Evidence of meeting #146 for Justice and Human Rights in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was community.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:40 a.m.
The Clerk of the Committee Mr. Marc-Olivier Girard
Certainly, Mr. Chair.
The budget will allow the committee to reimburse the witnesses appearing as part of the current study on online hate.
9:40 a.m.
The Clerk
It's $39,650. The estimates are based on the list of priorites provided by the political parties.
9:40 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you, Mr. MacKenzie.
Does everyone agree to adopt the $39,600 budget for the online hate study?
9:40 a.m.
Some hon. members
Agreed.
9:40 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you very much.
It's now a pleasure to be joined today by the Ghanaian-Canadian Association of Ontario. We're joined by Mr. Emmanuel Duodu who is the Executive Secretary. He is coming to us from Etobicoke. Welcome, Mr. Duodu. From S.U.C.C.E.S.S., we have Ms. Queenie Choo, the Chief Executive Officer who is coming to us from Vancouver. Welcome, Ms. Choo.
We're going to start, if it's okay, with the Ghanaian-Canadian Association of Ontario. Then we will move to S.U.C.C.E.S.S.
If the World Sikh Organization of Canada joins us, we'll move to them.
You have eight minutes, Mr. Duodu. The floor is yours.
9:40 a.m.
Emmanuel Duodu President, Ghanaian-Canadian Association of Ontario
Good morning, everyone. My name is Emmanuel Duodu. I'm the President of the Ghanaian-Canadian Association of Ontario.
Our organization has been in existence for quite some time. Just so you're aware, the Ghanaian community started coming to Canada sometime in the late 1970s. We got here and we built a very strong community throughout the country. We have a lot of our people here in Ontario.
I think with that came a lot of great things. We are very grateful as a community for the great country we are in here in Canada. We are certainly grateful for what we've been able to accomplish due to the inclusivity of this great Canadian community.
With all this, I think we are all very much aware of what is happening lately. For me as an African, I can always say that what happened in Rwanda is a classic case of hate. At that time it wasn't online hate. It was just a group of people saying that these are the groups that are the cause of people's problems. That was between the Tutsis and the Hutus. That led to about 1.5 million people being killed. It just started with that information, with a few people saying on radio that these Tutsis are the cause of the problems, and that led to about 1.5 million people dead, killed in a very brutal way.
Today, for me as a first-generation immigrant in this country, I would be doing myself a great disservice if I stand aloof when hate crimes are going on against people, especially the Jewish community, which I've seen lately. We have the evidence of that.
For me to say that a lot is happening to the Jewish community, and therefore, as a Ghanaian, as an immigrant, it's not close to my community, would be doing an injustice to something that can happen to anyone.
I feel strongly that, as a community, we have resolved that we are not going to stand for any online hate of any sort to any group at all. We have a lot of young people. Seventy per cent of our population is young people, and they are always online. The question is what we can do, or what we are doing, to make sure these young people will not stand indifferent to what is happening as far as hate crimes are concerned.
It's happening everywhere. I can attest to that. A month ago, we had someone from our community named principal of a reputable university, the first black to have that role. Guess what. The following day, there was graffiti saying that blacks are not welcome. This is someone who had been made a principal, or call him a chancellor. There was a desecration saying that blacks are not welcome on the campus.
These are some of the things happening. I feel that we want Parliament to do something to make sure we can combat online hate. We know what happened in Pennsylvania. Just last week, we know what happened in California. A lot of these things sometimes even go unreported.
As a community, as the Ghanaian community, we have resolved strongly that we want to make sure we partner within the group, so we can work with Parliament to make sure we can stamp out this menace that is going on throughout the world and is online. It's subtle, and in fact, the conduit to every house is through the Internet. You couldn't get this information out 20 or 30 years ago. Trust me, fake news is gaining strength every day. We know how it can destroy people. It can lead to young people even being abused, so the ramifications are huge.
I'm here this morning to testify that we as a community are here, arm in arm, with other groups. We've especially been working with CIJA, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. In our community too, we've been doing a lot of things to educate our people.
This morning I'm here to let you know that we want strong legislation to make sure we can stamp out this menace happening in the world.
This is my closing comment.
Thank you.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you very much.
Now we'll go to Ms. Choo.
Ms. Choo, the floor is yours. Please go ahead.
9:45 a.m.
Queenie Choo Chief Executive Officer, S.U.C.C.E.S.S.
Thank you so much for inviting S.U.C.C.E.S.S. to present before you today. We believe that this is an important topic of the study and we are honoured to provide our perspective.
To provide you with some context, for those people who are not familiar with S.U.C.C.E.S.S., we are one of the largest immigrant and refugee-serving agencies in Canada. We have 46 years of history. We provide a broad range of settlement and social services to more than 61,800 clients every year. Our clients come from diverse backgrounds and have unique settlement experiences in Canada. As such, my presentation today comes from the perspective of a settlement service provider for newcomers to Canada.
We believe that all forms of hate, including online hate, increase the exclusion, isolation and marginalization of members of our community. It is an attack to our values of being welcoming, open and inclusive, as well as to the safety of our communities, and it has no place whatsoever.
Online technology, which brings tremendous benefits in promoting knowledge and in sharing and facilitating connections, is being used to spread the messages of hate and to radicalize people. Online hate is touching many members of our community. I recall seeing statistics earlier this year from a national survey conducted by the Association for Canadian Studies. The survey found that almost 60% of Canadians have seen some form of hate speech posted on social media. We believe that strategies to combat online hate must consider the experience of newcomers, who also are significant users of digital technology as well as often the recipients of hate.
In our experiences with newcomers directly and through our work in community development, we find that many newcomers may not feel comfortable reporting any form of crime, let alone online hate, for various reasons. For example, they might feel that their engaging with enforcement in any way—even if it is a reportable crime—may jeopardize their citizenship application or PR status. They may not trust the police, or they may not understand what constitutes hate speech and not know that it is something that is reportable. They may believe that if hate speech is in a non-official language, it does not count as a crime in Canada and local law enforcement will not take it seriously. Some do not understand the process of reporting online hate and what happens afterwards. They may not believe that reporting it may make a difference, or they may feel that they are just causing problems by reporting a hate crime, especially if it is being perpetrated by a member of their own community.
While these issues are not unique to newcomers, they are often the barriers that prevent newcomers from reporting hate crimes. We believe that a national strategy to combat online hate is needed.
One of the first steps is to ensure broad and inclusive engagement across Canada, including population groups that tend to be under-represented when doing consultations—including newcomers—in order to understand their experiences with online hate. We need to ensure that the process is as accessible and inclusive as possible to engage diverse groups and that there is a safe space for more vulnerable people and groups to express their experiences.
For example, for newcomers, this cannot be just hiring interpreters to run several focus groups with newcomers. Instead, there need to be consultations, starting with the design process, to ensure that diverse newcomers are engaged and included in a meaningful way.
However, it is not enough to do consultation or make legal amendments. Laws around online hate need to be communicated to the community using language that is accessible and inclusive. The definition of what constitutes online hate versus offensive material needs to be clear.
All community members, not just the legal community or subject experts, need to understand what is online hate and how hate can show up online, whether it be under the guise of educational material or news; how to make a report; and what happens after reporting a hate crime. If the community does not understand the definition and process, they will be reluctant to intervene or make a report.
We also need to be better at tracking online hate experienced by different population groups, including newcomers. There needs to be a clearer definition and standardization of data collection and reporting so that there is more reliable data on the prevalence of online hate. We also need to do more community research to understand the prevalence of unreported hate crimes, as well as to understand which community groups tend not to report hate crimes and the barriers to doing so.
Open communication about the existence and prevalence of hate is also important, not only about the experience of hate against certain communities but also about how we all have a responsibility to do something if we see someone in our community disseminating messages of hate.
Online hate is something that can spread wide and fast, very quickly and easily. While we believe social media companies, law enforcement and policy-makers all have key roles to play, it is also the responsibility of all community members to take some type of action when they see online hate. We need to better educate community members on how to be allies and how to respond appropriately in this situation to ensure safety and promote reporting.
Education is particularly important to engage newcomer youth. They have unique and complex experiences and pressures. They have challenges in navigating a new social reality and have limited trust in authority figures, as well as feelings of being powerless and hopeless.
Dr. Ratna Ghosh, from McGill University, is currently doing important research about education as a form of soft power and a critical prevention tool in countering violent extremism, by supporting youth to develop values, skills, behaviours and norms that promote security and resilience. However, most community education and resources about hate crimes in Canada are created for the mainstream community and tend only to be available in English and French. We need to create linguistically and culturally inclusive engagement strategies and resources to engage diverse communities, including newcomers. At the same time, there needs to be more support to newcomers to enhance their media awareness and learn now to critically engage with media in order to assess information and news online in terms of whether it is credible or designated to incite hate.
We also need to build community resilience against hate by fostering diversity and inclusion. This includes building greater connection with communities, whether they are faith-based, ethno-cultural, indigenous, language-based, LGBTQ2S+, and so on, in order to foster greater intercultural awareness and understanding, break down the fear of others and understand how our experiences are similar. These connections strengthen our communities so that we will stand up and be each other's allies in combatting hate.
Of course, meaningful action to combat online hate must come with an adequate level of resources. There must be sustainable funding investments across Canada into community outreach, education, training, reporting, prevention and enforcement dedicated to combatting online hate.
Thank you again for providing the opportunity to share our perspective with you today.
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you very much, Ms. Choo.
We've been joined by Mr. Mukhbir Singh, who is the president of the World Sikh Organization of Canada.
Mr. Singh, the floor is yours for eight minutes.
9:55 a.m.
Mukhbir Singh President, World Sikh Organization of Canada
Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the invitation to speak to you this morning on behalf of the World Sikh Organization of Canada. We are a non-profit human rights organization established in 1984 with a mandate to promote and protect the interests of Canadian Sikhs, as well as to promote and advocate for the protection of human rights for all individuals.
Unfortunately, instances of hatred and violence are not new for the Sikh community. Sikhs are a minority around the world in every country in which Sikhs reside. This minority status, combined with an outward identity that is intended to stand out, has often made Sikhs a target of those motivated by hate and intolerance.
Just last week in Surrey, British Columbia, a man was arrested for public incitement of hatred following a Facebook comment in response to a news story about the record-breaking number of people who attended the Surrey Vaisakhi parade. Vaisakhi is one of the most important celebrations for Sikhs around the world, and the Vaisakhi parade in Surrey attracts hundreds of thousands of people from all communities and walks of life. The individual who was charged had commented that the failure to place a pressure-cooker bomb at the parade was a lost opportunity.
This was not the first time that a threat such as this was directed at the Sikh community. There have been a number of instances in which individuals on Facebook have threatened to attack areas such as Brampton and Vancouver due to their relatively high concentration of Sikhs. Though attacks such as this have not occurred here in Canada, six Sikhs lost their lives to a white supremacist shooter in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, in 2012.
With other attacks, similar posts on social media indicating a desire to harm a specific community have often been made just days or minutes before an attack is carried out. There is no doubt that in today's world social media is a primary tool chosen for spreading ideas and gaining support. Not only is information transmitted online not hindered by territorial boundaries but its origin also can be difficult to trace. In other words, the Internet allows individuals the opportunity to make hateful comments, undermining people's safety and security, all while hiding behind a veil of anonymity. This problem is compounded by the fact that social media sites such as Facebook attract millions of users and allow individuals to create private groups, effectively evading detection by users who are not members of that group.
Moreover, it is often the youth who are disproportionately impacted by the presence of hate-filled messaging online. This is due not only to the percentage of youth who use social media platforms on a daily basis but also to the vulnerability of young people, who are already faced with bullying at school and other forms of discrimination due to their Sikh identity.
In 2011 we undertook our first survey of over 300 students in the Peel region of Ontario and found that over 40% of them reported being bullied as a result of their Sikh identity. Allowing hate to be promoted online without consequences creates a situation in which many young people struggle to find a safe space to express themselves and grow, as they are faced with discriminatory and threatening behaviour both online and at school.
As an organization, we support the right of all individuals to exercise their freedom of expression, but we also recognize that there are instances in which expression may be used to threaten the most marginalized members of our society. We believe that an appropriate approach to curbing online hate would include a proper balancing of freedom of expression and the safety and security of those who are targets of hate speech. The creation of such an approach would benefit from consultation with stakeholders as well as social media providers, as they're able to provide a unique perspective on the issue.
Working alongside social media providers such as Facebook would allow the Canadian government to make better use of its resources and to address the challenge posed by the sheer number of people using these platforms. Indeed, Facebook has already shown its willingness to respond to the threat of online hate by banning prominent far-right groups in Canada from using its services.
We also support the establishment of uniform national guidelines and standards for the collection and handling of hate crime and hate incident data in Canada. We believe that the government must play a role to counter the proliferation of online hate material. It cannot be left up to private actors to voluntarily remove this material.
It will be useful to study Germany's network enforcement law act, given its inclusion of penalties for companies that fail to properly apply laws regarding the removal of hateful content. We also believe that law enforcement, provincial attorneys general and prosecutors must be provided with training and support to use the tools available to them under the Criminal Code, such as those in section 320.1. This section has not been used very often to date.
Finally, we recommend that one of the best ways to combat hate, online or otherwise, is to promote dialogue and engagement. Oftentimes, this hate is born out of ignorance or misunderstanding, and it may be prevented through community engagement and outreach. The World Sikh Organization has put on a number of events, such as Turban Eh!, in order to educate people about the Sikh faith so that we can build positive relationships and promote dialogue.
The government must also play a role by regularly engaging with community organizations and by hearing their concerns about what they are seeing on the ground. The proliferation of online hate and the link to actual attacks is worrisome. Canada must act to counter this threat with a meaningful and effective strategy. We hope that through co-operation with social media providers and government agencies, as well as increased dialogue and engagement, the danger that online hate poses to vulnerable groups can be mitigated.
Thank you so much.
10 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you very much.
We'll now move to questions, starting with Mr. MacKenzie.
May 2nd, 2019 / 10 a.m.
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses who are appearing before us today. I think we all recognize the importance of what this is all about. We've sat here and listened to a lot of providers, and one of the things that have come through clearly to me is that somehow we need to find a way to get all of the groups together and to sit around the same table. Probably we could have a solution amongst the groups that have presented before us—as opposed to us, who bring all of our prejudice to what we hear from you.
Having said that—
10:05 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
I'm sorry. Unfortunately, we have bells, which means we have a vote in 30 minutes.
I will need unanimous consent to continue.
10:05 a.m.
Conservative
10:05 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
No, there's a vote in 29 minutes and 41 seconds.
Can I make the suggestion that each party take three minutes for questions? We'll do one question from each party and then we'll go to the House.
Sorry, Mr. MacKenzie. Please continue.
10:05 a.m.
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
Okay.
Having said what I already said, does that occur now? Do all of the groups get together, sit around the same table and come up with some suggestions on how we work towards this end?
Ms. Choo, maybe you'd like to start.
10:05 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, S.U.C.C.E.S.S.
That's a very good question.
I think if it is done, it isn't done enough. In my presentation, I talked about creating dialogue and community engagement among particularly those people who are under-represented. Those are newcomers in particular. Those are the people in the community who usually do not have a voice. The faith-based and the language groups, the ethnocultural, indigenous people, LGBTQ2S—they are not the people who are usually asked to come to the table to talk about this.
I am really in support of this. I am very encouraged that the issue is being raised about engaging the community to create this dialogue. People would be allies and support one other and would be able to combat online hate or hate crimes collectively.
10:05 a.m.
Conservative
10:05 a.m.
President, Ghanaian-Canadian Association of Ontario
I would just support what Ms. Choo said. I totally agree that when we are trying to combat something of this nature and on that scale, it makes sense for all of us to be at the table. We can have some shared experiences and we can come up with some solutions that cut across all associations or organizations. I totally support that approach, because by so doing, I think the policies or initiatives would come from the ground up. That's when you get people collaborating and coming up with solutions. Yes, I totally support that.
10:05 a.m.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Considering I have only three minutes, I'll get right to it.
Mr. Duodu, in your testimony you talked about how we need to have stronger legislation to combat online hate. We've heard elsewhere, through briefs as well our research and the stats that we see, that the enforcement piece of it is the real big challenge.
Ms. Choo, Mr. Singh and Mr. Duodu, perhaps I could ask you to comment on what you think legislation would look like that would also have a stronger impact in deterring online hate.
10:05 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, S.U.C.C.E.S.S.
As I mentioned before, I think the legislation needs to take the following into consideration: defining what a hate crime is and how to report it, what happens after the reporting, and what people actually need to do when reporting a hate crime.
For the education piece, the training piece, make sure people understand it, because even though in some jurisdictions there is a reporting mechanism, it's not widely known to people. Resources need to be put into education and training. Make this a known priority to people and the communities. It would help combat hate and online hate in the long run.