We have for many years now, 10 or 15 years so far.... Recently we created a 1-800 number for all Canadians, not limited to our Muslim community, but really for those people who have to face issues that are discriminatory and who are being attacked for who they are. What we have realized through our experience on this is—although it is not a federal issue, it is more of a local issue—that there are two elements to this.
First of all, there are people who come from countries where they are hesitant to come and present themselves, especially to security departments.
Second, and this is most important, from our experience so far, security departments all over do not really take seriously the complaints they have received. I'll give you an example. If a woman is being targeted because of her hijab, and she goes to the police to make this complaint, they start asking questions: “Do you have a witness? Who was there? Are you fine? What kind of violence was there? Did you go to the hospital?” When the woman doesn't have all the answers, there's a sort of discouragement. Since there were no other witnesses who were ready to present themselves at this certain incident, there is no need for you to really.... CMF, Canadian Muslim Forum, has approached authorities and city authorities to tackle this issue.
They face another problem. Even if the police take it into consideration, there is no serious follow-up. This is also another discouragement where we call on authorities, whether at the city level or the provincial level, to have this sort of orientation for all police departments to take such instances very seriously and to be followed up seriously when they are reported.