OTTAWA — One Canadian Jewish group is aiming to ensure Canadian tax dollars aren’t used to further research that violates Canada’s anti-racism strategy.
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With a last-minute meeting cancellation stymieing plans to testify before the House Science and Research committee on Tuesday, B’nai Brith Canada’s Richard Robertson told the Toronto Sun it’s important to ensure the government’s new Capstone Research Funding Organization (CFRO) initiative doesn’t fund research deemed antisemitic under the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definitions.
“In developing the new EDIA (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility) initiatives for the CFRO, Jewish individuals (should) be properly encapsulated within the measures,” Robertson said.
“Something that we’ve noticed as an ongoing problem in Canada is that EDIA policies do not properly reflect the needs of Jewish people.”
The 2024 budget announced the formation of the CFRO as a means to oversee three existing grant councils — the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research — the so-called tri-council agencies.
The goal of the CFRO, the government said, is to modernize Canada’s research grant system.
In their submission to the committee, B’nai Brith Canada made two recommendations — ensuring Jewish Canadians are included in any EDIA policies, and that funding agreements with colleges and universities include assurances that research are in line with Canada’s anti-racism strategy.
“We see this as a very logical implementation of the anti-racism strategy itself,” Robertson said.
According to the submission, federal grants have a history of being awarded to researchers “whose publications contain content that is considered antisemitic under the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) wording definition” — a definition adopted by Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy.
Examples cited in the submission include a $105,000 grant for a 2023 York University study entitled “Palestinian Urban Displacement in Israel: Anti-Colonialism and the Right to the City” — which the submission maintains contains content that denies Jewish people “their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”
Robertson said that while this won’t address Canada’s skyrocketing antisemitism crisis, it’s a positive step in the ongoing fight against hatred in this country.
“We should not be funding projects whose publications are inciting endorsing hateful rhetoric.” he said.
“That’s not where our federal government should be spending its resources.”
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