Mr. Speaker, with regard to (a), as of December 4, the Department of Canadian Heritage has not been successful in its efforts to recover any of the $122,661 in funds that had been issued to the Community Media Advocacy Centre, or CMAC.
With regard to (b), the contract with CMAC was terminated on September 23, 2022, and the Department of Canadian Heritage retained a third-party collection agency to recoup the $122,661 paid to CMAC, as well as the services of an investigative agency. Additionally, the department asked the Canada Revenue Agency, or CRA, to apply their set-off program that allows amounts owed by an organization to be re-directed to set off debts. Following these efforts, a statement of claim was filed on November 17, 2023, by the Attorney General of Canada to take legal action against CMAC for breach of contract. The timing of the recovery of funds will be determined by the results of these efforts.
With regard to (c), the Anti-Racism Action Program, or ARAP, suspended the project on August 19, 2022, when it became aware of Mr. Marouf's hateful tweets. The department has not relied on any of the material that was developed by either Mr. Marouf or CMAC.
With regard to (d), following the discovery of hateful comments made by Mr. Marouf, the minister paused the programs that fall under Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy while the department conducted a comprehensive review of the grants and contributions under the programs, improved program integrity protocols and processes, and provided training to program employees.
The department made changes to the application guidelines of the Multiculturalism and Anti-Racism Program, the declaration and attestation section of the application form and the contribution agreement template. The attestation requires that funding recipients attest that they will not undermine Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy, that they will respect the values underlying the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Human Rights Act, and that they will disclose any information about the applicant that could bring disrepute to the Government of Canada. These changes were posted on the departmental website and the online application portal on December 14, 2022.
Additional program integrity review is also undertaken: enhanced assessment by program staff is conducted via web searches of a recipient’s board members, people directly involved in project delivery and the organization’s social media. Should potential risks be identified, such as allegations of racism, discrimination or harassment by board members or other individuals directly involved in the proposed project and named in the proponent’s application, then an escalation protocol is triggered to further review the file and make a recommendation.
New training has been provided to all program advisors on the importance of each step in the evaluation process, as well as on the new enhanced assessment/re-assessment criteria for applicants and recipients that include parameters on in-depth environmental scans. This training also included application assessment, risk management tools and monitoring. The department has also provided anti-racism and antisemitism training to all program employees across the country, which included the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition of antisemitism.
Additional training on antisemitism, developed by the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre, was also offered to program staff, as well as staff in communications and human resources.
Lastly, with regard to (e), see response for part (c).