Montreal actress Adina Katz has been facing some bizarre and undeserved backlash this week after being misidentified as a woman in Andrew Scheer campaign video. The person who resembled her in the video was also named Adina and was a cancer survivor who said she would be voting Conservative. The outrage started when people started accusing Scheer of hiring actors in his campaign who were posing as real people, and Adina Katz has seen the brunt of these accusations. Here's the video everyone's talking about: My healthcare guarantee is for youWe were set up to film a video in Toronto when I met Adina on the street. She’s a cancer survivor and I had a chance to tell her about the health care guarantee I signed earlier today. To patients like her, my mother after her kidney transplant, and every Canadian who relies on our healthcare system - this guarantee is for you.Posted by Andrew Scheer on Friday, August 2, 2019 Since the accusations, Katz has been working tirelessly to clear her name of any slander from people who got the story all wrong. Here is something she recently retweeted: Clearly not the same person; Retract and apologize. pic.twitter.com/H6mXMI3XjM— ❌ThinGrayLine 🐻 (@ThinGrayLine01) August 5, 2019 Did you know? Apparently I'm the only "Adina" in Canada! People saw someone named Adina who they speculate is an actor in a political campaign, then, I am accused of acting in this video and pretending to be a cancer survivor. What is wrong with you people? #NOTME— Adina Katz (@KatzAdina) August 5, 2019 The video surfaced on Aug. 2 and since then, Katz has been bombarded with rude and misinformed accusations. The Alberta Renaissance Twitter account accused her of posing as a cancer survivor a couple of days after the video surfaced. Other on twitter followed suit, and the fiasco got out of control. The accusatory tweet has since been deleted and replaced with the following: My statement regarding the tweets involving Adina Katz. pic.twitter.com/aPVIQwJT4m— Alberta Resistance (@ResistanceAB) August 5, 2019 Adina told The Montreal Gazette, “I know I’m sensitive, but it really touched a nerve when people accused me of pretending to be a cancer survivor. My father died of cancer, two of my uncles died of cancer and my friends have died of cancer.”In the same interview, Adina says, “I had nothing to do with that video, and people were so quick to be cruel,” she said. “If I just had a little less self-esteem, I can see how I could have been depressed or suicidal.” This goes to show how fast inaccurate information can circulate in the internet age, and how quick people are to believe anything they read. 1. I’m sorry for retweeting something that had inaccurate information in it. I have deleted the tweet so it is not spread further2. Why in the world does my wife owes you anything for something I tweeted, Brock? I am my own person. I expect crap like that from trolls, not you. https://t.co/slgg4D93Qp— Rob Silver (@RobSilver) August 5, 2019 Dear Ms Katz, as one who retweeted those that speculated you might be the woman in Scheer’s ad due to resemblance, I apologize to you without reservation.— Hon. Marlene Jennings (@marlenejennings) August 5, 2019 Katz has since been going on radio shows and her story has been published by multiple news media outlets. Luckily, it didn't take too long for the issue to be cleared up, but that doesn't take away from the damage done. Katz has been subjected to cruel and demeaning language from strangers across the internet that will no doubt stick with her after this has passed. “Harmful words do hurt. And to see them on the screen, one after the other, can do a lot of damage,” she said to CP24.
