Hoax about mayor refusing pork demands spreads again online

The mayor of Dorval, a suburb of Montreal in Canada, is getting kudos online for refusing Muslim parents who "demanded removal of pork in all school canteens in Montreal and its suburbs."

"Muslims must realize that they must integrate and learn to live in Quebec," reads an excerpt of a supposed note from the mayor in a Facebook post. "They need to change their lifestyle, not Canadians who so generously welcomed them."

The post goes on to claim the mayor said that Muslims who "don’t feel comfortable in Canada" can live in one of the "Muslim countries in the world, most of them poorly populated."

This note has been shared in social media posts and via email since at least January 2015. That year, the city of Dorval denounced it as a hoax. 

This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

The mayor in the Facebook post is never named, but in 2015 the city wrote that he "would like to set the record straight by saying that, on no account, he, nor any of the city’s representatives, have made such comments." 

Still, the falsehoods spread. In 2017, BuzzFeed News reported on "this hoax about a Canadian mayor’s insulting response to Muslim parents" that keeps coming back. 

Featured Fact-check

X posts

stated on September 24, 2024 in a post

Image of people boarding up a window shows Michigan election officials are “preparing to steal this election”

Similar fake claims have been shared about other mayors in other countries. In 2020, it was the mayor of a suburb in Perth, Australia, who allegedly refused the demands of Muslim parents to remove pork from school canteens. In 2014, it was the mayor of Ath, Belgium. 

But this didn’t happen there, and it didn’t happen in Dorval. 

We rate this post False.