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Doug Ford is distancing himself from former Progressive Conservative leadership rival and would-be MPP Tanya Granic Allen, under fire for her social media posts comparing women in burkas to “bank robbers” and questioning gay marriage.
“These comments do not reflect the position of Ontario PC Leader Doug Ford or the party,” the leader’s office said Monday in a statement to the Star.
On Twitter and in her blog in recent years, Granic Allen has linked Muslims to ISIS through her use of hashtags and made other comments as an outspoken social conservative active in the fight against the Wynne government’s sex education curriculum and a law banning “conversion therapy” for gay teens.
“We’re always concerned when there are people in the public eye making any sort of Islamophobic innuendo,” Rabia Kheder, executive director of the Muslim Council of Peel, said Monday, dubbing the comments “insulting and disturbing.”