CAEF Letter to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network Seeking Removal of Board Member Nigel Barriffe

October 8, 2026

Sue Gardner, Chair

Evan Balgord, Executive Director

Canadian Anti-Hate Network

Delivered by email: info@antihate.ca

Dear Ms. Gardner and Mr. Balgord:

On Sunday October 4, 2026, at 7:31 PM your Board of Directors member Nigel Barriffe, who is also President of the Elementary Teachers of Toronto (“ETT”), posted the message below on his Facebook account.

Mr. Barriffe may believe that if he re-posts a message without comment, he can evade moral and legal responsibility for the message. He is absolutely wrong about that. The regulatory body of his profession, the Ontario College of Teachers, has a very specific policy exactly on that point. See OCT v. McDonald 2019 CanLII 145136 (ON OCT).

As President of the Elementary Teachers of Toronto, Mr. Barriffe is supposed to represent the members of ETT, including the Jewish members, with fairness, empathy and compassion. He intentionally does the precise opposite. By repeating and amplifying this obnoxious, inflammatory, hateful and odious message (generously infused with obscene four-letter epithets) against equity-seeking Jewish teachers who are attempting to assert their legal rights under the Ontario Human Rights Code, Mr. Barriffe goes out of his way to bully, ridicule and belittle them; he makes a special effort to treat them with contempt.

Nigel will be accorded a fair opportunity to explain it all to the Ontario College of Teachers in answer to our complaint of professional misconduct, filed on October 5.

Now we come to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. Mr. Barriffe is listed on your website as a member of your Board of Directors. We respectfully request his immediate dismissal from your Board. Otherwise, you will be in the ironic, and we daresay awkward, position of harbouring exactly what you oppose, in your own governing board.

Aside from the formalities and complexities of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of antisemitism, the practical definition of antisemitism is very simple. Antisemitism is what the haters of Jews say and do.

If you continue to harbour Nigel, you become part of what you purport to oppose.

R. Michael Teper, President

Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation

Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation BN 857030340

788 Marlee Ave. Suite 304, Toronto, ON M6B 1K3