Thank you, Madam Chair.
I have a lot of questions, but I may have a total of only six minutes because then it will be the turn of a Bloc Québécois colleague. So I'll try to be as brief as possible. I'd like to have a chance to ask each of the witnesses a question.
Mr. Madou, you mentioned religiously motivated crimes in your opening remarks. As you know, we have a gap in the Criminal Code, and I'm going to explain the way it relates to our study.
The National Assembly of Quebec has requested that Ottawa take action to address hate speech, which has been on the rise since the Middle East war. However, Canada's Criminal Code protects individuals who promote hatred by allowing them to express their hate speech if they do so in good faith or if their speech is based on a religious text.
How can this religious exception encourage individuals to commit certain crimes against the LGBT community?
The Bloc Québécois introduced Bill C‑367 to eliminate that exception in the Criminal Code. I don't know if you've heard about it. If not, have you heard about this gap, and do you think it would be important to fill it?