The last 18 months have seen the political landscape shift for Jewish communities across the country, which have witnessed an explosion in antisemitic attacks, protests on university campuses and in the streets.
As a result, the April 28 federal election—the first time Jewish Canadians across the country have cast a ballot since Oct. 7, 2023, and the ongoing war in Gaza—involves a more intense conversation than experienced in the past.
Israel has also been the subject of debate on Parliament Hill. The government suspended and then restored funding to UNRWA, after an internal United Nations investigation revealed that some members of the relief agency dedicated to Palestinians had participated in the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks. Permits for new weapons exports to Israel have been halted.
Meanwhile, the political fortunes of the federal parties have also changed.
With a new prime minister heading the Liberal Party, and the re-election of President Donald Trump in the United States, what had once looked like an easy path for the Conservative Party of Canada to form the next government now appears to be less likely, with current polls indicating Mark Carney’s Liberals in the lead.
Pollsters, academics, and voters themselves say voters face a different set of choices than they did just a few months ago, as they try to determine which party and leader is best prepared to steer the country through an uncertain economic future—and to combat rising antisemitism.
And while many Jewish voters still want to see Pierre Poilievre’s Tories form the next government, which would include a prominent deputy role for Thornhill MP Melissa Lantsman, other voters are reconsidering their options.
Perspectives of a Jewish pollster
The national political situation is now “radically different” than at the outset of 2025, and that applies to the entire country as well as the Jewish community specifically, says Steven Pinkus, a principal at the polling firm Mainstreet Research, which has offices in Toronto and Ottawa.
“A massive wave has crashed across the country. It’s not a Jewish thing, it’s just the reality” with Trump in office and Trudeau out, he told The CJN in early April.
“[Trudeau’s exit] took a lot of the downward pressure on the Liberals off. Immediately. [It] was massive and clear, especially amongst the Jewish community. As soon as he left, it made things a lot better for Liberals, but that wasn’t the only change.”
With Trump’s adversarial posture sparking a trade war threatening to harm the Canadian economy, Pinkus acknowledges Jewish voters may stick to their “’core support for Conservatives” on Israel foreign policy and the government response to antisemitism in Canada. Then again, he says, the realities of the impact of tariffs are part of a changing picture that the research shows.
“The whole focus shifted in the entire election.”
This federal election presents voters with a binary choice, according to Pinkus.
“All of a sudden, the issues in antisemitism and support for as Israel, as important as they are— and they are very important… I have lots of Jewish people telling me ‘we worry about it’— on the other hand, it’s ’do we trust Pierre Poilievre to deal with this guy [Trump], or do we go with Mark Carney?’”
Conservatives were ahead by 27 points in January, following Trudeau’s resignation but before Trump’s inauguration, he says.
“Trump came in and started talking about 51st State, about ‘Governor Trudeau,’ and he started talking about these tariffs… he threatened all Canadians.”
Pinkus observes that voters in Quebec, where protecting language and culture is “hugely important,” along with those in Ontario, British Columbia, and Atlantic Canada, must consider which party leader is best to handle Trump, which he says inevitably “[splashes] over onto the Jewish community.”
The shifting sands in Toronto
Steven Pinkus mentions the midtown Toronto riding of St. Paul’s as one that may illustrate a shift for Jewish voters. Held by Conservative MP Don Stewart since a byelection last spring, it’s now seeing a rematch with Liberal candidate Leslie Church, who Stewart beat by a little more than 600 votes last June. Church currently leads the polls by a wide margin.
“We’re facing another four years of a very different Liberal government than we’ve had for the last 10 years,” said Pinkus. “And as odd as this election is, the Liberals are the party of change. It’s unbelievable, but there it is. Because we had two years, and everybody assuming that [Pierre] Poilievre was going to win… and that’s not the case anymore.”
Leslie Wolfe, a St. Paul’s voter, says last year’s byelection was the first election she’s missed in more than 40 years.
Wolfe didn’t vote based on “policies towards Israel and Jews” in previous elections.
“It [had] never been on my radar, but after October 7th, everything changed,” she said. One rally, held outside Toronto City Hall, celebrated the attack with displays and chants openly supporting Hamas’ actions, days before Israel’s military response began in Gaza.
“I began to look very closely at what our politicians were saying and doing around Israel, and perhaps more importantly, what they were saying or doing or saying and not doing in relation to protecting Jewish communities here in the country that I was born in. And I really wanted to vote. But I simply could not find a place where I was comfortable landing.”
A left-leaning voter, Wolfe says she’s moved between the NDP and Liberal parties, but could not vote Conservative.
“Despite Poilievre’s commitments to the Jewish community and to Israel, I can’t help but feel that he’s being opportunistic rather than… authentically understanding of the position that Jewish people in this country find themselves in,” she said, adding that his politics, and his conduct since becoming opposition leader “have not spoken to me.”
Wolfe posted on Facebook about her electoral dilemma—and it spurred a friend to invite her to a meet and greet with Church, the Liberal candidate.
“I can’t not participate again,” she said. “I felt like I needed to know who would be the best possible representative for this area based on the fact that there is a large Jewish population here and that there have been incidents of antisemitism right in this neighborhood.”
Whichever party forms government, Wolfe wants Canadian leaders to comprehend the sense of apprehension, including a tenor of antisemitism sometimes showing up in Toronto as aggressive protests she hopes to see her elected officials address.
“Those of us who have experienced the last year-and-a-half as threatening and filled with antisemitism” want MPs “who will speak up on behalf of those of us who feel that way,” said Wolfe.
“All of us are grappling with what’s coming up from the other side of the 49th parallel. But I think for those of us who have experienced the world differently since October 7th, there is that added, very specific priority of wanting to feel safe and welcome in your own country, and not feeling that way to a large degree, because of the lack of meaningful action taken by any level of government.”
She arrived at new thinking on her ballot question as a Jewish voter.
“[Do we] vote as Canadians and then figure out whether your sense of safety as a Canadian comes first? Or whether your sense of concern around Canada’s economic wellbeing and sovereignty comes first?”
Fighting antisemitism—priority or not?
Robert Brym, University of Toronto professor emeritus of sociology, says his survey of decided Jewish voters, conducted in August and September 2024, offers insights into what motivated their voting preferences.
“I gave people a list of campaign issues, and, as for all Canadians, the number one issue driving the vote was the state of the economy… jobs, inflation. Don’t forget, this is before the Trump era,” he told The CJN on April 8.
Out of 11 issues, antisemitism ranked second, he says, with the other nine issues “nowhere close to those two” for most of the decided Jewish voters in Brym’s survey—including health care, crime, and even the Israel/Palestine conflict.
“It was antisemitism here that mattered to Jews,” he said.
And while Brym can’t predict the future, he says the Trump tariff issue is looming large and seems bound to bring change to Jews’ voting preferences and will drive more of the vote than the economy did in the previous survey.
“I don’t know, and I don’t have the data to support it, but I think there will be a shift. In other words, that would be reflected in increased portion of the Liberals compared to the situation in the fall of 2024.
“Will a plurality of the Jews still favor the Conservative party? Probably, but not as enthusiastically as they did last fall,” he said.
The Trump factor, plus consideration for Carney’s economic leadership, will “move some Jews back to the Liberals,” says Brym.
“The question is, how much?”
New Democrats have lost many Jewish supporters, he says, “because it’s taken a strong anti-Israel position… at least that’s the way people perceive it. I certainly do, and I think it’s pretty common. A lot of people, even left-leaning Jews have been turned off with that.”
Left-leaning Jews have been turned off, generally, by the left, he says—”and the NDP is the left in our country.”
“Support for the NDP is way down” in the polls, he says.
“It’s going to be even more down, I think, for the Jews voting for the NDP. It’s going to be wiped out largely.”
Antisemitism will remain a key factor in Jewish Canadians’ votes, says Brym.
“But the tariffs and their consequences on the economy are going to be right up there with it.”
The driver for many Jewish voters involves weighing two ways of seeing the issues.
“The real question here is, are people voting as Jews or as Canadians… or, what’s the combination of these two things that are driving us?”
His research will soon determine that, Brym says, while survey data from August and September 2024 offered an answer for that period:
Conservatives led with 57 percent of decided voters to Liberals’ 26 percent and the NDP’s 10 percent; other parties totaled 7 percent.
“In a couple weeks, I’ll be able to give the answer for right now,” said Brym in early April. The new survey, finishing on or by April 28, will include responses captured before and during the election campaign.
Still, tackling antisemitism remains top priority for many Canadian Jewish voters in the first federal vote since Oct. 7, says Richard Robertson, director of advocacy and research at B’nai Brith Canada.
“There’s been a change in the mindset of Canadian Jews,” he said.
“The rise in antisemitism, our federal government’s response to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas… [have] had a profound impact on Canadian Jewish communities across the country. This will be front and centre, and should be, in the minds of Jewish Canadians when they cast their votes.”
Robertson sees the election as a chance for the Jewish community to “have their say” on how Canada will respond to rising antisemitism.
“We’ve heard from members of the Jewish community across the country who have been shocked, saddened, disappointed by the current state of affairs in this country,” he said.
Parliament must take the issue seriously regardless of which party forms government, said Robertson.
“The situation regarding antisemitism in Canada at present requires all of our political leaders and will require all of their efforts after the election to address it meaningfully.
“You cannot divorce tackling antisemitism from an election centered on Canadian values and Canadian identity.”
B’nai Brith hosted debates in two Toronto ridings, York Centre and Eglinton-Lawrence, and the organization prepared a nonpartisan election information website to guide voting decisions. Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs also mounted a ‘Four Questions’ campaign as a community voter guide for a year in which Passover landed in the middle of an election campaign.
Addressing antisemitism in Canada and relations with Israel will drive some Jewish voters’ decisions post-Oct. 7, but the community is not a monolith, says Myer Siemiatycki, professor emeritus in the politics department at Toronto Metropolitan University.
“It’s possible that more Jewish Canadians will be carrying with them into the ballot box a post-October 7th concern about Israel and concerns about what they see as rising antisemitism in Canada,” he said.
Siemiatycki points out there’s “a diversity of currents of support in various different political and partisan directions within the Jewish community,” and points to “an interesting indicator”: Of the nine current incumbent MPs who are Jewish, six are Liberals, two Conservatives, and one is NDP.
“Any suggestion that there is a Jewish vote to be had, a Jewish bloc… that’s attached to any one particular party [should be treated], I think, with a very high degree of skepticism,” he said.
While some Jewish voters aren’t likely to budge on which party they support, he says, other aspects of the community’s political leanings might yield voting shifts.
“I think we’re at the point where the Canadian Jewish vote on what I’ll call narrowly Jewish issues is pretty much baked in,” said Siemiatycki.
“I wouldn’t expect many who before Trump and tariffs were strongly supportive of the Conservatives as the best party to represent Jewish Canadians to now suddenly be thinking ‘no, it’s another party that can play that particular role better.’”
In a similar way, he says, a younger cohort of Canadian Jews “who are comfortable with the Liberal party’s position on Israel” aren’t generally Tory voters.
“I don’t see them jumping over and voting Conservative because of how much stronger they now feel that it’s the Conservatives who need to be elected for the sake of Canadian Jewry and support for Israel. That aspect of Jewish political leaning [is] already baked in and set… I don’t see a lot of variances or volatility on that.”
What might shift, Siemiatycki says, is voters’ thinking about who would best steer Canada’s economy through a turbulent period.
“Who do they want to send into the room, as it were, with Mr. Trump? Do they want to send in Mr. Poilievre, or do they want to send in Mr. Carney? Those questions, I think, are becoming increasingly relevant and significant in how Canadian Jews will vote,” he said.
“The reality is, a couple of weeks before election day, the Trump factor and the tariff factor has basically been an unprecedented political earthquake in this country.”
The before and after polling numbers tell the story, he says.
“At the beginning of 2025, the Conservatives were in majority, even landslide territory and the Liberals’… death sentence was being announced. Now all of a sudden, it’s the Liberals who are in the lead and the Conservative share that has fallen off.”
Jewish voters will have to evaluate ballot priorities, says Siemiatycki.
“How might they weigh and calibrate… threats to the sovereignty and the continued existential threat to Canada economically and politically that President Trump has been signaling since he was elected… how will Jewish Canadians balance the existential threat to Canada [with] the existential threat that they may perceive to towards Israel? Those are big unknowns at this point.
“It’s fair to say there are significant segments of the Canadian Jewish electorate that are available to both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party… the ground campaign will be important in in figuring out which parties get to those voters and get those voters out on voting day.”
Three party perspectives in Winnipeg
One city holds the highest proportion of Jewish representation in Ottawa: Winnipeg’s three incumbent Jewish MPs represent three separate parties: Conservative Marty Morantz, Liberal Ben Carr, and the NDP’s Leah Gazan (whose grandfather was a Holocaust survivor).
Tami Jacoby, acting head of the political studies department at the University of Manitoba, says many Jews tend to be single-issue voters who’ll choose candidates that support Israel.
“They don’t like to be among a group that votes Conservative because that group tends to also include the right-wing crazies and white supremacists,” wrote Jacoby in an email, while noting her specialization is in Middle Eastern politics.
“I think Jews are naturally left wing in Canadian (and American) politics. But on the left there is a general tendency to support the Palestinians and antisemitism, now dressed up as anti-Zionism. So, that would be a reason to hold their noses and support Poilievre.”
Sid Frankel, a retired professor of social work at the University of Manitoba, sees “no uniform set of voter preferences in the Jewish community.”
Those who see Israel as “legitimately expressing Jewish rights” mostly vote for Conservatives and Liberals, Frankel said in an email.
“There is a class divide here with the most affluent supporting Conservatives (Morantz) and upper-middle class supporting Liberals (Carr),” wrote Frankel.
“The minority, of which I am a member, who rank social justice policy highly and see the Palestinians as engaged in a legitimate anti-colonialist struggle tend to support the NDP and to some extent the Greens.”
Frankel says that Gazan, who he’s supported, represents a lower income area than Morantz and Carr do in their districts.
Political polarities in British Columbia
Rachael Segal, a Vancouver-based strategist for Enterprise Canada—and political commentator who once worked as a policy director for Conservative former prime minister Stephen Harper, and provides right-of-centre perspectives on the podcast Beyond a Ballot—says that the way Canadians are pulling together in the face of U.S. trade moves and threats from Trump is comparable to the sense of Jewish community unity in the wake of Oct. 7.
“There is a sense that there’s much more camaraderie, the way we’re seeing on the national scale right now in terms of Canada and that patriotism,” she said.
“I think that insular ‘we need to take care of ourselves before we can take care of anyone else’ idea has really has really impacted, specifically, a small community like the Jewish community in British Columbia.”
“Ultimately, being such a small community, the Israel and the Jewish community issues will play into voting intention for Vancouver and British Columbia as a whole,” she said.
However, she says, “we have a huge proportion of people that aren’t aligned with, Zionism or Judaism in some senses, and we kind of embrace that better than I think a lot of other communities across the country.”
Avi Lewis, a journalist and filmmaker whose father Stephen was an Ontario NDP leader and Canada’s UN ambassador, is NDP’s Vancouver Centre candidate—taking on Liberal incumbent Hedy Fry, who’s currently the longest-serving MP in Ottawa.
Lewis and his wife, author Naomi Klein, vocally support Independent Jewish Voices, a group calling for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel.
In 2021, Lewis finished third in a previous NDP run, behind the Liberal winner and Conservative candidate, in the riding of West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country.
“He’s probably got, by way of support in British Columbia, more than he [Lewis] would in other provinces from the Jewish community,” said Segal.
However, the NDP, whose Burnaby, BC-based leader Jagmeet Singh is defending his own seat and trails in the polls, has bled voter support that polls show is helping the Liberals.
“This is an NDP province. We have an NDP premier,” said Segal. “And it’s looking like they may go down to one seat in this province.”
The risk of eclipsing all other issues
Few urban Canadian ridings exemplify the loss of Jewish support for the NDP like the Toronto riding of Davenport, where some local Jewish voters are supporting Liberal incumbent Julie Dzerowicz in a strategic vote to keep out local NDP candidate Sandra Sousa, a founding member of a group called Davenport for Ceasefire. Sousa has signed onto a ‘Vote Palestine’ pledge, along with Avi Lewis in Vancouver, and more than 230 candidates representing different parties, of which 31 candidates are current incumbents.
A group of Jewish voters who met as a group, in person, with Dzerowicz earlier in April say Sousa is avoiding such a meeting, and that comments are being deleted from Sousa’s Instagram posts if they criticize or challenge rather than express support for the NDP candidate.
One Davenport community member, who asked The CJN to withhold her name, says she’s supported Ontario NDP party leader Marit Stiles in previous provincial elections, including this past February, and has supported NDP candidates in past federal elections.
In 2021, Dzerowicz beat NDP candidate Alejandra Bravo by a mere 76 votes, which was later confirmed by a judicial recount due to the tight margin.
But recently, when Sousa reached the Davenport voter on the phone and wished to introduce herself, the voter was clear with the NDP candidate.
“I said, ‘I know exactly who you are, but I’m telling you now that I’m not voting for you, so I don’t know why you’re calling.’ And then she said, ‘why aren’t you voting for me?’ And I said… as far as I can tell, you have no policy other than you hate Israel. And I don’t really understand what that has to do with the Davenport riding.”
If the voter’s support of Dzerowicz may be more strategic than zealous, her dilemma, too, reflects the “least worst” option voting decision that Leslie Wolfe in St. Paul’s—and other Jewish Torontonians in the recent Ontario provincial election—have referenced in interviews with The CJN.
“She [Sousa] knows nothing about our community… and she thinks that hating Israel is enough to get my vote,” the Davenport voter said.
“The fact that she ran the Ceasefire [for] Davenport group, she thinks that that qualifies her [to represent] this community.
“I didn’t understand what she had to offer us.”
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