Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez breaks silence, condemns ‘disgusting’ tweets
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OTTAWA — Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez broke his silence on Wednesday over his division’s funding of an company whose senior advisor posted a sequence of tweets about “Jewish white supremacists,” greater than per week after the federal government minimize off the cash.
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“Racism in any type has no place in Canada. I condemn the disgusting antisemitic feedback made by Laith Marouf,” Rodriguez mentioned in a written assertion to The Canadian Press.
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“I’ve no tolerance for this.”
Rodriguez additionally mentioned the Group Media Advocacy Centre, which Marouf works for as a advisor, ought to by no means have acquired “a cent of taxpayer {dollars}” and the Liberal authorities is reviewing the vetting course of to make sure it doesn’t occur once more.
His remarks mirror these of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who on Tuesday mentioned he was launching a whole authorities overview of funding to CMAC.
“It’s completely unacceptable that federal {dollars} have gone to this group that has demonstrated xenophobia, racism and antisemitism,” Trudeau mentioned.
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Final week, Variety Minister Ahmed Hussen minimize $133,000 in Heritage Division funding to the CMAC and suspended an anti-racism challenge it was overseeing after “reprehensible and vile” tweets posted by Marouf got here to mild.
On Monday, Liberal MP Anthony Housefather, who’s Jewish, posted a tweet urging all 338 members of Parliament to sentence antisemitism, after which a big variety of Liberal MPs started talking up concerning the difficulty.
Rodriguez had not commented till the assertion despatched Wednesday.
Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman, who can be Jewish, had criticized Rodriguez for not talking out concerning the tweets.
“Essentially the most vile factor about that is the silence,” she mentioned.
Marouf’s Twitter account is personal, however a screenshot posted on-line confirmed a variety of tweets together with his picture and title.
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One tweet mentioned: “You recognize all these loud mouthed baggage of human feces, a.okay.a. the Jewish White Supremacists; once we liberate Palestine and so they have to return to the place they arrive from, they’ll return to being low voiced bitches of thier (sic) Christian/Secular White Supremacist Masters.”
CMAC has not responded to requests for remark. A lawyer performing for Marouf requested for his shopper’s tweets to be quoted “verbatim” and distinguished between Marouf’s “clear reference to ‘Jewish white supremacists”’ and Jews or Jewish individuals normally.
Marouf doesn’t harbour “any animus towards the Jewish religion as a collective group,” lawyer Stephen Ellis mentioned in an e mail to The Canadian Press.
“Whereas not essentially the most artfully expressed, the tweets mirror a frustration with the truth of Israeli apartheid and a Canadian authorities which collaborates with it,” Ellis added.
