Public Safety Committee on Feb. 13th, 2017

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

To follow up on one of the points you made, the concern raised in particular in the media yesterday about a line of questioning leading to someone stepping back from a pre-clearance zone just because it's essentially abuse is a legitimate one and one that you can identify with.

[Safiah Chowdhury]

Yes. Absolutely. Definitely. I go to the United States often, so it really worries me.

[Katherine Bullock]

You always get randomly checked at the airport.

I would just add one more thing—

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Yes, of course.

[Katherine Bullock]

We know there has been a really disreputable history in that regard with what happened to Maher Arar and the other Canadian citizens who have borne the brunt of the U.S. rendering them to the black sites for torture, so we have reason to fear.

Canada should maintain sovereignty over itself.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Keeping with that thought, you were asked about the no-fly list. I understand you don't necessarily have any research in front of you, but from what you know, even if it's just from hearsay, how much of an impact does the fact that we also use the American list have?

[Safiah Chowdhury]

It has a profound impact. I'm lucky my name is nondescript enough and no one shares it. Typically I undergo what I will call the average amount of annoyance that Muslims undergo, but I ultimately get through. However, there are many friends, many family members, many individuals in our community who, when we say, “Let's have an event“ or “Let's go to the United States to go shopping” or whatever, will say, “No, I can't. I was held once for 12 hours and sent back” or “No, they searched my entire car. They went through everything. They called all the people in my contact numbers.”

No one wants to be subjected to this. It's degrading. It's dehumanizing. I would say that for probably at least a third of Muslims I know, that's the case.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Thank you.

I want to focus as well on the question of “will” versus “may” in the language of Bill C-51.

When we visited the counter-radicalization centre in Montreal, one of the people who work there brought up a point about how using “will” versus “may” and the way that's defined can actually be problematic, in the sense that if you have a youth who's a member of any community and who is seen as someone who is becoming radicalized, when the community is trying to reach out and counter that radicalization—and this point was also made by our friends from B'nai Brith—the community wants to look after its own, if I can express it that way.

The point he was making was that when you use “may”, you're losing that person, because they have to report it to the RCMP, and it sort of leads that young person down a different path.

Do you feel that is a tangible consequence, and do you have any further comments on that?

[Katherine Bullock]

It's definitely tangible, because of the fear that it creates. The community is really upset about the whole counter-radicalization thing, because we feel completely targeted.

The RCMP once visited a Muslim student association and told them stuff about how not to get involved with terrorism. The youth got extremely upset because they were just students organizing a fundraiser for a food bank. What does that have to do with the RCMP? What it does is target the Muslim aspect of their identity.

Extremists come in all shapes and sizes. Just because you're Muslim doesn't mean you're going to be an extremist. Even if you're a radical, it doesn't mean you're going to be a violent person.

As I said before, it's creating a space where core concepts of Muslim belief, like putting on a scarf, mean you are radicalizing. If you grow a beard, you're radicalizing. All of these so-called indicators and the whole concept of the conveyor belt to terrorism are completely wrong.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Thank you.

With the time I have left, I'll address B'nai Brith.

The federal government has put forward the idea of a counter-radicalization coordinator, and you floated out some ideas earlier about how this issue could be tackled. What would you be looking for from that coordinator to go down a path of success?

[Michael Mostyn]

I have one thought, and my colleague may have one as well.

Something that I've noticed in speaking to various police panels or national security panels about the anti-radicalization process is that you're just talking about the focus within one community. I think it is important to expand that beyond one community. For example, when the Jewish community is being targeted for hate, we are not involved in those consultations. There are other minority communities that are sometimes being targeted for hate, yet police and government often don't involve vulnerable communities that are being targeted because maybe we're outsiders to another community.

I don't quite know how you solve a problem if, for example, there's a hatred towards women or a minority group, and the people who are becoming slowly radicalized against them aren't forced to confront them and see that they are human beings themselves. It seems that there is an inherent problem with that whole process.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I'm afraid I need to end it there, but you might get that thought in again.

Mr. Spengemann is next.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Chair, thank you very much, and thank you to all four witnesses and both groups, B'nai Brith and ISNA, for being here today.

In many respects I see this as a continuation, both symbolic and substantive, of the coming together that went across the country following the terrorist attacks in Quebec on January 29. From that perspective, I really commend you for being here. I think it's evident from the exchange that we've had so far that this is a conversation that has to continue, not only at the level of government but in communities across our country.

I wanted to pick up on the theme of how to arrive at a personality that embodies so much hatred that somebody would go into a mosque or into any faith-based organization and shoot people engaged in the holiest act, which is the act of prayer. What leads a person to that mind frame?

Maybe I'll ask my first question to ISNA.

There was a seminar last fall hosted by ISNA on the response by communities to radicalization narratives. I'm wondering if you could give the committee a bit of a flavour of the fallout from that discussion, what came from it that you thought was most valuable, and how we could perhaps harness it in thinking about our national security framework.

[Katherine Bullock]

Actually, I don't know if you would like the product of that panel, because it was very critical of the government's approach to the whole counter-radicalization concept.

I think that with the interpretations of the issues around the “will“ space and the “may” space that I've mentioned, the rising Islamophobia, the curtailment of freedom of speech, the targeting of the Muslim identity as the religious identity of radicalism, what emerges is that basically the whole preventive approach focuses on Islam as if it were the problem, whereas in fact there's a big socio-political context that is ignored.

Youth were upset, for example, when Canada was in Afghanistan fighting against fellow Muslims. This leads people to feel that there's injustice in the world against Muslims. It has nothing to do with being religious or with a religious identity. It's about how to react to political issues in the world.

Counter-radicalization focuses too much on the religious aspect and pulls it out of context. It doesn't focus on state violence. It doesn't focus on exclusion, discrimination, Islamophobia, alienation, or any of those things.

It wasn't a policy panel. It wasn't something for government people to take notes about to make policy. It was more like an academic approach.

Probably I should stop there. I think I have that professorial talking-too-long thing.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Briefly, what were the non-Islamic factors? I've spoken to a number of imams in our communities, and they've quite frankly said, ”Yes, we have a problem with radicalization. We as imams are worried about our youth going down the wrong path.”

What kinds of factors do we need to pay attention to that are perhaps a lot more significant than religion itself?

[Katherine Bullock]

The sense that the youth have that the west is against Islam is one of the key factors in gravitating them towards extremist ideology. The more you can do to make them feel that they are Canadian, that they belong to Canada, that they can grow a beard, wear a face veil, put on their long gown, and still be seen as true Canadians who embrace Canadian values, the more you can drain away that anti-western narrative.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Okay.

Is it fair to say, without wanting to oversimplify it, that a much greater reciprocal openness at the community level would be of benefit? I stress “reciprocal”.

[Katherine Bullock]

Absolutely. There is a siege mentality among many Muslim communities that has led to a withdrawing, like a ghettoization and a fear of interacting, because you're just not sure if you're going to get attacked.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

That's really helpful.

I'm going to ask our friends from B'nai Brith, but please feel free to jump into this discussion as well.

The Minister of Public Safety has in his mandate letter the establishment of an office of community outreach and counter-radicalization. Again very specifically, with the mandate of doing what we can to stop hatred from developing, or in a more difficult sense, undoing hatred, but at least stopping it in the first place, what would be your expectations of that office and its connection with our communities across Canada?

[David Matas]

One thing that's going on in Winnipeg is something called the Jewish-Muslim dialogue. People from the two communities just get together and talk about current issues. That's the sort of experience that can be replicated across the country and across different communities, and the government could have a role in facilitating those sorts of dialogues.

Often what we're dealing with in radicalization are stereotypes and encoding. The target communities are more sensitized to what's going on because it's directed against them. If they can start saying, “Well, we don't like to hear you saying this, and we're concerned about this sort of dialogue”, or “This is what it means to us”, then I think that's a useful conversation to have, and I think the government can help it happen.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Mostyn, do you have some thoughts?

[Michael Mostyn]

The only thing I would add to that is I think it's very important to have honest, open conversations. I think there's a tendency in these sorts of dialogues to be very politically correct. You can't get to the root causes of these problems, and dialogues will fall apart because you're not dealing with the big issues. It's a bit like the Middle Eastern peace process or something like that.

As long as communities, through government facilitation, are willing to have those honest, real, human-to-human dialogues, I think they could be very successful.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Just in the last few seconds, from that last comment, you would even pass the message to government to be less politically correct to encourage frank and open discussion. That also suggests to a lot of the members of Parliament who go to their ridings and try to convene town halls and discussion groups on this question that they should put the big questions into the room quite openly.

[Michael Mostyn]

Absolutely, because there are real issues. I can tell you the Jewish community is extremely fearful about radicalization issues.

As I said in my opening statements, we have a police presence at all of our religious institutions all the time now. We see what's being written on the Internet. I gave an example of that television program. That was something B'nai Brith ourselves translated: we shut that show down. There are a number of examples of newspaper articles. One was in Windsor last year, and one was in London, Ontario. There was promotion of terrorism within those papers.

I can tell you that the most disturbing thing to the local Jewish communities there was the fact that, unfortunately, again, it was whistle-blowers calling it out, and that there should have really been a public outroar on this widespread publication.

There has to be a more open dialogue about what's going on in our society.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you.