Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of items that I would like to put on the record.
One is from a well-known journalist, Raheel Raza, who is a member of the Canadian Muslim community and published an op-ed just recently. Her words are, “If M-103 is passed, it will silence positive criticism and widen the gulf between Muslim and non-Muslim Canadians. This is unacceptable”. This is a voice from the Muslim community.
Why we would call anti-Semitism anti-Semitism is because that term has been around since 1879, it has endured academic rigour, it has endured history; it is recognized by the United Nations; it was strengthened by the EUMC in 2005 and by a voluntary group of parliamentarians here in Parliament, called the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism, in a report in 2010.
When the term Islamophobia stands up to that level of rigour, then I am convinced that the Canadian public will accept that word as meaning hatred toward Muslims. We condemn all hatred toward Muslims and any other group and I am convinced that they will be comfortable with it. However, until then, this is the concern that Conservatives have.