Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. International Christian Voice is a human rights organization that is the voice of voiceless religious minorities of Pakistan. It is the voice of those who are oppressed, victimized, terrorized, discriminated against, and persecuted due to their holding a di

Canadian Heritage committee  Honourable Chair, members of the committee, I would like to thank the heritage committee for giving me the opportunity to address the fears and concerns of my community of Pakistani heritage regarding motion 103. I come here today as a concerned Canadian citizen and as chairman

Canadian Heritage committee  My recommendation to you is that we don't need extra regulations or motions to combat racism or to protect one religion or another. First of all, we have enough in the charter of human rights to protect all these kinds of things. But if there needs to be more, it needs to be abou

Canadian Heritage committee  I just want to add a bit more about our concern about Islamophobia. When Pakistan was created, the Christians and other religious minorities were told they would be treated equally. But 15 years after it was created, it became the Islamic Republic of Pakistan instead of the Demo

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. I personally believe that increasing racism or hate against Muslims, or Islamophobia.... We are limited—

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. As I mentioned before, we don't need another regulation or amendment or motion. We need to strengthen our Canadian charter of human rights. Why is it increasing? In my personal opinion, it's because all over the world, wherever terrorism is taking place, unfortunately an Is

Canadian Heritage committee  We have to put everybody together.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Before I start to give my speech, I would like to thank the Canadian government for accepting Asia Bibi, the woman who was imprisoned for nine years in Pakistan and was released and came to Canada. It is a great day for us as a Pakistani community that she

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to present our concerns as a sponsorship agreement holder with the private sponsorship program. International Christian Voice, or ICV, is a registered, non-profit charitable human rights organization. Our core work is to ass

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you so much. Yes, there is a problem with the UNHCR especially, as I mentioned here. When religious minorities apply for immigration through UNHCR to seek asylum in Canada, they are less educated and they cannot present their cases properly. UNHCR wants to have 100% of the

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That would be helpful, especially when we apply for judicial review or anything else to appeal the case. That would help a lot to justify that either the refugee has a problem or the interpreter has a problem or the visa officer gave a wrong decision.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In the last few years, we've had several refusal cases from the Singapore office, especially people from Christian minorities. We have appealed several times to IRCC, and I think IRCC is looking at that. It is a little bit better, but still, it needs to be focused more on these

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. There is one application that was refused recently from IRCC. The guy was a target of the extremists in Karachi, and he went to the hospital. He went through the crisis, but unfortunately because of the circumstances, it did not allow him to give all the evidence, a police r