Thank you, Ms. Raza.
We are at the end of this session. We're going to go to another round of five minutes, and I have people's names on the list.
I just as the chair want to take the opportunity, because I was here when we agreed, as you heard from Ms. Dabrusin.... This motion from the House was not sent with an order of reference. In other words, it did not say that we have to do everything there.
On a motion, this committee could have said we're not going to study it because we are not bound to, but this committee, made up of three political parties—I just want to put it in context—agreed to do it. We sat down, we looked at what we were going to do, and we set up the terms of reference and the themes. Everyone around here agreed to those themes.
The themes were clearly based on religious discrimination and all forms of systemic racism. Those were what we were dealing with. Collecting data was another one we are dealing with.
Basically, I really would like to see that you understand what we're actually studying. We're not following the motion word for word. We have defined as a committee what we're going to study and how we're going to study it, and we're not having to slavishly follow anything in this motion. I just wanted to point that out. We decided as a committee of three different political parties, one of which did not vote for the motion in the House, but we all felt that there was a need to talk about this and that we needed to look at how we deal with it.
I want to point out one last piece of the motion that nobody has mentioned. It says, “the Committee should make recommendations that the government may use to better reflect the enshrined rights and freedoms in the Constitution Acts, including the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” That means section 2, which is religious freedoms, and section 15, which is hate or discrimination against minorities, etc.
I think we set these terms and that they're clear. I don't know that we are discussing one thing, which seems to be a focus here. We're talking about all forms. We clearly set those terms of reference. I just want to put the terms of reference of what this committee is studying on the table, so that when you have questions later on you may put them into that context, that we're not slavishly following the motion that was passed. I wanted you to know that.