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.