Justice Committee on June 10th, 2024

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

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

Thank you very much.

With 30 seconds left, I will take the liberty of asking Madam Elghawaby a question.

What relationship is there between your office and the office of Deborah Lyons? Does the work overlap at all? Can you please comment on that and tell us what this government has done in the last couple of years?

I know it's a large question, but I'll give you two minutes, please.

[Amira Elghawaby]

Thank you so much, Madam Chair, for the question.

First, in terms of the relationship of my office with the Office of the Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, Deborah Lyons and I are in regular contact. Both of us are extremely seized with and saddened by the rise in hate that is impacting our communities across the country. We are constantly wondering and questioning and looking for examples within our very own communities of where people are already coming together.

For instance, here in Ottawa a Muslim educator and a local rabbi, even before October 7 in the fall, are giving presentations in schools in order to demystify, and to address and combat stereotypes and narratives about, their communities. I think it's looking for those opportunities to highlight where people are working together. Even before this fall I had met with members of Jewish Family Services of Ottawa. They have a very diverse staff that includes many Muslim staff as well.

The examples that exist already in our communities are quite broad. In that vein, the federal government just this weekend introduced its anti-racism strategy for the next four years. This is a strategy that really builds on past strategies to address and combat hate and racism against any community in this country, with a lot of investments in community initiatives.

There is one thing that I would leave with this committee. Again, it's not up to government to fix this. It really is up to communities themselves, but we need to give them that support. We need to support leaders and community organizations that are already doing the work, and that need help to do it, with financial support and otherwise.

At the end of the day, Canadians understand that we need each other. We need each other to succeed. We need each other to support the vision of a country where everyone feels included. The federal government has invested quite heavily in these sorts of initiatives and will continue to do so, I hope.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

Thank you very much. You're at exactly two minutes.

With that, I want to thank the witnesses for appearing on our first panel. If there's anything that you believe you did not get a chance to respond to, please send it to us.

Thank you very much.

We will suspend while the next panel gets set up.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

We're resuming the meeting.

Members, please take your seats. I am told that we are ready to start with our second panel.

Again, for the benefit of our new witnesses who are appearing virtually or in person, please ensure that you have selected the language of your choice, because we have members who will be asking questions in French and other members who will be asking questions in English.

You can answer in English or in French.

Make sure that you have those devices already set, and we will keep to our time.

Welcome to our meeting.

I want to welcome our witnesses for the second panel.

In person, we have Husein Panju, chair of the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association, and Fauzia Mazhar, executive director of the Coalition of Muslim Women of Kitchener-Waterloo. By video conference, we have Abdallah Yousri, executive director of the Nova Scotia Ummah Society, and as an individual, Julie Macfarlane, emerita distinguished professor of law.

Now we will start with five minutes each to the four witnesses for opening remarks.

Please try to pay attention if you're virtual or in person. When I raise the 30-second mark, that means you have only 30 seconds. When time is up, I will raise the “time is up” sign. We have a hard stop at 30 minutes past, so we have 55 minutes remaining.

I will start with Madam Fauzia Mazhar, please, for five minutes.

[Fauzia Mazhar, Executive Director, Coalition of Muslim Women of KW]

Good morning. Assalam alaikum. Greetings of peace.

I come to you from the Haldimand tract, land that was granted to the Haudenosaunee of the Six Nations of the Grand River and within the territory of the neutral Anishinabe and Haudenosaunee peoples.

I'm here on behalf of the Coalition of Muslim Women of KW—CMW—which provides opportunities for personal and professional growth for Muslim women and youth while addressing issues of gender-based violence, racism, discrimination, Islamophobia and gendered Islamophobia through innovative programming and services, partnerships and collaboration, bridge-building and public education, and advocacy and outreach.

In April 2021 CMW launched its hate reporting, documentation and support services with seed funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage. This service, the first of its kind, was built upon a decade of CMW's work against hate, racism and Islamophobia in the Waterloo region. Now known as anti-hate services, or AHS, it provides various avenues to report and document hate and discrimination. It also provides an area of support services to the victims of hate and discrimination.

CMW releases yearly reports based on the data collected by AHS. We just released the third annual “Snapshot of Hate in Waterloo Region” report last week. The report, covering January 1 to December 31, 2023, shows a 26% increase in reported cases, with a total of 115 cases reported. Waterloo Regional Police Service, or WRPS, reported a total of 369 hate-motivated crimes in 2023, an increase of 94% from 2022; 46% of the total cases through AHS were reported between October and December 2023. When compared to the same time frame in 2022, an 83% increase in reported hate incidents and a 212% increase in Islamophobic, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian hate was noted. The AHS report documented 46 cases—which is 40%—that were motivated by Islamophobia, and 12 cases—which is 10%—that were motivated by anti-Palestinian hate.

WRPS reported a total of 67 hate-motivated crimes targeting religion; however, only two of the 67 cases are reported as directed towards Islamic identity. Forty-one per cent of the cases documented by AHS targeted individuals who self-identified as Arab, and another 26% targeted those who identified as South Asian. WRPS reported 190 race-based hate-motivated crimes, most often targeting Black individuals.

Key populations reflected in the AHS report include females and youth under the age of 24. A total of 74 cases—64%—were victimized females, and a further 38 cases—41%—were victimized youth under the age of 24. Furthermore, 69% of female and 71% of youth included Islamophobia as a reason for the incident. During an analysis of the data, a trend tying religious or cultural clothing directly to the victim's experience of hate emerged. Often, this clothing was mentioned directly in verbal hate harassment cases. Of the 115 victims, 55—48%—were wearing a hijab or a niqab, and in seven cases victims were wearing a kaffiyeh.

The AHS report fills a crucial gap in police-reported hate crimes, as you may have noticed. The trends emerging from the AHS report are important to note for this committee. Women and youth in Canadian Muslim communities are bearing the brunt of Islamophobia. They're more at risk of physical assault, verbal abuse, harassment in public spaces and educational environments, and bullying, intimidation and discrimination in workplaces and educational institutions. I hope that this esteemed committee will pay due attention to the experiences of Muslim women and youth as part of this study on Islamophobia.

It will also be important to look into the experiences of Canadian Arab and Palestinian communities to understand how Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism and anti-Palestinian racism intersect.

The report cited here is available at cmw-kw.org, under the publications tab, in English.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

Thank you very much for that.

We now go to Mr. Husein Panju, please, for up to five minutes.

[Husein Panju, Chair, Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association]

Madam Chair and honourable members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, hello, bonjour and assalam alaikum. Thank you for the opportunity to address you today.

My name is Husein Panju. I have the pleasure of serving as the national chair for the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association, also known as the CMLA. Our organization is a not-for-profit corporation that's dedicated to promoting the objectives and advocating on behalf of self-identifying members of the Muslim legal community. The CMLA consists of five provincial chapters consisting of over 400 members across the country, including professionals from all areas of the legal profession and several sitting judges. We regularly appear in appellate court matters related to human rights, and we provide legal input in government consultations just like this.

Recently, the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights adopted several elements of our testimony in its landmark report, “Combatting Hate: Islamophobia and its impact on Muslims in Canada”. This committee already heard very detailed testimony about the history of Islamophobia, including the recent high-profile incidents in Quebec City and in London, Ontario. In my submissions, I'm going to highlight the alarming rise in Islamophobia since October 7, with a focus on its impacts on local communities.

In 2018 the CMLA launched a legal clinic, known as the Muslim Legal Support Centre, which prioritizes access to justice for Muslims in Ontario. Since the conflict began, this clinic has encountered a 400% rise in intake on issues ranging from employment discrimination to improper treatment in schools. The CMLA also heard numerous concerning examples from lawyers and law students across Canada who have faced harsh and unwarranted consequences in response to legitimate speech regarding this conflict. There is a widespread fear that, if lawyers or students express political views that differ from those of their colleagues, they will face discrimination in the employment context. Furthermore, on social media, some lawyers have openly called for the establishment of blacklists of lawyers and law students who participate in pro-Palestinian activities and demonstrations, and two weeks ago a retired judge issued a 200-page review that denounced one such backlash against law students who signed a pro-Palestinian petition, which required him to publicly call for civility and respectful dialogue within the legal community.

Unfortunately, there's also been a recent rise in governmental policies that contribute to Islamophobia. These include police officers using a disproportionate amount of force and tactics on pro-Palestinian demonstrators; a provincial legislature now prohibiting elected officials from wearing the kaffiyeh in the workplace, which evokes another provincial bill banning public sector workers from wearing the hijab; and our highest court recently uninviting racialized speaking delegates, vaguely citing the speaker's social media comments regarding the same conflict. Our communities are already over-policed and underserved, and these recent decisions further embolden Islamophobic incidents on the ground.

In closing, if the government wants to address Islamophobia, it needs to take accountability and focus on three main areas. First is rebuilding trust with communities. The lack of trust is found across governmental institutions and is especially pronounced under national security, criminal justice and law enforcement departments. Second is recognizing that policies shape perceptions. Islamophobia is learned behaviour, and when governments introduce actions, language and policies that target particular groups, that often provides a licence for other Canadians to discriminate against these same communities. Third is meaningfully engaging with the Muslim community and related groups, and this includes an understanding of the intersectional forms of discrimination that include sexism and anti-Palestinian racism. These are distinct concepts that have a compounding effect that is greater than the sum of their parts, and there's an inherent need to appreciate the lived experiences of our groups when developing and implementing policies that directly affect us. Together these principles can lead to a more cohesive environment, but also to fairer policies and more defensible laws that will stand the test of challenges in our appeal courts and in the court of public opinion.

Thank you for your time. I'm happy to expand on any of these themes and any other issues that will be helpful for this committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

Thank you very much for your time.

We'll now go to Imam Abdallah Yousri, please, for five minutes.

[Abdallah Yousri, Imam and Executive Director, Ummah Society]

Good afternoon, honourable Madam Chair and honourable members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me to speak today.

My name is Abdullah Yousri. I'm the Imam and executive director of the Ummah Society. It's the largest Muslim charity in the Atlantic region.

As an imam, my role is unique. I am often the first stop for community members when hate crimes occur, and also the first stop for government officials in the same circumstances. I witnessed first-hand the impact of Islamophobia on individuals of our community. I have counselled children who are bullied in schools, women who are harassed for wearing hijabs and men who are profiled and discriminated against in workplaces and public spaces.

Since October 7, the situation has worsened significantly. I have observed a noticeable spike in Islamophobic attacks, physical assaults and verbal abuse and a disturbing rise in hate speech. There is fear everywhere in the community. There is also anger and frustration for lack of accountability towards the aggression taking place against members of the Muslim community here in Canada.

I feel the justice system has failed miserably to protect the constitutional rights of Muslim Canadians to express themselves and be themselves. In Canada, the country that celebrates all cultures, all of a sudden, the most iconic cultural item, the kaffiyeh, was banned, leaving many community members questioning their identity. More importantly, attempts to silence Canadian Muslims by threatening their livelihoods were the worst and most painful. Firing many Canadian Muslims and threatening many others in an attempt to silence them has been a shameful and horrible act that shocked thousands in our community, including our imams and community leaders.

Honourable members, I have even counselled Muslim lawyers who are fearful to utter a word or even express their pain to their colleagues while they mourn the loss of immediate family members in Gaza. Allow me to share two stories from our local community in Halifax that illustrate the personal toll of these injustices.

Yara Jamal was the only Muslim Arab woman working in the media in all the Atlantic, with CTV News. She was fired from her job immediately over alleged comments she made. The same woman was a victim of continuous bullying, harassment and discrimination for over a year in the same workplace. Despite these incidents being documented and reported, her case was ultimately neglected. I leave you to imagine the impact of such incidents on all the women and youth in our community .

Nargis DeMolitor was the only Muslim woman working in politics in Halifax. She worked for the Minister of Immigration and the PC government. She was fired immediately, as well, in a very humiliating way, over alleged comments she did not even make.

Furthermore, many imams and Muslim chaplains, like Imam Aarij Anwer and many others, were also fired from their jobs in hospitals and universities, with no legal consequences.

I can sit here and tell many untold stories to the committee. However, I watched the previous sessions held last week, and I heard honourable members asking about solutions. Here are a few measures I believe can make a difference.

At the Ummah Society, we have started providing training to local police officers, first responders, government officials, etc., about Islam and Muslim cultures, about Islamophobia and about religious and cultural sensitivities. We have seen the impact of providing this training, which has been attended by many every year, and we have seen this impact in our city. Mandating such training for government officials and making it a requirement for receiving government funding, I believe, would make a huge difference.

In Halifax, we successfully advocated for the establishment of the first hate crime unit in the Atlantic. Before that, we did not have one in the whole of Atlantic Canada. However, it is struggling to operate because of a lack of funding from the municipality. Federal support in the form of funding the hate crime units across the country would have a huge impact on reporting, counting, analyzing and protecting all community members.

Thank you for the invitation and for this great work you are doing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

Fabulous. Thank you very much. You're right on time.

For the last five minutes, please, we'll go to Madam Julie Macfarlane, professor.

[Dr. Julie Macfarlane, Emerita Distinguished Professor of Law, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker and members of the committee.

My name is Julie Macfarlane and I am an emerita distinguished professor of law.

In my presentation today, I'm going to say a few words about some research that I conducted in 2010 to 2012 and the book that I wrote as a result, which was about Muslim marriage and divorce customs in North America as practised amongst North American Muslims, both here in Canada and in the U.S.—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

I'm sorry to interrupt you, Madam Macfarlane. Can you please put the boom between your mouth and—

[Dr. Julie Macfarlane]

Oh. I'm so sorry. It fell down.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

I did stop your time, but I'll start it again. Please continue.

[Dr. Julie Macfarlane]

Thank you.

In my testimony, I'm going to say something about the work that I did in 2010 to 2012 and a bit beyond that in working with Muslim community members in Canada and in the U.S., and what I learned about Islamophobia as somebody coming very new and very ignorant to this area. I want to say a bit about events post October 7. Although I don't have empirical data, I do have some observations on that point. Finally, I have a couple of suggestions as to measures to build on my colleagues' points, which you've already heard.

When I began to study the role of Islamic laws and the ways in which North American Muslims conducted their marriages and divorces, I was doing so because all I had heard about this from the media was that it was a very bad and terrifying thing. In fact, I distinctly remember a student coming into my office one day at the university and saying to me, “I'd like to write a paper on sharia law.” I asked, “Well, what do you know about sharia law?” They said, “Well, nothing, but I know it's really bad.”

I think that was a summary, in some ways, for what I discovered over the subsequent years of my research: lots of lack of knowledge and information and lots of prejudice in a way that was truly astonishing to me. I am extremely grateful for the coaching I received from imams and members of the communities as I found my way through to do this research and to talk with people about a very sensitive subject, obviously, which is how they handle their family transitions, both marriage and divorce.

The first thing I learned was that sharia law is a term that's been made up by the western media. There is sharia, and there is Islamic law, and they are two different things. Sharia is the path that Muslims follow in order to live a good life. It's a totally personal experience. As one imam once told me, there is a sharia for every Muslim in Canada, which I thought really encapsulated this.

This was one of the first sort of staggering revelations that I had: That rather than being something that, as the media would have it, Muslims wanted to inflict on everybody—this horrible-sounding sharia law that seemed to involve lots of nasty punishments—sharia was in fact a deeply personal value system, which did vary from person to person, and Islamic law was the principles that had been built out of the Quranic texts and the Hadith by jurisprudence in the fourth century onwards. Of course, these were male jurists, so a lot of that jurisprudence is somewhat male-centric, which is a tendency of every single western system that was developed in the fourth century—and still some today.

I first of all realized that there was a lot of ignorance that created fear, and that in actual fact this idea that there was some kind of deep, seething resentment going along inside Muslim communities in Canada and the U.S., in which they desperately wanted other people to accept their system, was completely baseless. There was no basis for that. I asked people and talked to people constantly in hundreds of interviews about this, and I never heard a single person in that group say that they thought sharia should be imposed on non-Muslims. If you take that out of the picture, then you understand a great deal more about the fear and prejudice that have developed toward the Muslim community, and its lack of basis.

In terms of some measures that I think are super important as a result of that work, working with the imams is really important, because the imams are a very, very important source of influence, and they're also family problem-solvers in many communities. I think there need to be some clear standards around dealing with domestic violence, and, obviously, there's an issue of women's governance in mosques, but certainly it's important to work with the imams.

It's also important, I believe, to work with kids at school—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

Professor, thank you very much.

[Dr. Julie Macfarlane]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

I will be faithful to keeping the time. We will now—

Mr. Ehsassi.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Madam Chair, I just noticed that Mr. Morrice from the Green Party is here. I was wondering if you would care to ask for unanimous consent.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lena Metlege Diab]

If you're asking me to ask, I'd be pleased to ask.

I guess Mr. Morrice is asking for unanimous consent to be allowed two and a half minutes to ask questions.

No?

I'm sorry. I'm hearing all kinds of noes on my left side of the table.

Thank you.

Now I go to six minutes per each of the four parties here. I will be faithful in trying to keep the time as best as I can. Because I will have to be strict on time, can we please stick to the subject at hand so that I don't have to entertain any points of order? We have a hard stop at 30 minutes past the hour.

I will start with MP Jivani, please.

[Jamil Jivani, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I appreciate the witnesses for being here and for their contributions to this conversation. I certainly think that we are due for an important conversation on religious freedom in our country, and this has been an important part of that discussion.

I want to start off by maybe trying to give a bit of my perspective as a person from the suburbs of Toronto. Since 2021, we've had over 100 Christian churches burned, vandalized or desecrated in Canada, and sometimes, when I see that, and I see the lack of media coverage of those attacks on religious freedom, and when I see that we cannot, even in the House of Commons, get every party to agree on condemning those attacks on religious freedom, I think to myself, like, “Yo, dawg, are we like in The Truman Show or something right now?”

It just seems so frustrating and puzzling as to how you get to this point. Often, I will hear from constituents who are concerned about it, and they'll express a sense of hopelessness, like, well, how do you get people to care about this?

Then I see other communities go through their own ordeals when it comes to attacks on their religious freedom. We have seen schools and synagogues get shot at in Montreal just over the weekend. We have seen the hate-motivated attack on a Muslim family in London. I think to myself, well, maybe there's an opportunity for us all to work together and draw attention to the various ways that faith communities in this country may experience discrimination or persecution.

Maybe there's an opportunity for us to build some bridges across different religious communities in hopes that the experiences that are happening throughout this country right now, where, in many ways, people feel afraid that they will lose their jobs by showing that they are a person of faith, or that they will lose something—their standing, perhaps, in their workplace or their school—for showing that they are a person of faith.... Perhaps by working together we actually wind up being able to protect believers of all different types.

Maybe I will pose my question on that to you, Mr. Panju. As you think about charting a path forward, where do you see the possibility of different faith communities being able to work together and support each other better?

[Husein Panju]

Thank you for that question, MP Jivani.

You're right. There is a sincere division right now in our society amongst various cultures and faiths, and we are optimistic that we can get to a point eventually where this unity is developed.

I understand that the purpose of these sessions is to speak about what governments can do. There are so many things that can be done. One thing I want to focus on is to speak about how government policies shape perceptions. I won't purport to be an expert in all forms of discrimination, but to the extent that I'm an expert in anything, it is Islamophobia.

I know that Canadians look to our leaders for direction. The research confirms that when there is hateful rhetoric from the top, whether it's the government in power or other politicians or any other people of influence, other individuals from the community take notice, and there's a corresponding impact at the ground level. When governments introduce actions and policies to target particular groups, as I mentioned, that provides a licence for other Canadians to discriminate against these same communities.

To the extent that Islamophobia is a recognized issue—and I think largely there's consensus, but I know there are some who disagree—I think there needs to be tangible action and engagement, not just money that's invested in different programs, but a meaningful appetite to hear the perspective of those who are impacted the most.

To the extent that governments can help to coordinate this, we think that would be a great starting point. So often right now, Islamophobia, for example, is being conflated with anti-Palestinian racism, and they're related but different concepts. Not everyone who is a Muslim is Palestinian, and not everyone who is a Palestinian is a Muslim: For many Canadians, that's not an apparent issue. The compounding impacts of anti-Palestinian racism and gendered Islamophobia are serious concepts, and we think the government needs to take an active role in recognizing this and also to play a role in educating our communities about the values and strengths that make Canadians who we are.

[Jamil Jivani, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Panju, I have just a follow-up question before my time is up. There was a moment of hope, I thought, last summer, when I did start to see different religious communities working together.

The particular issue of concern for many believers was the matter of parental rights and the fact that at different levels of government we had politicians who were actively campaigning against the rights of mothers and fathers to play a leading role in their children's education. I wonder if you have any thoughts on that as a potential issue for collaboration.

[Husein Panju]

Yes. That's a great question. I'm familiar that...matters of education fall under the provincial purview, so I'll be mindful of this committee and the government's jurisdiction.

Muslims are not a monolith. There are different perspectives even within our communities. Questions like these are important, and to understand how communities feel about these, there need to be meaningful discussions within our communities to get these answers.