Mr. Speaker, thank you for recognizing me and giving me an opportunity to speak on this motion. I know my colleagues are still working their way out of the chamber as we end question period, so I am just going to make sure that you are seated and that there is some time and space in the House so that I can speak.
Before I get into my comments, I want to start by saying that I will be sharing my time with the member for Nipissing—Timiskaming. She will be speaking for the latter 10 minutes.
The motion deals with Bill C-9, which is a very important piece of legislation that I am glad to have an opportunity to speak to. It is something I am really hopeful will pass through the House as soon as possible. In my role as the member of Parliament for Ottawa Centre, I have some history of working on the various provisions of Bill C-9, which are very much aimed at ensuring that we rid hate from our society and that we take all important necessary steps to ensure that people of all backgrounds and religions, including people who belong to the Jewish faith, the Muslim faith, the Christian faith and any other faiths, feel safe in practising their faith, in living according to their faith and in being able to visit places of worship. Bill C-9 tries to do this.
As many have spoken about in the House, the incidence of hate crimes is rising in Canada. The issues around anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and other forms of hatred are significant. It is incumbent on all of us to work together, not in a partisan fashion but as Canadians and as parliamentarians, to exercise our responsibility and duty to pass laws that would allow for the safety of our community and that would allow for our Jewish neighbours, our Muslim neighbours and our neighbours from other backgrounds to be able to live peacefully, as we are all supposed to do and as Canada was founded upon. Bill C-9 captures this.
This bill, as many members would know, proposes to do four important things. First, it would create two offences for obstruction and intimidation intended to prevent someone from accessing a place used by an identifiable group. I will speak to that particular provision in detail a little later, because it is something that I have been working on. Second, it would create a new stand-alone hate-motivated offence. Third, it would create an offence for wilfully promoting hatred through the public display of hate or terrorist symbols. Last, it would codify the Supreme Court of Canada's definition of “hatred” in the Criminal Code.
The most important part of this legislation is around making sure that people are not obstructed or intimidated when trying to access their place of worship, for example, somebody who wants to go to their synagogue on the Sabbath or somebody who wants to go to their mosque for jummah prayers. These are very important rights that we have as Canadians to practise our faith freely without any fear of harassment or intimidation.
This legislation would create a criminal offence around anybody trying to take away that particular freedom. There have been instances in my community here in Ottawa with various important institutions where members of the Jewish community regularly congregate or meet as a social space or even at a long-term care home. The Hillel Lodge, for example, where seniors who are mostly of Jewish faith live, was subject to a protest. Of course, that was extremely traumatizing and troubling for the members of the community.
I have been working very closely with our Jewish community here in Ottawa, for instance, with the Jewish Federation of Ottawa. I want to thank friends like Danya Vered and Adam Silver, who have championed and advocated for this legislation on behalf of the community to ensure that we create provisions and laws in our criminal courts that would not allow something like that to take place and that people can peacefully live their Jewish way of life and be able to practise their faith. Of course, this legislation is not just limited to the Jewish community. It applies to all faith communities.
There has been precedent to do this. This is not something unique. In my former role as the attorney general of Ontario, we brought in similar legislation at the provincial level to protect women accessing abortion clinics or sexual health clinics, so that they would not be harassed or intimidated from accessing the very vital right of access to medical care. We were able to do that through a piece of legislation, a safe access law, that has been held as being charter-compliant.
A similar principle, in my view, has been applied to this legislation, albeit federally, which will apply across the country. Of course, this is not a provincial offence but a criminal offence. However, the aim and the purpose is the same, which is to create safety around specific important places of worship, such as synagogues, mosques, churches, gurdwaras and mandirs. Also, most importantly, it would give an opportunity to individuals to access those places of worship or other important institutions. This is about individual rights.
Another example I will give that I have been quite concerned about in my community has to do with schools. We have had multiple instances in Ottawa Centre, in my community, where an elementary school has been used as a site for people to protest around gender identity. They felt that somehow kids were being brainwashed, that they should not be taught about gender identity and that they should not get an education around health and sexual well-being. They have been using an elementary school as a site of protest, which is highly inappropriate. If people want to protest a curriculum, they should go to the ministry of education or go to the school board's office to protest.
This is an important piece of legislation. This is a piece of legislation that my constituents have been asking for, for some time. In fact, I started working with them prior to the last federal election. I worked extremely hard to make sure that it would be in the platform of my party, the Liberal Party of Canada. I spoke about it during the election many times. I was really happy to see that it would be a part of Bill C-9, one of the earliest pieces of legislation that the government tabled.
However, in my view, the bill has been dragged all this time by unnecessary filibustering by the opposition. It is highly unacceptable. In fact, it is perpetuating an unsafe environment. We need to make sure that we pass laws like Bill C-9 as quickly as possible, because this is not a partisan issue. This is a matter of making sure that together we are protecting our communities.
I urge all members of the House, particularly my Conservative colleagues who talk a lot about hate crimes, and rightly so, to support Bill C-9 and support this motion, so that we can help build safer communities for everyone in our country.