Author: Andrew Lawton

First published at True North on July 15, 2020.

Former prime minister Stephen Harper will be speaking at a large conference pushing for regime change in Iran, True North has learned.

Harper will join former Canadian foreign minister John Baird, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani and former United States senator and vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman among the numerous speakers at this weekend’s Free Iran Global Summit, according to a source connected with the event.

Harper’s participation has not been publicly announced and a request for comment to his spokesperson was not returned.

The Free Iran conference is hosted by the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and its activist wing, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK).

With delegates from 30,000 locations across 102 countries, the NCRI is trumpeting this year’s conference as the “largest virtual gathering,” having been forced online with public health challenges and travel restrictions caused by the novel coronavirus.

Ironically, Iran has been one of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic. While official figures show just over 13,000 deaths in Iran, NCRI estimates the real figure exceeds 70,000 according to a report published Monday. The conference will feature a special tribute to Iran’s coronavirus victims.

Harper, who now serves as chairman of the International Democratic Union, spoke at the Free Iran conference at MEK’s headquarters near Tirana, Albania last year.

“There are few causes in this world today more important at this moment than what you are pursuing – the right of the people of Iran to change their government and their right to do it through freedom and the power of the ballot box,” Harper said then. “The need for change in Iran is greater than ever before and the need for the work of this organization on behalf of the Iranian people is greater than ever before.”

Harper has never shied away from tackling the Iran problem. His government – with Baird as foreign affairs minister – severed diplomatic ties with Iran in 2012, citing the Iranian regime’s continued expansion of its nuclear program and ongoing threats to Israel, among other factors.

In January, Harper said at a conference in India, after the Iranian government admitted to shooting down a Ukraine International Airlines flight with 57 Canadians aboard, that there needs to be “change in Iran if we are going to see peace in the Middle East.”

NCRI and MEK seek to deliver that change, though the organizations are not without controversy.

The MEK was classified as a terrorist organization in Canada and the United States until 2012, when it was delisted by both countries, then led by Harper and President Barack Obama, respectively.

Several experts say it was lobbying from the Iranian regime itself that put MEK on several terror lists in the first place. The European Union removed MEK from its list of terrorist organizations after a European Court ruling, raising the ire of Iran’s foreign ministry – a component of the regime MEK seeks to upend.

Since then, both MEK and NCRI have worked to establish themselves as voices for a secular and democratic Iran, earning support on both sides of the political aisle in the United States and Canada. Liberal MP Judy Sgro and Conservative MP Candice Bergen both attended last year’s conference, as did Baird.

An open letter signed by over 30 American dignitaries, including former House speaker Newt Gingrich and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz calls the NCRI a “beacon of hope” and the “one organization that has done more than any other entity, including governments, to free Iranian citizens from tyranny and the world from fundamentalist-inspired terrorism.”

This year’s event comes on the heels of a United States House of Representatives resolution – backed by prominent Democrats and Republicans – “condemning Iranian state-sponsored terrorism and expressing support for the Iranian people’s desire for a democratic, secular and non-nuclear republic of Iran.”

The event has historically antagonized the Iranian regime. The 2018 Free Iran conference in Paris was the target of a bomb plot linked by French officials to Iran’s ministry of intelligence, with a senior Iranian diplomat among six people charged.

True North will be covering the conference.

First published at True North on July 8, 2020.

A segment on a CBC children’s news show calling J.K. Rowling “transphobic” didn’t meet the state broadcaster’s journalistic standards, CBC admits.

In response to a complaint to CBC’s ombudsman filed by Toronto lawyer Kaveh Shahrooz, a producer acknowledged the episode’s shortcomings.

“In the end, this segment did not achieve the balance we intended, and did not live up to the standards to which we as a public broadcaster hold ourselves,” says an email from CBC Kids senior producer Lisa Fender.

A CBC spokesperson confirmed to True North the original segment “did not achieve the balance of perspectives we aspire to.”

The segment was from a June 12 episode of the CBC Kids News show Recap, in which the young co-hosts take aim at Rowling over a tweet indicating only women are capable of menstruation. In the segment, the hosts tell Rowling to “read the room” and say she’s been “accused of transphobic stuff in the past,” referring to Rowling’s support of a woman fired for believing people cannot change their biological sex. 

While the tweet triggered a firestorm of both backlash and support for Rowling, who later expanded on her views in a lengthy essay about womanhood, the CBC segment itself was one-sided.

In his complaint, Shahrooz was clear to neither defend nor attack Rowling’s views.

“My sole concern is with the lack of balance in this coverage of this issue on a program aimed at children, a segment of the population most likely to take the pronouncements heard on television at face value,” he wrote, noting debate around gender identity is a “live issue with two sides.”

Fender says CBC Kids News decided to cover the controversy “when we heard that it was a topic that kids were hearing about from their peers, through social media and in the news,” adding CBC Kids News aims to “provide a trusted service” for coverage of issues that kids are hearing about.

“While popularized through social media, we knew that this was a complex and layered debate that presented many nuances, some which might be too complex for us to fully tackle in one story,” Fender writes. “We knew that we wanted to lay out how kids felt about what they were hearing and decided that we could…give the show’s kid commentators an opportunity to present the debate in a balanced, yet digestible way.”

Recognizing the segment did not do that, Fender says the network has “taken steps to correct this,” including a follow-up episode “which provides perspectives missing in the June 12th segment.”

In the follow-up episode, Recap host Myah Elliott acknowledges “conversations about gender can be confusing and layered” and quotes Rowling’s own words as well as a tweet from a Rowling defender. Elliott also shares that “there are a lot of people that stand with J.K. Rowling and her views on being female.”

Shahrooz, a self-described CBC supporter, says he was “satisfied with (CBC’s) response.”

First published at True North on June 24, 2020.

Canada’s state broadcaster has announced a number of steps to deal with what it says is “systemic racism” within its ranks.

CBC said in a statement Tuesday it would be working to “accelerate progress” on its Diversity and Inclusion Plan, citing “troubling” stories from employees who have reported being affected by racism both personally and professionally while working at CBC.

The directive sets out a hiring quota for senior positions as well as a target to retain and promote more minorities and people with disabilities.

According to CBC’s statement, by 2021-2022:

• Half of all new hires for executive and senior management positions will be Indigenous people, visible minorities, or people with disabilities; and
• Retention and promotion rates for people from these three groups will be doubled.

The policy also makes unconscious bias training mandatory for people in senior management and leadership rules, and available upon request to any employee in the organization.

CBC says these changes have come about through the broadcaster’s Diversity and Inclusion Working Group, a task force established in December with a mandate to “accelerate change in the areas of representation and workplace culture.”

CBC staff members have been breaking rank with the broadcaster in recent weeks to criticize the workplace racial environment. A Canadaland podcast reported employees have spoken of being referred to as “tokens” or feeling “invisible” at CBC.

Long-time CBC personality Wendy Mesley was suspended from hosting duties for using a “word that should never be used” in a staff meeting while quoting a potential panelist for a story on the Black Lives Matter protests and racial inequality.

CBC’s president and CEO Catherine Tait said unequivocally Tuesday that systemic racism exists is widespread across Canada, and CBC is no exception.

“We recognize that systemic racism exists in Canada and within many of its institutions, including its national public broadcaster,” Tait said. “We are committed to combating racism in all its forms, to removing structural barriers and practices that result in discrimination at CBC/Radio-Canada, and to improving our workplace culture in tangible, concrete ways.”

Tait said CBC will “intensify the transformation of our organization” in light of recent events.

The crown corporation will utilize a diversity and inclusion fund to provide internship and development opportunities to “employment equity-seeking groups.”

The plan will not just influence hiring and promotions, but also content, the broadcaster said. This will be achieved in part by a commitment to ensure a “person from a diverse background” is in a decision-making creative role on every scripted and factual program, even those commissioned from other production companies, within the next five years.

Training in unconscious, or implicit, bias has been widely panned – even by proponents of workplace diversity – as ineffective.

A 2009 review of nearly 1,000 prejudice reduction studies found no evidence that unconscious bias training has any effect at mitigating racism. In fact, several studies have shown that it can have a negative effect.

“Instructions to suppress negative stereotypes often have the opposite effect, and prejudice reduction programs are much more effective when people are already open-minded, altruistic, and concerned about their prejudices to begin with,” wrote University College London and Columbia University professor Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic in Bloomberg.

First published at True North on June 15, 2020.

A CBC children’s show is calling Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling “transphobic” and “dangerous” for saying only women menstruate.

In the June 12 episode of the CBC Kids News programme Recap, the three cohosts say they are “fired up” over a Twitter firestorm that started earlier this month when Rowling defended a biological definition of womanhood.

Rowling tweeted about an article that referred to “people who menstruate” rather than women, playfully saying there “used to be a word for those people.”

In the CBC Kids segment, Recap cohost Veena Yamano mockingly said Rowling “took issue with the word ‘people.’”

“There are lots of us who menstruate who don’t identify as women,” Yamano said.

After Yamano quoted Rowling as saying “My life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so,” cohost Sean Tran jumped in to say, “It’s 2020. Releasing these kind of statements online is not a good look.”

Tran then pointed out that Rowling has been “accused of transphobic stuff in the past,” referring to Rowling’s support of Maya Forstater, a British researcher who was fired for stating her belief that people cannot change their sex.

The hosts then shared Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe’s statement in defense of trans identities, saying that “seeing Daniel advocate for what he believes in is so inspiring.”

Yamano said the episode will “diminish the amount of respect that J.K. Rowling has acquired over the years,” but concedes that her writing is “exceptional.”

A web story accompanying the episode quotes a Simon Fraser University professor as saying Rowling’s view that only biological women menstruate is “dangerous” and “ignorant.”

The show Recap is targeted towards children as young as six, CBC’s website says.

“In a world of real news, fake news, clickbait and hot takes, it’s no wonder our heads are spinning from all of the information.

The show aims to “cut the clutter.”

Last year, CBC Kids published a segment glorifying child drag performers “as they prepare to slay on Montreal stage.”

CBC Kids previously came under fire for seeking a host of “any race except Caucasian.”

First published at True North on May 12, 2020.

It’s crunch time for Conservative leadership candidates, with just three days left to sign up new members to get their votes. As a result, all but one of the leadership campaigns have been eager to put their candidates before audiences of potential conservative voters.

Yes, all but one.

Despite doing several interviews with mainstream media outlets, Peter MacKay has had no time for independent media, including True North.

MacKay is the only Conservative leadership candidate to not sit down with True North. In fact, his team has ignored our interview requests.

While the invitations still stand, MacKay is, at this point, not among his opponents who have participated in my series of candid, cordial and wide-ranging conversations about their campaigns to lead the Conservative party and the country.

If the implicit goal of the series is to tell the audience who the candidates really are, perhaps MacKay’s non-response is more revealing than the interview would have been.

Candidates Leslyn Lewis, Erin O’Toole and Derek Sloan were all too happy to sit down with a conservative broadcaster, knowing it’s the Conservative membership and not the general electorate that will choose the next leader.

While it’s possible MacKay doesn’t even know we’ve been trying to get a hold of him, he must bear responsibility for his campaign team’s decision to ignore requests, just as he’s had to for previous missteps-turned-flip-flops in his social media and email messaging.

The non-response suggests a team so disorganized it can’t manage to find the “reply” button (if even to decline the request) or one that is deliberately avoiding the independent media that conservative candidates should be embracing rather than fleeing.

Handlers swiftly got between MacKay and David Menzies from Rebel News when Menzies attempted to snag an unplanned interview at a February event.

On at least one occasion, a True North reporter sent a request for comment – not even an interview request – to MacKay’s campaign team and was ignored.

Interviewing leadership candidates has been a long-time project of mine. I recorded five interviews with this year’s Conservative leadership candidates (the other two, Rudy Husny and Marilyn Gladu, did not make the final ballot). I also spoke with the candidates in 2018’s Ontario PC leadership race, as well as nearly all 14 people vying for the federal Conservative leadership in 2017.

This isn’t an exercise in vanity on my part, I assure you. It’s that conservative-minded journalists are a rarity in Canada, and the things the mainstream media wants to talk to Conservative leadership candidates about are not the things the people voting in these leadership races care about.

The mainstream media would be content to make whole interviews about social issues, when these are just one facet of the conservative movement and the Conservative base.

It’s not even like MacKay can claim his interviews with mainstream media outlets have been going all that swimmingly, notably walking out on one after fielding questions about one of the several tweets he’s backtracked on.

MacKay’s avoidance of the conservatives engaged in Canada’s cultural battles demonstrates his unwillingness to advance a genuine conservative agenda should he succeed in acquiring the Conservative leadership.

If MacKay were going to do something for conservatives, he would want to tell conservatives about it. This hasn’t happened, and if my empty inbox is any indication, it won’t happen.