Thank you, Mr. Chair.
B'nai Brith is Canada's oldest membership-based Jewish organization. Through its League for Human Rights, which maintains an anti-hate hotline and prepares an annual audit of anti-Semitic incidents, it is the premier advocate of human rights for Canada's Jewish community.
B'nai Brith testified before this committee in 2015, focusing on our support for one particular aspect of Bill C-51 relating to the creation of an offence for the promotion of terrorism, seizure of terrorist propaganda, and deletion of terrorist propaganda from computer systems. We offered several recommendations for amendments. My colleague David Matas, who serves as the senior legal counsel for B'nai Brith in Canada, will update our position in that regard in his statement.
We know the Jewish community is particularly vulnerable to hate propaganda throughout the world, and many of the most powerful terrorist organizations in existence today, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Daesh, rely upon the promotion of hatred with a particular focus on anti-Semitism to inspire acts of terror.
There are many examples of this internationally, such as the Hyper Cacher supermarket attack aimed at French Jewry, which was tied to the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and the horrendous attack on a Jewish religious centre in Mumbai that was specifically targeted as part of a larger Islamist-inspired terrorist attack in 2008.
In fact, terror attacks against Jews have taken place right across the globe. The Jewish community is quite cognizant of the threat it faces and knows that based on history, our community will continue to be the subject of terror attacks so long as incitement to hatred and radicalization continue around the world.
There is a tendency to think of terror as a foreign problem, but it is a Canadian problem too. In Canada the Jewish-owned West Edmonton Mall, as well as Jewish businesses worldwide, were the subject of a terror threat by al Shabaab, to the exclusion of non-Jewish-owned malls. We are not immune here in Canada.
The 2016 report on the terrorist threat to Canada cites Hezbollah, a listed terror group supported by the Iranian regime, as using its worldwide and Canadian networks for recruitment, fundraising, and procurement. Hezbollah remains a terror threat not only to the Jewish community but also to all Canadians, and it is believed to have a history of international terror operations, including the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Argentina. This is one of the reasons that B'nai Brith was supportive of the closing of the Iranian embassy in 2012 and believes it should not be reopened until the Iranian regime ends it support for terror and anti-Semitism.
B'nai Brith's annual audit of anti-Semitic incidents shows that anti-Semitism in Canada has remained relatively constant since 2011. With no active conflict occurring in Israel in 2015, 1,277 incidents were reported in that year. Harassment, including online harassment, has shown a general increase over five years. Vandalism declined to a 15-year low that year, while violence decreased slightly to 10 incidents. Our 2016 numbers will be released this spring.
Our Prime Minister is in Washington today, meeting for the first time with President Donald Trump. Canadians wish to maintain a positive relationship with the United States to enable efficient and speedy border crossings and trade. This requires taking our national security very seriously. Canada's counterterrorism and anti-radicalization efforts must acknowledge that specific identifiable groups—including Jewish, LGBTQ, Muslim, women, and others—are often the target for violence, and we must create a balanced framework to protect vulnerable societal groups from terrorism while maintaining important principles of freedom of speech within society.
Many often forget that minority Muslim groups are also targets of radical Islamist terror groups. Our community appreciates and supports the federal security infrastructure program, which supports the security needs of at-risk communities. It's unfortunate that children growing up in Canada today are made to realize that a police presence is required at Jewish synagogues during high holidays because of the ongoing threat of hate and violence.
Hatred is taught, and may prove the inspiration towards a violent pathway to radicalization. In this regard we should not forget that hate speech in Canada might play a role in sensitizing individuals to future radicalization efforts, whether in person or via the Internet, by desensitizing them to the humanity of their fellow human beings. Recently B'nai Brith exposed an Arabic-language local television show in Toronto, AskMirna, that had promoted holocaust denial. Rogers Television was not aware of any problems with the content, since they rely on the honour system and a complaint process. There is much work to be done in removing channels of hate from Canadian society, even from television and newspapers.
Those are my opening remarks, and Mr. Matas will now provide his update.