Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Thanks so much to the three speakers for your presentations today. I very much appreciate your taking the time to be here and making the time to be part of our deliberations.
I'm new to the committee, and I want to make sure that I am very clear with what our objectives are here today, so I think your comments are very relevant. I'm going to start off by reiterating what we're trying to do here in this committee. The part of the motion that we're focused on right now is the part where it says, “(c) request that the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage undertake a study”, so not legislation, “on how the government could (i) develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia, in Canada, while ensuring a community-centred focus with a holistic response through evidence-based policy-making”. The second part is, “(ii) collect data to contextualize hate crime reports and to conduct needs assessments for impacted communities”. Then there's a timeline, in which it asks us to do this work and to present it to the House.
I feel it's important for us to reiterate that, just because my questions are going to be very much focused on that. I'm someone who's focused on trying to get to solutions. What we are asked to do, another way of saying it is, how can the Canadian government develop a plan to combat systemic discrimination and racism in Canada? How can we engage community groups in Canada in this plan? How can we ensure that this plan is based on evidence and on data?
When we're talking about the collection of data, how can we collect the data in a way that will allow us to understand the hate crimes that are actually taking place? Once we have this data, how is it that we can conduct a needs assessment on those impacted communities?
Based on what we are trying to do—I've just stated what we're trying to do—I would be very grateful if I can hear from each of you your recommendations. If we were to develop a plan to combat systemic racism and discrimination in Canada, what would be your specific recommendations for that?
Perhaps, Father de Souza, I could start with you, and we can go down the line. Thank you so much.