Canadian Heritage Committee on Feb. 27th, 2024

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

No. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I'm going to move ahead to Kevin Waugh of the Conservatives for five minutes.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First, to Mr. Gormley, congratulations on your semi-retirement. I would say that your 25 years as a radio broadcaster in our communities of Saskatoon and Regina in Saskatchewan are duly noted. You certainly built up a loyal listenership in talk radio.

This committee hasn't talked much about radio. They're more concerned about the CBC and that direction. I want to get your take on local radio. Many have reached out to me in this country. We have not, in the heritage committee, even discussed the radio airwaves and where they're going. Would you comment on that?

[John Gormley]

That's a great question, and thank you very much for your kind words.

It's dependent on the ownership structure. When Bell cut loose 4,800 employees three weeks ago, a senior vice-president mentioned that the radio model was broken. I said to a friend that I dearly wish that I could sit down with some people who, as recently as two months ago, were my employers and have done very well by intensely local radio, and ask what they think of Bell's model. I think that at the local level, radio presently has done very well.

Is it radio that will one day have you end up in Toronto? Yes, if you work hard, but there will be thousands of young journalists who may not proceed past Red Deer. With respect, I would not get into the idea that one is entitled to a job if one goes to J-school. Radio is a very competitive regime.

With radio models that, again, are intensely local and reflective of the community, are prepared to also be on the web, have multimedia and have local ad revenue, radio is doing much better, particularly outside the larger cities.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

You mentioned no local journalism initiative—the LJI—no journalism labour tax credit and maybe eliminating the Canada periodical fund. What would the media look like, in your estimation, if we got rid of those three?

[John Gormley]

I don't know, but I do know what it looks like today and I see loyalty, trust and engagement with audiences being lower than they've ever been. That started, I would argue, with the media doing things differently, but it's certainly lost at least 10 points in the latest Angus Reid survey with the perception that the media are in on something that the government is doing.

Again, way before I was a radio talk show host who was paid to have opinions and perspectives, I was that journalist who took great pride in nobody knowing what I thought of anything. There was such a strong sense of neutrality and asking tough questions. I couldn't fathom what it would be like to go to work every day knowing that listeners thought my company—it doesn't matter if it's left or right, in answer to the colleague earlier—was taking money from the government. I'm sorry.

Mr. Waugh, I don't know what it would look like, but I wish we had the opportunity to see it, because I think we would have found innovation and adaptability much more quickly.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

You know the media do not adapt. You were in it and I've been in it.

It's interesting, because CTV, as you mentioned, is regulated by Toronto, if you don't mind, and that's why you have decisions made to get rid of 45 radio stations, eliminate noon television broadcasts, eliminate late-night, weekend and holiday broadcasts, and it's too bad.

I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Mrs. Thomas now, as she has something she would like to bring up.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 35 seconds, Rachel.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair. That won't be a problem.

I wish to move a motion.

At this point in time, having indicated that I wish to move a motion, I'll just say thank you so much to the witnesses for being here with us today.

I realize that this is a bit disruptive, but unfortunately, with the way the committee is structured, the only opportunity we have to move a motion is when we're in public, which is when we have witnesses.

The motion that I wish to move is:

Given that,

According to the 2021-22 and 2022-23 Public Accounts, The Department of Canadian Heritage has issued transfer payments to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in the sum total of $600,000 and $569,353 respectively, and that,

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council awarded a February 2022 Connection Grant in the sum of $24,999 in which the main applicant and speakers at the conference for which funding was granted have publicly expressed antisemitic views, including calling for a “global intifada” and support for designated terrorist organizations in Canada, and that,

The Department of Canadian Heritage has confirmed the implementation of an anti-racism declaration as a condition of funding in their grant applications, and that,

The Government of Canada has committed to the Canada Anti-Racism Strategy;

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the Committee:

Invite the Ministers of Canadian Heritage and Innovation, Science & Economic Development for a minimum of two hours each, to discuss the repeated and systemic awarding of grant funding to individuals or organizations expressing antisemitic views;

Recommend the Government of Canada immediately conduct a whole of government review of grant applications to include an anti-racism declaration as a condition of funding, and

Report its findings to the House.

Madam Chair, the reason this motion is so important to move today is that a group within the University of Alberta was granted this money.

We know that anti-racism in Canada is on the rise—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Excuse me, Mrs. Thomas. You're speaking to this motion now.

What I will do is tell the witnesses that they're free to leave. I want to thank them for their time and their very interesting commentary on the study that Mr. Champoux has brought forward. You're free to go any time you like.

We will continue the meeting with Mrs. Thomas taking the floor with her discussion on her motion.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Rachael.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I'm just not—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I wanted to let them know that they could leave now—that's all. I noticed Mr. Jolly is still here.

[Brent Jolly]

Yes. I'm okay. I'm interested in the motion. I'll just stay.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You know that you don't get to weigh in on it. Do you know that?

[Brent Jolly]

I'm a total dork. That's okay.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Good stuff.

Go ahead, Ms. Thomas.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Welcome, Mr. Jolly, and thank you, Chair.

I appreciate the committee accommodating this.

We know that anti-racism in Canada is up and we know that it is particularly alarming—I hope we do—when there is government money going toward the support of that. I think that's very disturbing. I've been contacted by citizens from across the country, as have my other Conservative colleagues. Finally, we've decided that we're going to act on the information that we've been given and advocate on behalf of Canadians, and in particular on behalf of the Jewish population, the Jewish community here in Canada.

There is no place in our country for anti-Semitism, and for $25,000 to be transferred from the Government of Canada to a group that is known for furthering anti-Semitism is absolutely alarming. It's appalling. It's disgusting. There needs to be an investigation. There needs to be an understanding of what took place here. It should be noted that this is not the first time this has happened. We've been here before, haven't we?

Laith Marouf, a raging anti-Semite, who is incredibly vile in the comments that he made online, was granted $133,000 through the heritage department. Of all things, he was granted that money to run anti-racism training. The hypocrisy could not be more rich. To this day, the government has not recouped those dollars, even though it claims it has tried. We have an individual out there who continues to be a raging anti-Semite and has received $133,000 from the Canadian public to help further his cause.

To make matters worse, there is this organization, or this group of anti-Semites, that conducted a three-day conference at the University of Alberta, and their speakers have anti-Semitic content all over their social media pages. I have it right here. These are just a few that I printed out—one page, two pages, three pages, four pages, five pages, six pages, seven pages, and there are multiple posts on every single page.

These folks got $25,000 to host a conference at the University of Alberta. I don't understand how any member around this table could be okay knowing that government money went to support something like this. It is incumbent upon all of us to get to the bottom of it, and the way to get to the bottom of it is by asking ministers to come to this table and answer for the decision that was made.

If we want to understand this further, the University of Alberta hosted this conference in February, on three different Fridays. They called it the “Mediations of Racial Capitalism Conference”. Then they brought in speakers, as mentioned and as shown, who have this history of making anti-Semitic comments. One of them even called for a global intifada.

This would never be okay, but then I look at it in light of October 7 and what happened, and it just makes my skin crawl all the more. There were members who took the stage at this conference, who took a key place, who are advocating support for organizations that we've declared as terrorist organizations—one that Canada hasn't, but the U.S. has. Surely we at this table are not okay with this type of conduct being perpetuated in our country. Surely we will choose to take a stand against that.

I'll speak to this a little further. Some of the content that is held within these pages, that was found on these social media pages, is the following. One of these speakers is promoting and sharing resources from a Canadian-listed terrorist organization, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Others are publicly celebrating or supporting Hamas' attack on Israeli civilians on October 7. That's disgusting.

You have others sharing support for the Houthi movement in Yemen. That's crazy. Then you have another who signed a petition supporting an anti-Semitic professor at a university who is being fired for his vile views and for spreading them, and this person was coming to his defence.

Here we have it. This conference is sponsored by the Government of Canada, with the logo full on. This money came down from Canadian Heritage, went to the council and then went to the University of Alberta to this group of individuals through the University of Alberta.

I think for the government's funds to be used to provide a platform for such conduct, for such vile remarks, is just wrong. It's absolutely wrong. Again, my plea to the committee would be for us to take the time to understand this more.

Interestingly enough, we had the minister here with regard to Laith Marouf. In fact, we've had the conversation a couple of times, and promises have been made and promises have been broken. The latest was that the minister sat here and made a commitment that no dollars would be given out without thorough investigation of those they were being given to. There was a vow made that the same type of funding mistake with Laith Marouf would not be made again, that there would be this lens applied to the application process in order to make sure that another anti-Semite or someone who perpetuated hate against any group of people would not be granted money from the government, yet here we are, approximately six months later, and we're having that conversation. We're staring into the face of the problem again.

I guess I pose a question to the government, and it is this: What will it take to make sure that we're not here again? What will it take to make sure that we are not perpetuating any sort of hate, especially anti-Semitism? I mean, Jews are the most persecuted group in Canada. For crying out loud, I would hope this government would want to do something to remedy this.

Conservatives are offering an opportunity to do that. We're offering an opportunity to have the ministers here, an opportunity to ask questions and an opportunity to get to the bottom of this. The motion asks that both of these ministers come, the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. The motion says that they would come for a minimum of two hours each and that they would discuss the repeated and systemic awarding of grant funding to individuals or organizations expressing anti-Semitic views.

As mentioned, this has happened before, but we certainly should make sure that it doesn't happen again. It's the folks at this table who have the opportunity to hear from those ministers, to make change or to recommend change. It's ultimately up to the ministers to make the change. They're the ones who have to implement the programs. They're the ones who ultimately have to do better in terms of their review of applications for grant funding and looking into these folks and the types of vile beliefs they might perpetuate.

It would be my hope that the government in the future would not find itself in this situation, but I think the way that we, as the opposition party, make sure that it doesn't happen is that we generate accountability, and the way we generate accountability is by moving a motion of this nature and asking for the ministers to come and answer tough questions and for that to be on public record for Canadians to be able to hear and understand what took place here.

As mentioned, I have heard from Canadians from coast to coast on this issue. It is deeply concerning to them, especially to those who belong to the Jewish community in Canada.

It's my hope that my colleagues would join with us in supporting this motion and in generating change, not only for the current time but for the future of our country and the grant monies that are given out in the coming weeks, months and years.

I say that, but we'll have a Conservative government pretty quickly here, and there will definitely be some significant change then. Hopefully, for the next few months that the Liberals are in power, we can generate a bit of change and prevent making this mistake once again.

With that, I'll ask for the members across the way to support this motion and to vote in favour of accountability, in favour of transparency, in favour of equality among all people, and against racism, discrimination and anti-Semitism in our country.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Mrs. Thomas.

Go ahead, Mr. Champoux.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Firstly, Ms...

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Oh, I'm sorry, Ms. Lantsman.

I'm sorry, Martin. You are after Ms. Lantsman.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

I won't be long, Mr. Champoux.

It's never a pleasure to speak to a motion like this, but it is important to support a motion like this one from my colleague. Thank God for her and her willingness to hold this government to account, because it's promise made, promise broken every single time.

This is the latest piece of information, after months and months of seeing people taking to the streets, vandalized synagogues, shots at schools and temples, particularly in the Jewish communities, in every large city across the country and even in some smaller communities.

It's important that we get to the root of this, because leadership comes from the top. Never have I seen a government break the long-standing consensus in this country about its position between principle and popularity and choosing to side with barbarism and terror, frankly, and choosing to fund those who espouse those kinds of views.

I want to read this into the record, because I think Canadians need to hear it. It's $25,000. This is, of course, after this committee sat here questioning the former failed minister responsible for diversity in this country under the minister of heritage. Both now have moved on.

I would expect that the committee would like to give an opportunity to this minister to clean up the mess of the last minister and actually hold this department to account to make sure that funding doesn't go to things that are called “Mediations of Racial Capitalism” conferences. It's a three-part series aimed at the—I'm going to quote—“racial character of capitalism in its complex intersections with structures of settler colonialism, anti-Blackness, heteropatriarchy, and empire”. This is according to a website that was promoting the event on February 9.

If that doesn't sound insane to the folks at home, it's deeply concerning that the government would fund a conference with the speakers who were there. One of the speakers is a professor of digital media studies in the United Kingdom named Francesca Sobande, who on her own social media was retweeting things from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. This is a designated terrorist group.

We've sat at this committee talking about how this country speaks about terrorist groups that have in some cases been designated since 2002. These resources were crafted by an organization called Samidoun, and by the way, they have the same leadership. One is a designated terrorist organization, and the other should be designated a terrorist organization, but I guess that could be a conversation for the public safety committee. These two organizations share these leaders. It is the government's money that is going to fund this conference, where people who speak at this conference are sharing that kind of material.

That's just one of them. I can go through many, but I want to talk about the importance of this at this very time.

Before coming to this meeting, I sat in a room with a number of people particularly from the Jewish community across the country—in Vancouver, in Ottawa, in Montreal, in large cities—listening to stories about how they have been targeted in the streets because of what they believe, where they pray, where they go to school and how they look. Then we see their own government, the Government of Canada, perpetuating this through the funding of people like Laith Marouf, who, again, was here to teach anti-racism, not espouse it.

Just for the record, he was given $133,000. We're still waiting to get $122,000 of our Canadian tax dollars back from him. I suspect the members of this committee would want to see every single dollar of that returned. We even had two failed ministers say that. They brought themselves to say that they're going to retrieve the funds after pretending not to know about the situation for a number of weeks.

This is why I think this motion is important. This is why I think that the committee ought to get to the bottom of this and give the new minister an opportunity to correct the mistakes of her failed predecessors, who have done nothing to ensure that this stuff doesn't happen at Canadian Heritage. It's not just Canadian Heritage, by the way: This is happening across departments.

I'm going to say one more thing. There is money that comes from all kinds of departments for all kinds of programs during the course of any year. I'll bring up one case, because it is a case that was funded by the Government of Canada. It is an organization called Inspire. They've been on the receiving end of grants from FedDev Ontario during the pandemic and after the pandemic, and organizations like that have taken away a platform from speakers. This one took away a platform from a speaker who served in the Israeli military 30 years ago, who is a Canadian, who is a champion of feminism and women's rights and is a celebrated athlete.

You have one organization de-platforming views that they don't agree with, and you have the Government of Canada platforming these vile anti-Semitic voices with Canadian tax dollars. I would expect that the committee would want to get to the bottom of this.

I am very grateful that the vice-chair of this committee continues to bring these issues forward. I hope that we don't have to come back to this committee every time a grant is given to fund the prevalent anti-Semitism that this government is frankly behind.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Mr. Champoux is next.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm certainly not questioning the importance of the subject raised by the Conservatives. I'm just seriously disappointed in my colleague Ms. Thomas's timing, in the context of a study that was originally scheduled to last four meetings and that I myself offered to shorten to three. It's a subject I feel very strongly about, and one that's important for the future of the media. There were 30 minutes left to hear from these quality witnesses. We could have continued to discuss things with them, and this motion could have been debated at a later date. This really isn't very nice.

That said, Madam Chair, on the substance of the motion, I agree. Given what we experienced with the Laith Marouf case, we must make sure that the recommendations we made following our study were followed. Everyone was aghast. We were all outraged at the way things unfolded, and we demanded changes through our recommendations. It would be entirely legitimate for us to hold the government to account and check whether the recommendations issued following the meetings on the Laith Marouf affair were followed.

Now, I want to talk about the fact that we're using an event like this, which isn't on the same scale. I'm not saying it's right; on the contrary, it's completely reprehensible. There's nothing good about giving money to an organization that uses anti-Semitic rhetoric and wants to start an intifada. It makes no sense to give public money to such organizations. However, we can discuss the path this money has taken.

As for the motion itself, I'm not convinced that the work has been done properly. I'd be willing to hear the Conservatives' arguments on that, but according to my research, the $600,000 and $569,353 we're talking about did not come from Canadian Heritage at all. So we're debating a motion that would have benefited from a little more research. However, I'm prepared to be corrected if someone can show me that this money did come from Canadian Heritage.

Now, I'm not sure what to do with the motion at this time. I don't know how urgent people feel this proposed study is. In my opinion, it would be more relevant for us to hear from representatives of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. They're the ones who should be reporting to us in the first place. Perhaps at a later date we will judge that the ministers responsible should indeed be convened. Will it be the Minister of Canadian Heritage , the Minister of Industry or the Minister of Diversity? In short, I think we're giving a high priority to something that deserves more nuance.

I'll stop here for now. I'm curious to hear what my colleagues have to say about this, but it would be worth checking the facts and rewording the motion. For example, we need to check whether the amounts in question, which total just over $1.1 million, actually came from Canadian Heritage or the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. I'd be very interested to...