On this year’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the interim chair of the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC), Charlotte-Anne Malischewski, said she was “deeply concerned about the rise meteoric rise in anti-Semitism” observed in Canada since the Hamas attacks on Israel last October.
“When hate enters our communities, it threatens public safety, democracy and human rights,” she said. “Hate divides us and pits us against each other.”
In the current climate, where the war in Gaza has made the Canadian Jewish community the scapegoat for criticism of the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, one would have expected federal Justice Minister Arif Virani to make an effort to find a worthy successor to Mr.me Malischewski to occupy on a permanent basis this position at the top of the hierarchy of human rights bodies in Canada.
Especially since the CHRC will be granted new powers under Bill C-63 on online harms to determine the validity of complaints regarding hateful content. The new CHRC Chair must himself be above any suspicion of bias for or against any complainant who approaches the commission.
However, in appointing Birju Dattani as chair of the CHRC on June 15, Mr. Virani seems to have sought above all to please the progressive wing of the Liberal Party of Canada. The appointment of this former director of the Yukon Human Rights Commission and “advocate for equity, diversity and inclusion” recalls that of Amira Elghawaby, who became special representative for the fight against Islamophobia last year, and who was haunted by her writings considered anti-Québécois after the announcement of her appointment.
Mme Elghawaby quickly apologized. But her act of contrition was immediately questioned by Quebec politicians, and her credibility was irreparably damaged. While she was able to keep her job, she has become virtually invisible since taking office.
Birju Dattani’s case is much more serious. According to revelations published this week in the Toronto media, the past of this former president of the Muslim Students Association at the University of Calgary is strewn with anti-Semitic remarks and dubious associations. While studying in London in 2012, he participated in a protest outside the Israeli embassy during which demonstrators repeated the slogan “Zionism is terrorism.” In 2015, while a lecturer in the British capital, he took part in a conference alongside a member of the Islamic fundamentalist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which advocates Sharia law and which the British government has listed on its list of terrorist organizations banned this year.
The Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs is demanding nothing less than the withdrawal of his nomination. According to the organization, Mr. Dattani “shared articles comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, participated in a roundtable discussion in the United Kingdom with a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, […] who seeks to establish a new caliphate and opposes the existence of an Israeli state, and has repeatedly lectured on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement at Israeli Apartheid Week at British universities.
Arif Virani’s office has pleaded ignorance, saying that Mr. Dattani did not inform it of his controversial tweets or his anti-Israel activism during the nomination process for the CHRC chair. While living in London, Mr. Dattani used a different first name. However, this does not spare the minister from accusations that he failed to conduct thorough due diligence before appointing him.
Mr. Virani is now promising to conduct a formal review of Mr. Dattani’s appointment before August 8, the date he takes office as head of the CHRC, and to make the review’s report public. For his part, Mr. Dattani apologized this week in an interview with Globe and Mailwhere he acknowledged that his previous comments and tweets may have hurt members of the Jewish community. “I wouldn’t do it now,” he stressed, specifying that his opinion had “evolved” since then.
It is good that Birju Dattani acknowledges his wrongdoing. His appointment is nevertheless inadmissible. After all, he clearly tried to hide his previous comments from the members of the Minister of Justice’s office, who certainly asked him, during the appointment process, to share any potentially compromising information about his past. Canadians must be able to trust the impartiality of the CHRC if it is to retain the credibility it needs to properly carry out its critical function of protecting Canadians from discrimination.
As for Justin Trudeau’s government, let’s just say that Mr. Dattani’s appointment is another example of progressive overzealousness backfiring on him once again. Let’s just say that he doesn’t seem to be learning from his mistakes.