Juno News - October 26, 2019Tax dollars fund ＂Muslim voting guide＂
Episode Stats
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Summary
A new report from the Islamophobia Industry Research Project at Wilfrid Laurier University gives the major parties in Canada a grade on issues that the report contends are relevant to the Muslim community: Islamophobia, boycott, divestment, sanctions, broader foreign policy, immigration and refugees, and religious freedom in Quebec. And if you look at the final scorecard, the leaders of the right-of-center parties, Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier, did not fare well.
Transcript
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Canadians, your tax dollars went towards telling Muslims not to vote for Conservatives.
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This sounds baffling, and the reason for that is very simple.
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The federal government gave a grant to a group of researchers at Wilfrid Laurier University
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to publish a report specifically to guide and steer the votes of Muslim Canadians.
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The report, published by Wilfrid Laurier University, has a very simple mandate,
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Canadian Muslim Voting Guide Federal Election 2019.
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In the guide, which was prepared by a specific Islamophobia industry research project at Laurier University
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and funded by the government, we'll get back to that in a moment,
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was there to give politicians, the leaders of the major parties in Canada,
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grades on issues that the report contends are relevant to the Muslim community.
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These issues are Islamophobia, boycott divestment sanctions, broader foreign policy,
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immigration and refugees, religious freedom in Quebec.
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And if you look at the final scorecard, the leaders of the right-of-center parties,
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Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier, didn't fare too well.
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Just take a look at those. An entire row of fails for Maxime Bernier on every issue.
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Almost an entire row of fails for Andrew Scheer.
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He got one needs improvement on religious freedom.
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No one did well on that category, as you can see.
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Green lights for Jagmeet Singh, green lights for Elizabeth May,
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and a combination of green and orange for Justin Trudeau.
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Now, when you go through the point of it, there are a number of issues here.
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Incomplete research, conclusions drawn about not only how the Muslim community,
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which is not monolithic, thinks about certain things,
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but also shoddy research on a lot of the positions that the party leaders have actually taken.
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They've distilled down into these five different areas what are more broadly disagreements.
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But if you think the wrong thing, according to this report, it's a fail.
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One of the most egregious examples of that is boycott divestment sanctions.
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The report accepts as a premise that BDS against Israel is a good thing.
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And anyone who criticizes or condemns BDS therefore gets a failing grade.
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So anyone that says, hey, BDS is unfair to Israelis and Jews, they get a fail just for that.
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And if you look at the premise of the report as it lists its purpose,
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it actually blames far-right Christians and Zionists for peddling Islamophobia.
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Now, this shouldn't be a surprise that a group of academics got together and decided to
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write out a bunch of mumbo-jumbo and start calling people racist and Islamophobes.
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But again, the most significant part of this report is on its cover page.
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More than any of the substance in the report, this is the big red flag for me.
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Literally, the red flag, the Canadian flag on this report.
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As you can see there, made possible by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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Now, what's interesting is that this initiative at Laurier University,
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which again is trying to say that it is there to dismantle the industry of Islamophobes that exists in the country,
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is something that partners with the National Council of Canadian Muslims.
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But take a look at the rationale for why this project exists in the first place.
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The website says that the study supports M103 through its objectives to analyze, document,
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The Islamophobia industry perpetuates fear and negative stereotypes about Islam and Muslims,
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It is comprised of media outlets, political figures, academics, think tanks, far-right groups and ideologues,
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These individuals, groups, and institutions comprise a network that supports and engages in activities
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that demonize and marginalize Islam and Muslims in Canada.
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So this is something that is basically telling Canadians, we're all racists, we're all Islamophobe.
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The media, academics, think tanks, we're all part of this problem.
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But even if there is a research initiative, there's a difference between researching something
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This study was done because of M103, the anti-Islamophobia motion that when it passed,
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and people like me were saying it would threaten free speech, we were told,
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Well, now that symbolic and non-binding motion is justifying tax dollars going towards telling people
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how to vote, and specifically telling them not to vote for conservative parties.
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Now, we don't know what the impact of this was in the election, and we never will.
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People get to make up their minds based on whatever criteria they'd like.
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But this is egregious that tax money is going towards peddling identity politics
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Now, I tweeted about this as soon as I learned it, and a Conservative member of Parliament,
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Karen Vecchio, had tweeted out her condemnation in response.
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She says the government should never have funded a guide like this.
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It's partisan and not in the best interest of all Canadians.
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B'nai B'rith has also come out and condemned specifically the BDS component.
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This government-funded report contending that BDS is a good thing,
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and anyone who disagrees with it is peddling Islamophobia.
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which is why it's so important to stop identity politics.
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When you have a resolution like M103 being put forward,
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If you can support True North's efforts to stand up and fight back against identity politics,
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push back against this, and fight for free speech,
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do head on over to tnc.news and make a contribution to support our efforts.