Former president of national gay rights group resigns to take up fight against Muslim Brotherhood
The former board president of Egale Canada, a leading Canadian group that advocates for LGBT rights, says she now wants to devote her energies to fighting antisemitism.
Jacki Lewis is managing partner of Toronto law firm, Lewis & Associates. She has 30 years’ experience representing refugees before the Refugee Protection Division and Federal Court of Canada and was president of Egale Canada’s board for more than 10 years.
“My reasons for leaving are that I have been with the organization for a long time and my politics and priorities lie with fighting antisemitism with Tafsik Organization (a Jewish Civil Rights group),” Lewis wrote in a Thursday email to National Post.
“It is not the priority of Egale at this time, to take on the fight against the Muslim Brotherhood. Their focus lies elsewhere while I believe that the Muslim Brotherhood remains one of the greatest threats to Western democracy and our way of life, which includes the rights of the 2SLGBTQI community.”
She disputes media reports alleging she left Egale because the organization has failed to include antisemitism in its advocacy work. Stating that she has been misquoted, Lewis insists she “never said that Egale is antisemitic and I do not believe that it is.”
In a Thursday X post, the publisher of Blacklock’s Reporter, Holly Doan, asserted Lewis as president of a “leading #LGBTQ rights group resign(ed) on complaints the community has failed to confront #antiSemitism.” Doan added that “federal agencies would not say whether funding for Egale Canada will be reconsidered.”
President of leading #LGBTQ rights group resigns on complaints the community has failed to confront #antiSemitism. Federal agencies would not say whether funding for Egale Canada will be reconsidered.https://t.co/tjjQj8SPb4 #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/JzCPH1Ujbb
— Holly Doan (@hollyanndoan) March 12, 2026
Since October 7, 2023, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs has released statements about the Toronto Jewish community representing four percent of Toronto’s population, but faces 40 percent of hate crimes.
Jewish communities, academics, and NGOs have pointed to a gap in institutional responses to the antisemitism that has become rife. Some Jewish and pro‑Israel advocacy groups contend that some groups within Canada’s progressive NGO ecosystem, including LGBTQ+ and human‑rights organizations, have been muted or ambiguous when it comes to antisemitism.
Egale Canada is a national advocacy organization for 2SLGBTQI rights, with a long track record in battling discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as hate crimes against LGBTQ+. For example, in 2025, Egale Canada told Canadians that the fight against acts of hate is was as critical as it had been in prior decades . Launched for Pride Month, the charity’s “Hate Isn’t History” campaign put a spotlight on the discrimination and violence that LGBTQ+ people continue to encounter. Egale explored a similar theme in 2023 with the “My Pride Won’t Unravel” campaign that showed a Pride flag being stripped of a thread for each of the nearly 6,500 incidences of anti-LGBTQ+ hatred the organization tracked through the first three months of that year.
A look at Egale’s website shows that the organization’s efforts does, in fact, focus exclusively on anti-LGBT hate. One study investigated AI-driven technologies and the ability to “unintentionally reproduce and magnify biases, while also (being) deliberately misused to spread harmful content. These harms disproportionately affect 2SLGBTQI communities, who already face elevated rates of harassment, discrimination, and violence, compared to their cisgender and heterosexual peers.” Another report documented 2SLGBTQI students experiencing more verbal harassment about their sexual orientation than their straight peers (42% vs. 8%).
However, Egale has sometimes been cited as an example of organizations that call for action against “hate” without naming antisemitism or Jewish communities as clearly or as often as other groups, which critics view as a failure to address antisemitism adequately.
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