As a former employee of Canadian Heritage, Manjot Bains said she worked with community organizations applying for anti-racism and multiculturalism program funding. (Photo: Manjot Bains)

A former federal employee who worked on anti-racism programs says she was reprimanded for speaking to HuffPost Canada about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s blackface incidents, and forbidden from talking about racism publicly.

Manjot Bains, 39, was quoted as an individual citizen in the September story and was not identified as a federal employee. Yet, she said blowback at work led to her quitting as a senior program adviser in the Community Support, Multiculturalism and Anti-Racism Initiatives program of the Department of Canadian Heritage, in Vancouver.

“The prime minister is the one who performed blackface, not me. But somehow I faced repercussions for his actions,” Bains told HuffPost in an exclusive interview.

A spokesperson for Canadian Heritage referred HuffPost’s questions about Bains’ situation to the Public Service Commission and the Treasury Board. A spokesperson for the Public Service Commission said that because Bains’ critique was about the head of government, the Treasury Board would have to respond. Staff at the Treasury Board did not provide comment by deadline.

When Bains was hired in May, she was cleared of any conflict of interest related to her activities outside of work. Bains is the editor of the Jugni Style website which covers South Asian art and culture, and also a co-producer of a podcast that shares stories of South Asian history in Vancouver and discusses race and identity.

Since she received a green light to continue her activities on the website and podcast, Bains said she didn’t seek permission from her employer to do an interview with HuffPost about different generational reactions to Trudeau’s use of racist makeup.

Bains flagged the story to her manager in an email the day it was published.

The story said that Bains was shocked when she saw photos of the prime minister in brownface and blackface. “It didn’t connect with who I thought Trudeau is,” she told HuffPost at the time. “For anyone to even do that, whether it’s 2001, 1990 or right now, that doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Bains said her manager told her she had made a serious mistake by speaking to media and could no longer be trusted.

“I feel like by telling them I did the interview, it just snowballed into something really big,” she said. “They escalated it so much when they didn’t have to.”

Bains was called to a meeting on Oct. 1, with her manager and another senior leader.

“I explained to [my manager] why I did the interview, because I think it’s an important issue and it was upsetting to see and read what the prime minister did,” Bains said.

“I felt like I was in an impossible situation where I was hired to do this job that I really cared about, but I also had these outside projects I was working on which they knew about.”

Bains took detailed notes later that day on what was said during the meeting, which have been reviewed by HuffPost.

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Bains said her superiors told her that public servants are not allowed to criticize Trudeau, that she would have to re-do her ethics training and complete a “loyalty training.” If she wanted to keep her job, they said, she would have to give up her outside projects, according to Bains.

“I asked my manager, ’Does this mean I need to choose between working for Canadian Heritage or working on my website and podcast? And she said, ‘Yes. You can’t be an activist and work for the government. You have to choose. We’ve all made these choices.’”

At a second meeting on Oct. 11, Bains said her manager told her that she could not speak publicly about race or racism — while working in anti-racism at Canadian Heritage — “because it could be perceived that I was not neutral and that I had bias.”

She was also allegedly told she couldn’t write about arts and culture because it’s related to Heritage department work.

“None of it made any sense and I was getting angry.”

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