Racist...White Supremacy...Hate...Neo-Nazis...Proud Boys

Anti-Semitism not on the radar of
Canadian Forces advisory panel,
advocate says

The panel will “focus on anti-Indigenous and anti-
Black racism, LGBTQ2 prejudice, gender bias and
white supremacy,” according to the Department of
National Defence.

David Pugliese • Ottawa Citizen
Publishing date: Jun 07, 2021

An advisory panel whose job is to deal with systemic racism and discrimination in the Canadian Forces isn’t set up to examine anti-Semitism, a major oversight in the battle against the far right, says a leading advocate against hate groups.

Bernie Farber, head of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, said he met with officials from the advisory panel this past week and they confirmed that there was no focus on anti-Semitism.

“This is a serious omission,” Farber said. “Given that Jews are usually the No. 1 target of extremists, I find it odd that anti-Semitism has not been made part of what they are looking at.”

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan announced the advisory panel on systemic racism and discrimination in December. The panel will provide advice on how the Canadian Forces can prevent individuals who hold racist or white supremacist beliefs from entering into the military or remaining in the ranks. It will produce a report by the end of this year.


Sajjan’s spokesperson, Todd Lane, noted that hateful and discriminatory beliefs, including anti-Semitism, had no place in the Canadian Forces. Lane stated that the members of the panel “are well-equipped to examine various forms of prejudice, including anti-Semitism.”

But there was no explanation on why the Liberal government left anti-Semitism out of the panel’s mandate. The panel will “focus on anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism, LGBTQ2 prejudice, gender bias and white supremacy,” according to the Department of National Defence.

Farber said that when he raised his concerns there would be no focus on anti-Semitism a panel official responded he had made “a very good point.”

But that was it, Farber added. “I urged them to take a much closer look at what they are doing,” he said.


The advisory panel is made up of four retired Canadian Forces members.

The Canadian military has faced criticism for its handling of a number of high-profile incidents involving racism and anti-Semitism. That includes the case of Canadian reservist Patrik Mathews, accused in August 2019 of trying to recruit for the Base, a neo-Nazi group, and later arrested in the United States and accused of planning a race war. The Base has portrayed itself as being against a system “infected by Jewish values.”

Last year, it was revealed that a sailor with ties to a neo-Nazi organization had been readmitted to the Royal Canadian Navy. This was done despite the sailor’s involvement with violent white supremacist groups and recorded attempts to sell military-grade weaponry to hate groups. After significant criticism of the decision to welcome the sailor back into the ranks, the Canadian Forces kicked him out earlier this year.


In 2016, a military supervisor in Ottawa pinned up at headquarters a racist poster featuring the N-word and a caricature of two Black men carrying spears. A Black employee filed a complaint after the same supervisor posted a second image in the same kitchen area at work, this time a racist joke referencing Hitler and Jews, the CBC reported.

But the DND didn’t view the images as being racist and rejected the complaint.

It was only after CBC published the image of the racist poster featuring the N-word last year that the department ordered a new investigation into the matter.

In 2018, this newspaper reported on a white Canadian Forces reservist who targeted Black soldiers with racial abuse, challenging them to fights and taunting them with racial slurs. The reservist was counselled about his actions, but was allowed to stay in the military because he claimed his actions were related to feeling stressed out by his military training.

Defence Watch

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