Canadian Heritage committee  I agree with my colleague. Also, in terms of interfaith dialogue, it's very important, especially now that we're seeing, unfortunately, a lot of discrimination against certain religious groups. You mentioned the Jewish faith and the Muslim faith, but we also see it with regard to Sikhism, etc.

Canadian Heritage committee  Sure. Efficiency is a big part of it. We need to direct the funding and the attention to the impacted communities. We need to recognize impacted communities and have the ability to identify impacted communities, like the Iranian-Canadian community. Maybe in the future the Iranian-Canadian community won't be as targeted, hopefully, as they are now.

Canadian Heritage committee  The government needs to communicate to the banks that this is an unacceptable thing to do. At the moment, as you said, there's very little that anybody can do, and we're getting to the point where every day we hear that a new bank is engaging in these practices. Earlier it was one or two, then four, and it keeps increasing.

Canadian Heritage committee  That's something that needs to happen. This is especially true for our community. There is a real issue with the regulatory bodies themselves. These are often organized provincially. For example, in Ontario we've had a lot of problems with the dentistry organization. There seem to be a lot of artificial barriers erected for individuals who receive their education outside Canada and are trying to enter dentistry in Canada.

Canadian Heritage committee  We listened to the testimony and we think that's an interesting idea. Part of the problem we have is it would be very difficult to coordinate something like this among all our organizations, if it comes to the actual reporting and having people report an emergency. That said, our answer would be a hotline.

Canadian Heritage committee  Sorry, the question was...?

Canadian Heritage committee  A national action plan, yes, we definitely think it's an important issue, especially in terms of what can be done federally. Again, we think that looking at the federal legislation we have is an important part of this. Definitely, we agree that there should be an integrated national plan.

Canadian Heritage committee  I would say that would definitely be a great step to take. There needs to be a change in the mentalities and the approaches we have in government. We need to accept that systems of privilege and underprivilege are at play here, and an equity lens would definitely help dismantle and alleviate some of these issues.

Canadian Heritage committee  Well, I mean, again I would say that this is one part of the issue, but the other part is that we do actually have an issue with the singling out of Iran specifically. Every country has its problems, as you said, and every regime has its problems, but the singling out of the country of Iran for its behaviour—behaviour that is not really empirically different from any other country, either within the region or otherwise, with which we have even very friendly relations—is an additional problem.

Canadian Heritage committee  I'll be frank with you; I spend most of my time in Canada. I tangentially know about the Baha'i situation, but I can't really speak on it. As far as the connection with Iranophobia is concerned, I really don't have the expertise, unfortunately. I've been here since I was a child, so it's very difficult for me to speak on that issue.

Canadian Heritage committee  Employment discrimination, unfortunately, is something that affects every immigrant community to some extent. This is more of a provincial issue, and we've been rather active on this at the provincial level. In respect of employment discrimination, what tends to happen a lot of the time is that we invite individuals to come to our country to work in specified fields where we've identified a labour shortage.

Canadian Heritage committee  Sure. That study is fairly well known. In our community, employment discrimination is something we've addressed in our presentation. I believe the federal government could address the fact that individuals from Iran are prevented from getting into certain jobs, either because the jobs require travel to the United States or because the job requires access to certain sensitive information that Iranian Canadians are not allowed to see.

Canadian Heritage committee  Then you need the Ryerson University and the University of Toronto study?

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, that was in response to the question.

Canadian Heritage committee  Sorry. I didn't quite understand what the question was.