Mr. Speaker, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the Somali woman who became a Dutch citizen and, following the assassination of director Theo Van Gogh, a member of the Dutch Parliament. She wrote the screenplay for the late director's film entitled Submission, which denounced the harm done to a woman in the name of religion. A fatwa was then issued against Ms. Hirsi Ali's life.
While in Montreal this week, she gave a lecture on multiculturalism, which has been official policy in Canada since 1982, but not in Quebec, which chose interculturalism instead. Ms. Hirsi Ali criticized multiculturalism harshly, saying that the policy exempted minorities from obligations that everyone else has. She stated that Quebec's interculturalism, which calls on immigrants to undertake a moral engagement with the Government of Quebec, is more appropriate because immigrants can acquire a better understanding of the host society's values, such as secularism and gender equality.
This government could learn a lot from Ayaan Hirsi Ali's perspective on Canadian multiculturalism.