Canadian Heritage’s newest quarterly disclosure lists 191 agreements worth $10.9 million under its Multiculturalism and Anti-Racism Program, including a $215,000 agreement with the Quebec newspaper cooperative that publishes Le Soleil and Le Droit for a children’s news project against racism, a Rebel News review of the federal grants disclosure has found.
The agreements, with start dates between April 15 and October 24 and most of them from August on, sit in the proactive disclosure data on open.canada.ca as 53 “Projects” worth $8.1 million and 138 “Events” worth $2.8 million. The figures are multi-year agreement values, not payments, and the record says the start date “is based on the approval date.”
Rebel News reported on October 16 on a separate batch of 78 anti-hate projects worth $11 million that started in April.
The media recipient is the Coopérative nationale de l’information indépendante, the cooperative that owns six regional dailies, including Le Soleil and Le Droit, taken over in what Le Soleil has called “le sauvetage des six journaux en 2019”. Its 19-month agreement, from September 1 to March 31, 2028, is titled “Les As de l’info : informer et accompagner les enfants pour lutter contre le racisme”.
Les As de l’info describes itself as “A French-language news site that explains current events in simple terms for children aged 8 to 12.”
Other project titles include “Youth Belonging in Action,” $133,000 to Moms Against Racism (Canada) of Victoria, a group its founder Kerry Cavers has said she began as a Facebook group in 2020; “Regenerative Equity Governance in Practice,” $130,000 to the Future Arts Network Society of Vancouver; “Community Inclusion and Wellbeing Project,” $176,000 to the Moose Jaw & District Chamber of Commerce; and $139,000 to the Yukon Human Rights Commission for “Unmasking Systemic Barriers: An Intersectional Analysis of Race-Based”, a title the record cuts off.
In a briefing document prepared for its deputy minister’s June 1 appearance before the public accounts committee, the department said that, as announced in Budget 2025, it “will implement savings of $93.1 million by 2028-29”, with about 120 fewer indeterminate employees across the department.
The same document says the program as a whole approved $35.2 million in 2024-25. The program’s current anti-racism call for applications is open until November 12.
