Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you so much. Madam Chair, honourable members of the committee, I would like to thank you all for inviting us here today to discuss how our government can work to combat racism and discrimination and create a more inclusive Canada. The Iranian Canadian Congress, or ICC, i

Canadian Heritage committee  Our organization is an advocacy organization. We're not a service provider. We help our community members connect with service providers in some instances, but our main role is to provide advocacy to the government. We've presented in the Senate before. We've presented petitions

Canadian Heritage committee  We have lists and connections with all of these service providers, but really that's not our main role. I didn't want to give that impression. We do this sometimes, but there are plenty of great service providers in our community, and we do not consider ourselves a service provi

Canadian Heritage committee  Would you like me to answer that? Basically, you're completely right. When it comes to explicit, verifiable, recorded instances of employment discrimination or other kinds of discrimination, we do try to direct our community toward the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal or to whateve

Canadian Heritage committee  We've described some of the policy in the recommendations. Maybe Soudeh wants to go into them, but basically—

Canadian Heritage committee  First of all, we think that a review of our Criminal Code legislation is extremely important. I'm sure you've heard that in this committee from other witnesses as well. A lot of experts, legal or otherwise, have pointed to this idea. It is very difficult in Canada to prosecute

Canadian Heritage committee  I think the real specifics would be best left up to the legal experts, but I think on a higher level we really need to make sure that a hate crime can be prosecuted in Canada, that it is actually in our Criminal Code and is very directly addressed. It's very difficult for anyone

Canadian Heritage committee  I'll start if you want.

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

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 t

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.

Canadian Heritage committee  The question is why...?

Canadian Heritage committee  I don't think it's a change; I would say it's more of a stylistic issue. I remember it was used in a very small column. I don't think there's a lot of meaning behind the difference. “Iranophobia” has been used by some, I believe by one scholar, and it has been used before. I'm no