Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sir, we can always do a better job under any circumstances. That's not the issue I'm concerned about. Until this policy of multiculturalism was introduced, we were a liberal democracy. We are still trying to be a liberal democracy. We have created a situation...and again the Eur

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm a father of a beautiful young girl, and I hope she will grow up to be a very strong woman like yourself, Madam, and will have a role to play in Canada. I want her to be that. I want her to be a free and brave woman. But I wouldn't like to see what has happened to a woman who

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Very briefly, sir, my answer would be that liberal democracy respects individual rights. Your problem of how the names are pronounced is part of a learning process. Liberal democracy's core value is the defence of individual rights, respect for individual rights. Counter to lib

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would very respectfully say that the problem you raise is particularly the problem that has come about in the last 40 years of bending the rules of liberal democracy, which is very respectful and inclusive of individuals and saying that we're not going to say something about ot

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Honourable member, I can explain to you by analogy, if the time permits. The people who understood the problem of communism were people from within the belly of communism. I can remind you of names like Natan Sharansky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Václav Havel, and others. This was

Citizenship and Immigration committee  So that's the number, and what I'm suggesting is that it is not only such an unprecedented number; it raises the whole problem of absorptive capacity. The absorptive capacity has not only to do with the economic situation, particularly in the time period we've been living through

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, it is as I understand it as a practising Muslim and coming from the background of an Islamic society.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, I didn't say that, and that is not what you asked me. You asked me how I think, and that's what I was ready to answer. That's the question.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The cultural context from which the population is coming is a cultural context that is in many ways antithetical to the values that represent a liberal democracy such as ours or those in western Europe. The overarching issue is that these numbers are challenging our own system, o

Citizenship and Immigration committee  You are speaking to one of them sitting right across from you, sir. I don't know whether you know the other side from where the demand comes, but I know it from the other side. That's why I said in my conclusion that I know what the opposite is and why I so greatly value what is

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, I say it because it is a question of where we have gone in the last 40 years. In 2011 we celebrated the 40th anniversary of the official multiculturalism policy. I've written a book about it. I would invite you to read that book, sir.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Maybe not, but that's what liberal democracy is all about.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  You invite me to share that view. It is not about your imposing one value and my imposing another value. That's to be debated.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would argue that one would have to be an ostrich not to realize what is happening around the world. One would have to be an ostrich not to understand that a demand is coming from the organized Muslim community for its values to be accepted in a liberal democracy, values that ar