An MP has lodged a formal complaint against the CBC for what he considers “shockingly offensive remarks” made in an opinion article featured on their website.

Garnett Genuis, the Conservative MP for Sherwood Park – Fort Saskatchewan, submitted a letter to CBC ombudsman Esther Enkin to raise concerns about an opinion piece by journalist Neil Macdonald headlined “Simple truth is Canada’s mass shooters are usually white and Canadian-born.”

Genuis takes issue with several of the assertions in Macdonald’s column, including a line that the alleged shooter in the Quebec City mosque attack was “Probably a Christian, judging from his name.”

“This is an entirely false and deeply offensive statement that, were it to mention any other religious community, would be recognized immediately as plain bigotry,” the complaint reads in reference to a tweet by CBC’s The National regarding the column.

Genuis highlights the personal history of several mass shooters in Canada and states that out of the nine killers actually listed by Macdonald, “only two, it seems, even grew up in families that even attended church, and none of the nine appear to have been self-identifying or practising Christians.”

The CBC’s journalistic practices clearly state that “CBC journalists do not express their own personal opinion because it affects the perception of impartiality and could affect an open and honest exploration of an issue.”

Macdonald is a long-standing CBC journalist. For more than a decade, he was the state broadcaster’s Washington correspondent and now holds the title “opinion columnist.”

In the eight most recent complaint reviews posted on the ombudsman’s website, Enkin sides with the CBC in every case.

afurey@postmedia.com