Canadian Heritage Committee on Dec. 4th, 2024

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

How do you see us moving forward? We are seeing more hatred and more discrimination because of these right-wing groups getting pushed and encouraged by people who are.... Some colleagues of mine—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 30 seconds.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

How can we fight against that?

[Didi Dufresne]

I think there can be limits. Obviously, we have limits to speech. That's an accepted principle, doctrinally.

Additionally, I am also very concerned with limits on people's gender expression, particularly with youth. We see this happening in province after province. Alberta today announced a potential ban on children using the gender of their choice.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Then theories such as the great replacement theory would hurt interracial marriages.

[Didi Dufresne]

Yes, that's correct.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

How would those interracial marriages and people from different communities and religions be perceived?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Go ahead. I've let others go over time, so I'll give you 15 seconds to answer, Ms. Dufresne.

[Didi Dufresne]

Yes, I take the member's point that all of these are inextricably linked. I think we've heard from another witness that an intersectional approach is crucial to understanding different points of view.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Thank you so much, Ms. Dufresne. Thank you for the work you're doing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Ms. Dhillon.

Now I go to Monsieur Champoux for two and a half minutes, please.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to put my questions, once again, to the representatives of the Chaire de recherche France-Québec sur les enjeux contemporains de la liberté d'expression.

I want to talk about the heightened sensitivities seen in recent years. The phenomenon exists all across society.

I'm thinking of the sensitivities that have led, for example, to banning books on a variety of subjects, whether in academia or the artistic community. People even went so far as to cancel university professors' and CEGEP teachers' projects. That concerns me, and I am not the only one.

Do you think that has a significant impact on society? Can the artistic community, the academic community and society at large repair the damage caused by this trend?

My question is for any of the three representatives.

[Maryse Potvin]

In our brief, we talk about the role of social media and the media overall. They may exacerbate the effects of certain types of disinformation, cyber-bullying, fake news and so forth. Obviously, all of that has an impact on scientific data, knowledge and scientific research.

What Mr. Gaudreau‑DesBiens may not have had time to say earlier is that we also recommend establishing much stricter regulatory frameworks that impose obligations on digital platforms. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner or the Competition Bureau could be granted powers to oversee that. Alternatively, an independent dedicated authority could be created to monitor the platforms. A number of options are possible.

In addition, we made recommendations to address social media concerns. As we point out, social media environments build and amplify echo chambers and disinformation, which has repercussions for science and knowledge.

We also recommended that the government put much stricter safeguards in place to protect science. This would involve recognizing institutions of knowledge, including those under provincial jurisdiction such as universities, to give them greater protection overall. I'm talking about the Government of Canada and the Parliament of Canada recognizing science and institutions of knowledge as essential components of Canada's constitutional democracy.

In countries such as Germany, science, knowledge and scientific freedom are constitutionally protected.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you. I'm going to have to cut you off here.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Sorry, Ms. Potvin, but I have a limited amount of time.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I'm going to go to Ms. Ashton.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Thank you very much.

I'd like to go back to Ms. Majid.

I know you referenced it in your opening statement, and we got to it in the first round of questions. How important is it for the anti-racism strategy put forward by the government to include a definition of anti-Palestinian racism? As you pointed out, there is one that's globally agreed upon. How important is it for the strategy itself to include that definition within it?

[Dania Majid]

Yes, what would be really important is, first, the recognition of anti-Palestinian racism, and then the definition that will help illustrate what we mean by that. By having it in there, it signals to Canadians that this is a distinct and serious form of racism that is being experienced by a broad range of Canadians.

Again, in her report, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression talks about that global repression around Palestinian rights and expression. This isn't the first report from the UN warning about this global repression of Palestinian rights.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

I have a point of order, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Excuse me for a minute. I have Monsieur Champoux.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Madam Chair, could you ask the witness to raise her microphone so that it's not quite so close to her mouth? We can hear noise, and it's making things difficult for the interpreter.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

I would ask the witness to please move her microphone up a bit.

We'll see how that helps, because we are not hearing you. Your breathing is intervening. I know that we would like you to continue breathing, but let's not have it intervene.

Thank you.

[Dania Majid]

I'm very sorry about that. This is the first time I've used this headset.

Having that recognition there will help us address the anti-Palestinian racism that does exist systemically and ensure that our freedom of expression is upheld, as it is for other Canadians.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Thank you very much, Ms. Majid. There's no reason to apologize. We're very grateful that we're here and hearing from you.

I want to go back to the question of the chilling effect. We're talking about what the ICJ has referred to as a plausible genocide happening in Gaza and, obviously, we know as well about the bombing of Lebanon that has occurred over the last number of weeks. We also know that Canada is complicit in terms of both the arms trade and financial transfers, and of course, through the political cover that Canada has given to Netanyahu's regime.

I'm wondering, when we're talking about hundreds of thousands of Canadians speaking out, coming out on the streets and sharing on social media, how deeply troubling it is that there's a chilling effect in a country like Canada, where we claim to uphold human rights in a vivid democracy and in democratic debate, including on foreign policy. How problematic is this chilling effect?

[Dania Majid]

It demonstrates that we have a discriminatory practice around rights and that rights are not fully enjoyed equally among Canadians.

The second ICJ decision also recognized that Israel was practising or conducting an illegal occupation and apartheid of Palestinian land as well. Palestinians have the right to speak out about these systemic and long-standing atrocities and violations of international law. By curbing our expression...and it's being curbed in such a way that we have reports or we've been informed of people who have been fired for simply posting “ceasefire now” on their social media pages—