Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez’s department says it did a “comprehensive assessment” before awarding a $133,822 grant to a consultant who tweeted about murdering Jews. New rules will require grant applicants to swear an oath they are not anti-Semitic, said a department briefing note..The subsidy “should never have been approved,” said the note Funding To Community Media Advocacy Centre. The Montréal group was awarded funding though its organizer Laith Marouf, a local activist, had a 20-year history of anti-Semitic remarks including messages that had him banned from Twitter..According to Blacklock's Reporter, the heritage department claimed it did a thorough assessment before approving the grant. “Following a comprehensive assessment including both regional and national committees, the Advocacy Centre project was recommended in the amount of $133,822 for approval on July 8, 2021 and the project was approved for funding on July 30, 2021.”.The grant was announced Sept. 21, 2021. That same year Twitter suspended Marouf’s account for “hateful conduct” including posts in which he referred to “ugly inbred Zionist colonists” and “Zionist bags of human feces.”.“May death visit the home of every Zionist on earth,” wrote Marouf. “Life is too short for shoes with laces or for entertaining Jewish white supremacists with anything but a bullet to the head,” he said in another Twitter post..As vice-president of the Concordia University Student Union in 2001 Marouf published an essay claiming “the majority of Canadian media is owned by two Zionists” and that “Zionists monopolize North American media.”.The heritage department claimed it only learned of Marouf’s anti-Semitism through media accounts last July 19. The funding was revoked August 22. The briefing note called Marouf’s Advocacy Centre a “first-time applicant to the Department.”.However the Centre previously received a $2,882 student grant approved by his local MP, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller, as well as $32,147 from the CRTC and $433,814 in grants from the Broadcasting Participation Fund Inc., an industry-funded agency that subsidizes intervenors at CRTC hearings..Marouf in a podcast last October 26 said the heritage department “begged us” to apply for funding and approved the grant application within four days. “Heritage Canada outreached to the Community Media Advocacy Centre, the group that I work for,” said Marouf..“It begged us to apply within four days to receive funding,” said Marouf. “We were shocked because there were no funding packages open for us to apply to,” he added. “We applied anyway and we got the money very fast.”
