Canadian Heritage Committee on Sept. 25th, 2017

[Avvy Yao-Yao Go]

Can I answer this question?

According to the Supreme Court of Canada, you can challenge a jury for cause based on their racial bias. That's already a decision that is made by the Supreme Court and also confirmed by the Ontario court.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Are you allowed to ask enough questions to determine that?

[Avvy Yao-Yao Go]

You are allowed to ask.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

This has changed since I was up for jury duty about 15 years ago.

[Avvy Yao-Yao Go]

Yes, I guess it's up to the defence counsel to say they want to raise this question as a challenge for cause. I can see that a defence counsel should be able to raise the question. If the accused who stands trial is a Muslim man, they may want to ask about the potential jurors' view about Islam and that sort of thing. I hope to see someone try that.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Thank you. That was very helpful.

You used a term, Professor Chaudhry, twice in your remarks. I know it has a meaning, but I'm not sure what that meaning is. You used the term “hyperbolic fear”. I'm not sure if you mean verbalized fear, if you mean fear that is expressed in a way that foments hate. I'm not sure what you mean, so I want to ask you to give a definition of that.

[Ayesha Chaudhry]

I was thinking of hyperbolic fear as along the lines of irrational, exaggerated fear of Muslims and Islam, the idea, for example, that if you think that Islam promotes violence, then you think Muslims are inherently violent people. That's hyperbolic and irrational and exaggerated, because Muslims across the board are not like that.

That's what I meant.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

You're using a term that is not a term within the profession. That's helpful to me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 20 seconds.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

All I have time to do is say thank you very much for your presentations, both of you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Arif Virani, for the Liberals, for three minutes.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you both for your candour and your presentations. They are both very illuminating.

I want to touch on something that relates a bit to what, Professor Chaudhry, you were referencing in your exchange with Mr. Vandal. It's about the proliferation of certain sentiments, particularly of Islamophobic sentiments. Can you talk about the role of the media, including social media, in that regard?

That's open to both of you. Can you also talk about the importance of political leaders calling out these situations as we observe them?

[Ayesha Chaudhry]

The media plays an important role, of course, in perpetuating and sustaining ideas about Muslims as violent, but I want to think about the media in a more robust way, because the media is made of human beings who are in our society and they feed particular appetites. Without taking them off the hook or not holding them accountable, I want to say that when we're thinking about education, for example, education should happen more broadly and it should include, for example, media training sessions, so reporters can understand when they are participating in conversations that include entrenched ideas about Islam as inherently violent.

Also, something that lately has been happening is that people in the media will make a false equivalency between two situations, one that is really harmful and one that is not. I think that when people make statements that are Islamophobic and that are publicized in the media, it is the responsibility of political leaders to really lead the nation and to call out Islamophobia or systemic racism when they see it and when they hear it.

The thing about social media that's interesting—a lot of studies have been coming out—is that people online sort of live in a social media bubble. They don't actually encounter...they end up encountering news that they already agree with, and they don't actually seek out and encounter, necessarily, news that they do not agree with. Hence the focus on systemic. When dealing with systemic problems, the response has to also be systemic.

I see people will often blame the media for the problem, and I think the media is responsible, but I think the media is also often a mirror of us and is reflecting the things we as a society are believing. I do think that political leaders have an important role to play in leading the nation toward a kind of plurality that respects the human dignity of everyone, where people are not forced to, first and foremost, prove their humanity somehow in order to be treated decently.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much. We have Ms. Blaney for three minutes, please.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Again, thank you so much for this.

One of the things I would like to hear a little bit more about is what role community leaders and community organizations can play to increase inclusion and diversity across Canada. How do we, as a committee, push that sort of agenda forward?

[Avvy Yao-Yao Go]

I have two suggestions. One is, as you mentioned earlier, that in the old days, maybe during Dr. Fry's time—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I like the old days, though.

[Avvy Yao-Yao Go]

—we used to be able to get multiculturalism funding to do community capacity building. One of the first ones that Colour of Poverty-Colour of Change got was from Canadian Heritage's multiculturalism program to do community consultation, to do impact studies looking at racism as it affects different communities. More funding of that nature should be given out.

Two, certainly I would hope that at the end of the day you would adopt our recommendation to develop an anti-racism strategy. It needs input from communities. You need to speak to the community groups impacted by it. You need to speak to the advocates, the experts, academic experts, people who have been working on the ground for many years. They will bring you the bread and butter of how different policies affect the communities. Their voices will be very important in the development of that policy.

[Ayesha Chaudhry]

One of the things that would be really useful is for communities to have a sense of security. If communities feel safe, they can have different conversations, complicated conversations about the identity that the community is converging around, whether it's religious, whether it's racial, or whether it's professional. Right now, for Muslims, it is really difficult to have difficult conversations within the community when people feel that they're under siege, under attack, and that they're unprotected from those attacks. Having policies, having an action plan that makes communities feel that they're important, that we value them, and that we are here to protect them will cultivate those kinds of conversations internally.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Yes. We can never underestimate how systemic discrimination has an impact on economic outcomes. I know in Halifax, and it was piloted also in B.C., with the connector program, businesses were working with people to open doors. Often the challenge was that people would look at resumés and see a name they didn't understand, and then those doors would close.

There is a lot of activism on the ground. How do we promote that, and how do we engage communities in knowing there are activities that they can do? A lot of mosques opened their doors after the tragic events, so that is something that opens those opportunities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I don't think we have any more time left. We've gone over time.

Again I want to thank Ayesha and Avvy. You were excellent witnesses.

We're going into the next hour. We will have one minute of transition time for people to leave and other people to come in for the second hour.

Ms. Konanur and Mr. Richard, good afternoon and welcome. Thank you for being here.

Mr. Richard represents the Canadian Association of Black Lawyers. Ms. Konanur represents the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario. You have a maximum of 10 minutes each for your presentation, and then we'll go to a question and answer session.

I shall begin with Mr. Richard, for 10 minutes, please.

[Shawn Richard, President, Canadian Association of Black Lawyers]

Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members for the invitation to present to you on behalf of the Canadian Association of Black Lawyers, CABL for short.

CABL was formed in March 1996 as a national network of law professionals with an overall mandate to promote the advancement of black lawyers within the profession by providing support systems, promoting academic and professional excellence, and advancing issues of equity and diversity among the bar and judiciary.

Our members—black, white, brown, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, agnostic, and so on—are all bound by a profound concern about issues affecting the black community, including the issues before this committee.

The motion identifies two broad, pressing issues that are top of mind to our members, and in our view, they should be top of mind to the federal and provincial governments, and to anyone who takes the rights of all Canadians seriously. The first issue is racism. The second is religious discrimination.

Condemnation of acts of hate, including the murders at the Islamic cultural centre of Quebec City on January 29, 2017, should be swift and unequivocal. Racism, religious discrimination, or both justify hate speech, assault, and murder in the minds of people like Alexandre Bissonnette, James Fields, and Dylann Roof.

These overt expressions of hate and fear grab headlines. They make fair-minded Canadians shift in their seats, because they are dramatic, visceral reminders of the persistence of racism and racial discrimination in Canada. They are difficult to deny or minimize, though some try. However, for most Canadians, whom I believe to be fair-minded and generally well-intentioned, it is easy to draw a line between themselves and people like Mr. Bissonnette, Mr. Roof, and Mr. Fields. Racism becomes something clearly visible and easily identifiable. It is defined as an act or acts committed by particular individuals chanting horrid things and carrying backyard accessories, while marching on university campuses, driving into human beings, or shooting human beings in prayer.

With the time allotted to me, I would like to focus on a different form of racism, one that we call “institutional” or “systemic”. It is the form of racism that can be the difference between receiving a warning from an officer and ending up in the back of a cruiser. It's the difference between an opportunity to learn from a mistake on the job and having a mistake cost you your job. It's the difference between receiving the benefit of the doubt and consistently being the subject of doubt.

Systemic racism has been defined as the social production of racial inequality in decisions about people and in the treatment they receive. Racial inequality is neither natural nor inherent in humanity. On the contrary, it is the result of a society's arrangement of economic, cultural, and political life. It is produced by the combination of social constructions of races as real, different, and unequal, known as racialization; the norms, processes, and service delivery of a social system, known as structure; and the actions and decisions of people who work for social systems, known as personnel. If you are wondering, I didn't come up with this definition. It's from page 39 of the "Report of the Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System.”

In October 1992, the Ontario government appointed the commission to inquire and make recommendations about the extent to which criminal justice practices, procedures, and policies in Ontario reflect systemic racism. Based on statistical evidence, the commission came to several conclusions, including that black people are vastly overrepresented in prisons. It identified two primary explanations for this overrepresentation, which were social and economic inequalities, and differential enforcement of criminal law. Differential enforcement revealed itself at several stages of the criminal process, including in the decision to imprison an accused before trial, or what we call remand.

On this issue, the commission found that black accused are more likely than white accused to be imprisoned before trial. Little of the difference of the use of imprisonment for black and white accused is explained by factors said to be relevant to imprisonment decisions. Imprisonment decisions are significantly influenced by the race of the accused, or, in the frank words of the commission:

However closely we scrutinize the data, the findings disclose distinct and legally unjustifiable differences in detention decisions for black and white accused, across the sample as a whole and for some specific offences. The conclusion is inescapable: some black men imprisoned before trial would not have been jailed if they had been white, and some white men freed before their trials would have been detained had they been black.

In my view, the gravamen of the commission's report is that whenever broad discretion exists, racialization can influence the decision of typically fair, well-intentioned people and produce racial inequalities and outcomes.

What is particularly interesting is the contrast between the views of some of the stakeholders in the criminal justice system who were surveyed as part of the study and the commission's evidence-based conclusions. I would like to briefly identify a couple of them because it's important to put this into context. Some expressed that people who complain about systemic racism “do not understand the justice system”, that the idea of “there being widespread racism in the administration of justice is patently false. These ideas result from an ill-informed, politically correct minority who, I believe, have no experience in the criminal justice system.” “Whining about supposed discrimination is a waste of time. The suggestion of discrimination is unfounded.” Some say they are make “excuses”. “The accusation of 'racism' is often used as the last refuge of the scoundrel.” Those are crown attorneys.

I'm not aware of any reliable evidence that the conclusions reached in the commission's report have changed. In fact, in 2007, Dr. Scot Wortley, a criminologist at the University of Toronto, replicated part of the commission's work, a survey of Torontonians about police bias. Dr. Wortley found that the perception of bias in the police and courts appears to have increased between 1994 and 2007 for all racial groups, including whites.

I will now turn to carding. We have also seen the effects of systemic racism in what are described as street checks, known popularly as carding. This is the stopping, questioning, and documenting of people on the street who are not suspected of having committed a crime. Black people are far more likely to be carded than white people in “areas where we do not belong”, in ratios ranging from 3:1 to 17:1. This was the finding of the The Toronto Star, which analyzed 1.7 million contact cards filled out by Toronto police officers between 2003 and 2008. The legitimacy of carding cannot reasonably be evaluated outside of its concrete application. Although we appreciate recent efforts by the Ontario government, in CABL's view, carding is a practice that should be eliminated.

In summary, systemic racism is a real problem. It has been an issue for some time. Important work has already been done, but what, if any, progress has been made is at this point unclear.

We would humbly recommend that the committee survey the work of others on these issues. Don't reinvent the wheel. Important, valuable work has already been done. I point you to chapter 12 of this report. There are four key needs that are identified: one, anti-racism training of personnel; two, employment of racialized persons; three, increased participation of racialized persons in developing policies; and four, monitoring of practices for evidence of racial inequality.

Madam Chair, on behalf of CABL, thank you for this opportunity. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Mr. Richard.

I now go to Ms. Konanur.

[Shalini Konanur, Executive Director and Lawyer, South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO)]

I'd like to thank the standing committee, and you, Madam Chair, for this opportunity to present on such a critical issue.

Pursuant to motion M-103, we understand that this standing committee is studying a whole-of-government approach to reducing and eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination, including Islamophobia, in Canada. We also understand that the study will look at issues of disaggregated data collection and hate crimes reporting. I will be making my comments and recommendations specifically related to those goals.

The South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario is a not-for-profit legal clinic serving low-income South Asians in Ontario from a wide variety of home countries, as well as North America.

South Asians make up one of the largest racialized communities in Canada. Statistics, unfortunately, also show that many South Asian communities continue to fall below the poverty line at disproportionate rates for a number of reasons that include racism and other forms of discrimination.

SALCO's mandate includes the provision of direct legal services in areas of law including human rights, immigration, income maintenance, employment law, tenants law, family and intimate partner violence, and forced marriage. Our mandate also includes a large-scale advocacy on issues of racism, religious discrimination and gender discrimination.

Our own advocacy always starts from the premise that people have intersecting identities and that to improve their lives our decisions must recognize that intersectionality and how it impacts a person's agency or ability to make choices. For example, we know from evidence that racialized women face a larger gender wage gap than white women.

I would like to start by saying that any approach this committee takes to the study of racism and religious discrimination must have an intersectional framework to ensure the best possible outcomes for marginalized communities.

In direct legal service our clinic serves approximately 4,000 to 5,000 clients per year through legal advice, brief service, and casework. The information that I will be providing today is truly grounded in the work that we do within our communities and what we see and hear directly from our clients, as well as our own analysis of the systemic impact of the policies, laws, and regulations that impact them.

SALCO is also a founding member and steering committee member of the Colour of Poverty-Colour of Change campaign. As mentioned in our previous session, the Colour of Poverty campaign has focused on issues of racial equity and racial justice and concerns around the racialization of poverty.

Over the years we have seen many instances of racism and discrimination against the South Asian community in Canada both at the individual and systemic level. Systemically our own work has challenged immigration policy that targets South Asian communities like the conditional permanent residence. We have challenged issues of freedom of religion, in particular, the ability to wear the niqab in areas like a courtroom. We have challenged religious discrimination and accommodation in education, and we have looked at the issue of racial and religious discrimination in employment, including a call for employment equity.

We have also worked hard to discuss repealing legislation that we believe targets our communities, like the so-called Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act.

We have seen a rise in overt and direct racism in the form of violent acts against members of the Muslim community, and by extension, the South Asian community. The point must be made that we do not see a distinction there, and that many members of our community who do not identify as Muslim also bear the brunt of Islamophobia. In our own work we have seen a rise in targeted racism against all of those communities.

According to the 2016 hate crime report of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, the incidence of Islamophobia hate crimes or incidents reported to the NCCM and the police or in the media has been steadily increasing with the most recent frequently targeted hate-motivated attacks having been on Muslim women and institutions such as mosques.

What is not captured here are those people who face racism and discrimination on a daily basis and do not report it. We speak to clients daily who express incidents of hate, incidents of violence, incidents of Islamophobia, and who repeatedly tell us that they will not come out and report it, that they do not feel safe to do so, they do not feel they would be supported if they did so, and they do not feel that anything would happen if they did so.

In preparing for today I decided to look back at our own casework in 2016 and look at some of the incidents that were reported to us so that I could get a sense of what we have been seeing. It was a troubling review. These are some of the things we found.

We had many clients report frequent comments against Muslim women wearing the niqab in shopping centres and on the street, saying that they are not Canadian, that they should go home, or that they are terrorists. We had frequent comments against Muslim women wearing the niqab that they are anti-woman and anti-feminists. We had comments to Sikh clients wearing turbans that they were Muslim terrorists. We had comments that wearing religious attire meant that a person supported sharia law. We had comments that all South Asians practise forced marriage.

We had one client reporting an incident of being pushed on the subway and told, “Get out of my way. This is not your country.” Most recently, for myself personally, two weeks ago I was at a coffee shop, and a man butted in front of me. I made a comment to which he turned around and said, “Get out of this country, you Paki terrorist.” The environment in Canada is not great for those who are facing Islamophobia.

At a grassroots level, SALCO has seen a steady increase in the number of racist Islamophobic incidents reported over the past several years that mirrors the statistics that this committee has heard from other people in front of it.

This summer I had the opportunity to present to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination which was reviewing Canada's progress on addressing racism. At the committee, Canada was inconsistent in its messaging around systemic racism. In fact, it went so far as to say that Canadian police do not racially profile. I would urge this committee to ground its approach in addressing systemic racism in Canada as a critical piece of its work.

I would like to move on now to some of the more practical recommendations that I would make, and I would echo some of the comments you've heard today.

The first recommendation is a call for a national action plan. I myself had the privilege of sitting on the provincial ministers advisory group for the Ontario anti-racism directorate. I would strongly recommend that this committee review the work of that directorate and consider the implementation of a national action plan that improves upon, not just reintroduces, our old CAPAR, the Canadian action plan against racism.

We need a robust plan that targets issues that the committee has identified and addresses them. In its closing recommendations, the United Nations CERD committee also made the same recommendation, and they urged the committee to review that report.

In recognizing gender equality, Canada has instituted a gender plus framework to be applied to all government decision-making. For me, this is a positive and much-needed step forward. By extension, I would also urge the committee to consider specifically applying a racial equity framework to government decision-making. It is estimated that 25% of our population is now or will soon be racialized. We must approach with the same vigour and importance the issue of race as we do with gender.

Had such a lens been placed on policies like the conditional permanent residence, which is now thankfully repealed, it would have shown that there was a disproportionate impact on racialized women from that policy.

I would also urge the committee, as other speakers have done, to review the United Nations CERD closing recommendations for Canada, as they echo many of the things that we are talking about here today. I would urge the committee to review the CERD recommendations on improvements to our immigration system and the embedded systemic racism within it. I would urge the committee to review the comments made about racial profiling within the criminal justice system and the child welfare system. I would urge the committee to also review the call for employment equity, the call for disaggregated data, and the call for a national action plan.

I would like briefly to talk about the federal poverty reduction strategy that goes on currently through the federal government. Discrimination based on race and religion plays a critical role in keeping racialized Canadians in poverty. Discrimination in employment continues to impact racialized Canadians' ability to have fair and equitable labour market outcomes. A very simple example is that those with Asian-sounding last names are less likely to be called for job interviews. In fact, I was at a legal education session recently, where the number one question was, “How can I change my name legally?”

I would also quickly echo the sentiment that the collection of disaggregated data would be critical to the work of any national action plan. Specifically, collecting data in a disaggregated manner will allow us to measure our progress.

I will leave it at that. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to our seven-minute round of questions. The seven minutes includes questions and answers.

Ms. Dabrusin for the Liberals, please go ahead.