(Ottawa) Foreign Minister Melanie Jolie has summoned the Russian ambassador to Canada (again), this time after tweets were posted hostile to the LGBTQ+ community.
Oleg V., head of the delegation from Moscow to Ottawa. Stepanov was confirmed by the minister’s communications director, Meva Proto. The information was released on Monday morning National Post.
Anti-LBGTQ+ messages have been circulating on the embassy’s Twitter account since last Thursday, after Russian lawmakers passed amendments to significantly expand the scope of the law banning LGBTQ+ “propaganda.”
The first flood of tweets showed a rainbow flag with a prohibition sign, capped with the following message: “Family is a man, a woman and children”.
He drew several reactions from the LGBTQ+ community, including Liberal ministers Randy Boissonnault and Pascale St-Onge.
“Russian homophobic propaganda is not welcome here. “The treatment of LGBTQ2+ people in Russia is shameful and an attack on basic human rights,” said Mr.me St-Onge in response to this tweet.
“When this tweet was posted, I was attending an LGBTQ2I+ event where activists and leaders shared their experiences in defending the fundamental right to equality. “In Canada, you’re free to be yourself and love whoever you want,” Mr. Boissonault decried.
Rather than back down, the embassy instead added a layer, first accusing “Canada and other states of conforming to a neoliberal agenda, distorting reality by deliberately obfuscating notions of individual sexual preferences and human rights.”
On the same day, we wanted to tease Minister St-Onge, posting a photo of the last Tsar Nicholas II of Russia surrounded by his family above his response: “Madam, with due respect to your opinion, could you please think? Explain how you came into this world?”.
The embassy then broke into a string of tweets, one of which echoed former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s famous quote that the state has no place in the nation’s bedrooms.
The next day, Saturday, it was his colleague Boissonnault’s turn to taste it. This time the embassy drew on its religious roots by unveiling an icon of the Mother of Kazan in hopes of making its point.
“In Russia you are free to be yourself and protect your children while they are still minors from the imposition and branding of the occupation propaganda,” it wrote in response to the Alberta minister’s objections.
Since the war in Ukraine began nine months ago, the Russian ambassador has been summoned at least three times for various reasons. The Conservative Party, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the Ukrainian Ambassador to Canada called for the expulsion of Ambassador Stephanov.
The Kremlin office in the central capital did not comment on the government’s summons at the time of publication of these lines on Monday.
With Agence France-Presse
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