Mr. McKinnon has kindly given me his time, so thank you, Mr. McKinnon.
Thank you, to all of you, for being here. It's a very important issue. I know many of you have been speaking out about this issue for some time and your expertise is very well received.
Mr. Herman, I was taken by the statistics you started out with, about a 16.5% rise in incidents in Canada and 80% of incidents being online, as well as one of your opening comments that we need to collect more data.
I think there is absolute agreement from all parliamentarians in terms of what we've done thus far. The budget a year ago provided $6.5 million to the Centre for Diversity and Inclusion so we can start collecting disaggregated data to do just that.
I have about four questions, so could you keep your responses somewhat brief?
We've also heard that people are more likely to come forward to people they trust. Are state actors the best entities to collect the data, or should we be relying more significantly on Jewish groups, Muslim groups, black groups, indigenous groups, and so on, that have the trust of their constituents who are experiencing these types of hatred?