Canadian Heritage Committee on Oct. 30th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I would like to call the meeting to order.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the parliamentary committee on Canadian heritage is studying systemic racism and religious discrimination. In the first hour, from 3:30 to 4:30, we have three witnesses: the Armenian National Committee of Canada on video conference; Trinity Western University, Mr. Robert Kuhn, president; and Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, from Phoenix, Arizona, on video conference. Thank you.

All right, now we will begin. Here are the protocols. You have 10 minutes to present your position, and after that there will be a question and answer period. At eight minutes, I will give you a two-minute warning that you may have to wrap up.

We will begin with Shahen Mirakian, from the Armenian National Committee of Canada.

[Shahen Mirakian, President, Armenian National Committee of Canada]

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee for inviting the Armenian National Committee of Canada to provide evidence to you today.

My name is Shahen Mirakian, and I am president of the Armenian National Committee of Canada. I apologize for not being able to join you in person. The executive director of the Armenian National Committee of Canada, Mr. Sevag Belian, is based in Ottawa, and he is present in the committee room today.

I have had the opportunity to review the evidence from previous sessions, and I have followed the reports in the media as well. The committee has already had the opportunity to hear from many presenters on a variety of concerns having to do with today's topic, and particularly with reference to Islamophobia. Many presenters have made recommendations concerning how to better address these issues. However, we believe that one topic that has not been covered sufficiently is the role that advocacy organizations can play in advancing respect and understanding amongst Canadians.

Generally, advocacy groups such as the Armenian National Committee of Canada are seen as advancing a particular point of view to the exclusion of other points of view. They are regarded as having a narrow and parochial interest. We often hear about how government should not be captured by special interests, and advocacy organizations are often portrayed as the ultimate special interest groups.

We believe that this view is misguided and ignores the important role that organizations like the Armenian National Committee of Canada play in advancing broader interests. I am going to begin with two examples, and then move from these specific cases to a more general thesis.

In December 1998, Soviet Armenia, as it was then, was struck by a devastating earthquake that killed tens of thousands, injured countless others, and left a significant portion of the population homeless and without the necessities of life. The Armenian Canadian community immediately launched into action to collect funds, medical supplies, and other essential items to aid the population. Armenian Canadian organizations approached Canadian elected officials and public servants to see how all levels of Canadian government could assist in the effort. Armenian Canadian organizations reached out to private enterprise to help with things like setting up phone lines to collect donations—this was before the Internet—and to assist with the logistics involved in transporting goods to the then-Soviet Union. Communication channels were opened with the embassy and local consular offices of the USSR and with Soviet and Armenian government officials.

This effort was obviously directed to a particular interest important to the Armenian Canadian community. However, it had a positive impact on all Canadians because it created the basic framework that could be used in other disasters worldwide. Governments, private enterprise, the media, and aid organizations learned important lessons about coordinating their efforts and how to improve relief efforts by involving Canadians with ties to the affected region. Armenian advocacy on these issues meant that, when other communities were affected by similar tragedies, Canada was prepared to respond more quickly and more effectively. The payoff from this experience continues to be felt even today.

More recently, the Armenian Canadian community was deeply involved in the effort to resettle refugees from the conflict in Syria. The Armenian Canadian community throughout Canada, working through a variety of community organizations, brought over 4,000 privately sponsored and blended-visa Syrian refugees to Canada. This massive effort required constant engagement with the Canadian government, provincial governments, municipalities, school boards, hospitals, settlement organizations, private sponsorship groups, and countless community organizations.

Much of this work began well before the Canadian government's push in mid-December 2015, so the Armenian Canadian community had a unique insight into how to do the enormous work that had to be done by other groups when the large waves of government-sponsored refugees began to arrive. Many of the government-sponsored refugees benefited immensely, because Armenian Canadian organizations had already identified the major issues involved in resettlement and worked with our partners to resolve them.

However, the Armenian Canadian community did not do this alone. If we were able to see further, it was because we stood on the shoulders of giants who paved the way before us, the Vietnamese Canadian community, the Hungarian Canadian community, the Jewish community, the Somali Canadian community, and others had already been through similar experiences, and their efforts had resulted in structures that were already in place, which assisted us in our efforts.

The advocacy and work of many Canadian faith communities, including the Catholic Church, the United Church, the Anglican Church, the Mennonites, Islamic groups, Sikh groups, and others with refugees also provided useful guidance on how to work.

We can already see how the Syrian experience is guiding efforts to resettle the Yazidis in Canada today.

These are but two examples. The work of Chinese Canadian groups on removing the discriminatory head tax against people of Asian descent, the work of Japanese Canadian and Ukrainian Canadian organizations in seeking redress for instances of internment during the Second and First World Wars, respectively, and the work of Jewish groups to track hate crimes and combat discrimination all have positive impacts measured well beyond the immediate subject of their advocacy or their own particular community.

The work of numerous community organizations helped to make the Canadian Museum of Human Rights a reality, for instance. Similarly, Islamic organizations and advocacy groups from various cultures that follow Islam are already playing a valuable role in combatting Islamophobia and, in turn, broader instances of systemic religious discrimination.

Obviously, advocacy groups are not the sole element in combatting systemic racism and religious discrimination, but they can and should play a role. When these groups campaign to open doors, those doors are opened for everyone. We all benefit from the efforts of organizations to address particular instances of systemic discrimination because we become better at identifying what laws, actions, or policies are discriminatory, and we learn how to work with the targeted groups to address these issues.

To assist in this effort, the Armenian National Committee of Canada would like to make two recommendations.

First, we call upon members of Parliament to act as a resource for advocacy groups.

One of the most positive things that can be done is to introduce various communities to one another and bring them together to discuss common goals. If a member of Parliament has been approached by two advocacy groups who are pursuing the same objective, introducing these two groups to one another can create new connections that create wider ties between the communities they represent and create better integration. Open dialogue between communities can be fostered by members of Parliament, who are often best positioned to recognize areas of common interest. Additionally, members of Parliament can help organizations addressing issues of systemic racism and religious discrimination meet people from communities who have already done considerable work on addressing these issues, and learn the best way to affect positive change.

Second, we call upon the government to redirect some of its funding from promoting intercultural dialogue to, instead, work on community building among faith and cultural communities.

Grants that require co-operation among communities will almost always accrue to the best-organized communities that already have ties with other communities and are able to lever those connections. In this way, the better off continue to be better off. If some of the funding were directed at community organizations that were smaller and less well-established, these communities could develop the proper structures to be better engaged in intercultural dialogue and to participate more fully in Canadian society. Participation by more groups will create more opportunities to identify and address systemic racism and religious discrimination.

We understand fully that these recommendations will not entirely address Islamophobia or systemic racism and religious discrimination, but we believe that they are important initial steps in creating structures in Canada that can effectively tackle this issue.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much. That's well under time.

Now we go to Mr. Kuhn from the Trinity Western University.

You have seven minutes, please.

[Robert Kuhn, President, Trinity Western University]

Madam Chair and honourable members of the committee, my name is Bob Kuhn. I'm privileged to serve as the president of Trinity Western University. I appreciate the invitation to address this committee. I've submitted a short written brief as well.

This is a very important issue, and it is important to Trinity Western, which is the largest faith-based university in Canada. It has a student population of 4,000 or more, and it represents 55 years of serving a very important function in the fabric of Canadian higher education.

Trinity Western offers a wide range of undergraduate degrees, graduate degrees in the liberal arts, sciences, and professional schools in nursing, education, clinical psychology, human kinetics, business, and others. TWU also provide a unique program of leadership training at the Laurentian leadership centre in Ottawa. You may have interacted with TWU interns in the offices of MPs or elsewhere on Parliament Hill. As well, TWU, in partnership with well-known Chinese universities, offers an international master of business degree in Tianjin, Beijing, and Shanghai.

In terms of research, Trinity Western professionals hold three Canada research chairs, and numerous research grants from NSERC, CIHR, and SSHRC. The university also owns and maintains environmental study areas, with properties totalling approximately 150 acres.

Not to leave our athletes out, over the past 15 years, Trinity Western teams have won 11 national and 23 Canada-west championships, often against universities 10 times their size.

In terms of objective party evaluation, Trinity Western has scored among the very highest ratings in the country in student satisfaction, and they have achieved an A+ grade in quality of education for seven years running. No other Canadian university has done so.

Trinity Western University is not just an excellent academic institution with winning sports teams. It's a Christian university, a community that cares deeply about all its diverse students, who in turn care deeply about the needs of others. Approximately 65% of the student body participates each year in student leadership, international service trips, community service, or outreach, working with prison populations, sex trade workers, first nations groups, Habitat for Humanity, and others.

You would think a university with such a remarkable history, extraordinary nationally and internationally recognized faculty, and exceptional students with 24,000-plus alumni would not be subjected to exclusion and rejection because of its traditional biblical values, especially when Trinity is mandated by the Trinity Western University Act to provide a university education “with an underlying philosophy and viewpoint that is Christian.”

Despite its success and despite the fact that it provides its education and community service without government subsidy, it has consistently been the subject of religious discrimination. In my brief I discuss several; let me discuss two here.

Some of you may be aware of the decisions made by three provincial law societies that rejected the ability of graduates from Trinity Western's proposed law school to enter the practice of law in those provinces. This was despite approval given by the national Federation of Law Societies and the minister of higher education in British Columbia, and it was despite the fact that it is universally acknowledged that TWU law school graduates would have been fully qualified.

The sole reason for their rejection is that Trinity Western University, as a Christian university and consistent with the views of most other world religions, subscribes to the traditional definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman. Of course, that position is referenced in the Civil Marriage Act of 2005, which says, “it is not against the public interest to hold and publicly express diverse views on marriage”. It appears that some government, quasi-government, and other organizations and corporate entities prefer to ignore the important statement of principle.

At the end of November, these issues before the courts will again be before the Supreme Court of Canada, despite the fact that this court, facing similar facts relating to the approval of Trinity's school of education, ruled in favour of Trinity in 2001. In that decision they made a number of judicial statements relevant to motion 103. The first statement reads as follows:

The diversity of Canadian society is partly reflected in the multiple religious organizations that mark the societal landscape and this diversity of views should be respected.

Here is another quote:

[TWU students'] freedom of religion is not accommodated if the consequence of its exercise is the denial of the right of full participation in society.

I have one final quote:

For better or for worse, tolerance of divergent beliefs is a hallmark of a democratic society.

Now if the powerful law societies can discriminate against students graduating from Trinity Western, then what is to stop other organizations from discriminating against its 24,000-plus alumni and 300-plus faculty members? In fact, this is exactly what has happened.

There are examples of them in the brief. Again, I will focus on one. In the last few months, a Trinity Western faculty member applied for a position at a public university. The public university faculty union executive advised their fellow faculty members to boycott the Trinity Western applicant's interview solely because the applicant was from Trinity. It is alarming that the well-established concept of accommodation is not referenced when authorities such as this or other organizations engage in rapid and reckless response to shifting social values. That is, governments, organizations, and individuals create and enforce a hierarchy of discrimination without a means of balancing potential conflicting interests. If the concept of accommodation is eliminated entirely, it is done in favour of an immutable, pre-established hierarchy. In essence, we are told that in the name of diversity, you are not welcome. In the name of tolerance, we will not tolerate your religious freedom. You must conform to society's secular moral judgments to participate at the table of pluralism.

This committee has asked for constructive suggestions for implementation by the federal government that would reduce or eliminate systemic racism and religious discrimination. Let me make three.

This is recommendation number one. Inevitably, if we are to retain the sought-after, balanced, multicultural, multireligious mosaic, religious discrimination must continue to be the subject of careful study, civil discourse, and creativity in resolution of conflict. It is my submission that the first step is to promote, encourage, and engage in meaningful opportunities to pursue dialogue, relationships, and educated understanding. The government can and should lead by example. I believe it would be prudent and positive to ensure consultation with religious organizations in order to understand the perspective of religious people in Canada. In this respect, the duty to consult would be appropriate. This would go some distance to bridging the increasing divide between the secular and religious communities. It is when people in positions of authority or power do not listen to, consult with, or show respect for those who hold strong religious views that religious discrimination arises.

The second recommendation is, when considering the impact of decisions on religious minorities, the concept of accommodation should be employed. If our country is to build a meaningful and genuine pluralism, its leadership must be committed to accommodation of religious differences, rather than simply adopting and enforcing secular majority opinions.

The third recommendation is that the appointment of an ombudsperson be considered. Assisting in the resolution of differences and disputes between governments, authorities, religious institutions, and individuals, it would provide an opportunity for greater understanding, dialogue, and mediation, and the advent of creative resolution alternatives.

In conclusion, Trinity Western and its staff, students, and faculty experience significant financial, emotional, and systemic discrimination. It is getting worse, and it should not be.

Honourable members of the committee, this is not the Canada that has historically opened its arms to welcome a great variety of people of faith. This is not the Canada that prides itself on being a nation of peace—a country where men and women of deep religious convictions are not forced to forgo their faith as a condition of full citizenship. We are the Canada that is offering safe harbour to families fleeing religious persecution—a compassionate country that does not dictate conformity but rather seeks community in our diversity.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

I now go to Dr. Zuhdi Jasser for 10 minutes, and I'll give you an eight-minute warning.

[Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, President, American Islamic Forum for Democracy]

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, for holding this important hearing and thank you for inviting me. I can't tell you enough how important this issue is to me. For those of us south of your border, America has been wrestling with many of these same issues, since 9/11, as your country has.

I'm founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. As you mentioned, my name is Zuhdi Jasser. I'm also the son of Syrian immigrants. My family escaped the Baath regime in Syria in the mid-sixties. I still have most of my family in Syria, so I'm greatly aware of the plight of refugees and our family.

What I'm going to reference today in the little time I have—we submitted my full comments for your record and I ask you to accept those—are the unintended consequences of M-103. It may be well intended to prevent bigotry against Muslims, but since it's couched in the term “Islamophobia”, since it really looks at Muslims as a model, I think it would cause more harm than good. I'm going to walk you through what I see as some of its harms and what I think would be a better approach to the issues that were intended to be raised in M-103.

As a devout Muslim and an American Muslim who loves my faith and loves my country, I must tell you that any emphasis on Islamophobia, as it's called, is profoundly flawed and will continue our nations down the slippery slope of catering to Islamist separatism. I'm here to tell you that simply even using that term Islamophobia, and getting the government into the business of monitoring any form of speech, will end up paradoxically tightening societal division. We must not coddle our Muslim community, which will only further separate Muslims out. We must treat them as any other minority, as any other grievance group and a group that needs protection of its civil rights, but trying to suppress what can be painful speech about Islam at society's fringes will actually paradoxically feed the unintended consequence of fomenting non-Muslim fears of Islam.

Citizens who cannot have their real fears heard and their speech exercised will be stifled from the public sector and pushed underground, resentment that will only foment and actually exacerbate the very problem and one of the claims we want to solve.

Let me tell you briefly about our organization. We were founded in the wake of 9/11 to separate mosque and state. We believe the only way to defeat the root cause of radical Islam is to defeat the ideology, non-violent ideology, of political Islam or Islamic state identity movements. We also helped found the Muslim reform movement that was founded in December of 2015 and we have members across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, including Raheel Raza who, I believe, has spoken to your committee before me.

We are reformists, and I want to emphasize this movement, because much of what we say on behalf of liberal rights, liberal ideas, women's rights, minority rights, within Muslims is often identified as blasphemy by Islamic regimes. It is identified as heretical by mosques in the west, and identified as “Islamophobic” by mosques and leaders in the west, including many allies of the author of M-103. I would tell you that Islamophobia is a weapon used by theocrats to prevent free speech and to prevent critical thinking and modernization of the very ideas that create the underbelly of radical Islam, if you will.

By having a resolution and having a sentiment put forth that focuses on Islamophobia rather than bigotry that surely exists against minorities—and I'm not telling you there isn't bigotry that exists against Muslims, against Jews, against other minorities in all of our society that we need to fight—but by calling it Islamophobia you're basically implying that Islam has rights.

Islam is an idea, like anything else. It does not have rights. It's not a race and it's not part of this systemic racism and discrimination that is being addressed by M-103. I would tell you that the way to approach it is just as you approach anti-Semitism. You don't approach Judeophobia. You approach anti-Semitism because it's the bigotry that exists against practitioners of the Jewish faith that needs to be defeated. Ultimately, bigotry exists against Muslims that needs to be defeated, but we don't do it by making people afraid to push the issues that need reform and need to be addressed, because the primary victims of, even in the west, our government's addressing Islamophobia and calling it that are going to be Muslim.

Where it asks you to address and quell an increasing climate of hate and fear, I believe it will make it worse, preventing the tough conversations we need to have.

Where it asks you to condemn Islamophobia and all forms of racism and religious discrimination and take note of e-411, I will tell you that the language of e-411 smacks of a lot of the language of theocracies from Iran to Saudi Arabia and others, and it will empower tribal leaders and Islamists within our community.

Next, M-103 asks you to undertake a study of how the government should develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism. Certainly the government should be in the business of protecting individual citizens from hate and racism, but it should not be in the business of studying negative and positive sentiments about a particular faith or idea.

Then it asks you to collect data about hate and crime reports. Again, that seems harmless enough, but the focus should not simply be Muslim, but all minorities and all people of faith because when you carve out Muslims, it feeds into separatism.

The harms of M-103 I believe include enabling and enshrining the term “Islamophobia” with the empowerment of all the Islamists domestically and abroad, which marginalizes we reformers who are dedicated to working with both liberals and conservatives in protecting the rights of women and protecting the rights of apostates and blasphemers and others to whom Islamists don't want to give freedom of speech.

M-103 will empower Islamists over Muslim reformers and call us “Islamophobes”. I believe it infantilizes Muslims by disproportionately protecting them more than any other vulnerable minority or community in Canada. I think it will backfire and end up separating Muslims more and feeding into both extremes: those who are too ignorant of the realities within Muslim communities, and those who might be blaming all of Islam for the acts of radicals.

M-103 treats Muslims as a monolith, and I think that is not healthy. Most importantly, I think that this mantra, this language, will feed into harming the progress in the security apparatus.

One of my primary recommendations to you is that you recommend to your government that you shift from CVE, countering violent extremism, to countering violent Islamism because we Muslims can only help you counter the radical ideologies of Wahhabism, Salafi-Jihadism, and all these things that our governments have not wanted to dive into, and shift away from a whack-a-mole program in national security to working against the ideas that radicalize Muslims within our community, such as the horrendous misogyny, the anti-Semitism, and other things preached from the pulpits that radicalize and are the precursors to push Muslims down the pathway of radicalization.

These conversations will not be able to be had if M-103 is implemented, which talks about Islamophobia, because then they will see any discussion of Islamism or political Islam, which is theocratic Islam, which I think every American could understand, as our country was founded on fighting theocracy. I think the west understands this battle. It is just that Islam is a few hundred years behind, being only in our 15th century.

My recommendations to you are, first, to address any bigotry and racism equally across faith and racial communities, without a disproportionate focus on Muslims.

Second, do not use the term “Islamophobia”, please do not use it.

Third, the best way to melt away any bigotry that exists against Muslims is to have us given platforms to counter Jihadism and Salafism so that Canadians can see us leading the battle and how much of an asset we are to countering the threat. That will do so much more to counter the so-called Islamophobia or bigotry to have Canadians see how vital we are.

Fourth is to have a whole-of-government approach—as it calls for—to change the language to “countering violent Islamism” rather than “countering violent extremism”, and to include a broad spectrum when you talk about diversity in our community, to include reformists and those who push against the old mantras that have been fossilized in our thought processes.

My last two points, as my time ends here, are to stop engaging Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups, and to understand the elephant in the room, which is the OIC governments, the Islamic theocracies across the planet that don't want the people of your country to get into the criticism of theocratic Islam.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

We now go into the second part of this hearing, which is to have a question and answer segment. This first round is a seven-minute round. The seven minutes include questions and answers, so I'm asking everybody to be as crisp and terse as you possibly can.

We begin with Mr. Breton for the Liberals.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Good afternoon everyone.

Thank you for being here today for the resumption of our study.

My first question is addressed to Mr. Mirakian.

If I understood correctly, you represent a community organization which defends the rights and represents the concerns of Armenian Canadians. Your organization promotes human rights with the public.

Since you are concerned with rights and freedoms, I'd like to ask you a question. How can the Government of Canada better protect the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

[Shahen Mirakian]

Thank you. I'm going to respond in English, because I'm more familiar with English than French.

About four years ago, the Armenian National Committee of Canada had an opportunity to reconsider its mandate. We spent a long time thinking about it. Rather than being a group that just advocated for the issues of interest to Armenian Canadians, we actually changed our mandate to say we were a grassroots human rights organization that generally advocated for human rights for all people.

One of the reasons for doing that was that, in a country like Canada, we recognize it's very important that we stand up for all the people who are subject to various forms of discrimination, racism, or had their, as you said, charter rights denied.

Obviously, we have a government, we have courts, we have all kinds of functioning to stand up for charter rights. I may sound a little airy-fairy, or have my head in the clouds, but I certainly think that education and advocacy by individuals and groups is very important to make sure we all recognize our charter rights, and we're all ready to defend them as necessary.

Some of them are fairly clear. I don't think people are going to take away my right to a fair trial or due process without a great outcry, but others are less clear and require more education and more effort to preserve.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Thank you.

Last April 3, the Armenian National Committee of Canada, the committee you chair, which also represents the Rwandan, Jewish and Ukrainian communities, published a statement in the context of the month of commemoration.

Why did the Armenian National Committee of Canada decide to make a statement last April?

[Shahen Mirakian]

Absolutely. In April 2015, the House of Commons passed motion number 587, which recognized the month of April as Genocide Remembrance, Condemnation and Prevention Month. In April 2016, we were involved in efforts to have the various communities get together to recognize that month again. Unfortunately, by the time we were organized, it was a little late.

This year, luckily, we started very early, and all the communities worked together to commemorate that very important motion that passed the House of Commons in April of 2015, and to recognize that April, in Canada, is now designated as Genocide Remembrance, Condemnation and Prevention Month.

Each of the communities have specifically been the subject of genocidal acts against them that are recognized by the Canadian government: the Ukrainian Holodomor, the Jewish Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and the Armenian genocide.

We all worked together, and that's one of the ways in which advocacy groups can work together to overcome divisions between communities. We share a common interest as Canadians, and as members of communities, we have these things recognized to prevent such systemic discrimination in the future.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Mirakian.

My next question will be for you, Mr. Kuhn. I am really not very familiar with Trinity Western University. If am I not mistaken, you said it had been the subject of religious discrimination. I did not understand what you meant by that in your statement, which you had to present in a very short period of time. Is that what you said?

[Robert Kuhn]

Yes. There are examples in my written material of graduates from Trinity Western who, because they were going to a Christian school, were targeted, so to speak. There's the matter that I referred to involving the professor who was duly qualified to apply for a job but was boycotted by the professors' union in the university to which that professor applied. The general, more well-known circumstance is when the law societies denied access to Trinity Western's proposed school of law graduates to practice law in those provinces. Those are the three examples I've provided.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have about 30 seconds left, Monsieur Breton.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Fine. I'll go back to that topic later if I have time.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

I'll go to David Anderson for the Conservatives.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank our witnesses for being with us today.

Mr. Jasser, I'd like to start with you. Can you give us a little bit of information on how you deal with radical preaching and still leave freedom of speech intact? Do you have any recommendations for us? We've heard testimony here saying that we should be limiting freedom of speech, and then others are saying absolutely not. Do you have any comments on that?

I only have seven minutes, so I'll need a quick answer.

[Dr. Zuhdi Jasser]

I would tell you absolutely not. Do not limit it. Every Middle Eastern regime is testament to the fact that when they limit free speech, they push them underground. They will still preach what they want and they won't have the antiseptic of sunlight. Just as I don't want my speech prohibited by this false banner of Islamophobia or anyone's criticism of Islam, similarly the light of day can only be shed on the radicals and we can monitor them, if they have the freedom.

As long as they're not preaching imminent violence and violence against individuals, our Supreme Court has deemed that theirs is free speech, even for the KKK, and I think most societies have shown that when you limit that speech, you actually radicalize them more.

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

Thank you.

President Kuhn, I'm wondering if you could tell me whether it's fair to force faith institutions to be defined by external sources. I think I know the answer to that question, but is it fair for religious institutions, religious faiths to be defined by external forces and sources?

[Robert Kuhn]

That's a very broad question, and I'm not sure that it can be answered in definitive terms without a specific example. In some respects, the organization must be defined by external, societal circumstances; in other respects, as I indicated, the duty to accommodate reflects a balancing between the interests of the external regulating entity, whatever that defining entity may be, and the religious community itself.

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

In 2016 the Ontario court said that the Law Society of Upper Canada's decision did in fact interfere with TWU's right to religious freedom, but that the infringement was not unreasonable. From your perspective, if the courts are going to go in that direction, then what are the limits of reasonableness? Where can they come in, to either a Christian, a Muslim, or a Hindu community, and say, “Here are the guidelines. You can't go past here with your faith issues”?

[Robert Kuhn]

There is a significant amount of jurisprudence on this with respect to the balancing of rights under section 1 of the charter. The other issue is that it comes back to accommodation.

There are legal avenues that would afford a balancing of the term “reasonable”. Reasonable, as is the case with many other terms in the English language, can be much what you define it to be. What is reasonable to one person is not reasonable to another, but there are established principles, such as that of accommodation, that establish what reasonable means in given circumstances. Certainly, courts could to make the conclusion that you read from the Ontario decision as opposed to the one from the British Columbia Court of Appeal, where the issue of a liberalization of societal values generally impinges on the religious views of an organization or a community such as Trinity Western.

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

Is this religious discrimination that you are facing systemic, or do you think it is going to become systemic? Our motion talks about “systemic discrimination”. I'm wondering, from your perspective, if this is systemic or not. If so, is it going in that direction?

[Robert Kuhn]

I'm of the view that it continues to gain strength and in a systemic way, because of the way in which multiple aspects of society have now taken up the terminology that is ill-defined, such as “inclusivity”, which, if it doesn't include religious organizations, isn't itself inclusivity. Inclusivity is used in a language that is ill-defined and creates a potential for a hierarchy of rights and hierarchy of views.

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

We had testimony last week from one of our witnesses that basically came to the point of saying that if religious feelings are hurt, that is going too far. In terms of Islam, that would be Islamophobic. If someone feels they have been offended, then the person who has offended them is Islamophobic.

Do you believe we can take things that far? What is the difference between protecting religious freedom and then protecting religious sentiment? In other countries, there are laws protecting religious sentiment that end up in a bad place.

Do you have any thoughts about that? How do we protect religious freedoms at a time when people's feelings seem to be as important as any other factor?