Honourable members of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, thank you for giving the Muslim Canadian Congress the opportunity to speak on a matter that affects many members of our community and has contributed to the rise of gender apartheid within many Muslim households.
We are deeply concerned that despite the advances made in ensuring gender equality in mainstream Canadian society, the values have not filtered down and at times have not been embraced by new Canadians who migrate here with deep-seated beliefs in the second-class status of women in society.
We are glad that your committee is looking into ways to rectify this situation. In view of this question, we have the following recommendations.
To ensure that sponsored spouses have the skills they need to succeed in Canada, it is imperative that they possess a working knowledge of one of Canada's official languages. It is our experience that spouses who arrive in Canada without the ability to speak either English or French find it very difficult to be productive members of society and therefore live at home at the mercy of their spouses.
In order to better prevent vulnerable women from being victimized by abusive sponsors, we recommend that each arriving spouse be properly debriefed as a new immigrant about their rights and duties, and about Canadian values. This would ideally be handled by government agencies. We strongly recommend that the government facilitate the creation of a volunteer network of second-generation Canadian women and not fall into the trap of creating NGOs or paid groups.
To ensure that vulnerable spouses are protected and have the skills they need to succeed independently, it is crucial that they have the necessary language skills, the social network, and a knowledge of their individual human rights.
If these prerequisites are not met, the task of protecting newly arrived spouses from abuse will become difficult.
With regard to forced marriages, forced marriage is a violation of fundamental rights and the right to self-determination. One of the under-reported tragedies of Canada's spousal sponsorship scheme is the issue of forced marriages of Canadian girls and young women by their parents, as was witnessed in the recent honour killing of Toronto's Shaher Bano Shahdady, who was murdered by her husband after being brought here following a forced marriage by her parents.
According to the report of the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario, which questioned 30 different social services agencies and found 219 cases of forced marriages between 2010 and 2012, parents, siblings, extended family, grandparents, and religious leaders were all involved in pushing individuals into forced marriage. In 66% of cases. there were cultural reasons, but honour, money, and immigration purposes were also behind some forced marriages.
Young girls are taken away from Canada by their parents under the excuse of a visit back home and are forced to marry cousins who are later sponsored to come to Canada. We recommend that in all such sponsorships, the young woman involved be interviewed in private and away from her parents or siblings to determine whether the marriage was forced on her against her will.
We recommend that forced marriage be considered a criminal offence for which the person responsible for such a conspiracy must face jail time.
The U.K. has established special units to provide a 24-hour hotline to the victims of forced marriages, and the UN has also taken initiatives to stop forced marriages.
On polygamy, we are concerned that despite polygamy being a criminal offence, it is gathering acceptance, mainly in Canada's Muslim community. The law is being blatantly ignored, with serious consequences for the second and in some cases third wives who come to Canada as maids and house workers.
Unless these men who are carrying out this medieval practice and flouting the law are brought to justice and convicted, this trend will gain strength and validation from the clerics in our mosques, who have already given their nod of approval to this horrendous practice.
Thank you.