Mr. Speaker, on this National Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, I draw the attention of Parliament to the escalation and use of racial profiling in Canada.
The Deputy Prime Minister denies racial profiling exists but those who are targeted know differently.
On March 9 the Minister of Transport told us that his department was developing a no-fly list in Canada and yet there are no provisions to deal with incidents of racial profiling, no procedures for follow up and we do not know the criteria nor the basis for such a list. The Liberal government cannot hide behind denials.
We call on the government to support Bill C-296, a bill to ban racial profiling and to enact policies and procedures to compel law enforcement and federal departments to eliminate racial profiling. We must not allow racial profiling to exist in the name of security. We must not allow people to be targeted on the basis of their colour, ethnicity or religion.
A new website, stopracialprofiling.ca, has launched a campaign, including an incident report form. We in the NDP support this campaign and will do everything we can to make racial profiling illegal in Canada.