Justice committee  In your opinion, should we not put an end once and for all to discrimination, violence against the Muslim and Jewish communities, and all other forms of discrimination based on race, skin colour, gender or any other form? Have we not reached the point where we must ban all expressions of hatred from the public space?

Justice committee  I am a big supporter of the need to have hate speech principles to protect people, but I also think one of the things we do in our legal system is exclude any kind of reasoning—it's very interesting—that might be based on a religious text. If you see a Muslim woman trying, for example, to enforce her maher, the agreement she's made under Islamic law for an amount of money to be paid in the event of divorce, the courts won't accept any arguments that are based on references to religious texts.

Justice committee  Panju, I'd like you to comment on the same question. I understand that you are a lawyer and chair of the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association. I am not familiar with your résumé, and you may not be an expert on freedom of expression. However, in your opinion, should we keep this religious exception in the Criminal Code that allows hate to be promoted on the basis of a religious text or, on the contrary, should that hatred be prohibited?

Justice committee  Mr. Yousri, in your presentation, you said that you deplore the hate speech directed at the Muslim community in Canada. That clearly did not help relations among citizens in Canada. I understand your point of view. In your opinion, should hate speech be banned in Canada, or should it continue to have a place?

Justice committee  Definitely, all forms of hate should be addressed and should be banned, and we should all work together to combat all forms of hate against Muslims or other religions and cultures. This goes without saying. Thank you.

Justice committee  There was extensive backlash from the legal community that targeted the students who signed this letter, many of whom were racialized individuals, including visibly Muslim women. Students were doxxed on various social media platforms. There were various organizations and commentators who urged that they be named, expelled, deported and labelled as terror apologists.

Justice committee  It seems so fitting, given that the third annual “Snapshot of Hate” report came out from the Coalition of Muslim Women just last week. As you shared in your testimony, there have been 115 total cases of hate and discrimination through the anti-hate services reporting, and a drastic increase since October 7.

Justice committee  I'm familiar that...matters of education fall under the provincial purview, so I'll be mindful of this committee and the government's jurisdiction. Muslims are not a monolith. There are different perspectives even within our communities. Questions like these are important, and to understand how communities feel about these, there need to be meaningful discussions within our communities to get these answers.

Justice committee  I found your testimony extremely helpful. Now, if I can start off with Mr. Panju, first of all, thank you for leading the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association. I've had the pleasure of receiving a few legal briefs, and the legal work was spot-on and very helpful. Thank you for that. Now, in your testimony, you touched on the fact that since October 7 we've seen some discrimination in the workplace.

Justice committee  We have seen schools and synagogues get shot at in Montreal just over the weekend. We have seen the hate-motivated attack on a Muslim family in London. I think to myself, well, maybe there's an opportunity for us all to work together and draw attention to the various ways that faith communities in this country may experience discrimination or persecution.

Justice committee  You didn't answer; you just said you don't want Muslims to respond.

Justice committee  I do want to underscore, obviously, the need for this conversation. There is a growing issue of hate in the country against Muslims and others. The way to resolve it is through policy and by enacting certain words that we will say or the media will say, but this idea of unity and getting together and understanding each other's commonalities is the only way to simmer the issue.

Justice committee  I've seen, and many of those who are tuning in right now have seen, how past governments, previous to 2015, have maligned the Muslim community. In some cases, provincial governments use minorities as pinatas to score populist political points. I think Mr. Garrison referred to under-handed commentary, even as we are having you testify.

Justice committee  When I was young, there were certain slurs used that were maybe anti-immigrant but not anti-Muslim, and then they went away. I talked about this movement of the right gathering some steam, what's happened down south and even what's happening over here. The hate that took 50 years to bury has risen to the surface, and you don't bury this stuff again in four years.

Justice committee  Obviously, as you mentioned, and as we've heard from testimony, there's been a massive spike in hate towards the Muslim community and other faiths as well. The Liberal government has brought forward some changes. It's been three years—