Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to the opposition day motion, tabled by the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands. I will be sharing my time with the member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert.
As the NDP critic for immigration, refugees, citizenship, and multiculturalism, as well as a member of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, I have often had the opportunity to speak to the issues of persecution and discrimination abroad and how Canada can best respond to be a world leader in a humanitarian crisis. Unfortunately, too often issues of discrimination, racism, and intolerance go unaddressed, and often even unnoticed at home.
This motion is very similar to Motion No. 103, as mentioned, on which the debate just began yesterday. As elected officials, and the representatives of our communities in the House of Commons, I firmly believe we have a duty to stand together against racism and discrimination of all forms. We currently find ourselves in a time of increasing polarization of political debate and, sadly, of a global climate of increasing fear, and in some cases, hate.
Canada's multicultural society can flourish in the context of cultural diversity only if we are united in condemning and remedying issues of racial and religious discrimination, be that overt instances such as the recent and devastating Quebec City mosque attack; or be that systemic, long-standing discrimination, such as that faced by too many members of the indigenous communities, and recently made headlines regarding the Sixties Scoop court ruling. We have a duty as members of Parliament to set an example and speak out against all forms of discrimination wherever we see it, in Canada and abroad.
I note this motion proposes a committee study be undertaken at the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to determine how the government can develop an approach to reducing and possibly eliminating all types of discrimination in Canada, with a community-centred focus based on evidence. It also calls on the committee to determine how best to collect data to contextualize hate crime reports and conduct needs assessments for impacted communities.
The work to be undertaken by the committee is exactly the same that is being proposed in Motion No. 103. As both of these motions are private members' motions, and in the tradition of each party, private members' bills or motions are generally not whipped and, as such, members are entitled to vote their conscience. I am looking at both of these motions as stand-alone motions, and not around the political gamesmanship that is being played. I am not sure if one or both motions will pass.
I support both Motion No. 103 and this motion. Both are valid. It is my view that both motions aim to achieve the same outcome, and the work to be undertaken by the committee, if these motions pass, is exactly the same. Therefore, in the event that both motions pass, I would expect the committee would have to sort out how best to proceed. To be clear, the work sent off to committee will not be an easy task. Both motions seek to find answers to address difficult long-standing problems. As parliamentarians, our job is not about doing what is easy. Being here is about doing what is right and what will make Canada a better place.
We have all been troubled by recent events of race or religiously motivated hate. I can recall when Canada began its Syrian refugee initiative in the city of Vancouver. After a welcoming reception, an individual pepper sprayed a group of newly arrived Syrian families, including young children, as they were waiting for the bus to take them back to their temporary lodging. I was horrified to learn of the incident, as I had just left the event. The families were just gathering the children together to get on the bus.
In the nearby community of Richmond, there are also deeply troubling reports of the Chinese Canadian community being targeted with racist flyers being distributed in the area. In Abbotsford, a man was filmed hurling abusive and racial slurs. He said. “You [bleeping] Paki. Go back to [bleeping] India. You camel-rider.” The individual then clearly states, “White power” as part of the exchange.
Other incidents include flyers promoting the Ku Klux Klan being found outside homes in British Columbia. Spray painted swastikas were recently found on a rabbi's door at a synagogue in Ottawa. A racist rant was caught on film in transit in Toronto. Racist posters also went up in the University of Alberta targeting the Sikh community.
Jewish Canadians are still the most targeted religious group in Canada though those types of attacks have dropped while attacks on Muslims have increased. Hate crimes against Muslim Canadians have more than doubled in three years, even as the total number of hate crimes has dropped, which is why Motion No. 103 is important and ought to be supported.
No matter in which community hate and discrimination is being targeted, we have a duty to stand up against this kind of despicable behaviour.
We cannot have a conversation about discrimination in our country without acknowledging the systemic and unacceptable discrimination that continues to this day against indigenous, Métis, and Inuit communities.
I had the opportunity to rise in the House on Wednesday to deliver a statement in support of the missing and murdered indigenous women's march, which began 27 years ago in my riding. The memorial march has now since spread across the country, with marches in dozens of communities from coast to coast to coast, yet the horrific problem of missing and murdered indigenous women persists.
Just this week, the Canadian court system declared that while the government had breached its common law duty law of care in the situation of the Sixties Scoop in Ontario, indigenous culture and identity were stolen from children as a result of those actions. This did not happen hundreds of years ago. This happened between 1965 and 1985. Systemic discrimination against indigenous peoples is so deeply pervasive that it has impacted generations of the first peoples.
Hundreds of children came to Ottawa on the “Have A Heart” campaign this week. This campaign calls on the Canadian government to end systemic discrimination against indigenous children on reserves as they do not have the same rights to education as other off-reserve children.
There is no question that much work needs to be done. We need to look long and hard at our own current policies and actions. We absolutely need to collect data on incidents of hate and discrimination. We need to understand what is going on. We need to educate. We need to devise a plan to take all of this on. In my view, it would be worth our effort to examine and track over time if hateful racist incidents reported in Canada have increased since Trump became President. On the face of it, it certainly feels like it to me.
According to Professor Rinaldo Walcott, director of women and gender studies at the University of Toronto, “I think that the election has allowed people who might have been formerly in the shadow to feel emboldened”. In the same article Professor Walcott suggested “ it may be easy to stand by and do nothing, but it is up to everyone to help”.
We must speak clearly and forcefully against racism, discrimination, and bigotry. We teach our children to stand up to racism. We teach them to call it out wherever they see it. On that note, is it not time that our own Prime Minister also spoke up forcefully against Trump's racist immigration policies? The executive director of the National Council of Canadian Muslims Ihsaan Gardee, said, “Unfortunately, the election of Mr. Trump has really galvanized and mobilized many Islamophobic and racist individuals”.
At the heart of both Motion No. 103 and today's motion is that the Canadian government needs to recognize the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear, and condemn all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination. That also means the Prime Minister must muster up the courage and stand up against Donald Trump's racist immigration policies. That would be good for Canada. Let us get the job done and let us put politics aside.