ABOUT THIS EPISODE
One day before Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government announced it will scrap the role of the Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, a group of senior Canadian bureaucrats and policing experts attended a roundtable in Ottawa where they heard advice from some of the world’s top antisemitism experts. The guest list of the four-hour meeting included government advisors and scholars on antisemitism and the Holocaust from France, Germany, the U.K. and Israel.
The closed-door discussions strove to understand what tactics to tackle anti-Jewish hatred are working worldwide, which Canada might try; Norway, for example, has found success bringing young Jewish “pathfinders” into schools to meet their peers.
The international experts also told the government what Canada doesn’t need: more laws.
On today’s episode of The CJN’s flagship North Star podcast, host Ellin Bessner sits down with two of those experts. Sally Sealey runs the U.K. envoy’s office for post-Holocaust issues and chairs the Holocaust memorial foundation, which is building the country’s new education centre in London; Carl Yonker, meanwhile, is the senior researcher at the Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University, which also publishes an annual global antisemitism monitoring report.
Related stories:
- Read Irwin Cotler’s column about Canada scrapping its special envoy office, a role which he first held from 2020-2023, in The CJN .
- Reaction was swift to Canada’s surprise announcement Wednesday that the government is ending its Special Envoy position for Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, (and the other one for Islamophobia) in favour of a single advisory council on rights, equity, inclusion, in The CJN.
- Read the latest global antisemitism report from Tel Aviv University published in April 2025 , and the Israeli Diaspora ministry’s newest interim report on international antisemitism, from January 2026.
Credits
- Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner ) info@thecjn.ca
- Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director)
- Music: Bret Higgins
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