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.