Canadian Heritage Committee on Oct. 16th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I call the meeting to order.

This is the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. We are studying systemic racism and religious discrimination, as a result of M-103, which had been forwarded to us. This committee, however, decided that the way to focus on this would be to look at the broader issue of systemic racism and religious discrimination. All the parties agreed to do this, and so we set our themes based on that.

I want to welcome our witnesses who are here today. We have Sherif Emil, director of pediatric general and thoracic surgery at the Montreal Children's Hospital; and then from the Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada, we have Laurence Worthen, executive director.

I will begin with Dr. Emil.

[Dr. Sherif Emil, Professor and Associate Chair, Department of Pediatric Surgery, Faculty of Medecine, McGill University, Director, Pediatric General and Thoracic Surgery, Montreal Children's Hospital, As an Individual]

Madam Chairwoman, honourable members of Parliament, committee staff, guests of the committee, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the privilege of allowing me to address you today.

My name is Sherif Emil. I am not a public figure, a political operative, or a political advocate. I am not here to represent any organization or movement. I am here as a genuinely concerned citizen, one of Canada's newest, having obtained the privilege of citizenship on Canada's 150th birthday, last July 1. On that rainy day in Montreal, I took an oath to faithfully observe the laws of Canada and fulfill my duties as a Canadian citizen. I see my presence here today as a way to express gratitude for my new citizenship and fulfill my duties as a new citizen.

I am a pediatric surgeon at the Montreal Children's Hospital. I attend to one of the most vulnerable patient populations, babies and children with surgical illnesses. My patients and their parents come from every corner of the world and represent every culture and faith. My trainees are similarly diverse. Approximately one-third hail from Arab states of the Persian Gulf—deeply conservative Muslim societies. A large part of my success as a physician and educator stems from my deep respect for diversity and my genuine tolerance for views significantly different from my own.

I am here today to offer my views on M-103 and any potential bills that may eventually emanate from this motion. M-103 calls on government to, among other things, develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia”. The last word in this sentence, “Islamophobia”, has rendered this motion controversial. Unfortunately, an alternative introduced by the opposition, urging Parliament to “condemn all forms of systemic racism, religious intolerance, and discrimination of Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, and other religious communities” was rejected by the majority, even though Muslims came first on this list.

Allow me to examine the notion of Islamophobia. I will start with a direct quote: “What we saw in the last couple of days in Germany and Netherlands are the reflections of Islamophobia.” These were the words of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday, March 12. They were uttered in a series of speeches in which Mr. Erdogan also called the German and Dutch governments Nazis and fascists. Apparently, these governments were Islamophobic because they refused to allow Turkish officials to hold campaign rallies among Turkish immigrants. The rallies were meant to support an April referendum in Turkey aimed at transitioning the country from its recent past as the only Muslim secular democracy—albeit one that continued to deny the Armenian genocide—to its future as another Islamic autocratic state. We all know what has happened in Turkey since the referendum passed.

I ask you: do you agree with Mr. Erdogan's definition of Islamophobia? Do you agree with what Al-Azhar, Islam's most respected seat of learning, has done when they accused Islam Behery, a liberal Egyptian thinker, author, and journalist, of propagating Islamophobia and insulting Islam? Mr. Behery, a practising Muslim, used a weekly television show to examine the roots of Islamic fundamentalism that have given rise to the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State, al Qaeda, al Shabaab, Boko Haram, and others. These movements draw their constitutions from accepted and endorsed sources of Islamic doctrine and jurisprudence. His message was simple: why blame Islamic State for crucifixions, beheadings, enslavement of women, and destruction of idolatrous historical landmarks when all of these practices are enshrined in Islamic texts?

In fact, many of the practices of Islamic State—public beheadings, murder of homosexuals, stoning for adultery—are also the practices of the Government of Saudi Arabia. The only difference is that the Saudi government codifies them into law and brands anyone who dares to criticize them, as the Swedish foreign minister recently did, as exercising Islamophobia. Mr. Behery's “Islamophobic” program earned him a year in prison.

He is not the only one. Fatima Naood, a respected Muslim thinker and feminist, was sentenced to prison for daring to question one of the practices of the Islamic feast of al-Adha. Ibrahim Eissa, an Egyptian Muslim journalist who highlighted the rampant and chronic persecution and discrimination against Egypt's Christian minority, had his TV show closed and was questioned by a federal prosecutor. Again, Al-Azhar, front and centre in the war against so-called Islamophobia, charged them both with the same thing.

The notion of Islamophobia is behind the apostasy and blasphemy laws that pervade Muslim countries, laws that are used regularly to imprison and subjugate minorities and some Muslims. Last year, four Egyptian Christian high school students, youth, were sent to prison for insulting Islam and propagating Islamophobia. Their crime was a video they made mocking Islamic State.

How do you plan to define Islamophobia? What do you plan to do with those accused of propagating it? Will some of my testimony today one day become illegal in Canada? As I understand, Islamophobia has been defined quite loosely—any speech, opinion, or action that promotes irrational hatred towards Muslims.

When she tabled her motion, the honourable Iqra Khalid cited her experience as a young Canadian woman:

When I moved to Canada in the 1990s, a young girl trying to make this nation my home, some kids in school would yell as they pushed me, “Go home, you Muslim”, but I was home. I am among thousands of Muslims who have been victimized because of hate and fear.

I sympathize with Ms. Khalid. Living in Saudi Arabia as a young Christian, I was called an infidel daily by other children and adults, and made to feel inherently inferior. I was not allowed to worship or declare my faith, let alone exercise it. My family that remains in Egypt, our native country, is constantly reminded that they are second-class citizens. More than 100 Egyptian Christians, including many children, have been killed during the past year in incident after incident. Their crime is being Christian. In last December's bombing of the Coptic Orthodox cathedral, my wife lost two second cousins, beautiful young women, the only children of their parents. Christianity, ladies and gentlemen, not Islam, is the most persecuted faith in the world today.

I understand the pain of ignorance, hatred, prejudice, discrimination, and intolerance, but I don't call it “Christianophobia”, because it's not. It's ignorance, hatred, prejudice, discrimination, and intolerance. In fact, I experience denigration of my Christian faith on a regular basis by Quebeckers who use the holiest of Christian religious terms as swear words. A few years ago my hospital put up a “multicultural” poster stating that Easter is a pagan feast.

Ignorance and insensitivity are not phobias. “Phobia” is a medical term, implying a pathological and irrational fear. As far as I know, the only religion it has been applied to is Islam. The proper definition of Islamophobia, therefore, is not “irrational hatred of Muslims” but “irrational fear of Islam”.

Hatred is always wrong. Incitement to discrimination or violence against any group, including Muslim Canadians, is illegal and always should be. Muslim Canadians bring a welcome diversity to our society. I work with dozens of them every day. Their contributions make our society better, but concern about Islam as it is practised in much of the world today is not irrational.

On the same day that Ms. Khalid tabled her motion, an e-petition was tabled that called on the House of Commons to join the signatories “in recognizing that extremist individuals do not represent the religion of Islam, and in condemning all forms of Islamophobia.”

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have two minutes.

[Dr. Sherif Emil]

Ladies and gentlemen, we are living in an age when terrorist armies occupy large swaths of entire nations, commit heinous crimes daily, advertise their raw depravity proudly, cite a unifying explanation for their actions in Islamic texts and history, and inspire followers in every country, including Canada, but let us ignore these hundreds of thousands of individuals. They, after all, are the extreme, who do not represent Islam.

How does the mainstream look? In mainstream Islamic society, apostasy is a crime often punishable by death; minorities, which often represent the indigenous populations of these societies, are robbed of equal citizenship; and dissent is equated with treason. A Pew Research poll taken in Egypt, a moderate Islamic society, showed that 62% of Egyptians said that law should strictly follow the teachings of the Quran. One-third sympathized with Islamic fundamentalists, and only one-third believed that Christians should exercise their rights.

I will end with an incident that I hope is still fresh in your minds. Four days ago, a young Coptic Christian priest was stabbed and bludgeoned to death in the middle of the day in a busy street in Cairo as the crowd watched. Egyptian Christians are resigned to the likelihood that his attacker, although apprehended, will not face justice, because none of his predecessors have. In a mainstream Islamic society, no Muslim will face due punishment for killing a Christian.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 30 seconds.

[Dr. Sherif Emil]

Ladies and gentlemen, I started my day today at 5 a.m. in order to round early on my patients, start my clinic early, finish it early, and hurry to the train that brought me here to Ottawa. Many of my friends and colleagues counselled me not to come. Some feared for my life, reminding me that it only takes one violent extremist unhappy with my public comments to silence me for good. Others were afraid that I would be branded an Islamophobe and see my practice and academic reputation suffer. Many said, “Don't confuse them with the facts. The majority party already knows what it wants.”

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Dr. Emil, I'm going to have to cut you off. Can you round it up very quickly with your final sentence?

[Dr. Sherif Emil]

I chose to come today because my duty as a new Canadian citizen is not to surrender to fear or cynicism. I chose to come because I am now part of the Canadian experience, one of the most successful in the history of humanity, and I want to teach my two daughters, who were born in this country, to cherish that experience and to do their part to see it continue to be tolerant, open, and free, to see it advocate for equity and justice, not only here in Canada, but around the world.

Thank you again for the privilege of the floor.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Dr. Emil.

Now we have Mr. Worthen from the Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada for 10 minutes.

[Laurence Worthen, Executive Director, Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

On behalf of the Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada, l would like to thank the committee for this opportunity to address a very serious concern—that of prejudice, violence, and discrimination against people because of their religion.

CMDS Canada is a fellowship of over 1,600 doctors and dentists whose goal is to integrate Christian faith with professional practice. Christian faith is an intrinsic part of who we are as human beings. We cannot just turn on or off our faith in God. Faith is so much a part of who we are that it must, by its very nature, spill over into all aspects of our lives.

Because of this commitment, we are very empathetic to the concerns of all religious groups when we hear about prejudice, discrimination, or lack of tolerance in Canadian society. We believe that Canada is a pluralistic society within which every Canadian is able to live out their faith, their beliefs, or their creed and to participate in as many aspects of civil society as their values permit. It is intolerable that certain groups, because of their religious beliefs, should be excluded from any opportunity available to the average Canadian or be subjected to hate crimes, violence, prejudice, or discrimination.

l worked for several years with the Government of Nova Scotia, developing training materials for government employees in relation to the respectful workplace policy. We developed policies that extended the rights guaranteed under the Human Rights Act for groups with protected characteristics related to race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, and so on. We also extended that to include personal harassment or bullying. I was proud that we were working towards a workplace where no one would be bullied or harassed for any reason. I think there is a general Canadian consensus that this is an admirable goal.

Given this effort, imagine the following scenario. Imagine there was a group within Canadian society that had one of the protected characteristics found under either the provincial Human Rights Act or the charter. Imagine that members of this group were unable to practise their profession in certain provinces or be educated in certain professional schools because they had a particular protected characteristic. In discussions in class, there was no acknowledgement of the legitimacy or viability of their world view. They were told not to seek positions in rural areas because of their protected characteristic. They were advised that they could only work in certain small sections of their profession because of their protected characteristic. In policies put forward by their regulatory bodies, people who shared their moral convictions on a topic were deemed unprofessional, selfish, and not worthy of the noble position that their profession provided. Regulatory leaders openly spoke of decades-old anecdotes that were the product of theoretical discussions that never took place. When regulatory leaders began to use their power to act upon their prejudice, the inevitable result was discrimination.

This scenario is not fictional. It is real. It affects doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals in Canada who cannot, because of their religious beliefs, be involved in the intentional killing of patients at any stage of life. Their conscience and religious convictions tell them that killing patients is morally wrong, and they cannot participate in it. We cannot participate in procedures that go against our moral responsibility to God and our fellow human beings, yet some provincial regulatory authorities, like those in Ontario, require physicians to arrange for patients to be seen by doctors who will end their lives or in some cases to actually end the life of the patient themselves through providing a lethal prescription.

As a result, students report being told in class that if they have these beliefs, they should avoid certain geographic practice areas. Physicians have been told by regulators to retrain for a small subset of specialties, such as plastic surgery, pathology, or sports medicine. Applicants for medical schools—as part of the admissions process—are faced with questions that put them at a clear disadvantage because of these ethical issues. Prominent medical school ethicists have gone on record as recommending that students who have conscientious objections should be screened out before they ever get accepted into medical school.

Imagine that this scenario was occurring to systemically exclude any group of people who had one of the protected characteristics. Imagine that people were being penalized because of their colour or sexual orientation, or gender, or racial group. The powerful forces in our society—government, media, universities—would not tolerate this. Why is it tolerated when this discrimination is against people of faith? Why is this serious attack on our constitutional values accepted?

I would suggest the reason is that Canada is at an important crossroads. We need to decide what it means to have a secular state. Everyone feels that state neutrality is a good thing, that the state must never be in a position where it favours one religion or creed at the expense of another one. This allows a pluralistic society to flourish.

However, something more insidious is happening here. People are being discriminated against. They are being forced to do things that go against their religious convictions, convictions that will not allow them to participate in certain procedures that involve bringing about the death of their patients. The requirement to do this, even against conscience, is enforcing and promoting secularism or atheism, which is in itself an identifiable creed. State neutrality is breached, therefore, when a secular state decides to impose secularism on people who have established religious beliefs that should be protected under human rights legislation and the charter.

These concerns involve a broader spectrum than just Christians. Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus who are physicians, nurses, or other health care professionals are also threatened, as are many who are secular humanists and atheists who do not feel that killing patients is in the patient's best interests. An argument based on multiculturalism actually supports greater care or support of conscience and religious rights, as many of the new immigrants coming to Canada bring with them religious beliefs that can enrich our cultural mosaic.

At the Senate justice committee hearings on the bill that would legalize euthanasia in Canada, three major religious groups stood shoulder to shoulder in advocating for conscience rights for health care professionals. This unity of purpose was evident because many religious groups in Canada sense they are in a battle for human rights against a radical secularism that would remove all reference to God, and even the transcendent, from every aspect of public Canadian life.

Secularists who espouse this view do not recognize that they are imposing their values on others. Because they have such a fervent belief that they are right, they feel justified in using the tools of the state to force others to either be coerced into joining them or potentially lose their livelihood. This is the essence of bullying.

Such a stripping of the fundamental core of the human person will only lead to an impoverishment of the Canadian mosiac—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have two minutes left.

[Laurence Worthen]

—and ultimately a move towards totalitarianism. In the 20th century, those governments that would have striven to enforce secularism have been among the worst offenders against human rights.

The solution to this problem starts with the leadership in our country. Having any of the protected characteristics, such as religious belief, should not restrict access to power in this country. It should not affect a properly qualified member's right to sit in the House of Commons for a political party, or in fact be the chair of a commons committee. It is not a political football to be used to garner votes. It is something that every MP and every government should hold sacred and should not tamper with for political expediency.

Three physicians' organizations and five doctors have taken the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario to court, asking the court to stop this active and virulent discrimination on the basis of religious belief and violation of conscience.

This was not a proper remedy.

First, it was expensive. It has cost us nearly $350,000 to date to vindicate our rights under the charter. Second, the resources of the college and the Government of Ontario, which acted as intervenors, were difficult for not-for-profit organizations to challenge. Finally, the damage has already been done. Many hundreds of Ontario physicians now know that their regulator and their government do not respect their deeply held religious beliefs and that members of the staff of the college feel that these doctors should not be able to practise medicine.

Even if we get a decision in our favour, how will we ever be able to overcome the prejudicial attitudes that have already poisoned the Ontario health care system?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 30 seconds.

[Laurence Worthen]

We have turned something beautiful, which is belief in God and a profound respect for the dignity of the human person in health care, into the subject of a regulator's disciplinary investigation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mr. Worthen, you have 10 seconds left. I'm going to ask you to wrap up, please.

[Laurence Worthen]

Thank you.

Religious intolerance is a real problem in Canadian society and has many manifestations and forms. We urge the committee to make a strong statement that will improve Canada's standing as a truly pluralistic society in which people of all religious beliefs feel safe to practise their religion according to their god and their conscience.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Now we go to the second part of this exercise, which is questions. In the first round, the members of Parliament will ask a question, and the question and the answer must not go over seven minutes. You have seven minutes to do both, so I'm asking everybody to be as crisp as they can.

We're going to start with Julie Dzerowicz, for the Liberals.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

I want to start off by warmly thanking both of our speakers today. Your presentations were both very compelling. In particular, I thank you for coming all this way. I know it took a lot of time. I also want to say congratulations on becoming Canadians. You're warmly welcomed. We're very pleased to have you as part of our Canadian family.

Mr. Emil, I know you've just recently become a Canadian, but had you been in Canada for a while before that?

I'm just going to ask a few short questions, and then I'll get to my bigger questions.

[Dr. Sherif Emil]

Yes. I've lived a total of 16 years in Canada—four years as a student, two and a half years as a trainee, and now nine years as a practitioner.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Do you believe that systemic racism and/or religious discrimination existed in Canada during the 16 years that you've been here?

[Dr. Sherif Emil]

If systemic racism and religious discrimination existed, I probably wouldn't be a pediatric surgeon today, because my name, Sherif, is a Middle Eastern name. It can be Muslim; it can be Christian. Nobody ever asked me in my training, in my selection, who I was or what I believed in, so no, I do not believe systemic racism and discrimination exist.

I believe discrimination and racism exist. They exist in many circumstances, in many situations, and that's totally unfortunate, but I don't think they are systemic.

I have lived in societies where systemic racism and discrimination exist. Trust me that I know what it's like, and this is not it.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Then you don't believe that we need...?

Part of the key mandate of this committee is to look into a whole-of-government approach that will address systemic discrimination and racism in Canada. That's what we're looking for here in terms of recommendations.

Now, if you don't believe it's happening, it's hard for me to ask you for recommendations. I don't mind turning my attention to Mr. Worthen, unless you believe that there are some recommendations that you can make around a whole-of-government approach to address religious and racial discrimination in Canada.

[Dr. Sherif Emil]

Let me just make this comment. All the laws I mentioned in my talk are under the guise of protecting a population from insults or discrimination or whatever you want to call it. No, I don't believe it's the government's job to tell us....Discrimination and racism are an ugly part of human nature. Nothing the government can do can absolutely get rid of it.

What it could do is punish people who are responsible for hurting others in any way, shape, or form, and I believe those laws already exist. If we start passing laws saying that things are going to be illegal, that what you say is going to be illegal because we have now defined it as systemic discrimination, we are heading in a very bad direction.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I thank you very much, Mr. Emil.

Mr. Worthen, I want to turn my attention to you, because we're very much seized. We're midway through our testimony and we're hearing from a lot of wonderful witnesses such as you. Again, we're looking for a whole-of-government approach on how Canada can address systemic racism and discrimination across this country.

You've talked quite a bit about what I understand to be discrimination against Christians in this country. I would be grateful if you had some recommendations for us on how we could reduce systemic discrimination, whether for Christians or any other religion in this country. If you could give us some specifics, I'd be grateful.

[Laurence Worthen]

As I mentioned, I had the privilege of working with the Nova Scotia government around creating the respectful workplace, so I've done some work around issues of racism and discrimination. I think we have a paradigm within government for dealing with discrimination against other protected characteristics, such as sexual orientation, colour, and gender. We have a paradigm and a system. We simply need to turn people's minds towards religious freedom and use the same model, the same paradigm, that we've used in those cases.

That's the frustrating thing for me. Having been in the system and knowing what you do to deal with racism, what you try to do to deal with discrimination, now I'm seeing it imposed in Canada against people of faith. I find that part disturbing. We need to add people of faith to the list. Even though they're there legally, they're not top of mind.