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

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