The shooting outside the Sons of Jacob synagogue in Belleville on the eve of Yom Kippur should not have come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the government’s own threat assessments. For the past year, CSIS’s Integrated Threat Assessment Centre has been sounding the alarm, warning that a violent attack targeting the Canadian Jewish community was a realistic possibility. Indeed, the ITAC warnings predicted that the most likely scenario was a lone actor with a simple weapon at an easily accessible target fuelled by the normalization of antisemitism. On Sunday night, a 29-year-old former soldier fired repeatedly at the synagogue with congregants inside, with only a brave police officer averting a potential massacre.
The record of warnings leaves little doubt that the terror attack was not only predictable but effectively predicted. In December 2025, days after the Bondi Beach massacre, ITAC assessed that it could not discount a lone actor or small group using readily available weapons mobilizing to violence, and noted that it had been describing an attack on the Jewish community as a “realistic possibility” for more than a year. Several months later, after three Toronto-area synagogues were shot at in a single week, a second assessment reported by the Globe and Mail and Global News concluded that “the most likely scenario of an attack targeting the Jewish community is a lone actor using unsophisticated methods against easily accessible targets.” The assessment warned that any such attack would most likely involve knives, small arms or a vehicle and that the likely targets included schools, community centres and synagogues.
Months after that, Global News reported on another threat assessment. It concluded that violent and criminal threats against Jews “will likely continue at a steady rate over the next six months” and disclosed that authorities had disrupted four violent extremist plots against Jewish targets in the prior three years alongside increases in assaults, arson and shootings against Jewish communities. The key warning stated that “over the longer term, an environment in which the targeting of the Jewish community as a group frequently occurs and becomes more normalized will likely influence some susceptible individuals towards violent extremist pathways.”
The truth is, you didn’t need to be Nostradamus to see this Belleville Yom Kippur attack coming. Statistics Canada reported in July that Jews were the victims of 71 percent of all religiously motivated hate crimes in 2025. In fact, even a partial list of violent incidents in Canada since October 7, 2023 screams crisis:
- Shots fired at the Yeshiva Gedola school in Montreal in November 2023
- Congregation Beth Tikvah in Dollard-des-Ormeaux firebombed in November 2023 and again in December 2024
- The Schara Tzedeck synagogue in Vancouver set on fire in May 2024
- The Belz school and Young Israel synagogue in Montreal shot at in May 2024
- Bais Chaya Mushka girls’ school in Toronto shot at three times in 2024 alone
- Temple Emanu-El in Toronto shot at hours after Purim celebrations in March 2026
- Shaarei Shomayim and the Beth Avraham Yoseph synagogue in Thornhill both shot at in March 2026
- Worshippers at Congregation Chasidei Bobov in Toronto assaulted with an imitation gun in the spring of 2026
- A Molotov cocktail thrown at Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom in Montreal in June 2026
- A gunman opens fire at the Sons of Jacob synagogue in Belleville as congregants gather for Kol Nidre in September 2026
Belleville is the March assessment played out in real life: a lone actor with a shotgun at a small-town synagogue whose only protection was a single officer requested by the congregation itself (side note: there is a GoFundMe for the synagogue to rebuild). Military sources told Global News that the gunman had been released from the Canadian Armed Forces in 2022 after voicing a range of COVID-19 conspiracy theories, including claims blaming Jews for the pandemic. As the government’s own analysts warned, an environment in which the targeting of Jews is normalized will move susceptible individuals toward violence.
Given the warnings, this cannot be regarded as a failure of information. Months after Prime Minister Carney replaced the national antisemitism envoy with a Ministerial Advisory Council that was tasked with prioritizing the rise antisemitism of Canada, the council has rarely met and produced nothing. This is where we are at in Canada in 2026: the government’s security agencies warn of violence against Jews linked to the normalization of antisemitism, the violence comes as predicted, and the political response is more thoughts and prayers.
The post Nobody Can Say They Weren’t Warned: Canada’s Threat Assessments Predicted the Belleville Yom Kippur Attack appeared first on Michael Geist.