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“OUR BRIEF HISTORY – In 1996, a group of concerned Canadian Muslims started an informal network in Canada to work with the Washington-based CAIR, an organization well known among Canadian Muslims since 1994. In the spring of 1997, CAIR-Montreal was formed, and was soon after replaced by CAIR-Ottawa. In 2000, CAIR-CAN was incorporated as a Canadian organization speaking out for Canada’s Muslim population.”
On January 17 of this year, Point de Bascule published an article reporting a statement made by the Prime Minister Harper’s Director of communications to the effect that the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM – formerly CAIR-CAN) is “an organization with documented ties to a terrorist organization such as Hamas.”
In order to provide some context to this remark, a brief chronology of NCCM / CAIR-CAN was added to the article. The chronology indicated that CAIR-CAN was founded in 2000. In reality, that is the incorporation of CAIR-CAN with Industry Canada that occurred in 2000. According to CAIR-CAN’s 2005 Annual Review, the beginnings of the organization rather occurred in 1996 in Montreal. CAIR-Montreal was added to the Quebec Registry of Enterprises on January 14, 1997 and struck off the Registry on May 8, 1999.
The page of the 2005 annual review dedicated to CAIR-CAN’s beginnings and the 2005 CAIR-CAN annual review out of which the page was excerpted are available on Point de Bascule.
The January 17 article’s chronology has been adjusted to take this information into account.
It is noteworthy that the brief CAIR-CAN history published in the 2005 annual review indicates that the Canadian organization was set up “to work with the Washington-based CAIR.” This contradicts a document provided by CAIR-CAN when it changed its name to NCCM in July 2013, according to which “There was never any operating or funding relationship between CAIR.CAN and CAIR.”
Ihsaan Gardee repeated the same misleading information in a recent CBC interview.
Further reading
Point de Bascule: File National Council of Canadian Muslims / CAIR-CAN
