Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
My name is Mohamed Boudjenane. I am the executive director for the Canadian Arab Federation, and with me today is James Kafieh, our legal advisor.
Mr. Chairman, I'd like to thank committee members for inviting us here today. I think it is crucial and very important for committee members to hear from the communities most affected by this kind of bill, in particular the Arab and Muslim community of this country. Thank you for inviting us here.
The Canadian Arab Federation is the national voice for one of the two minority communities in Canada that have been most adversely impacted by post-9/11 stereotypes. This legislation not only fails to guard against the effects of those stereotypes, it unintentionally perpetrates them. For every time another Arab is detained under the regime, in the minds of many Canadians it reinforces the social stereotype that all Arabs are terrorists. That is a racist stereotype, of course.
Arabs in Canada are an incredibly diverse community. Contrary to the popular perception, most Arabs in Canada are Christian. Actually, today you have two in front of you. I'm originally from Morocco. I'm an Arab Muslim, and James Kalieh is a Canadian originally from Palestine who is a Christian.
Christian and Muslim Arab alike are peaceful and productive members of our society who embrace our democratic values. They are as concerned about safety and security as anyone else in Canada. Despite these facts, in the social reality of discrimination in the post-9/11 environment, Arabs face prejudice. “Travelling while Arab” is the current touchstone for racial profiling.
Why were all Arabs immediately perceived as terrorists following 9/11, whereas the Scottish/Irish were not following the Oklahoma bombing? The answer lies with the social reality of pre-existing discrimination and stereotypes.
Actually, there is an interesting study that was done in the United States by an Arab scholar who talked about the villain within the pop culture of America through movies, cartoons, and so on, and the Arab and the Muslim are always portrayed as someone you cannot trust and someone who is an outsider.
The reality is that Timothy McVeigh was just like us and the 9/11 hijackers were different from us. As I said, this is a perception promoted by certain stereotypes pre-existing in our society.
Arabs are a community at risk. Arabs in Canada live in a society where stereotypes have been reduced to a simple equation--Arabs equal Muslims and Muslims equal terrorists. This type of legislation, unfortunately, is sending a major message to what we have now within our public discourse. The public discourse mainly refers to our opinion leaders, politicians, our media, and people who have a certain impact on the perception of the public. And since 9/11, of course, the media are using headlines like “barbaric”, “uncivilized”, “non-compliance with our values as Canadians” when whey refer to Arab and Muslim.
The opinion leaders and certain politicians, and I remember Mr. Harper recently, after the so-called 17 alleged terrorists in Toronto...when he stood and said “us against them”. Well, we all know that the majority of those kids who were arrested were all Canadian citizens and were all born here in Canada. This type of message sends a clear signal, it has a strong impact on Joe Schmo on the street, and it has a major impact on the perception.
The stereotype and this piece of legislation also give carte blanche to our security officials and agencies to basically racially profile and harass and discriminate against members of our communities. The Canadian Arab Federation has files of cases of people being detained, questioned at the border, and racially profiled by security officials on a regular basis.
We still have cars from CSIS and the RCMP parked in front of mosques in Toronto, Montreal, and other big cities, spying on people, blackmailing members of the community, and asking them, “If you don't spy on your fellow worshipper, you might not have access to your Canadian citizenship”, or “Maybe the application you have to bring your family here will be delayed”. This is the reality, and we have cases and cases of this type of....
On our campuses and universities, Arab women are being attacked. Muslim women are being harassed, and we all know the big debate now in Quebec around the so-called les accommodements raisonnables, where the description of Arab and Muslim is quite negative.
The other impact, of course, is this big sense of marginalization and of being ostracized as a member of this community. Arab Canadians and Muslims now feel like outsiders. They feel as though they are now the enemy within. This has a clear impact on the way they behave in society. It has a big impact on the way they engage with the civil society. I'll give you a couple of examples.
Recently, the Canadian Labour Congress released a study about the rate of unemployment in Canada among racialized minority groups. Arabs and west Asians have the highest unemployment rate in Canada now, in spite of the fact that it is one of the most educated immigrant populations of this country.
The situation now, where we have many organizations that used to fundraise to help people in the Middle East or in other parts of the world, Africa or South Asia, is limited. Anyone who is now raising funds or trying to put together some initiatives to help this part of the world is considered as someone who may be helping a terrorist organization in the Middle East. This has had a major impact on the way we behave as citizens of this country.
We are not able to organize anymore, to express our voice or our opinions on a regular basis. One of the examples I can give you is that last week an Arab, or actually a Muslim-born Canadian.... He is suing Air Canada with the Canadian Human Rights Commission because he was racially profiled. He was stopped and was blocked from taking a plane. The only reason, he thinks, is either because he is a Muslim or because he was very critical of the Bush administration. He is a cartoonist.
So we are now questioning our own freedom of expression in this country when we've been targeted by this piece of legislation.
Finally, I think this is creating a major impact on other racialized minority groups and immigrants in this country. Yesterday, Statistics Canada released new numbers about the new face of Canada, telling us that now one in five Canadians is born outside.
Canada is a country of immigrants. We need immigrants. We have always been portrayed as a land of opportunity, as a land of diversity, but the reality is that we are creating now, with this piece of legislation, a two-tiered legal system: one for immigrants, and we're telling them, if you come to Canada and we perceive you as a threat, you can be detained indefinitely; and one for Canadian citizens. This is not part of our values as a fair and democratic society.
Our recommendation is straightforward. I'm not going to repeat the main argument. Alex Neve spoke about it, and I'm sure Madame Hall will also talk about that. We think there is no room for this piece of legislation in our society. We think we have enough ammunition within our legal system to go after criminals—and a terrorist is a criminal. We arrested and detained those so-called 17 in Toronto recently without using the security certificate, or even Bill C-36. There is enough ammunition, as I said, in our legal system to make sure criminals are detained, arrested, and punished.
I want to conclude by saying that it's interesting, but at some time we said in Canada that it's important to sacrifice some of our civil liberties and human rights to make sure we are secure and safe in this country. The reality is that we are willing to sacrifice the civil liberties and human rights of a certain group in our society. This is not the type of Canada we choose to stand for.
We come to you as legislators to remind you that you have a duty to make sure that this society remains inclusive, that there is no such piece of legislation that can encourage racial profiling or racism against any group in our society. Thank you very much.