That's right. I'm actually moving on to propose a counter way of looking at this. I mentioned the importance that Canadians assign to this issue. I mentioned as well the scope of motion M-103, which is very considerable. It's not merely about Islamophobia—not that it could be dealt with quickly—but is also about all forms of systemic racism.
The motion makes a point of distinguishing between that and religious discrimination, so we are talking about two distinct phenomena, although you could argue that they are two phenomena that overlap very considerably, like Venn diagrams. The point is they are two things, both of them vast in scope, given the large number both of different races, forms of racial discrimination, and of religious discrimination that exist both in Canada and internationally.
Then it asks us to take note of House of Commons petition e-411. We have to find out exactly how we ought to do that and what these words mean. Does it mean that the terms of e-411 are equal in merit to this? Petition e-411 contains some subject matter not contained in M-103, which of course is the reason for citing it.
Finally, we are then asked to undertake a study of how the government should:
develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia, in Canada, while ensuring a community-centered focus with a holistic response through evidence-based policy-making....
Now, evidence-based policy-making involves collecting evidence. How one does this in 10 meetings, of which some at least are being devoted to actually writing a report, revising the report, and so on, is quite frankly beyond me.
Then we're supposed to advise how the government could:
collect data to contextualize hate crime reports and to conduct needs assessments for impacted communities....
I think this one would take less time, because this was one of the subjects addressed in the report of the inquiry panel of the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism, the nearest parallel we have to these hearings on Islamophobia and systemic racism, and something on which, Madam Chair, you served as a member some years back and which I chaired.
There we discussed ways in which data collection could be improved. This, then, would not, I think, take too much time. It would still take an entire meeting, if we were to be successful in lining up the people who conduct this sort of data collection—police forces, StatsCan, and so on.