I know that Nuzhat is still on the call as well, and the Canadian Council of Muslim Women has done a lot of work on that.
What I can certainly say—and MP Dhillon, thank you so much for the question—is that, absolutely, when we're talking about hate crimes specifically and hate that's targeting our communities, an issue that Nuzhat had raised, which I have seen first-hand in my work with police services, is that when someone reports a hate crime to police, basically police, if you can imagine, have boxes of identities that they have to check off.
For instance, if someone is both Asian and Muslim, and they report a hate incident or a hate crime to the police, the police can only choose one box. Right across the country, it's only one box. That means we are not capturing the intersectional nature of hate in our communities. That's just a very basic example.
As you know, people can be targeted for multiple identities. For instance, if a man with a turban is targeted because he was perceived as being a Muslim, which box will it be? That's the question. These are different things to think about and are examples of how our institutions are still catching up to understanding the intersecting identities that people hold.
Before I cede the rest of the time to Nuzhat to speak more to that, I would also just like to urge the committee—it's why I tried to stay around, and Samya has raised it as well very eloquently. It would be such a powerful statement from this committee for it to condemn Quebec's Act Respecting the Laicity of the State, which is essentially state-sanctioned discrimination against Muslim women, as well as other visible minority communities including Jewish Quebec communities, the Sikh community and anyone who wants to wear a religious piece of clothing and to continue to contribute, as any other Quebecker has the right to do.
When we're telling our children that they can grow up to be whoever they want to be, to participate however they want to, that is true for everyone in Canada, except if you are living in Quebec. It is definitely an erosion of the human rights and freedoms that we all cherish, and it certainly has a disproportionate impact on Muslim women and girls. A statement from this committee would be very welcome.