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The Quebec government provided a $100,000 subsidy to the conference from a Municipal Affairs fund aimed at promoting Montreal. A department spokeswoman said Monday that the grant was awarded before the program was drawn up.

“The detailed programming of activities was not in the request for financial assistance or in the organization’s charter,” Alexandra Paré said. “It should be mentioned that the government was not involved in creating the programming, which includes some 1,000 activities.”

CIJA is calling on the Quebec government, which is listed as a partner of the Forum, to dissociate itself from the event. An annual event, it began in 2001 as a left-wing alternative to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It started in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and has typically been held in developing countries.

“This is the first time it’s being held in North America, in a pluralistic and liberal democracy,” said Eta Yudin, deputy director of public affairs for CIJA Quebec. “It’s an opportunity for them to pick it up a notch and make it a forum for legitimate expression of views on serious global concerns. To see the emphasis placed and the space given to those who seek to delegitimize the state of Israel and promote anti-Semitism is our biggest concern.”

Carminda Mac Lorin, co-coordinator of the Forum, said the organization “provides a stage for civil society” to hold events, but the content is determined by individual groups. “We are still in the process of reviewing programming,” she said. “If there are questionable activities, we will remove them from the programming.”

For an event to be removed it has to violate the Forum’s principles, which prohibit proselytism, violence and political partisanship. Seyyed Ali Mousavi, organizer of the workshop that featured the offensive cartoon, was livid that his event was judged to contravene Forum principles.

“World Social Forum is occupied by Israeli tanks and petrodollars Saudi Arabia,” he wrote on the Forum website.

• Email: ghamilton@nationalpost.com | Twitter: grayhamilton