Jews targets of 82% of religion hate crimes in Toronto in 2025, Muslims 14%; hate crimes up 40% in 2026, per police data

Some 82% of religiously motivate hate crimes in Toronto in 2025 targeted Jews, compared to 14% that were anti-Muslim, according to annual hate crime statistics that the Toronto Police Service released on Thursday.

The department said that there was a 50% decrease in reported hate crimes in 2025 (231) compared to 2024 (443) but that reported hate crimes are up 40% so far in 2026 compared to this period last year. In 2023, there were 372 reported hate crimes, the department said.

In 2025, there was also a 37% decrease compared to 2024 in the number of criminal charges (217) brought against the 73 people arrested for hate crimes. Those arrested for hate crimes in 2025 were likelier to be charged (32%) than they were in 2024 (25%).

“Despite the overall decrease, hate crimes motivated by religion, race/ethnic or national origin, sexual orientation and gender identity or expression remained the most frequently reported, with the Jewish community the most frequently targeted group of all hate-motivated crimes,” the police department stated.

“The harm caused by hate continues to be very concerning, particularly for communities that continue to be targeted most frequently,” stated Myron Demkiw, chief of the police department. “The data shows that Jewish, black and 2SLGBTQI+ communities remain most impacted, year after year.”

“We are steadfast in our commitment to confronting hate in all its forms and making it easier for people to come forward and report incidents of hate,” the chief said. “In the last two years, we have strengthened our Hate Crime Unit and established the Counter-Terrorism Security Unit, which now encompasses the Hate Crime Unit, because we recognize the importance of addressing violent extremism early, in order to prevent harm.”

James Pasternak, a member of the Toronto City Council, told JNS that the “hate crime statistics are sad and shocking but not all that surprising.”

“Our city is at an inflection point, where there lacks a unified and universal condemnation of hate and a joint effort to stop the incitement on the streets of Toronto and online,” the councilman said. “We need robust action in law enforcement and criminal justice. We need to enforce current laws, improve laws and speak with moral clarity.”

“There is seems to be an unwillingness to confront this plague on our city and take the actions necessary,” Pasternak told JNS. “Toronto is heading to the abyss.”

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the advocacy arm of the Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA, stated that Jews make up 3% of Toronto’s population and that 35% of all reported hate crimes in the city targeted Jews.

“A Jewish Torontonian is now 14 times more likely to experience a hate incident than any other resident of Toronto,” CIJA stated.

“Toronto prides itself on being a city where people of all backgrounds can live openly, safely and without fear. Those values are undermined when any community no longer feels secure expressing its identity in public,” stated Michelle Stock, vice president for Ontario at CIJA.

“These statistics are deeply alarming, but they reflect a broader reality that Jewish families across Toronto are already experiencing every day. From synagogues to schools to public displays of Jewish identity, blatant attacks against the Jewish community are becoming more frequent and more brazen,” she stated. “Jewish Canadians are being targeted simply for who they are. No one should have to think twice about wearing a kippah, attending synagogue, sending their children to Jewish schools or participating openly in Jewish life.”

The city’s numbers mirror a nationwide surge, which B’nai Brith Canada has tracked. The Jewish group’s recent audit recorded 6,800 Jew-hatred incidents in 2025, about a 9% increase over 2024 and some 145% more than in 2022. The largest share of the incidents occurred in Ontario, per B’nai Brith’s statistics.

Richard Robertson, director of research and advocacy at B’nai Brith Canada, told JNS that given his group’s data, “it comes as no surprise that the Jewish people were once again disproportionately the most targeted group when it comes to religiously motivated hate crimes in the Toronto area.”

“We saw an unprecedented rise in antisemitism from 2022 to 2025 right across the country,” Robertson said. “Hate crimes in general might be decreasing, but the Jews still are being targeted at an unprecedented rate, and so we need immediate action from all levels of government to address this.”

B’nai Brith has already recorded more incidents of violent Jew-hatred so far in 2026 than it did in all of 2025.

“It also is consistent with a trend that B’nai Brith Canada has seen, where increases in antisemitic rhetoric online, which is something that we noted in our 2025 audit of antisemitic incidents, where over 92% of the antisemitic incidents occurred online, can be seen as a precursor or creating of an environment where we then see hatred play out in the streets,” he said.

Under-counting
Official police hate crime statistics likely undercount the total number of such incidents, according to the Canadian government.

“Police-reported hate crime information reflects only incidents that come to the attention of police and are subsequently classified as confirmed or suspected hate-motivated crimes,” the government states.

“Reporting can be influenced by many factors, including world events, social movements, community awareness and the expertise of local police,” it states. “Victims’ decisions to report may also be influenced, in terms of their likelihood to report a crime to police, by factors like language barriers, trust in police and the justice system and fears of stigmatization or further victimization.”

Survey data from 2019, the most recent such poll, suggested that “Canadians were the victims of over 223,000 criminal incidents that they perceived as being motivated by hate in the 12 months that preceded the survey,” and that “more than one in five (22%) of these incidents were reported to the police.”

Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, senior director of policy and advocacy at Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Canada, told JNS that “the report makes it clear that there’s still a lot of work to do in combating hate crime in the city.”

“We’re looking forward to continued partnership between TPS and the Jewish community,” she said, of Toronto police, “and we hope 2026 will start to look a lot better.”

Matthew Taub, director of the group Unapologetically Jewish, has filed a human rights complaint against the Toronto Police Services for what he alleges is a systemic failure to protect Jews from harassment, threats and violence in the city.

“Community members saw nothing happening from the police in 2025 and saw Toronto police weren’t stepping up to the job and protecting all Canadians,” he said. “There’s no trust in police, so people aren’t even bothering to report anymore.”

Talia Klein Leighton, president of Canadian Women Against Antisemitism, hopes that the statistics about Jew-hatred in the city makes the police department “take a good look at themselves and understand why so many people think there’s two-tier policing.”

“Not just putting Band-Aids on top of Band-Aids, but we need them to actually stem the tide of antisemitism and make real arrests,” she told JNS. “At least, make it moderately uncomfortable for someone to be an antisemite in Toronto.”

Ali Siadatan, head of education at the Toronto-based Jewish advocacy group Tafsik, told JNS that the new statistics from Toronto police make clear, as the B’nai Brith audit did, that “antisemitism in Canada is no longer episodic.”

“It is systemic and increasingly public. Jews represent a tiny percentage of Toronto’s population yet remain the single most targeted community for hate crimes,” Siadatan said. “The fact that so many incidents are occurring openly, on streets, transit and campuses suggests perpetrators no longer fear social or legal consequences.”

Police alone cannot solve the problem, according to Stock, of CIJA.

“Governments, law enforcement and civic leaders must treat these incidents with the seriousness they deserve and ensure those responsible are identified and held accountable. This requires coordinated action to confront the growing threat of antisemitism, extremism, radicalization and hate-motivated violence,” she stated. “The safety and security of Jewish Canadians cannot become negotiable or conditional in our society.”

The Toronto police department said that there were more than 375 protests in 2025 “related to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.”

“During demonstrations, 84 individuals were arrested and 186 criminal charges were laid,” the department said. “The Hate Crime Unit continues to be deployed during these protests, and other protests, to provide specialized expertise.”