Here's the—
Evidence of meeting #72 for Canadian Heritage in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was right.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #72 for Canadian Heritage in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was right.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4 p.m.
Conservative
4 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Mr. Fatah, you have to allow Mr. Anderson to finish his question, please. Thank you.
4 p.m.
Founder, Muslim Canadian Congress
You address issues of bigotry against Muslims or Jews or Hindus or the aboriginal. You embrace the ideas of W.E.B. Du Bois in fighting racism. You cannot apply that to ideas and say that because there is bigotry toward Muslims, and I have witnessed that, and even now bar anyone from discussing the ideology that created hatred toward it.
Would you blame anyone in Montreal today who is following the terror trial that is going on there? Any ordinary citizen, non-political person, is asking questions of me or coming over and asking what's gone wrong with you guys. I'm a Muslim, I know that. I've studied more and written about this. It is the apolitical ideology of Islamism that has to be addressed. Not a single Iman today has been asked to denounce the doctrine of armed jihad. All you ask of him is to denounce terrorism. Of course he will. You ask him, “Do you denounce the action of armed jihad which has been going on for a thousand years, which emptied Egypt of every Fatimite and dispersed them to Yemen, India, and central Asia?” We're talking about the Ismailis in the Dawoodi Bohras. We don't know about it.
They're killing Syrians. Why? Because Saudi Arabia says they're non-Muslims. Where is this ideology coming from? ISNA, ICNA, MSA, all identified by all our security agencies as fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood. Hatred toward Shias, hatred toward Ahmadiyyas, hatred toward black people, so Islamophobia is not to be tolerated. If it was Muslimophobia, then I would say, halleluja, let's get along.
What Irwin Cotler said of anti-Muslim bigotry, that is the question we should be debating.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
I need to stop you so Mr. Reid can have his time.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Thank you.
I'd like to pursue the direction you were taking. The issue we saw in the Quebec City shootings, the murders this January was, whatever the ideological manifestation may have been—we still don't know all the details of what was going on in the mind of the murderer—it manifested itself as anti-Muslim hatred.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Anti-Muslim activity is a legitimate thing to go after.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Part of the point I think you're trying to make is that if we avoid the word “Islamophobia” and emphasize the need to attack or prevent anti-Muslim bigotry and hatred and actions based on it then that would be a good public policy.
4:05 p.m.
Founder, Muslim Canadian Congress
That would be practical policy strictly in how Irwin Cotler labelled it. How to address it? Parliament is being manipulated by some very smart people.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
While I do not accept that most Canadians are bigoted in this respect or any other—I just don't think that's the nature of our people—there is clearly some, we don't know how much, anti-Muslim activity that may spring up spontaneously; it may be organized. To focus on trying to crack down on that kind of activity is a legitimate act. Do you agree?
4:05 p.m.
Founder, Muslim Canadian Congress
I'll give you just one reason why Canada has the lowest—
4:05 p.m.
Founder, Muslim Canadian Congress
—hatred against Muslims compared to the United Kingdom and the United States: Canada is the only country where Muslims took up the fight against sharia law in 2005. We said we would oppose it. We fulfilled the appetite of people saying Muslims are good people and they stand up for Canadian values.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you, Mr. Fatah.
We now go to Ms. Kwan from the NDP for seven minutes.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
I thank our witnesses for their presentations.
Mr. Juneau-Katsuya, you said something on the issue that I think is really critical and that is the issue around how people are playing on our insecurity and fears. One of the issues that is happening right now I worry about: this motion in itself. There are people out there who are playing on this insecurity and fear, and they're fanning more fear and hate with this motion. That of course is not the premise of why we're here. We need to get a handle on that.
You also mentioned another important issue, that there is a vacuum of leadership in trying to counter the alt-right and fake news. I'd like to seek your advice for this committee on what specific actions you think we need to take as parliamentarians, as leaders in our own community, to address this very dangerous situation you identified that is very much emerging and being normalized, especially with people across the United States and with the U.S. President himself.
4:05 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, The Northgate Group Corp.
I think Canada is an excellent example of multiculturalism and the ability of different cultures, different religions, different people to come together and live together. We probably have every ethnic group under the sun right here in Canada, represented one way or the other.
The challenge we're currently facing is the lack of motivation for someone to speak out when it's time to speak out. It took the event in Quebec City on January 29 to get the Prime Minister of Canada, the Premier of Quebec, and the Mayor of Quebec City to finally come out and say that we have to be careful what we say. I use the example of Quebec because we had a very dramatic event that took place there. The lives of six families over there have been changed for the rest of their lives. This area is partly targeted by what we call trash radio. There is a lot of trash-talk taking place by people who feel empowered on air to say whatever they want. This has been going on since the mid-1990s.
We have institutions in Canada like the CRTC that issue licences for those radio stations. There have been a multitude of complaints and many times the radio hosts and stations have been seen as guilty, if I may use that word, of bigotry, racism, Islamophobia, sexism, and even encouraging violence against certain groups. Why are we waiting to take the licences away from these guys? It's one action that could be done. Coming back to the responsibilities that political leaders and individual Canadians have, we have to speak out when somebody around the dinner table says something inappropriate. We have to tell them that they ought to rethink what they said, that if they really believe this, they have a problem and we need to talk about it. The lack of debate and discussion gives an opportunity for the right wing to fill up a discourse that wasn't there before. We have to explain better why we should receive refugees. We do need to receive the refugees, and this brings us back to a bigger problem: how come the situation in the Middle East got so bad that we are now forced to take these refugees?
When I was with CSIS in the early 1990s, I tried to warn people about exactly what we are living through today, and unfortunately that report was shelved. There is a lack of action and a lack of political backbone. We need to make decisions that are sometimes difficult, but we definitely need to state what Canadian values are about. To come back to what I was just saying, I believe we have the necessary laws and regulations in place. We just need to enforce them when people are going too far in their discourses.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
We mentioned there was a report. I'm a new MP around this table, and I wonder whether you can share that report with the committee through the chair. It would be good to see what ideas you had back then and to see its classification.
4:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, The Northgate Group Corp.
It's classified and it's still with CSIS. I don't have access to it. They probably threw it out by now.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
I see. I didn't realize it was a classified document.
Let's talk about action. You also mentioned that the Quebec municipal government in Montreal has the only deradicalization school in the country. The government talks about coming forward with a program on deradicalization. Can you give me the top three recommendations you think the government should act on?