Canadian Heritage Committee on Oct. 23rd, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Is that okay, or did you have something else you wanted to ask, Mr. Reid, since I stole a bit of your time there?

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

No, that's fantastic. Thank you very much. That was helpful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Next is Ms. Kwan for the NDP, for seven minutes.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thank you to all our witnesses for their presentations.

Further to the response that Ms. Akinturk provided us around the issue of unemployment and the implications for a lot of individuals who have the training and the expertise but are not landing the jobs they had hoped for. In other forums we've heard from people that discrimination and hate have implications, and sometimes lifelong implications.

To that end, for the purposes of what we're trying to achieve in this study, do you have recommendations for government on how we can address that issue?

[Dr. Ayse Akinturk]

I would like to start with a very general problem that concerns many Canadians who have credentials from overseas and not from Canada.

I think that the recognition of foreign credentials, international credentials, should become a much-facilitated procedure. It really takes a lot of effort and years, and in the end people give up and try to find other solutions to make a living for themselves. Recognition of international credentials, as well as making it easier to prove that you are racially or religiously discriminated against in hiring processes or work retention processes, would be a good step forward.

I don't know whether my friends have other things to add to that.

[Dr. Mansoor Pirzada]

From the health industry perspective, I would say that I have personally seen and experienced discrimination and racial profiling. During the training and everything, I've been called a terrorist and I've been called...so yes.

I know that there are so many medical graduates who.... I see it. I receive emails. They are overqualified. They are willing to work not even as physicians but below physician levels, as physician assistants, and even then they are not getting the jobs. Sometimes I've heard people say, “Well, he's overqualified, but at least we are getting an overqualified health practitioner or health professional and giving him a physician assistant job.”

These things are going on all over Canada. We know it. I mean, all of us are highly educated people, and we have the insight. We know what's going on. I think it's time for us to say that, yes, this is going on and we need to deal with it head-on, rather than just trying to talk, mellow it down, and say that it doesn't exist or something like that.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

There's a possibility that I would like to explore. In a number of different meetings, witnesses came forward to suggest that it's time for Canada to have a national strategy to address racism or a national anti-racism strategy on racism and religious discrimination. I wonder if you can shed some light on whether you think it's time for us to do that. If you say yes, how should it be resourced and how should we be working on the ground with the community in addressing this very real issue that is facing all of us today?

[Haseen Khan]

Thank you very much for your question.

I think that not only the development but the implementation of that national strategy is the only way for us to move forward to address these outstanding issues of racial and religious discrimination and Islamophobia.

I think the strategy has to be developed and implemented in consultation with grassroots organizations, because they are at the forefront. They are familiar with the realities on the ground. On a day-to-day basis, they get complaints. They counsel those who have been victims of these scenarios, these serious situations.

Also, when we implement our strategy, we should set clear goals, clear objectives, and clear targets for how that strategy works. What are the outcomes? Are we making any progress? How is that gap, that disparity, in unemployment among visible minorities being addressed?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

Recently we were talking about data collection, particularly the issue around under-reporting. I think a lot of lived experiences are in fact not reported. We heard previously from a couple of presenters about some experiences from people in the community that were never followed up. As an example, there was one particular case of a young woman who faced discrimination in her workplace. How do we go about collecting data from that perspective, when not every incident is reported to the police and thereby makes it into the data collection?

[Haseen Khan]

Thank you very much again for a very interesting question.

As mentioned by Dr. Pirzada, our first recommendation is to create a national registry to record all hateful incidents involving Islamophobia and other forms of racial and religious discrimination. Why are we making this recommendation? We are all professionals and we are involved to a certain extent in policy-making. Our experience is that if you want to have informed decision-making on any issue, you first need to have the information in both quantitative terms as well as qualitative terms, because that is the only way for us to move forward.

Generally, as mentioned by other witnesses, victims of these hate crimes or of discrimination on a racial or religious basis are already suffering. They have lost self-esteem. They have lost self-confidence. Then we put them through the process of going through these complaints through law enforcement agencies. It is very painful for them. It is just like putting salt on their wounds. We need to have a better informal system in the form of some sort of national registry where they can dial in or log in and complain and record their report with all the facts and figures without going through any further harassment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Mr. Khan.

I'm going to take the prerogative of the chair and ask our Manitoba colleagues to add to your question, Ms. Kwan, on what they see as elements of a national strategy.

[Dr. Idris Elbakri]

If I understand it, the question is regarding the national strategy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Yes. What are the elements?

[Dr. Idris Elbakri]

I think a national strategy would be a welcome development. It would be a step in the right direction.

In our view it should encompass the following components: first, it should emphasize education of young children. It's remarkable that as an immigrant, I grew up in a much more homogeneous society, but my children today go to public school, to a French immersion program here in Winnipeg, and they have friends from all different walks of life. I think it's important that in schools we work with young children to instill the values of diversity and inclusiveness from an early age.

It's also important to encourage communities to share good practices. Again, I would like to come back to the point that a lot of good work is already happening at the grassroots level, but we need a platform for that to be shared and celebrated. That will empower those who may not have had those experiences yet to try to engage as well with their own communities.

The second point made by our colleagues from Newfoundland is that we have to involve the grassroots communities and consult with them, because a lot of the work is being done by them.

The other aspect that has come out of your committee's deliberation is Islamophobia. What is the definition, what is the extent of it, and so on? I think there need to be grants to academic experts in universities to study this issue further, whether it's Islamophobia or racism and discrimination in general, to inform our policy-making with scholarly research that has withstood the test of peer review and so on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I am sorry, but we've already ended the seven minutes, Ms. Kwan. I gave them an extra couple of seconds to comment on the elements. We have to move on to Julie Dzerowicz for the Liberals for seven minutes.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

[Member speaks in Arabic]

I want to thank all of you for your wonderful presentations. My last name betrays me—or doesn't betray me, actually. My mother is Mexican, a light brown woman who came in the early seventies and experienced a lot of racism and discrimination in terms of trying to find jobs. This last name actually isn't really my last name. It was changed at the border to simplify it so that Canadians could pronounce it.

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

This is the simplified version?

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

This is the simplified version. You don't want to know what it was.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Part of my point is that systemic discrimination has existed for a while.

We've been very blessed in this country that we have new races and cultures that come through time, and you can see it. We've always had difficulty in accepting every new group. I feel wonderful that I am a part of a government that is finally starting to try to develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing and eliminating systemic racism and discrimination.

My colleague Ms. Kwan mentioned a national action strategy, and I think we're all talking about that. We've had the black community come before us, we have talked about the indigenous community, we have had the Jewish community come before us, and we've had lots of letters from Christians saying they're discriminated against.

We have to set some priorities in a national action plan, and I know that both of you have made a series of recommendations. Could tell us what we should be prioritizing? Just to give you a little context, Ontario has put an anti-racism action plan into place. They've had to set some priorities on what to begin with.

Perhaps we'll start with our Newfoundland community and then we'll go to the Manitoba community.

[Dr. Ayse Akinturk]

I think our last recommendation would be to focus on introducing and implementing appropriate tools that would promote equality and inclusion and eliminate racial and religious barriers to employment, because then people feel they are socially and economically empowered and their self-esteem and their resistance to attempts to be discriminated against rises.

I think this is the most important thing. This should be a priority. The other ones can come afterwards.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

That's wonderful.

Could we hear from Manitoba?

[Dr. Idris Elbakri]

I think the idea of collecting data or a data registry is very important.

I think maybe one or two other priorities would be working with educational institutions, with younger folks—university and high school and even earlier than that—to try to foster the salient ethic of respecting diversity and inclusion.

Another priority would be to encourage partnerships to be formed across the country between places of worship, in the schools, in law enforcement, and so on, so people can come together and tackle these issues with knowledge of their own local context, but with the support of the government.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you. That's very helpful.

You have one extra to add.

[Dr. Ayse Akinturk]

I related to your initial remarks, because I know many younger children and youth, including my own son.... When we Muslims name our children, we try to pick beautiful names, names that have meaning, but recently I started observing a trend among Muslim youth to be shy or ashamed about their names because their peers cannot pronounce them because they're different. As a result, their peers bully them. Their peers make fun of their names, so they choose some nicknames that are easier to pronounce so they can be accepted by their peers.

It's damaging not only to youth self-esteem, but also for all their families and communities.