Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to thank the committee for inviting me to appear today to support their efforts. My name is Jenifer Aitken, and I’m the assistant deputy minister of strategic policy, planning and corporate affairs at Canadian Heritage. The main focus of my remar

Canadian Heritage committee  As I am sure you know, the program was recently welcomed back into Canadian Heritage after having been at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada since 2009 or 2010, I believe. That will require some coordination between the two departments, so I appreciate your request bein

Canadian Heritage committee  It's run by Statistics Canada. Although Canadian Heritage supports the initiative, it's really Statistics Canada. What they collect is police-reported hate crimes. They collect information from municipal and provincial police forces, as well as from the RCMP.

Canadian Heritage committee  The last report that was published applies to the year 2015, but it was published earlier this year.

Canadian Heritage committee  If you look at the publications from Statistics Canada, you'll see that they describe what they mean by “hate crimes” in terms of the statistics they collect: Hate crimes refer to criminal offences motivated by bias, prejudice, or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin,

Canadian Heritage committee  Other than the StatsCan definition, possibly my colleague from the RCMP could provide you with some further information about what the police do.

Canadian Heritage committee  I'm not sure how much I can help you with that. As I said in my remarks, there are areas of concern, such as statistics that show an increase in hate crimes, for instance, and there are positive things. There are many indications of positive things in diversity and the inclusiven

Canadian Heritage committee  The action plan that you're referring to was a five-year plan, and it did sunset. It was an umbrella for a number of initiatives. There were several initiatives that were part of that plan and continue today, such as the statistics collection that we've been talking about, and se

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, that is something that we could provide.

Canadian Heritage committee  One point I might make there is when you talk about discrimination. All of the provinces have human rights codes and there's a Canada human rights code as well. That's one place where the information about discrimination is collected. From a Canadian Heritage point of view, a l

Canadian Heritage committee  The policy of multiculturalism is a policy for Canada. The programs that operate under the policy provide funding for projects and for events, and quite a number of those things that are funded are in the regions. I couldn't give you an exact breakdown right now, but they are spr

Canadian Heritage committee  I would like to go back and make sure that I wasn't unclear. With respect to the Multiculturalism Act, the program under the act certainly is active. In May of this year, the minister announced a call for proposals with a specific focus on projects that work toward eliminating ra