islamophobia representative, too. Is CIJA upset about it or do you agree?
I have a lot of respect for both Irwin Cotler and for Deborah Lyons who have done a lot of work in their careers on these issues, not just in the position of envoy. For me, the office itself is not the issue. The issue is the impact that that office can have. So it’s a vehicle. It’s a vessel. If there’s another way for a future government of Canada to have an impact on fighting antisemitism on the international stage and domestically here in Canada, to great effect, then that’s the most important thing. Not the title, not the fact that there is an office. It’s what the government is able to deliver on those things.
‘
I do have something I want to add – You had asked me about why now we’re looking to work with volunteers, grassroots groups and what’s changed. I just want to say, you know This isn’t a new approach for CIJA.
If you look at the Legal Task Force that was put together in the immediate aftermath of October 7, to support the community with legal resources and tools, on a pro-bono basis, that is volunteer-led and volunteer-driven and is successful on the basis of hundreds of volunteer lawyers putting their hands up and offering their blood, sweat, and tears. for the betterment of the Jewish community. And I know that it’s been a grueling experience. I also hope it has been a fulfilling experience. It’s an invaluable resource, not just for CIJA but for the broader community. So this isn’t something that’s coming out of nowhere. This has always been something that’s important, but I think we need to elevate it and take it to a whole new level where it’s a community-wide approach where we’re not necessarily
doing everything as CIJA, but we’re helping, we’re convening, we’re connecting, we’re coaching.
And funding, because I know you do a lot of funding too.
And we’re embracing the entirety of the community and helping us to do more together than we could do as constituent parts.
This is a critical moment for the community. I don’t know if governance of the organization is really where we want to be looking right now. But in terms of the ethos of wanting to move forward in a way that reflects the needs of the Jewish community and how we can advance a better future for the entire Jewish community, that’s 100 % the driving force for me every single day when I come into the office. First and foremost, we have to be really, really accountable and transparent and thoughtful about how we’re engaging the community, and how we’re representing the community and how we’re going to build a better future for the community.
Every single person in our community has something to contribute. And I think that’s a fundamental Jewish value. And we have to embrace that. Because it’s pivotal for our success. The other side, our adversaries, are unified. They are speaking with one voice. And we have to do that to the best of our abilities too. That doesn’t mean we all have to do the same thing.
That doesn’t mean we all have to be the same. In fact, to the contrary, we each have a unique role to play. And the important thing in all of this is to make sure that we are doing so in a unified way, where each of those unique contributions can come together and contribute to a greater whole, and that we’re all focused on the same target and driving towards success. go back to what I said before. This is about winning. This is about making sure that our community wins. It’s not about any one organization or any individual or any group. We need to win this fight. It’s the fight for our lives, the fight for our children. And in order to do that, we’ve got to come together.
Why did you want this job?
Listen, I’ve been working in Jewish community advocacy for the last 18 years. I’ve worked for CIJA. I’ve worked for UJA Federation of Greater Toronto. I worked for the Canada- Israel committee at the very beginning. Over time I’ve developed some skills and some experience. At this moment. for the community, and for my children, I want to be at the front lines of this fight. I want to do everything that I can to make sure that our community has the best shot at success. We need to win this and I don’t want to be sitting on the sidelines. I want to be in the mix. So that’s why I’m here. I’m here to drive things forward and do everything that I can while I’m here, you know. help our community along the way.
Your grandfather experienced fighting for Jews against Fascism at Toronto’s Christie Pits in 1933. This is your Christie Pits?
My grandfather was at Christie Pits and I will tell you that there are eerie similarities to the 1930s, having swastika flags flying in Toronto and crowds marching, violence in our streets. Today we see Hamas and Hezbollah flags flying in our streets. calls for violence, extremism, arson attacks and shootings and horrible, horrible things happening in our neighborhoods, in our schools, in our universities, in our hospitals, everywhere. Once upon a time, our public institutions put their foot down, banned the swastika, took an unequivocal stand, and started to create the conditions for a new Canada to emerge where Jewish life could thrive and experienced a golden age.
This is a major, major setback. Alarm bells going off for everyone. The frustration, the fear, I feel it. I’m a Jewish Canadian and I am in this with every other Jewish Canadian right now.
We have an opportunity to push for our public institutions to take a stand again, to draw that line that should be indelible between acceptable behavior and what absolutely cannot stand in this country. And it’s not enough to just say that it should be so. People need to do it. They need to act. They need to demonstrate that this will not be tolerated in this country. We need change. We need to make sure that this is happening.
The prime minister tweeted a couple of days ago when the first three Israeli women hostages were released during the latest ceasefire, that he hopes the temperature will turn down in Canada. Do you think the temperature is going to turn down with the hostage? How did that sit with you?
Protest groups made it very clear that the temperature was not going to go down and the experience thus far has confirmed that. The reality is the hate slogans, the calls for violence in our streets have absolutely nothing to do with what’s going on over there. It has to do with what’s going on over here. If you’re serious about fighting Jew hatred in the streets of Toronto, in the streets of Montreal, in the streets of Vancouver, in the streets of any city in this country, you have to focus on the people who are perpetuating that hate.
Hope is not a strategy and we need to go all in on quashing these hate mongers, these extremists, these people pushing and promoting terrorism and violence targeting Canadians.
This is not something that we can just brush off as a symptom of a war half a world away. This is a Canadian problem, and it needs to be solved here in Canada.
Is there anything you would like our listeners to know about what keeps you up at night?
There are lots of issues that come up every single day that keep me up at night. Every single day there seems to be another shoe dropping, like a shooting at a school or a firebombing of a synagogue or a kid being bullied in their school, a student being harassed in their classroom or university. It’s hard. I think what keeps me up at night is wondering whether our community will rise to this challenge. I think that we have an opportunity right now to make a big difference.
It all keeps me up at night.
How could anybody sleep soundly while schools are being shot at, synagogues are being firebombed, children are being bullied in their schools, while students can’t go to university without being harassed? What keeps me up at night is fear that it’s going to get even worse than this for my kids. And I can’t accept that. I absolutely can’t accept that.
And so I’m going all in. Every ounce of strength that I have is being poured into whatever I can do as an individual and as part of this group at CIJA and as part of this broader community here in Canada to make change happen, to solve these problems, to drive forward to a better future so that we can all sleep better at night knowing that the Canada of our past, the Canada within which we grew up, when none of this stuff was even a thought of being possible, is the Canada that we’re going to have one day again in the future.
It seems there is so much hate out there, it feels like a fire hose.
For sure. It is absolutely a fire hose. But to see people who are volunteering their time to take up this fight, who are dedicating themselves, whether through some of these grassroots organizations or as lay leaders in some of the other Jewish organizations. or just people going like and doing their little bit, putting up hostage posters around town just on their own. It’s incredibly encouraging to see our community coming together, finding common cause and everybody finding their voice at this time.
There’s a fight or flight reflex when you’re threatened and I think I’m here in Canada today because my family were fleers and they got out of there. I am so impressed with the fight response of this community. And if we are able to harness that energy effectively and drive forward, there won’t be any need for anybody to ponder flight from this country. And we can build a better Canada. not just for us, but for everyone going forward. This is a fundamental issue for Canada and what this country is going to become. And we all have a role to play, along with our non-Jewish friends, neighbors and colleagues, in putting our hand up and moving forward.
We have a federal election coming, an Ontario election coming. This is an opportunity for everyone in our community to help shape the country, to help shape our democracy.And if we don’t participate, others will and they’re going to take it in a different direction. So right now, as a minimum, everyone in our community should commit to vote. And if you’re willing to do more than that, get involved in partisan politics. And CJPAC is there to help make that easy for you. So if that’s one thing that everybody can do right now, don’t be passive, be active.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
