Toronto's summer "Fun Guide" cover uses a stock photo of a happy family, see top image. However, the bottom image shows they replaced one smiling family member with an African Canadian in the effort to fulfill a recent mandated policy to represent Toronto's "diversity."

Canada’s National Post reports that the city of Toronto’s summer “Fun Guide” cover was doctored to create an “ethnically diverse family.” The image on top shows “the family” before the digital alterations, below which is the instantly more inclusive family after the photo surgery.

The Post reports that John Gosgnach, a spokesperson for the agency that published the booklet, said an “African-Canadian” person’s head “was superimposed over the original family photo.” They state, “The cover shot caught the eye of a National Post graphics editor, who ran it through a program called TinEye that detects visual enhancements” in photographs. (TinEye is the same software that a photo debunker used to find an original photo taken in the Amazon region that a hoaxer employed for a fake giant snake image).

Turns out the city has a new policy that requires representation of Toronto’s diverse culture. So they decided to take a stock photo of a happy family and make the father a different race. The problem was nowhere was the fakery disclosed as an “illustration.”‘

“The policy doesn’t say [use] PhotoShop,” Kevin Sack, Toronto’s director of strategic communications, told The Post, “The policy says ‘show diversity’.” So they did–by Photoshopping stock images.

Not seeing any problem with faking diversity, Mr. Sack said, “When you’re publishing something with deadlines and you don’t have the right photo, the objective is to communicate the service.”