Mohamed Boudjenane

Mohamed Boudjenane is a Moroccan-born journalist and social democratic politician in Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada. He served in the Bob Rae NDP government as a staffer to cabinet minister Gilles Pouliot until 1995. He joined the franco-Ontario television station TFO in 1995, and served as a reporter there for ten years. He switched careers again, in 2005 and served as the Executive Director of the Canadian Arab Federation until 2009. Over the years he has been part of many human-rights organizations and boards. Since 2010, he is a civil servant in the Ontario provincial government.
Career
Born in Morocco, Boudjenane came to Canada at the age of 20 to study international economics and communications at Université Laval. During this time, he worked at Quebec City's City Hall, and was a reporter and board director for the local campus radio station, CKRL-FM. In 1989, Boudjenane moved to Ontario to become a political advisor and then executive assistant to the Minister of Transportation and Francophone Affairs, where he spent four years working on a broad set of policy issues for the provincial government.
In 1995, Boudjenane joined the provincial broadcaster TFO as bureau chief for the Ontario Legislative Assembly. For the next ten years he covered Ontario politics for Ontario’s leading Francophone public affairs program, Panorama. He was also a regular panelist discussing provincial political affairs for CBLA's Metro Morning, and he contributed pieces to CBC Radio’s Dispatches, as well as the Moroccan segment of an award-winning documentary on terrorist networks that was co-produced internationally by CBC, the New York Times, and PBS.
Boudjenane's work in the area of anti-racism, civil liberties and human rights has included memberships on the Toronto Chief of Police’s Advisory Council and the executive of the National Antiracism Canadian Coalition. He has made public presentations to the Arar public inquiry, and to federal parliamentary committees examining Bill c36, the anti-terrorism legislation. He continues to be invited by international organizations, such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), to speak on issues related to Islamophobia and hate-crimes.
Boudjenane also served as vice-president of both the l’Association Canadienne Francaise de l’Ontario (ACFO) and the Canadian Media Guild at TV Ontario. He has made presentations to the Heritage Committee on the future of public television.
Candidate for NDP Nomination in Parkdale—High Park
In 2006, Boudjenane sought the Ontario New Democratic Party (NDP) nomination to run in the 14th of September Parkdale—High Park by-election to replace outgoing Ontario Liberal Party Member of Provincial Parliament(MPP) Gerard Kennedy. Kennedy, a former Minister of Education in the Ontario Liberal government headed by Premier Dalton McGuinty, resigned both his cabinet post and his seat in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to seek the Liberal Party of Canada leadership, necessitating the by-election. and many members of the riding's executive. The nomination meeting took place in the middle of a heat wave on the evening of 17 July 2006, in the Parkdale Collegiate Institute auditorium. The sweltering auditorium was filled with over 300 people, most of them delegates. DiNovo defeated Boudjenane and went on to defeated Liberal Sylvia Watson in the 14 September 2006 by-election.
Candidate for NDP in Etobicoke North
On July 9, 2007, Boudjenane was acclaimed as the NDP's provincial candidate in Etobicoke North. He ran against Liberal party MPP Shafiq Qaadri and Mohamed Kassim of the Progressive Conservative party.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
In his role as Executive Director of the Canadian Arab Federation, Boudjenane voiced the organization's concern over Canada's policy changes that began favouring one side over the other in the Israel-Palestine Conflict. He pointed out, in 2007, that the recent pro-Israel stance has cost Canada its credibility as an 'honest-broker' in related peace talks.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu