Former Canadian politician Bob Rae is apologizing for a photo he posted about Toronto Mayor Rob Ford on Tuesday after complaints that the altered photo could be seen as racist.

The former MP for Toronto Centre posted a copy of a photo that surfaced around the time of the crack allegations against the mayor first surfaced in May 2013. The photo ran on Gawker when the media outlet first broke the story that someone had contacted them, trying to sell a video of the mayor smoking crack.

The photo shows Ford standing in front of a suspected drug house with three other men; one of the men, Anthony Smith, was shot dead outside a Toronto nightclub in March 2013 and the other two were rounded up in the Project Traveller raids.

But in the version Rae posted, the men's faces have been replaced with images of raccoons.

When he sent out the photo, Rae wrote: "He's right, they're not afraid of anybody. Rob hanging out with some pretty rocky company. #TOpoli"

Some critics replied to the tweet, saying the raccoon faces evoked a racial slur.

Shortly before noon on Tuesday, Rae deleted the message and photo, and apologized for the tweet.

 

 

He wrote that he'd intended the photo to be satirical, not racist.