Juno News - November 04, 2019The government wants nothing to do with ＂Muslim Voting Guide＂
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Summary
The federal government denies it had any role in funding or supporting a controversial Muslim Voting Guide published by Laurier University researchers days before the most recent federal election. But why did a government logo appear on the document in the first place? And why is the government funding a research project that is aimed at advocating, not researching, the notion that Canadians are Islamophobic?
Transcript
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The federal government is denying it had any role in funding or supporting a controversial
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Muslim voting guide published by Laurier University researchers days before the most
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recent federal election. I spoke about this voting guide when it came to light, a document
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that was basically telling Muslim Canadians that Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier get failing
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grades across the board and telling Muslims they should vote for the other ones, the ones
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that are getting passing grades for their positions on combating Islamophobia, hate crime legislation,
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supporting M103. This document was published and produced by an Islamophobia project at
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Laurier University led by Professor Jasmine Zine. On the front page was a big giant Government
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of Canada logo as well as the logo of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council,
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a government organization responsible for dispensing money in grants to all kinds of projects in academic
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circles across the country. But in this particular case, a spokesperson for the Social Sciences and
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Humanities Research Council said there was no support given by the federal government to this
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Islamophobia project. They're looking into it. The logo has since been removed from the archived
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document, although in many cases too little too late because the election is done. And the big question
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raised by this whole episode is why did it appear there on the first place? Now worth noting is that the
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SSHRC has actually given a grant worth almost $25,000 to Professor Jasmine Zine's project and this money has gone
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towards this initiative of mapping the Islamophobia industry in Canada. That's exactly what they're
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calling it, the Islamophobia industry. What the researchers contend is a massive industry on Twitter
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and think tanks and academic circles in the media of people peddling Islamophobia. So it's entirely possible
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that they just decided on their own, we want to produce this report card underneath the banner of the
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research we're already doing. But this raises the bigger question of why is the government funding a
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research project that is basically aimed at advocating, not researching. This initiative is advocating this
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notion that Canadians are Islamophobic, that there is an Islamophobia problem that is so bad that we need to
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be told how to vote and specifically that Muslim Canadians need to be told how to vote to combat this. That's the
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very premise of this. So why is this something that's getting government funding? Now I accept that this
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may have been a little bit overzealous for Professor Zine to put the Government of Canada logo on this
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specific report card. There are questions that need to be answered here such as were there any terms or
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stipulations or conditions put on that money that would preclude Laurier from doing something like this
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or was it here's the money do whatever you want and make sure everyone knows the government's bankrolling
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this. It could be that or it could be again a researcher that wants to lend credibility to this
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report card that is absolutely shoddily researched if researched at all by saying hey look everyone
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this has the backing of the federal government that may be what happens here I'm going to be holding
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the government and the SSHRC to account when they say they're looking into this all right share the
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answers. Government should not be funding efforts to re-elect that government or efforts to vote against
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other people which is exactly what this report with its government logo on the cover page did. We can't pit
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groups against each other which is what this government funded Islamophobia industry research project is
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doing in the first place. For True North, I'm Andrew Lawton.