Canadian Heritage Committee on Oct. 25th, 2017

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

The motion refers to racism as well as religious persecution. Do you get different input from people in your community if they have different backgrounds as far as religion is concerned? I know that there will be Muslim Iranians. There will be Iranians with Baha’i backgrounds. There will be Iranians who are secular. There will be Zoroastrian, Ahmadiyyan. Are you getting any kind of different report about levels of persecution based on their religious backgrounds as well as race?

[Pouyan Tabasinejad]

I'll try to answer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Sorry, but you have about 30 seconds to answer it, please.

[Pouyan Tabasinejad]

There was a lot covered in that.

Firstly, we agree that the term “Islamophobia” is useful, whether or not what it means gets a little abstract. In terms of Iran, you mentioned human rights. Every country has its problems. Mr. Reid put it very well. Regardless of what the actual intent is behind this kind of Iran accountability and this kind of stuff, we see that it affects the discrimination that Iranian Canadians feel, which is problematic. This is something that they've reported to us. I think 77% percent said the way Iran is treated by Canada and other countries actually affects the discrimination they face.

Again, I would say that if you really look at the human rights of Iran and the reason we're saying it's being singled out, it's really not that much.... Really it's on the same level as countries like Saudi Arabia and others, or even better. The issue that we're seeing is that Iran is being singled out. We're not saying that Iran is perfect, but really the issue is the singling out of Iran for doing the same things as other countries.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I'm sorry, Mr. Tabasinejad. We've really gone over time on this one.

We have Julie Dzerowicz for three minutes.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much for your presentations, and thanks so much for your patience in answering all of our questions.

I'm very big into data gathering. You had mentioned initially that there's discrimination again the Iranian community in Canada. Where do you get your data? Are you personally getting it from other people? Do you tap into police organizations? How is that you're actually gathering the data?

[Soudeh Ghasemi]

The data that we have, and what we're talking about right now, is based on the survey that we initiated recently. The survey was not going around for that long. It's been less than a week. We had more than 600 responses.

We collected these data from the community members, and some of the comments that we're making are the comments that the community members are mentioning, especially in terms of employment. We have seen in many of the comments people make that they've been discriminated against in employment situations as a result of travel bans because employers perceive that they cannot travel to the U.S. They couldn't get training or promotions because the employer perceived them as such. There wasn't enough clarification from the government and they were treated as such.

This is the data that we collected in a short period of time with minimal financial resources. It's the research that the organization has. Obviously, if we had more funding available and more resources available, we could have reached out to a greater portion of our community to be able to get more accurate data and statistical data from our community.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Ideally we would have more national statistics and a very consistent way of gathering the data.

One of your recommendations is very much about putting more money into intercultural dialogue. I know there has been a bit of a conversation around that. Is there a program about which you could say, “Here is an intercultural dialogue or program that works really well that we think we need to model or continue to introduce across the country”? Is there something that you can talk to us about that works, that you are particularly fond of or think is an excellent program?

[Pouyan Tabasinejad]

I'll be honest with you: I'm not that familiar. Maybe Soudeh can answer. You're talking about other countries and their models, if I'm understanding you correctly.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

No, I mean just here in Canada. Is there anything that happens here in Canada that you think is done well in terms of an intercultural dialogue?

[Pouyan Tabasinejad]

Do you mean in terms of non-governmental organizations and what they're doing?

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Sure, or even if a government is funding something. I mean anything that you think is actually working. You said, “Let's put more money into it,” so there must be some program that you think might be a good one or something that you think we should model.

[Pouyan Tabasinejad]

I think part of the issue right now is that the funding is very low. I believe it's at about $5 million or less that's dedicated to this kind of work, which we think is not enough. Unfortunately, that means there are probably not a lot of positive examples we can look at.

I would say the government needs to do a study on what we can do, look at other models, look at what's going on, but really the funding is fundamental. I mean, it's $5 million for a country like Canada, where we have so many immigrants and so much of our population is foreign-born. I think it really needs some real study and funding.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you. That's about it.

We go to David Anderson, for the Conservatives.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I thank the witnesses for being here with us today.

Does your council express an opinion on minority rights in Iran? Do you deal with that? The reason I'm asking this is that part of our motion deals with religious discrimination. I'm simply wondering how you deal with that issue.

[Pouyan Tabasinejad]

Our policy is that we are an Iranian-Canadian organization. We deal with Canadian politics. A lot of us, including me, are not in Iran. I haven't spent a lot of time there.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

But you make other comments about Iranian issues that aren't strictly Canadian, and lots of them.

[Pouyan Tabasinejad]

When it comes to it, our interests are for Iranian Canadians and their experiences. When an Iranian Canadian goes to Iran and is arrested, for whatever reason, we're very active in advocating on behalf of those individuals.

In terms of getting into the politics of what's happening in Iran, etc., that's something we haven't—

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I'm surprised, because such a large number of your people have come here to get away from the rapes, the tortures, the killings, the mass arrests, the jailing of opposition leaders, the killing of journalists, and those kinds of things. It would seem that if you're representing them and you're the main voice in Canada, you would be speaking out about those things. Don't people still have relatives back home who are impacted by these things?

[Pouyan Tabasinejad]

In terms of people's individual experiences, to be honest, that's not something we've come across.

Really what we're looking at is the different generations of Iranian Canadians and Iranian immigrants. In the case of the original Iranian immigrants, the first wave, you're completely right. A lot of those individuals' experience with Iran and their immigrant experience was one of leaving from a kind of revolutionary stage. Then the Iran-Iraq war happened shortly after that. It was a very violent movement.

Now, the orientation of a lot of the Iranian Canadians we're seeing—I would say definitely the majority, and we've done studies on what's important to them and what they want—is really not about what happened seven years ago in Iran, or even 40 years ago, in terms of these violations you were speaking of. They're talking about wanting to prevent war with Iran, and they want to prevent sanctions on Iran because—

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Can I say I'm a bit surprised, though? Even those of us who have been here for a couple of generations still feel a tie back to our country. When you have things like a UN General Assembly motion that says they have serious concern about Iran's high rate of executions without legal standards, ongoing use of torture, widespread arbitrary detention, sharp limits on freedom of assembly, expression, religious belief, and discrimination against women and ethnic and religious minorities, I guess I'm surprised you don't take a position on that, and that you're not actively advocating for better consequences there.

That's in the context of our debate here.

[Pouyan Tabasinejad]

I understand.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

We would like some help from you on how we deal with making sure those kinds of things do not become a factor in Canada.

[Pouyan Tabasinejad]

I understand what you're saying, but first you should know there are a lot of organizations, Iranian and otherwise, that deal with those issues. Our organization's focus is on Iranian Canadians' lives here in Canada. We are a diaspora. We are immigrants. We are Canadians, really. We're no longer in Iran. We have connections with Iran, and most Iranian Canadians, I would say, now have an opinion on Iran. It's more about we don't want our country to be attacked militarily, for example, and we don't want sanctions on Iran.

Really, that's as far as we'll go. What we're really dealing with here—

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

What you're saying is that irrespective of what's happening there, you don't want it to impact you here. Is that correct?