A pro-Israel student is suing Toronto Metropolitan University for $1.3 million, arguing the school allowed violations of campus policies that created a toxic atmosphere for Jews—and even cost her a job. Elsewhere, Jewish members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada—whose dues get donated to Palestinian causes like the United Nations Relief & Works Agency—are outraged that a senior official in the union has been posting pro-Hamas slogans to social media.
What connects these stories, and more than 500 others? These Canadians sought help from the new CIJA Legal Task Force, a free initiative created by the lobbyist organization the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. Created years ago as a professional development group, the task force has, since Oct. 7, evolved into a “rapid response” pro bono legal team that combats antisemitism directly—by taking the issues to court. Officials behind the group say that politicians, police officers, school boards, unions and hospitals have failed to take the problem seriously, prompting them to take matters into their own hands.
On today’s episode of The CJN Daily, we’re joined by former federal crown prosecutor Nanette Rosen, who co-chairs the legal task force, and Richard Marceau, a lawyer and CIJA’s general counsel.
Show Notes
Related links
- Learn more about the CIJA Legal Task Force and how to apply for help.
- Why CIJA is helping some families of the Canadians murdered on Oct. 7 to sue Ottawa for resuming funding to UNRWA, in The CJN.
- Read the legal brief filed at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice last April by a Toronto Metropolitan University student against her school for alleged toxic antisemitic conditions.
Credits
- Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
- Production team: Zachary Kauffman (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
- Music: Dov Beck-Levine
Transcript
Transcripts are AI-generated and may contain minor errors.
CTV News reporter:Yeah, we’re just getting this announcement from Global Affairs Canada and the office of Minister Ahmed Hussein, International Development Minister, saying that they have taken a look at that sort of partial interim report by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services into UNRWA.
Ellin Bessner:That’s some of the news coverage from about a year ago in March of 2024 when the Canadian government announced it will resume funding UNRWA, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, despite the agency confirming that 9 of its employees in Gaza may have been involved in the October 7th attack that killed 1200 Israelis. The Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs CIJA quickly swung into action.
It filed a lawsuit against the Canadian government demanding a judicial review in federal court of the cabinet’s decision to start up funding again.
Some of the families of the Canadian victims also joined CIJA’s lawsuit.
The case is still going ahead, and it’s just one of the more high profile legal files that CIJA’s taken on since October 7th, the work done for free pro bono by the organization’s LTF or Legal Task Force, a rapid response team made up of about 300 Canadian lawyers from across the country.
And while it sounds like the title of a new courtroom drama on TV, in fact, much of the work is done quietly behind the scenes, helping Jewish Canadians fight antisemitism in their workplaces, at schools, by their unions, on campus, and even in hospitals because of the explosion of anti-Semitism here in Canada since October 7th.
The legal task force members have helped an astonishing 550 people in just 17 months.
They get about 10 to 20 new cases every month, and it’s not slowing down.
And while some can be dealt with perhaps with just a lawyer’s letter or with having one of the lawyers attend a disciplinary hearing for the client, there are about 24 ongoing complicated cases, including the UNRWA lawsuit, but you might have also heard about some of the other ones:
the lawsuit against the Public Service Alliance of Canada, one against the Toronto Metropolitan University for $1.3 million because of a toxic atmosphere for a Jewish student on campus.
And there’s also a court appeal of the University of Windsor’s deal with its pro-Palestinian encampment protesters.
Now, the task force mainly handles civil cases, not criminal ones.
And although they call themselves the legal rapid reaction force, they know the wheels of justice move slowly.
Nanette Rosen:And what we see is the rise of antisemitic behaviour, a permission. But what the hope is, and the accomplishments is, that we are making people behave, and we hope to also through education and other means change the hearts and minds. But in the meantime, we are changing their behaviour.
I’m Ellin Bessner, and this is what Jewish Canada sounds like for Wednesday, March 12, 2025.
Welcome to The CJN Daily, a podcast of the Canadian Jewish news made possible in part thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.
CIJA’s legal task force is run out of Ontario with hubs of legal volunteers in Vancouver, Calgary, and Montreal, and they’re looking for more lawyers to join the team.
The story’s interesting because it shows how the Jews have to resort to the courts and the legal system to fight for their equal rights now, instead of relying on elected politicians and union leaders, university presidents, or school boards to take antisemitism seriously.
Right now, for example, the CIJA task force is helping a group of pro-Israel Jewish parents at Rawlinson Elementary in the Toronto District School Board.
They won an election to sit on the parents’ council, but other parents who don’t support Zionism want the election results annulled.
The case is going to court for a judicial review. It’s scheduled to be heard in May.
To find out more about why Canada’s Jewish political advocacy agency created its own legal SWAT team, I’m joined by the task force’s co-chair, Nanette Rosen.
She’s a retired Department of Justice prosecutor. And also by Richard Marceau.
He’s a lawyer by profession and CIJA’s general counsel.
Ellin Bessner: The task force itself is not new, right? It’s been around for a while before October 7th. Give us a little bit of the background.
Richard Marceau: So about eight, nine years ago, the legal task force was created out of Toronto to pool resources of lawyers who wanted to contribute to the Jewish community. And then it expanded across Canada. But the focus was on three things. Some cases you might have heard, like the Foodbenders case, you know, that cafe who had the “Zionists not welcome” sign? So that’s the case that, let’s call it LTF 1.0, dealt with. The legal task force also did legal conferences to train lawyers on different issues and provided continuing legal education for lawyers. Additionally, Legal Task Force 1.0 was a great brain trust for CIJA when there was legislation tabled, and we wanted access to great minds. But then October 7th happened, and everything changed.
Ellin Bessner: How many cases would you have been working on per year, let’s say, and then what happened October 7th, I think, must have changed your numbers.
Nanette Rosen: Four or five cases a year, perhaps, that would go forward. And then October 7th happened, and myself and all members of our community and all members involved in Jewish organizations all had to reinvent what it is they had initially signed up for and what they were now asked to do.
Ellin Bessner: Did you at the time have any clue to the amount of cases that you would now be working on?
Richard Marceau: No, we did not. Nobody expected that tsunami of Jew hatred. Immediately, we started to get emails and phone calls from people in the school system, from campus, from people in unions and everywhere saying, “We need your help.” So we had to set things up differently, all led by a steering committee co-chaired by Nanette, who would have an overview of all the activities. And I know it sounds like a cliché, I know, but we’re literally building the plane as it was taking off, while at the same time seeing all the advocacy work that needed to be done. It was chaotic but lots of work got done from the very beginning.
Nanette Rosen: While the lawyers provide their work pro bono, UJA Federation of Greater Toronto has come up with funding with respect to disbursements–it might sound pedantic–or about costs that are associated, but we have transparency, and we have probably helped over 300 individuals. Importantly, it’s not just Jewish members of our community. It can include our allies: non-Jewish people who have come forward and supported us or spoken publicly in support of Israel or members of the Jewish community, they have been the subject of hatred too, and we have represented them pro bono.
Ellin Bessner: Are there also lawyers, speaking of which, who are non-Jewish allies and part of your legal task force?
Nanette Rosen: Yes, there are. It doesn’t make you popular at cocktail parties. They deserve all our respect. All our Kavod.
Richard Marceau: Latest number was actually more than 500.
Ellin Bessner: Some of it is just having a lawyer at the initial stages of some problem. Second of all, if it doesn’t get solved that way, then you escalate. Thirdly, is political action. Right?
Nanette Rosen: When we help people on an individual basis, members of our community are our allies. There’s a respect for their confidentialities. We don’t advertise, we don’t toot our own horn. What we do is we listen to those individuals, people who are aggrieved. We provide empathy, we provide legal assistance, and we provide a confidential way by which they can act. And they also get to change their minds. So, for instance, when we have a parent who comes to us when their child has been the subject of antisemitism and they say, initially, ‘We want to go to court!’ Then we tell them what that’s about and they go, well, maybe we don’t want court. We want to meet with the administration and we say, okay, we’ll provide some. And they say, well, actually, no, let me think about it. So what we do is we listen to the needs and the concerns of the community, and we do what they say in a respectful fashion.
Ellin Bessner: There are, though, some cases where the subjects have gone public, though? The student at Toronto Metropolitan University who sued for a toxic atmosphere of antisemitism, you guys were involved in that. Where is that?
Richard Marceau: Last April, we issued a statement of claim that’s taken by David Rosenfeld, an excellent lawyer at Koskie Minsky. So there was a statement of claim, there was a statement of defence, and we responded. And now we’re—you know, the wheels of justice can be slow to turn, but the court date has not been set, but we have to follow the usual course. So that is one. There’s actually two cases at Toronto Metropolitan University for antisemitism.
Ellin Bessner: One is a professor, I think, right?
Richard Marceau: Correct. So one is faculty, the other is a student. And we have the University of Windsor. The University of Windsor is one of the only, if not the only, university in Canada that caved in, that capitulated to the demand of the encampments. We made a complaint under the Ontario Business Discriminatory Practices Act. The deputy minister, so it’s not a political decision, it’s not a political echelon, rejected our complaint saying that the Act did not apply. So we’re doing a judicial review of this. So that’s where it’s at. It’s in front of the Ontario court to judicially review this. So we have now three active cases related to campus.
Ellin Bessner: And you have UNRWA.
Richard Marceau: When the Canadian government decided to renew funding for UNRWA, which is a Hamas-infested UN organization, we took the Canadian government to court for a judicial review, saying that it was patently unreasonable. The government tried, at the early stage, to kick us out, saying that we had no case, but that was rejected by the Federal Court. So the case is proceeding. So we have an important case with CIJA and family members of victims of October 7th that are taking our own government to court. To me at least, it’s very sad that we have to go to court to ensure that Canadian money does not go to an organization that is so linked and infested by Hamas. It shouldn’t be that way. It should have been an easy decision for Ottawa to say, you know what, the Palestinians deserve humanitarian aid, but not through UNRWA.
Nanette Rosen: It’s important to note that while we wish that we had many, many more cases that potentially we could take strategically and we would want to soothe our community and satisfy our community, nothing goes out before we can be sure that there is a real argument, that there’s a foundation, that there’s the evidence in place. And so while it’s not fast, it is of quality. The second piece I want to mention to defend the legal system, where Richard talks about the fact that our legal cases go slowly. It’s true that they go slowly, but in the meantime, they provide a very important purpose. If I may, as a former prosecutor, sort of riff on sentencing principles, we have both specific deterrence and general deterrence. So when those cases go forward, they impact the institution and ask them to behave and make them accountable. But there’s also the principle of general deterrence. So when we take on one of the universities, like the University of Windsor or TMU, we have a chilling effect on other institutions where they reflect on whether or not they want to conduct themselves, how they want to treat their Jewish students, how they want to respond to BDS requests. So we wish the litigation was fast and swift with good results, but they provide an important deterrent effect both specific and general as they’re going through the court system.
Ellin Bessner: Can you tell us why you feel this is so necessary—the court way to get what we deserve?
Richard Marceau: So, Ellin, I know we speak to a member of a prominent legal family. There has been a systemic failure of governments at all levels and of law enforcement to protect the Jewish community across the country. We have touched the limits of the advocacy-only era. Now we have to use more tools or at least use them more aggressively than we used to in the past. I was having similar conversations with our colleagues at ADL from the U.S. who also have basically set up their own law firm within the ADL context because they also are touching this. Our governments have failed to protect the Jewish community. Our governments, our institutions—for example, campus—have failed to enforce their own policy. Because when you look at the TMU case on behalf of the student, when you drill down, bottom line is that they have policies, they’re good policies, that they have not applied them correctly and that is an issue. So we’re taking them on, or we want to make sure that they’re accountable for their failure to apply and to enforce their own policies. The same thing for law enforcement. There are laws, there are bylaws that are on the books that have not been used for reasons unknown, that could have put a damper on the anti-Israel, antisemitic stuff that we’ve seen in the streets, that we should not have seen. There was a way to stop that before, had we used the laws that are already on the books.
Nanette Rosen: And to your question, you know, why should we? I’ll use a phrase from our Israeli family, Ain Brera. We have no choice. We have to use all the tools that are available to counter the antisemitism.
Ellin Bessner: You didn’t want to talk about criminal stuff yet, but let’s talk about it now. How, if at all, are your legal task force members involved in the day-to-day and criminal code stuff as opposed to the institutional stuff?
Richard Marceau: So we have great experts, great criminal lawyers. Mark Freiman, of course, is one of them. We have Joe Neuberger, John Rosen, and a few others who have been quite helpful on that front. But now we’re organizing better. Other lawyers, other legal Jewish organizations are working with CIJA: Canadian Lawyers Against Antisemitism. There’s ALCCA (the Alliance of Canadian Combatting Antisemitism) as well. So we’re getting more organized, again, because there’s been a failure of that. But you know, to your question, when we’re at a point that in 2024 Canada, the community needs to go to court to get injunctions to protect our schools, to protect our synagogues, to protect our community centres, something has gone wrong and we should not need to do that. That is a failure of the authorities, be they municipal, provincial, or federal, to ensure that our community is safe. We’re using courts now because there was no choice to ensure that our rights are protected and that the promise of Canada to the Jewish community is realized and protected.
Nanette Rosen: We’ve had Jewish students being charged on campus who have been swept up in protests. Again, we have quietly but appropriately represented them.
Ellin Bessner: I want to just ask, of all the sections of society where you guys are seeing cases or people needing help, is there one that is the worst or has it changed over the past 17 months? Maybe it’s quieter, I don’t know.
Richard Marceau: K to 12. Campus. Unions.
Ellin Bessner: Is there anything that gives you hope?
Richard Marceau: There’s hope in our community being resilient. There’s hope in the great people that I’ve seen step up. People were disengaged before and now are stepping up. Here, I’m thinking a lot of the work that’s been done in unions, because you talked, Ellin, rightly, about the proceedings against CUPE and against PSAC and against OPSEU. What has not been as covered is the work done by Jewish union members who before were disengaged, and now are fighting back against antisemitism in their own unions. I see a renaissance of Jewish pride, of people being more visible Jews sometimes, despite being afraid and wanting to stand up. To me, that’s one of the big lessons. We can advocate, we can demonstrate in the streets, we can write letters to the editor, we can send letters, we can do advocacy work, we can do legal work, we can complain to this or that. But nothing replaces a Jew who stands up, a Jew who has her or his head held high and knows their place in Canada as full citizens with rights that need to be protected by their authorities and will stand up for themselves. Even though we have allies, and they’re very important, we need to stand up for ourselves more than we ever had. And we’re seeing, certainly from where I stand, more and more of that. And that gives me a lot of hope.
Nanette Rosen: I would say we’re on a journey. I’d like to riff on “Na’aseh v’Nishma.” So with respect to the idea of first the conduct and then the understanding, what we are doing and what we have is to make people behave, whether or not they’re antisemitic in their hearts. We can see that there’s been an incubation of antisemitism, and we hope to also, through education and other means, change hearts and minds. But in the meantime, we are changing their behaviour.
Ellin Bessner: Do you think that just by putting them through the court system and making them get their briefs and affidavits, and making them spend money on this, they actually pay attention? The outcome may be a long way down the road, as you said, but does the process have any help as well?
Nanette Rosen: Yes, it does. It changes the behaviour and it provides also a general deterrence when other people decide whether or not to engage in such behaviour. That’s harder to measure, but it’s equally important. There’s the possibility of settlement throughout the whole procedure. In the meantime, it sends a message. The other piece that sends a message is: we are not retreating from institutions. We are going to participate in public universities, public hospitals, and workplaces. We are not going to self-ghettoize. We are here to stay, and we are, as Canadian citizens, most importantly with allegiances to Israel, not going undercover, not being stealth. We can choose to be in those public institutions. We can choose to live in Mississauga, for instance, and our child may have to go to school under the Peel education system, where we’ve had tremendous difficulty with antisemitic activities. But a Jew has a right to live in Mississauga, and a Jew has a right to send their child to the public school there.
Ellin Bessner: Back to you. It takes a lot of courage for your plaintiffs or your complainants or your test-case people to do this.
Richard Marceau: It’s not fun. And that’s been one of the challenges—people saying, yes, you have to sue this or that, but then not wanting to put their name forward out of fear, for whatever reason. That is why I’m in awe of the young woman who’s suing TMU, of the Jewish union members who are taking on OPSEU, PSAC, and CUPE, the Jewish faculty member who is suddenly taking on TMU. It takes risk. It shouldn’t, but it does. Yet it can have an impact. And you were asking earlier about victories. We were granted intervener status in the U of T injunction case. CIJA and B’nai Brith were represented by the excellent Mark Ross, a great litigator, and we won. When the encampment was taken down, it had a domino effect across the country. Within a very short time, every encampment was gone. One notable exception, which we discussed earlier, is the University of Windsor, which decided to capitulate shamelessly to the encampment. But legal action does have an impact. It’s not the be-all and end-all; it’s an important tool in a toolkit to fight antisemitism.
Nanette Rosen: They are the heroes of this narrative. We distinguish ourselves because they put their names on legal documents and they don’t wear masks. They stand forward in full view.
Ellin Bessner: It’s never ending.Listen, guys, it’s been an eye-opener. I really appreciate it. You’ll keep us posted on how these cases are going? I’m sure we’ll hear about it.
Richard Marceau: Thank you for having us.
Ellin Bessner: And that’s what Jewish Canada sounds like for this episode of The CJN Daily, made possible in part by the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.
Now this CIJA Legal task force isn’t the only one doing this kind of work. The Lawfare Project run by Canadian Brooke Goldstein out of New York has almost 1,000 attorneys at their disposal, and they launched lawsuits on behalf of pro-Jewish and pro-Israel clients and activists. There’s also the new Canadian Jewish Law Association, just launched with criminal lawyer Joseph Neuberger of Toronto as its founder, and there’s the Toronto-based Diamond and Diamond firm. They launched a class action lawsuit against 15 universities for how they treated their Jewish students since October 7th. We put the link in our show notes for anyone who thinks they need free legal help from CEA.
Our show is produced by Zachary Judah Kauffman.cThe executive producer is Michael Freeman.cManaging editor is Mark Weisblott, and the music is by Dov Beck Levine. Thanks for listening.
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