Post Tagged with: "hussen"

Witton Station - Mind the Gap by Elliott Brown (CC BY 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/d7D2fS

The Canadian Heritage Online Harms Credibility Gap, Part Two: Filtering Out Critics From Participating in Anti-Hate Consultation Survey

The government’s online harms bill, led by Canadian Heritage, is likely to be introduced in the coming weeks. My series on why the department faces a significant credibility gap on the issue opened with a look at its misleading and secretive approach to the 2021 online harms consultation, including its decision to only disclose public submissions when compelled to do so by law and releasing a misleading “What We Heard” report that omitted crucial information. Today’s post focuses on another Canadian Heritage consultation which occurred months later on proposed anti-hate plans. As the National Post reported earlier this year, after the consultation launched, officials became alarmed when responses criticizing the plan and questioning government priorities began to emerge. The solution? The department remarkably decided to filter out the critics from participating in the consultation by adding a new question that short-circuited it for anyone who responded that they did not think anti-hate measures should be a top government priority.

Apologies Without Accountability: Canadian Heritage Committee Seeks Answers on Government Funding an Anti-Semite

The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage conducted a long-overdue hearing yesterday on the department’s funding of Laith Marouf, a known antisemite, as part of its anti-hate program. The hearing, which was held almost seven months after the issue began to attract to public attention, featured departmental officials answering questions from MPs seeking to understand how this could have occurred. While most of the discussion emphasized fixing the grant approval process to ensure this doesn’t happen again, that framing misses that there were at least two failures: a process failure that led to the approval and a response failure once officials knew or ought to have known about the process failure. The process failure, including the lack of due diligence, can be addressed by fixing the systems and engaging in greater antisemitism education. But response failure is harder to address since it requires accountability from the department and its ministers that has thus far been absent.

Government Funding For an Anti-Semite: They Knew For a Month. And Did Nothing.

The Laith Marouf/CMAC incident took another turn today as Globe and Mail has a report that the Prime Minister’s Office knew for a month that the government was funding an anti-semite as part of its anti-hate program. And it did nothing.

I have written previously about how calling out government ministerial silence on this issue led Liberal MP Chris Bittle to suggest I am racist and a bully. I have written about the shameful silence from virtually all but Jewish MPs, leading MP Anthony Housefather to call on all to speak out (I also discussed this with Housefather on a Law Bytes podcast). I have written about the embarrassing solitary Canadian Heritage hearing, in which Minister Ahmed Hussen was evasive in answering questions and the time for discussion with department officials was lost over an unnecessary hour-long debate over whether to call Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez to committee.