Justice Committee on May 27th, 2024

[Gabriel Miller]

First, it's very clear that being able to define anti-Semitism is critical to being able to identify and address it. We've heard very clearly from Jewish leaders, students and faculty that our universities need to have the tools to clearly define and identify anti-Semitism, so we can be more effective in addressing it.

The question around IHRA is one of the most important topics that have been discussed by this group. There are two things that I think are very encouraging in this area.

First is the work by Deborah Lyons, the special envoy who is working on resources to address questions about how to use IHRA, because there are some important questions we have to answer so that we can bring everyone along in the use of this very valuable tool.

Second is the work of the Network of Engaged Canadian Academics, who appeared before this committee and have done very good work in demonstrating the value of that tool, underlining the fact that it is non-binding and that it can be very useful to institutions in academia and outside of academia in fighting anti-Semitism.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Why is the IHRA definition important as opposed to some of the other competing definitions, which maybe don't tie anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism?

[Gabriel Miller]

Let's let Mr. Sandler answer that.

[Mark Sandler]

The reason it is of critical importance is that anti-Semitism is a cancer and it metastasizes in different ways through IHRA. What are we dealing with now? We are dealing with anti-Semitism in the form of anti-Zionism.

I won't give the whole history lesson, but there's a well-documented history of Zionism as racism, which started in Russia and was propagandized. We've been fighting that for years, because it involves a distortion of Zionism.

Zionism is nothing more or less than the right of Jews to have a homeland. It has nothing more to say about that, other than our right of self-determination. Also, it's not inconsistent with Palestinian self-determination, for example, in a two-state solution.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

Thank you.

[Mark Sandler]

I'm sorry I went on too long, but to answer your question, if that definition is not utilized and we exclude anti-Zionism as part of the anti-Semitic picture, then we're not addressing the current form of anti-Semitism that's prevailing on campuses and at schools.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

It's over to you, Madam Dabrusin, please, for five minutes.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you to all the witnesses.

I'll start with you, Mr. Miller.

I have to say that one of the challenges I'm facing today is that there's a gap between what the students told us at the press conference, what the students told us here in their testimony and what you're saying, which are very nice words. They're very reassuring. However, there seems to be a disconnect between what they're experiencing and what you're saying on behalf of universities.

Maybe I'll start with this point. When the special envoy, Deborah Lyons, came to speak here, she said, “we have not had our brains shrunk, either by COVID or by social media. We are capable of holding two thoughts in our [brain].... It is possible to be pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian at the same time. Canadians have that capacity.”

As universities, you are there to help foster respectful dialogue and disagreement.

What are the universities doing to actually broach that problem? Right now, we're hearing that it's not respectful on campuses.

[Gabriel Miller]

Through you, Madam Chair, I appreciate the question.

There's no question there's a huge amount of work here to do. I do want to address your point about any kind of gap between what you're hearing from me and what students have said, because that's certainly unintentional.

My message to the students who have appeared here is, “We hear you, and we understand that the experiences you've had are very real and that we have a lot of work to do to address this situation and improve things.”

Universities are committed to doing that work. Every day on university campuses, people engage in constructive, respectful dialogue around very difficult issues, but we are seeing some very important examples of us falling short—

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I'm sorry, but I don't have much time.

What we're hearing is that it's not respectful. People can have very strongly held positions and disagree, but the expression of it.... I would think the universities' main role should be in helping model how we have these conversations.

[Gabriel Miller]

I agree. We have a special and particular responsibility in our society to be a place where respectful, open dialogue occurs.

Picking up on some of what Mr. Sandler said, perhaps in a different context, we're seeing universities' ability to do that challenged, and we need to up our game. We need to educate ourselves and to do a better job of modelling that in a new world where anti-Semitism has morphed into new forms.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you.

Anti-Semitism isn't new—we've been hearing that—and the history of anti-Semitism at universities isn't new. In fact, in our next panel, we will have several universities sitting here who had quotas on the number of Jewish people who could attend certain programs or be in their universities.

Do you have an inventory of which universities had that systemic anti-Semitism baked into their policies? Is that not something that needs to be addressed going forward?

[Gabriel Miller]

It's an excellent suggestion.

What we have is a very good picture of the general situation that existed in Canada.

Your point is one that I think has been under-discussed, which is that this country was saturated in anti-Semitism right up until the 1960s. One of the contributions that universities had to make first was confronting their own anti-Semitism, which was deep and severe, but also opening the doors to scholars like Irving Abella, who helped document that anti-Semitism and its causes. That's a huge part of the contribution our institutions need to make going forward.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I don't have much time.

You talked about sharing best practices and conversations with universities in the U.K. and the United States. Can you submit to us what those best practices might be? That would be helpful.

Mr. Sandler, I'm not giving you much time, but I know you put in a letter trying to foster that respectful dialogue. Can you tell us a bit about that work and how we can do better?

[Mark Sandler]

Sure. This was built upon an initiative that was started by the University of Ottawa faculty of law's Muslim and Jewish law associations.

I built on that, and we've created a national respectful dialogue initiative that 2,500 members of the legal community have signed on to. The idea is that we're now operationalizing that, so we will have respectful dialogues on our campuses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

You have seven seconds.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

You said you were having future conversations as part of that respectful dialogue. Can you please submit anything that you're doing so that we can also—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Fortin, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Miller, I'll turn to you.

Of course, we understand the intention to combat antisemitism. Hate speech is unacceptable in Canada. But we also know that there are values we hold dear, such as freedom of opinion and expression. These values are in conflict in situations like the one we are discussing now.

How can we strike a balance between freedom of opinion and expression and the fight against hate speech in the public arena?

[Gabriel Miller]

Thank you very much for that important question.

The point I would make on this is that we often talk about academic freedom and freedom of expression as being in balance with the need for respect and for preventing discrimination, but I think it's also important to see how much these complement each other.

The message we've been hearing in talking to Jewish students and scholars is that one of the consequences of not equally applying codes of conduct and other policies is that it deprives them of their academic freedom and their proper freedom of expression. That's when a university in our society begins to really experience difficulties, because it's premised on all people having those freedoms.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Sandler, what would be your answer to that question, in about 20 seconds?

[Mark Sandler]

I've provided you an article that I wrote on the distinction between protected speech and hate speech.

I want to say simply that there are clear demarcations between the two. The example that I usually give is that, if someone wants to criticize Israel's policies, its practices, the conduct of its government and so on and so forth, that's contemplated by the IHRA definition as not being anti-Semitic. A democracy should welcome that.

I can tell you as a member of the Jewish community that I've been sharply critical of the Israeli government where it's appropriate. The difference is when one says that all Zionists are racist, all Zionists are evil, and Israel should be wiped off the map. That transcends protected speech, and now we're in the realm of hate speech.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Sandler.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

Thank you very much.

The final two and a half minutes go to Mr. Garrison, please.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I had some different ideas about where I was going to go this morning, but I want to go back to Mr. Sandler.

Stepping away from the narrow university context, what we see is a failure to prosecute hate crimes generally when it comes to anti-Semitic hate crimes. I wonder whether you would speculate—it's not the right word—about why we see that failure. Is there a fault in the law, or is it something more pervasive than a fault in the law where we don't see prosecutions that we might see if another group were involved?