Diversity Minister Ahmed Hussain says the government has cut funding for an anti-racism plan because of “reprehensible and vile” tweets by a senior adviser involved in the strategy. Hussen says the project run by the Community Media Support Center — which received $133,000 from the Department of Cultural Heritage — has been suspended. The move follows reports by The Canadian Press about tweets sent by Laith Marouf, a senior adviser on the project to build an anti-racism strategy for Canadian broadcasting. Hussein called the tweets “anti-Semitic” and called on the center to explain how they hired Marouf and how they plan to remedy the situation. Marouf’s lawyer draws a distinction between his client’s tweets about people he calls “Jewish white supremacists” and Jews in general, saying Marouf has no animosity toward the Jewish faith as a collective group. The center’s work received funding from the Department of Cultural Heritage’s anti-racism action program and the diversity minister was quoted alongside Marouf in a press release about its launch last year. A screenshot of one of Marouf’s tweets reads: “You know all those noisy bags of human excrement aka Jewish White Supremacists; when we liberate Palestine and they have to go back to where they came from, they’ll be back in low tones the dogs of (sic) Christian/Secular Teachers of the White Superiors’. This report by The Canadian Press was first published on August 22, 2022.
