The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council is investigating after a Quebec mayor called Israel an apartheid regime and a country that doesn’t deserve to exist on his French-language talk show.

Stéphane Gendron, host of Face à Face on V Television Network and mayor of Huntingdon, a small town 75 kilometres southwest of Montreal, made the comments on his show last month. He also said he supports a boycott of a store in Montreal that sells Israeli-made shoes.

Gendron declined to comment when contacted by the CBC, directing all questions to the network.

V Network spokeswoman Diane Patenaude said the point of Gendron's show is to provide strong opinions: "This program is neither a news telecast or a news magazine and its hosts are not journalists."

The network will meet with Gendron and the show in the next few days to discuss the situation, she said.

The CBSC has already received six complaints from Jewish rights groups over Gendron’s comments.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2012/01/06/quebec-mayor-israel-face-a-face.html