Justice committee  I too am not a criminal law specialist, so I'm hesitant to venture a response on this issue.

Justice committee  I'm not familiar with any. Other than the one case that I have examined in depth, I haven't followed that particular issue as much as I would like to enable me to answer, but thank you for the question.

Justice committee  It's a complicated question. I don't presume to speak on behalf of the Muslim community. I can only speak in my role as a law professor who has written about terror trials, and I can tell you that in writing about terror trials and looking at how they're litigated, I have concerns that the terrorism provisions of the Criminal Code are problematic.

Justice committee  Thank you for the question. I am mindful that this is a law-making body at the federal level, so my recommendation might draw upon my written submission, which was targeted towards the federal Parliament. Let me give you an example. It was my fourth example, which I didn't get to.

Justice committee  As an educator, I would think that one of the things that would be very useful—and I think the heritage ministry has a mandate for this—is to increase spending for increased storytelling, which centres the voices of those most affected. Imagining our minority communities, who oftentimes do not get to voice their own stories in the media....

Justice committee  I'm mindful that last week you heard from specialists and scholars on this topic, so I would defer to them. Obviously, the Government of Canada should be tackling all forms of hate, not just one or the other, but I'm not a specialist in that area and I would defer to the experts you brought in last week.

Justice committee  I think the biggest challenge with the CRA is that the CRA is a tool or an instrument of a whole-of-government policy regarding national security. One of the challenges I've noticed is that as an executive arm of the tax authority, they're subject to policies from Public Safety Canada, the Department of Finance and so on and so forth.

Justice committee  As we think about the national security regime and the way it operates in the case of anti-terror financing across 13 to 15 agencies, one of which is the CRA, we would need to think about how units like RAD, the review and analysis division of CRA, and the charities directorate are incorporating section 15 and GBA+ models.

Justice committee  I think we need the same explicitness. Thank you.

Justice committee  I think creating more positive relationships is always a better mechanism than otherwise. In terms of the how, I think that there are many mechanisms for us to do that. I'm grateful for the government's support of the Muslims in Canada Archives, which we run at the Institute of Islamic Studies.

Justice committee  I think education and initiatives can be very helpful in this context. Again, the issue is in the how, and how it's centred. We've chosen, in various ways, to centre the voices of those who have oftentimes been marginalized from our mainstream media. In the Muslims in Canada Archives, for example, we try to centre the voice of Muslims through their artifacts.

Justice committee  Thank you very much, and I wish to thank the standing committee for inviting me today. The clerk has my written submission, to which I added materials that I refer to herein. My oral remarks will briefly summarize what I have written, and I welcome the discussion thereafter.