Jewish rights organization B’nai Brith has concluded that Pointe-Claire Mayor Tim Thomas didn’t have antisemitic intentions when he uttered a racial stereotype during caucus last week.
B’nai Brith officials say they started an investigation into the matter when they read about the incident in the newspapers.
“We went through Tim Thomas’s social media, we looked him up, we could find absolutely no incidents of antisemitism,” said Marvin Rotrand, B’nai Brith’s League of Human Rights national director. “We are not adding it to our audit of 2022 as an antisemitic incident.”
Rotrand says he also called Thomas and is satisfied with their conversation.
“The context had nothing to do with the Jewish community and we did not see this as an antisemitic incident,” Rotrand added.
Last week, Thomas was accused of uttering an antisemitic expression when discussing a private citizen matter.
Coun. Tara Stainforth says she called him out on it.
She says that when her request for an apology was not met, she walked away from caucus.
The councillor then filed an ethics complaint with the Union of Quebec Municipalities.
“For me, it was never about being antisemitic, it was about a phrase that is an antisemitic slur that basically perpetuates the stereotype that Jewish people are greedy and would do anything for money,” Stainforth said. “And then it was of course everything that followed that, the refusal to apologize, to acknowledge it, to listen to a definition of it.”
While Thomas didn’t apologize immediately, he told Global News he later realized that what he said was wrong and called all councillors to apologize.
Since then, Hampstead Mayor Jeremy Levi has also come out in Thomas’s defence in a Facebook post questioning Stainforth’s motivations.
Levi cautions people against calling something antisemitism too spontaneously.
“The problem with calling out something antisemitism that is not antisemitism is that it cheapens the word and it loses its meaning; and over time, people won’t recognize what is antisemitism,” Levi said.
Both Levi and B’nai Brith advise people who are wondering whether an incident is antisemitic to reach out to a third party before launching any accusations.
Meanwhile, Stainforth says she still wants to receive a written apology from the mayor but acknowledges they need to move on, adding she hasn’t decided whether or not she will return to council.
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