B’nai Brith is registered to lobby Saskatchewan’s government on policies it says are necessary to protect Jewish students and prevent antisemitism in universities and schools.

A provincial lobbying registration posted on Aug. 17 shows B’nai Brith is seeking meetings with officials from the education, justice, finance, community safety and other ministries to discuss a number of issues, including reviewing provincial grant programs and recipients, establishing a prosecution unit for hate crimes and implementing two policies it has developed for schools and post-secondary campuses.

The organization’s Policy for Combating Antisemitism on Campuses (PCAC) and the Policy for Combating Antisemitism in Schools (PCAS) call on university and school administrations to enhance protections in existing equity, diversity and inclusion frameworks, and prohibit events and narratives that it says platform antisemitic content.

The two policies have been included in B’nai Brith’s previous lobbying registrations beginning in January 2025.

The PCAC section on student encampments, rallies and protests recommends institutions prohibit events that promote hatred or support antisemitic movements or entities.

Discrimination due to religion, creed, race or ancestry is prohibited under the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code, which forms the legal basis for discrimination and harassment policies adopted by universities and other public bodies, as well as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Hate-motivated crimes and promotion of hatred are dealt with under Canada’s Criminal Code.

Where B’nai Brith’s policy proscriptions differ from existing legislation is in the types of speech and activity it defines as antisemitism.

A section of the campus policy includes “undue criticism of the State of Israel,” defined holding the State of Israel to a standard not expected of other nation states, as a contemporary form of antisemitism. Other forms of antisemitism named in the document include “colonial narratives,” the claiming of indigeneity to “the Jewish homeland” by non-Jewish groups, and opposition to Zionism, a nationalist movement central to the creation of Israel.

The creation of B’nai Brith’s university and school policies followed the 2024 wave of protests on college campuses in response to the Gaza war and the Israeli military’s killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians. In 2025, a United Nations commission of inquiry concluded Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.

May Elsayed, founder of Students for Justice and Peace at the University of Saskatchewan, said that groups organizing in solidarity with Palestine have already faced a greater degree of pushback from administration than others she has participated in, and that the CPAC policy could be used to quash any kind of student activity the university “chooses to interpret a certain way.”

“I am a little worried that future activism, future work on the campus, could be further inhibited and could now be labelled illegal just because they’re fighting for Palestinian peoples,” Elsayed said.

Elsayed said the definitions of antisemitism put forward in the document make equivalencies between Jewish identity and ideological or political positions held by some Jewish people.

“Not only on our campus, but there are thousands of Jewish individuals worldwide, inside and outside of Israel, that do disagree with Zionism and the current functioning of the state of Israel,” she said.

“Contradicting the state of Israel and being anti-Zionist does not mean we are antisemitic or anti-Jewish by any means.”

B’nai Brith reported on its website it had shared its proposed policy with Canadian universities in 2024, and that most universities who responded said they already had policies in place to protect students and combat racism.

B’nai Brith did not respond to the IJF’s questions by the time of publication.

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