Search Results for: marouf

The story of the government engaging an anti-racism consultant with a history of “disturbing comments” has been chronicled here for more than a year (see: July 2021: Funding Hate; April 2022: Purveying hate on the public dime; and, Government funded hate speech). Thanks to amplification from Jonathan Kay’s twitter feed, the story has made its way into the mainstream media, leading (at last) to a government response.

As I wrote last week, the government (and even some opposition members) knew about the problem much earlier, but did not act until the matter became a more public priority. The reasons for this inaction can be the subject of further investigation by the Parliamentary Heritage Committee, or others.

While the focus these past couple weeks has been on the Anti-racism Action Program funding, some may want to explore the ease by which “public interest” groups, such as the one under the microscope, can feed at various troughs of cash in Ottawa.

I raised questions in July of 2021 about a CRTC award of $16,815.10 to CMAC in May of that year. The CRTC awarded an additional $15,332.48 a few months later (October 2021), paring back CMAC’s original request by $2000 “in order to be considered reasonable and necessarily incurred”. In each case, all but $2069.55 (paid to another CMAC consultant) was claimed by Laith Marouf.

In addition, the Broadcast Participation Fund (BPF) represents a pot of cash available to groups since its establishment by the CRTC in 2012. According to the CRTC, the mandate of the BPF is:

• provide costs support to public interest groups and consumer groups representing non-commercial user interests and the public interest before the CRTC in broadcasting matters under the Broadcasting Act;
• support research, analysis and advocacy in both official languages directly related to ongoing CRTC broadcasting proceedings under the Broadcasting Act;
• retain an independent costing officer who shall be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the BPF subject to the overriding authority of the Board; and
• do all things which are in furtherance of the foregoing.

The BPF hands out a lot of cash to public interest groups, totalling just under $900,000 in 2021 alone. Of that total, CMAC received $144,480.44 or more than 15% of the 2021 allocations. There was another $57K granted in 2020; $89K in 2019; $41K in 2018; $88K in 2017; and, $98K in 2016.

That is more than half a million dollars to CMAC over the last 6 years, just from one Ottawa-based fund doling out your money.

The same groups show up on the lists year after year, similar to names of organizations receiving cost awards directly from the CRTC in telecom proceedings.

Who qualifies for funding?

In Telecom and Broadcasting Notice of Consultation 2020-124-2, the Commission stated the following:

15. […] Eligibility for a share of these funds will be evaluated according to the criteria set out in section 68 of the Rules of Procedure, namely

• whether the applicant had, or was the representative of a group or a class of subscribers that had, an interest in the outcome of the proceeding;
• the extent to which the applicant assisted the Commission in developing a better understanding of the matters that were considered; and
• whether the applicant participated in the proceeding in a responsible way.

Should the third criteria, “participating in a responsible way”, include an examination of the character and behaviour of the people involved in the applicant? Is the credibility of the applicant impacted by their character and does that impact the ability to participate in a responsible way?

To whom do these public interest groups answer? Who do these groups actually represent? What due diligence is performed by the guardians of the public funds?

As I highlighted last year, in one set of cost awards, the CRTC didn’t even allow people to provide comments about the cost applications, comments that might have helped inform the Commission of concerns about the recipients of these funds; “the Commission considered that such responses were unnecessary.”

It turns out, that was a bad call.

These various programs and funds have been established with the best of intentions. Unfortunately, there are often unintended consequences that arise from opportunities to access “other people’s money”.

Are the people distributing public funds exercising sufficient checks before disbursing money from these troughs of cash?

From the outset, I have had concerns about plans to create new legislation addressing online hate.

Some may find my position surprising, given my involvement in the first CRTC application to request blocking of a website, back in August 2006.

That was a very different case from trying to establish a regime that attempts to define what constitutes online harms and enforces limits on our freedom of expression.

As I wrote last year:

we need to be able to distinguish between language that is insightful and words that are inciteful. Which words lead to constructive engagement and which words are those that are destructive? What facts are being omitted because they inconveniently don’t fit the narrative being set forward? Which authors are consistently reliable and which ones seem to prefer sensationalism over substance?

In 1964, ruling on a case considering “hard-core pornography”, US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote of the term that “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it”.

How will we define what material online should be considered illegal, versus that material which is merely offensive? Will we know it when we see it?

This could be the challenge for the Heritage Minister in introducing online harms legislation. Indeed, the expert advisory group appointed by Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez earlier this year concluded its work 2 months ago, recognizing “The issue of harmful content found online is both a critical and complex issue that calls for an approach that balances freedom of expression, protection of privacy, and online safety.”

That said, let’s examine a very current situation: a Montreal-based consultant who refers to Jews as “loud mouthed bags of human feces”, and threatens “Jews with a bullet to the head” (as highlighted in a Twitter stream last Friday by journalist Jonathan Kay).

Hateful or merely offensive? To me, it’s pretty clear that this kind of commentary crossed the line.

But we don’t actually need to consider whether or not Laith Marouf’s comments would survive Canadian Heritage’s prospective Online Harms legislation. Legal or not, it seems pretty inexcusable that this same department of the Canadian government has been providing funding to him.

And to add insult, the funding falls under the Department’s “Anti-Racism Action Program”. Was there any due diligence performed by those responsible for vetting applications? Did anyone use Google before handing out cash to this guy?

I highlighted this problem back in April shortly after the news was released, quoting Canada’s Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion. Before providing a Ministerial statement for the CMAC press release, did anyone check references for the other guy being quoted?

Four months after I started asking questions, I have still seen no action by the government to distance itself from this online purveyor of antisemitism.

The Minister has said Canada is seeking to create “a legislative and regulatory framework to … help create a safe space online that protects all Canadians”.

How can we expect the Minister of Canadian Heritage to establish legislation creating safe spaces online, when the same department is funding those creating the kinds of material against which the legislation is intended to target.

There can be no credibility for online harms legislation being proposed by a department that funds those who generate online hate.

It isn’t easy to get suspended from Twitter or Facebook.

More than a decade ago, I referred to it as “anti-social media”. I commented at the time that “Adherence to truth and reasoned thinking is clearly not a prerequisite for publishing on Twitter.”

You need to be pretty blatant in violating Twitter’s lenient terms of service.

Indeed, it is precisely the lax enforcement of terms of service standards that has led so many countries to be examining or enacting legislation to combat online hate. On March 30, Canada’s Heritage Minister, together with the Minister of Justice and Attorney General jointly announced the appointment of “a new expert advisory group on online safety as the next step in developing legislation to address harmful online content.”

“The Government of Canada is committed to a digital society that creates safe and respectful spaces online and protects Canadians’ freedom of expression.”

The Department of Canadian Heritage also has funded an Anti-Racism Action Program, funding projects aligned with one or more of 3 themes: Employment; Justice; and, Social participation. “The Anti-Racism Action Program will also prioritize projects that target online hate and promote digital literacy.”

So, given the Government’s commitment to a “safe and respectful spaces online”, and the Action Program’s priority of projects targeting online hate, I was surprised to see that the Anti-Racism Action Program was apparently funding a series of programs across the country organized in part by CMAC consultant Laith Marouf, whose @LaithMarouf account was suspended by Twitter for violating its rules against hateful conduct.

Although his notice from Twitter explicitly forbade evasion of the suspension by creating new accounts, he has been spreading his venomous messages under a new Twitter account, @Laith_Marouf.

Was sufficient due diligence performed when Heritage officials were reviewing this funding request? [If his name sounds familiar, recall that I wrote about him last summer.]

Should the Government of Canada be funding (directly or indirectly) purveyors of hate?

Should Canada’s imprimatur be attached to this series of programs?

How did the CRTC find itself in the position of funding the person generating the kind of speech in this tweet?

You might be surprised to learn the CRTC ordered nearly $13,000 to be paid to the author of this clearly hurtful, if not outright hateful, tweet. [Update: As of July 29, Twitter suspended his account for violating its rules against hateful conduct.]

How did this happen? Two years ago, Bell Canada proposed using $125,000 remaining in its deferral account to defray the costs of interveners participating in CRTC regulatory proceedings to make regulations under the Accessible Canada Act. The CRTC agreed.

Two months ago, on May 13, the CRTC issued a series of decisions awarding funds to a number of groups:

• Telecom Order CRTC 2021-170: $4,180 to the Canadian Association of the Deaf
• Telecom Order CRTC 2021-171: $7,872.75 to Media Access Canada
• Telecom Order CRTC 2021-172: $4,747 to the Canadian National Society of the Deaf-Blind
• Telecom Order CRTC 2021-173: $5,170 to the CNIB Foundation
• Telecom Order CRTC 2021-174: $22,777.50 to Deaf Wireless Canada Consultative Committee
• Telecom Order CRTC 2021-175: $16,815.10 to the Community Media Advocacy Centre

Let’s focus on the last of those cost awards. Of the $16,815.10 awarded to CMAC in Telecom Order CRTC 2021-175, $12,875 went to pay its consultant, the author of the Tweet above, just one of dozens of examples of venom spewed on his Twitter account.

How could the CRTC have missed the context of ordering payment for his participation in a regulatory proceeding?

There is a clue in the third paragraph of each of the Telecom Orders listed above:

3. The Commission noted that Bell Canada did not submit, as part of its proposal, that it required the opportunity to respond to applications for a share of the available funds. In the circumstances, the Commission considered that such responses were unnecessary.

Keep in mind that deferral account funds were ear-marked for a public purpose, so one might ask if it was appropriate for the CRTC to use a standard of “what Bell asked for”. Indeed, the standard appears to have been “what Bell didn’t explicitly ask for”.

Unlike most cost award processes, the CRTC chose to short circuit the reply phase to the applications and as a result, it did not have the benefit of public input to help inform the process by which the Commission reached its conclusions. Paragraph 6 states: “CMAC submitted that it is a non-profit organization that represents the interests of people with disabilities who are Indigenous or racialized, or who identify as women, and that offers advocacy and support to these groups.” Would that submission hold up under further scrutiny?

With input, the CRTC might have reconsidered its determination in Paragraph 12 that “CMAC has demonstrated that it meets the first criterion by representing people with disabilities who are Indigenous or racialized, or who identify as women, and by elaborating on its membership and expertise.”

The cost awards in May used up about half of the funding set aside from the deferral account. The CRTC may want to reconsider its processes for any further distributions.