OTTAWA-
Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez has broken his silence on his ministry’s funding of an agency whose lead consultant posted a series of tweets about “Jewish white supremacists.”
In a statement to The Canadian Press, Rodriguez condemned Laith Marouf’s comments on Twitter as “disgusting” and “anti-Semitic,” adding that racism has no place in Canada.
He also says that the Community Media Advocacy Centre, for which Marouf works as a consultant, should never have received a penny of taxpayers’ money and that the Liberal government is reviewing the vetting process to ensure that this does not happen again.
Diversity Minister Ahmed Hussen slashed $133,000 from Heritage Department funding to CMAC last week and suspended an anti-racism project he was overseeing after ‘reprehensible and despicable’ tweets emerged published by Marouf.
The CMAC did not respond to requests for comment, but an attorney representing Marouf previously distinguished between his client’s tweets about people he calls “Jewish white supremacists” and Jews in general, saying Marouf has no animosity towards the Jewish faith as a collective group. .
On Monday, Liberal MP Anthony Housefather, who is Jewish, posted a tweet urging all 338 MPs to condemn anti-Semitism, after which a significant number of Liberal MPs began speaking out on the issue.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on August 31, 2022.