Former MP for Spadina, Kevin Vong, Lisa McLeod, and Selina Robinson have been trying to get an Order of Canada award taken away from Mohamed Fouki for his anti-Israel tweets. They argue that he crossed the line and crossed the moral line, and that he should be stripped of the honour.
00:00:02.660In Canada, I think that we should have basic standards on who gets awards from the state like the Order of Canada.
00:00:11.100And that's why I really like what three former politicians are doing to try and strip an Order of Canada award from somebody who I think truly deserves it.
00:00:22.820In general, I think supporting terrorism and going after the human rights of other Canadians is a good enough reason to say that somebody should probably not be given our highest honour and in fact should have to give it back.
00:00:37.760And to talk about this issue today, I am bringing on former MP for Spadina, Fort York, Kevin Vong, who with Lisa McLeod and Selina Robinson have been going after the owner of Paramount Fine Foods, Mohamed Fouki, who is an Order of Canada holder for some recent tweets he's made.
00:01:00.720Yeah, so what's this whole, I guess, situation about?
00:01:04.820Because it's kind of not unprecedented, but it's not typical to specifically be going after an individual for a lot of their statements in terms of trying to strip them of awards.
00:01:18.780So what's kind of the background on why Mohamed Fouki specifically and what did he specifically do?
00:01:26.320Yeah, so listen, this is not, I think I want to address it right away, that this is not an act of censorship or trying to cancel someone who's simply exercising the right of freedom of expression.
00:01:44.160You can say whatever you want, so long as you're not inciting hate or violence.
00:01:48.760But the difference here between, say, you and me and other Canadians and Mr. Mohamed Fouki is that he is doing so from his platforms while using his post-nominals as a member of the Order of Canada, almost as a shield.
00:02:06.700And when the highest civilian honour is being used in that way, it is not only a reflection on that honour and everyone else who holds it, it's also, by extension, a reflection on Canada and Canadians.
00:02:24.620And, you know, he has very strong views, as everyone does, on different things.
00:02:31.660But what crossed the line for us and what compelled Lisa, Selena and I to act was on August 25th.
00:02:40.460And I think you have the tweet, yeah, you're going to pull it up.
00:02:44.620Quote, on behalf of literally every Canadian of conscience, if you are Canadian and a supporter of Israel, you do not have basic human values, let alone Canadian values.
00:02:56.360Your tweets and messages are saved and known to all of us.
00:03:07.180Because who is he to make a sweeping combination of millions of Canadians who he doesn't agree with, who may hold different belief systems than his?
00:03:20.540Who is he to be the arbiter of whether or not someone is human, never mind Canadian, right?
00:03:27.620And so this isn't policy disagreement, Wyatt.
00:03:30.760This is someone who's denying others their moral worth and their Canadian identity based on their beliefs.
00:03:37.980And that's what crosses the line from free speech and into social division.
00:03:43.780And then it's also the Order of Canada is being used as a marketing tool that I am saying this as somebody who has the Order of Canada, who has, like, the inside lane on, you know, on morality and what real human rights should be and whatnot.
00:03:59.220And, like, he has also posted other stuff like this, where he says he's commenting back on CIGIA, who was disagreeing with something that the organization NCCM had put out.
00:04:12.440And Mohammed Fakir said, look who showed up.
00:04:15.160Yes, if you serve in a foreign army and you are involved in war crimes, you must be prosecuted.
00:04:20.860Yes, members of the IDF have engaged in war crimes.
00:04:23.660Yes, if they are Canadian and come back to Canada, they must be prosecuted.
00:04:27.440And the thing is that this isn't really even something where people can, like, agree to disagree on.
00:04:36.480Objectively, there are no members of the IDF that have been found yet that have been found to have committed some sort of a war crime.
00:04:44.280If they have, I guarantee they've probably already been punished by Israel themselves.
00:04:51.440But, obviously, what he's trying to do is basically antagonize a group of people, if they've ever worked for the Israeli government or ever fought for the IDF, that the Canadian state should be used against them in order to prosecute them and, you know, presumably put them in prison.
00:05:13.560He's become a bit of an internet punching bag simply because of all the times that he's spread obvious Hamas propaganda and then just never given a retraction.
00:05:23.960And that's the problem, is that when somebody is also implying that you are of no worth for supporting Israel at the same time, the guy is basing all of that on things that are provably wrong.
00:05:37.700That you're a bad person because you support the state of Israel fighting Hamas based on all of his reading that has typically been debunked within the hour.
00:05:48.060Like, it's actually been crazy following many of these accounts who will continually put out, like, tweets and press releases about this horrible thing that just happened in Gaza.
00:06:00.000And then, like, five hours later, it's proven not to be true, but they don't retract.
00:06:04.460And so, what's your guys' sort of initiative, I guess, been based on now?
00:06:11.880You guys are running a petition, right?
00:06:13.940And do you guys have a specific goal with that?
00:06:15.920Yeah, so we felt compelled to come together and do something.
00:06:22.700And, you know, I think this is a good opportunity to directly address Mr. Focke's remarks that this is somehow a well-funded, organized campaign.
00:06:33.120This well-coordinated campaign, I think that's his exact wording, it was Lisa seeing what he wrote, being pissed off.
00:06:41.940And when she was Provincial Cabinet Minister here in Ontario, she actually had Ontario honours under her purview.
00:06:50.240And so, she has spent a lot of time thinking about how do we honour our best of the province of Ontario.
00:06:57.140And so, she reached out to me, she's like, essentially, she's like, Kevin, are you as pissed off about this as I am?
00:07:04.220And we decided, hey, let's reach out to Selena, just to make sure, you know, it's not just an Ontario thing, you know, albeit Selena's, correction, Lisa's in Ottawa, I'm in Toronto.
00:07:13.980And Selena was soon, so we decided in the span of 24 hours, okay, let's draft and write a petition and see if others agree with us.
00:07:23.960Now, in hindsight, I think Wyatt publishing it on the Friday of probably Canada's busiest long weekend, right, where everyone's trying to enjoy what's left of the summer, getting kids ready for back to school.
00:07:36.980And yet, we still got 11, over 11,000 signatures during that long weekend.
00:07:44.680And we're now, I think, close to 13,000.
00:07:48.000What's, I think, really important for me too is now, it's not just the three of us, 27 other former parliamentarians, both provincial and federal, have since joined us to add their names.
00:08:00.160And we have signatories from every single province and every single territory, but of now the 30 of us who are former politicians, we have 292 years of collective public service, nine are former cabinet ministers, we have a former premier, we have two former speakers.
00:08:19.180So, these are all individuals who have all come together united by the fact that we care about the integrity of what is supposed to be our nation's highest honour, something that's supposed to bring Canadians together, not divide us.
00:08:35.280Even you, Lisa McLeod and Selena Robinson come from different political backgrounds.
00:08:40.940You sat as an independent your entire time in parliament.
00:08:44.580Lisa McLeod is a progressive conservative from Ontario, and Selena Robinson was part of the British Columbia NDP.
00:08:52.620In fact, Selena herself had to leave the NDP because, frankly, the spread of anti-Semitism made it impossible for her to actually operate within that party in B.C.
00:09:04.020It just became so, it's because, like, it's going down a bit of a rabbit hole here, but the sorts of things that Mohamed Fakir and other people
00:09:14.300who spout a lot of the same things that he does, they make, over time, there's no difference made between someone who's from Israel and supports Israel and if you, you know, believe Israel should exist,
00:09:26.480and the idea that that, it doesn't matter if you are from there, if you fought in the IDF, if you just support them, you are not good enough to be in Canadian public life.
00:09:36.080And that's effectively what happens to Selena Robinson.
00:09:39.680For the mere crime of being Jewish and not hating Israel inside the B.C.N.D.P., she got harassed and reported constantly to the point where she just had to resign
00:09:51.740after she was actually kicked out of the provincial cabinet for stuff, for reasons.
00:09:56.960They'll never actually tell you specifically why because it would look bad.
00:09:59.940But the rhetoric and the sorts of things that people like Mohamed Fakir say are toxic to our public discourse over time
00:10:08.300because we now have it just normalized that people will attack Jewish cabinet ministers because they must be up to something because they're serving Israel.
00:10:19.380And that's what, even what you guys are doing right now is being characterized as, like, the Israeli lobby.
00:10:25.480Yeah, whereas we're three Canadians who care about the integrity of Canada's highest honor.
00:24:27.360And I won't say more right now, but I can tell you that that is absolutely a model that we're going down.
00:24:36.360But the reality is just like I think on the broader issue, especially post October 7th, is that the very same people like I think Mr. Faki, who are willing to articulate the very views that they have so publicly,
00:24:54.360which I would suggest are very divisive and hate filled, are there is no limit either in terms of who they're willing to harass,
00:25:03.360speaking as somebody who's who's had to endure some of that.
00:25:06.360So I think people who may otherwise agree with us have been cognizant of that.
00:25:12.360That's why I don't blame the vast majority of Canadians who I know support the Jewish community and stand with our democratic ally have been sometimes silent because they see the harassment that you, me and others have to endure.
00:25:28.360And so I think part of our campaign has been looking at how do we create the conducive environment for others who want to speak up, but don't yet feel comfortable to do so.
00:25:38.360And again, I don't want to get ahead of where we are, but I can tell you why that we have some some more I think developments that we look forward to announcing that I think very much strengthen our case.
00:25:55.360I want to reiterate again, if you don't mind, that this isn't about censorship or silencing an opinion that we disagree with.
00:26:04.360Mr. Faki, like everyone else has the right to freedom of expression that includes, by the way, the freedom to say completely ill informed and stupid things, which is how I would describe a lot of his remarks on this issue.
00:26:19.360But the difference here is your freedom of expression does not mean you have freedom from consequences.
00:26:32.360And if you hold our highest honor with that also comes responsibility.
00:26:37.360It's it's an incredible privilege, but privilege comes responsibility.
00:26:41.360And he has, in my view, and I think that of now over 13,000 Canadians who have joined Selena and Lisa and I in signing that petition has violated that.
00:26:56.360And we are now trying to hold into account, not only.
00:27:02.360I'm sorry, I was gonna say it also should be said, you don't have a right, you don't have a, you know, to the to the order of Canada.
00:27:09.360The whole point is that it is meant to be an honor with standards.
00:27:13.360If it had no standards, everyone and their dog would have an order of Canada right now.
00:27:18.360The whole point is that it's not even saying you can't be political after you get an order of Canada that we're going to say, oh, I don't agree with that partisan statement.
00:27:27.360It's the idea that are you now basically turning into a Twitter troll?
00:27:32.360Are you using the idea that you have an order of Canada to pump up your political opinions and be able to use it as a shield in order to, you know, in a very in a very on brand kind of a way for people who are trying to excuse them,
00:27:47.360the mass using it as a human shield in order to act as if there's some, you know, gravity to the statements you're making, even when you're saying that people who support Israel do not have basic human rights and stuff like that.
00:28:28.360This is not a freedom of expression matter.
00:28:32.360This is defending the integrity of our highest honor, because that is a direct reflection on this country.
00:28:39.360Anyways, well, thank you for coming on, Kevin.
00:28:41.360Would love to have you back on, especially as the campaign goes forward.
00:28:45.360But I wish you guys luck and in your next steps and what what you guys are doing here, I think is quite good.
00:28:51.360I think that, you know, to be in order to and not try to make it partisan, but in order to clean up Canada in general on a lot of fronts,
00:28:57.360you have to be able to start with small stuff where we actually put a line in the sand and say, you know, that actually is not a Canadian value that this is outside of the bounds of what Canadian values are.
00:29:09.360But thanks for thanks for coming on and for the audience.
00:29:13.360Make sure to share this with anyone who is unaware of the campaign so far.
00:29:17.360So they can see the petition and of course, sign the petition yourselves.
00:29:21.360And with that being said, see everyone later.