Juno News - Edmonton schools renew Arabic course tied to board's Qatari partnership

How did a tiny article about an Arabic language course uncover foreign malign influence in Alberta s education system? How did an article in the Edmonton Journal uncover this? What is Qatar Foundation International (QF International) and what role did they play in Alberta's education system in the first place?

00:00:00.000 How did a tiny article about an Arabic language course uncover foreign malign influence in

00:00:06.880 Alberta's education system? Last week, the Edmonton Journal published a very short article

00:00:12.500 announcing that Edmonton Public Schools approved and renewed a, quote, locally developed course

00:00:19.580 in Arabic. Now, the article didn't say much more than that, but my curiosity took over and I had

00:00:25.000 a closer look the course itself has been in place for some years but what didn't receive as much

00:00:31.000 attention was that the board maintained an arabic bilingual program for all ages basically

00:00:36.160 kindergarten to grade 12 for decades and in 2015 the board signed a memorandum of understanding

00:00:42.340 with qatar foundation international agreeing to collaborate on the promotion of the arabic

00:00:49.080 language arabic culture teacher training and development things like that now qatar foundation

00:00:56.120 international is the u.s based arm of another another foundation called qatar foundation which

00:01:02.520 is based in doha counter-terrorism researchers have documented in detail how qfi qatar foundation

00:01:09.800 international has been engaged in what they call soft power in the in u.s schools and universities

00:01:16.200 for years now they do it by advancing qatari friendly narratives within qfi funded language

00:01:22.680 programs teacher trainings and educational partnerships the exact same kind of partnerships

00:01:29.880 that edmonton public schools signed an mou for back in 2015. a recent institute for the study

00:01:36.360 of global anti-semitism and policy reported on qfi recently and they said quote qatar hosts

00:01:42.920 supports and empowers the Muslim Brotherhood, maintains ties with Iran, hosts the Taliban,

00:01:49.400 has supported and maintained an office for Hamas and its exile leadership and has backed militias

00:01:55.560 in Syria and Libya. In just one week after the report was published, Qatar Foundation International

00:02:01.960 announced that it was winding down its operations in the US. Now they did this after 17 years in

00:02:07.640 operation. That's why I was really surprised to discover that QFI maintained a similar program

00:02:13.720 in Edmonton and that no similar announcement had been made about Canada at all. I reached out to

00:02:20.600 Edmonton Public Schools to ask them if they were aware of allegations coming from America on

00:02:25.740 foreign malign influence involving QFI. The board told me that the course had been in operation

00:02:31.880 since 2011, so before the 2015 MOU, but they didn't address any questions that I had about QFI

00:02:39.960 at all. Now, it remains to be seen whether this partnership will continue, but in the meantime,

00:02:45.660 Edmonton remains the only formal partnership that I could find of its kind in Canada. Now,

00:02:52.020 there's a lot more to this story, so I would encourage you to check out the full article

00:02:56.720 on Juno News.

Juno News - June 22, 2026

Edmonton schools renew Arabic course tied to board's Qatari partnership

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript