Just days away from the 2025 federal election, CBC News has produced an important broadcast report and an accompanying news article shining a light on concerns and issues important to Canada’s Jewish community.

The April 22 broadcast of The National featured a feature-length report entitled: “Jewish voters look to Conservatives as an ally against antisemitism,” by senior reporter Jamie Strashin, who spoke with members of Toronto’s Jewish community who discussed issues related to anti-Jewish hate crimes as it pertains to the upcoming federal election.

Click below to watch the full segment:

In the report, Strashin chronicled that, following the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, a growing proportion of Canadian Jews began voicing support for the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) due to its policies related to combatting anti-Jewish hate crimes.

Strashin told viewers that “police-reported hate crimes towards the Jewish community in Canada rose 71 percent between 2022 and 2023, with the biggest spike in the months after October 7.”

In an accompanying news article published on April 23 entitled: “Rising antisemitism sees some Jewish voters turn toward Conservatives this election,” Strashin and co-author Perlita Stroh cited incidents of anti-Jewish hate, including the shooting three times of Bais Chaya Muskha, a Jewish girls’ elementary school, and vandalizing of synagogues.

In the article, Strashin and Stroh also interviewed a number of Jewish voters who expressed their frustration with the Liberal government and its policies on combatting domestic anti-Jewish hate and referred to a survey which found that nearly 60 percent of Canadian Jews said they would be voting Conservative in the federal election.

These two reports raise a critically important issue, not just for Canada’s 405,000 Jews, but for Canadians at large, many of whom are surely unaware of the extent to which their Jewish friends, colleagues, neighbours and fellow citizens are feeling targeted by a wave of pro-Hamas demonstrations and hate crimes.

This article and broadcast was also a breath of fresh air in contrast to the seemingly endless parade of coverage fixating on the marginal, yet vocal contingent of anti-Israel campaigners. In many reports, journalists have sanitized the frequently hateful rhetoric coming from these protesters, and in giving them such widespread attention, have served to amplify their fringe voices and falsely portray them as far more mainstream than they really are.

CBC News’ coverage, in particular over the last 18 months following Hamas’ massacres on October 7, 2023, has left much to be desired, regularly exhibiting an open bias which has showed overt and consistent favouritism towards anti-Israel activists and often ignoring completely any opposing voices, but these two reports took an important – yet highly underreported issue – and told it for Canadians.

Importantly, the article and video also made the distinction that, for these voters interviewed, and a far larger number for whom they represented, the issue was not the Hamas-Israel war per se, though it was related. In fact, the issue was the rise in anti-Jewish hate, which, while widely condemned by elected officials from across the spectrum, has not been meaningfully addressed except in some very specific exceptions.

CBC News’ article and video broadcast told an important story about an issue important to hundreds of thousands of Canadians, and it deserves to be recognized and thanked as a result.