---

THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RIGHTS

EVIDENCE

---

EDMONTON, Thursday, September 8, 2022

The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights met this day at 9:10 a.m. [MT] to examine such issues as may arise from time to time relating to human rights generally.

Senator Salma Ataullahjan (Chair) in the chair.

[English]

The Chair: Good morning, honourable senators. I am Salma Ataullahjan, senator from Toronto and chair of this committee. Today we are conducting a meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights.

I would like to take a moment to introduce the members of the committee who are participating in this meeting. We have Senator Arnot from Saskatchewan, Senator Jaffer from British Columbia, Senator Martin from British Columbia and Senator Simons from Alberta.

Having held two meetings in June in Ottawa, today we continue our study of Islamophobia in Canada under our general order of reference. Our study will cover, amongst other matters, the role of Islamophobia with respect to online and offline violence against Muslims, gender discrimination, as well as discrimination in employment including Islamophobia in the federal public service. Our study will also examine the source of Islamophobia, its impact on individuals including mental health and physical safety, and possible solutions and government responses.

We are pleased to be here in Edmonton and to hear from witnesses about Islamophobia in this part of the country. This is the second of our public hearings outside of Ottawa. Yesterday we were in Vancouver, and in two weeks we shall be in Quebec City and Toronto.

Let me provide some details about our meeting today. This morning we shall have two one-hour panels with a number of witnesses who have been invited. In each panel, we shall hear from witnesses, and then the senators will have a question-and-answer session. There will be a short break around 11 a.m. In addition, the committee has set aside time at the end of the morning to hear some short five-minute interventions from members of the public but without a question-and-answer session. And if you would like to participate in this part of the meeting, you need to register beforehand with the committee staff sitting at the back of the room.

So before we begin the first panel, I will ask Senator Jaffer to come forward. As you know, I’m an adviser with an NCCM, and therefore I will not chair this panel. Deputy chair Senator Bernard is not travelling with us, so Senator Jaffer has graciously agreed to assume the chair for this portion of today’s meeting on our study. Senator Jaffer.

Senator Mobina S. B. Jaffer (Acting Chair) in the chair.

The Acting Chair: Thank you for your confidence, Senator Ataullahjan. Now I will introduce the panel of witnesses, and I want to tell you that when I saw you all and I saw the panels, it’s a real honour to have you here, and we all look forward to hearing from you, learning from you, and this is not our only discussion. Hopefully we will continue discussions because we all have to learn.

And so I want to introduce the panel of witnesses. Each witness is asked to make an opening statement of five minutes. We shall hear from all witnesses and then turn to questions from the senators.

Our first witness is Rod Loyola, Member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta for Edmonton-Ellerslie, Poet, and Spoken Word Artist; Said Omar, Alberta Advocacy Officer from the National Council of Canadian Muslims; from the African Canadian Civic Engagement Council, Dunia Nur, President and CEO; and Yasmeen Abu-Laban, Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Politics of Citizenship and Human Rights and Fellow, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, University of Alberta .

I welcome you all. You have all five minutes, and we look forward to hearing from you, and then we will ask you questions to clarify or if we have other things to ask you. We’ll start with Mr. Loyola.

Rod Loyola, Member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta for Edmonton-Ellerslie, Poet, and Spoken Word Artist: Thank you very much for having me here this morning. I appreciate greatly. I think when it comes to the issue of interest of this Senate committee, it’s very important to understand that hate crimes that are happening in Canada are a symptom of a much larger problem and we have to look at the root of where all this is coming from.

Now, of course, the attacks specifically on Black Muslim women, hijab-wearing women, here in the city of Edmonton and across Alberta, it’s not very commonly known that the perpetrators of these attacks in some cases were Indigenous people. Now, I am not saying this in order to point the finger at Indigenous people by any means. All I’m trying to highlight here is that Indigenous people here in Canada have been disadvantaged for such an enormous amount of time, and we recognize the fact that the treaties that were signed with first the Crown and then observed by the Canadian state were never truly followed through on. When you consult Indigenous people, this is what they say.

Now, I could understand being underprivileged — and by that, I mean purposely being subjected to the negative racist and colonial laws of the state of Indigenous people — and then looking at other people from other parts of the world coming here to now call Canada home and then seeing that these so‑called immigrants are better off, than them as Indigenous people is going to create a certain amount of hatred, I would say.

I’m not saying it is just that this be the case; however, I think that this is something very important in understanding where the hate is coming from. That is one factor.

Now, of course, it should be well known that there are over 3,000 hate websites or social media groups in Canada, and these individuals who run these sites and social media groups are actually propagating and pushing hate.

So we have on one side those who have been negatively impacted by the state because of the colonial implications of this state on Indigenous people, and then you also have those individuals who identify themselves as White also being underprivileged by the economic system in which they live, and this comes out as hate in one sense.

There are individuals out there, for some reason or other, they want to hate, and I don’t know what their perspectives are, but if Canada truly wants to confront this, it has to look at the root of the problem. And as a legislator myself, looking at our legislation, federally, provincially, even looking at it through a municipal lens, we need to start identifying how we de-colonize our legislation. How do we make sure that all individuals can cooperate fairly on a even playing field so that no individuals are underprivileged. This is like the first step in getting us towards actual cooperation and working with each other regardless of our nationality, our religion, our ethnicity and whatnot because, at the end of the day, we’re all Canadian, but this is something that we really need to identify.

I wish I had more time, to be quite honest, because I’m only touching the surface on this, so I hope that you will ask questions.

I also would like to highlight the fact that these hate groups also have to be addressed in some fashion. I know that Jabril of the Somali Edmonton Society is going to be here later today, but he actually came to me once and was talking about a hate registry, a national hate registry, and I hope that he brings that to the table today because I think it’s an important concept that we should consider. And with that, I will wrap up my five minutes.

The Acting Chair: Mr. Loyola, you certainly have given us a lot to think about, and we’ll have lots of questions of you, but we will now go on to hear from Mr. Said Omar.

Said Omar, Alberta Advocacy Officer, National Council of Canadian Muslims: Chair and honourable members, thank you for the invitation to appear before this committee to share the perspectives of the National Council of Canadian Muslims on this committee’s study of the issue of Islamophobia.

The National Council of Canadian Muslims is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit grassroots organization. Our mission is to protect human rights and civil liberties and to challenge Islamophobia and discrimination and to build a mutual understanding and to advance the public concerns of Canadian Muslims.

I am going to begin by reading the names of my brothers and sisters into record: Ibrahima Barry, Mamadou Tanou Barry, Khaled Belkacemi, Aboubaker Thabti, Abdelkrim Hassane, Azzedine Soufiane, Mohamed-Aslim Zafis, Yumna Afzaal, Madiha Salman, Salman Afzaal, Talat Afzaal. These are the names of those taken from this nation in acts of Islamophobia in the past five years during the Quebec City mosque attack, the London terror attack and the IMO attack. Indeed, Canada has become the leading nation in the G7 in terms of targeted killings of Muslims motivated by Islamophobia.

This is nothing to say of the attacks that have happened across Canada that could have easily resulted in fatalities. Here in Alberta, we have seen multiple attacks and examples of Islamophobia. In Edmonton, groups like the Wolves of Odin trespass and illegally entered the Al Rashid Mosque, the oldest mosque in Canada.

In Alberta, Black Muslim women have been targeted for attacks at knifepoint. On January 1 of this year, a Black Muslim woman of Somali descent was attacked in an Islamophobic and hate-motivated incident all while her four children were in the vehicle. During this horrific attack, the perpetrators hurled Islamophobic abuse at the victim and said he would finish her.

In June 2021, a Muslim woman and her sister were the victims of a violent attack in St. Albert. The perpetrator of this incident grabbed one of the women by her hijab and threw her to the ground, knocking her unconscious. The man then produced a knife, knocked the second woman to the ground and pressed a blade to her throat while uttering threats and racial slurs.

The problem of violent Islamophobia is here in Alberta. Violent Islamophobia is a prominent threat that looms over our community, and it deserves a whole of government approach.

I want to thank this honourable committee for engaging in further study of Islamophobia. There has of course in the past been significant and unfounded fear mongering regarding the usage of the term of “Islamophobia.” Consider for example the M-103 study of Islamophobia in 2017 that resulted in the death threats of parliamentarians and protest on Parliament Hill. I want to note, of course, that the study of this committee should begin with an exhaustive reading of the report of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, Taking Action Against Systemic Racism and Religious Discrimination Including Islamophobia.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission defines Islamophobia as follows, which the NCCM subscribes to:

. . . Islamophobia includes racism, stereotypes, prejudices, fear, or acts of hostility directed towards individuals, individual Muslims or followers of Islam in general. In addition to individual acts of intolerance and racial profiling, Islamophobia can lead to viewing and treating Muslims as a greater security threat on an institutional, systemic and societal level.

By way of concrete recommendations to the committee, the NCCM submits that the following actions and policy steps should be undertaken. First, while many of the 61 recommendations put forward at the Summit on Islamophobia in 2021 have been committed to, like the creation of the Special Representative on Islamophobia and the National Support Fund for Survivors of Hate-Motivated Crimes, we encourage both chambers to prioritize advance in legislative and regulatory changes to operationalize the recommendations made at the summit.

Second, that this committee accept that violent and systemic Islamophobia are facts that deserve action from this chamber following this study. We at the NCCM stand ready to support action that is meaningful in the eyes of Canadian Muslims.

Those are my submissions. Thank you for your time.

The Acting Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Omar. We will now hear from Dunia Nur from the African Canadian Civic Engagement Council.

Dunia Nur, President and CEO, African Canadian Civic Engagement Council: Hello, everyone, your honourable committee. Thank you so much for having me here. Assalamualaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh. My name is Dunia Nur, and I’m the president, co-founder and CEO of the African Canadian Civic Engagement Council. First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge that this meeting is taking place today on Treaty 6 territory. As an African woman and as a Muslim woman, I am very privileged. And also as a young woman that has had a lot of her learning opportunities came directly from the Indigenous people of this land, Turtle Island, and as a woman who continuously practises her faith and also an African-Indigenous world view in terms of what healing and reconciliation means, it’s important for us to be here today.

When I say “us,” what I mean is, typically and unfortunately, when it comes to Islamophobia, it’s multilayered and it’s intersectional. Unfortunately, we have been left out of the table by a lot of public officials, policy legislative makers, including some members of our communities, and we are the ones that are targeted, and we experience the pain of Islamophobia, gender‑based violence and anti-Black racism. I will give you some concrete examples and some of the interventions that the African Canadian Civic Engagement Council end up using as strategy to combat Islamophobia.

First and foremost, women that are of African heritage have significantly been impacted and attacked in the city and across Canada. The issue is it was under-reported. The reason why is because we have no mechanisms of reporting Islamophobia. What I mean by that is, for example, myself, my family and the women I serve in my community, when we report to Edmonton police, typically we are turned away. We had some instance that even members of police have told us that some of the members that inflicted harm on us are people that are patriots and they love their country and we should have a picnic and perhaps have a conversation.

Another issue is that with Muslim communities, there are different intersectionalities as well. If you look at populations in Edmonton that are facing tragedies, it’s actually African immigrant refugee Muslim populations. One of the biggest mosques, Sahaba Masjid, has received little to no attention. It’s a newer community. And if you look at Statistics Canada, people of African descent are the fastest and the largest growing population across Canada. When you look at the stats in terms of those populations, Black folks, Toronto being one — then I believe Montreal, then Ottawa, then Alberta is the third. So if we are the fastest growing population in Canada, Alberta hosts the fastest growing people of African heritage population — and if you look at the stats within Alberta, it’s people that are practising the Muslim faith. The largest Black community in Alberta are Muslim.

We have been left out of recommendations. We have been left out of consultations. We have been left out within our own communities. We have been left out of legislative recommendations in terms of what a path of moving forward means.

I’ll give you some concrete example of what the African Canadian Civic Engagement has done. Our mandate is to protect and promote all people of African heritage as human rights and dignity. On a daily basis, we have people of African descent coming to us that have multi-intersectional experiences and identities; for example, deportation issues that result in deporting Black Muslim women disproportionately; hate-motivated attacks that happens in our streets, we are in the heart of 118 Avenue, and we are surrounded by Black Muslim businesses. Lastly, if you look at a lot of our population that seeks our service, they’re also other Black women that come from equity‑seeking communities such as being members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community and a lot of them also having issues of significantly facing disadvantage.

With that being said, yes, we have been attacked, and some of the attacks were perpetrated disproportionately, actually, White males. That’s first and foremost. Second, it was other equity‑seeking populations that internalized a lot of lateral violence and oppression. And some of these attacks also include our own men from our community. For example, we have issues around domestic violence; we have issues around sexual violence. So while we are experiencing a lot of these issues and then there’s an extra multi-layer in terms of hate-motivated crime —

The Acting Chair: Ms. Nur, I hate to ask you to wind up now. I’m sorry.

Ms. Nur: No worries.

The Acting Chair: Sorry.

Ms. Nur: So my point is I will not give you answers today in this consultation. I will ask for the Government of Canada, all three levels, to seek and resource women of African descent following the United Nations declaration for people of African descent, and including Islamophobia, and ensuring that our communities are on the table and they are directly participating. The reason why I say that is because we have a lot of rich knowledge that we can share, and we put a lot of the interventions in terms of healing circles, restorative justice and what it means to empower women. Thank you so much.

The Acting Chair: Thank you very much. We will now go on to hear from Professor Abu-Laban.

Yasmeen Abu-Laban, Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Politics of Citizenship and Human Rights and Fellow, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, University of Alberta, as an individual: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for the invitation. Over the Labour Day long weekend, I had friends from Europe that were visiting Edmonton for the first time, and so I took them to Fort Edmonton Park because there were two things I especially wanted them to see. The first was the newly opened Indigenous Peoples Experience for what it tells us about truth and reconciliation; and the second was to see Canada’s very first mosque. The original Al Rashid Mosque was moved from north of Edmonton’s downtown core to Fort Edmonton Park in 1991.

The mosque and its history tell us much about a multicultural Canada before official multiculturalism. The original building was completed in 1938, a reflection of the fact that Muslims have a deep history in Canada. The actual project of building a mosque back in the 1930s was spearheaded by both men and particularly women in the Muslim community. They garnered support from the then-mayor of Edmonton as well as from Jewish and Christian communities, and these communities also contributed funds.

Oral history and other reflections of the early decades of the mosque illuminate that the mosque served as a meeting point not only for Muslims but also members of other faith communities.

The original Al Rashid Mosque is also architecturally fascinating because the contractor was a Ukrainian-Canadian who built the mosque in the style of an early 20th century Ukrainian Orthodox Church with crescents instead of crosses.

So, to me, both the Indigenous Peoples Experience as well as the mosque stand out for symbolizing an open Canada.

My own research work suggests that, when it comes to various minorities, there’s an ongoing tension between two Canadas that plays out in different ways at different times, and what I call the open Canada offers a vision of openness, embrace and trust of others and can lead to forms of recognition and coexistence. The closed Canada is about rejection, closure and fear of others, and can lead to assimilative pressures, outright denial and even violence.

Now, I’m sure you’ll all agree that the open Canada is a much more compelling place to live. The issue of Islamophobia or what some would call anti-Muslim racism or anti-Muslim hate is really a critical one because it feeds a closed Canada vision. So given this, I want to share three main points that emerge from my own research that relate to countering Islamophobia from a policy angle.

First, it’s really critical to address Muslims in Canada in a multi-dimensional way, not simply through a cultural or a religious lens. We know from recent censuses that Muslims are mostly in urban areas, particularly Toronto and Montreal, but there has been growth in the past decades in medium-sized cities like Edmonton.

Many Muslims in Canada are immigrants, refugees and visible or racialized minorities. And despite many having high levels of education, many suffer from economic disadvantage.

We also know from recent experience here in Edmonton that you also just heard about that Muslim women of colour wearing the hijab can become specific targets of physical and verbal assaults. Dealing holistically with Islamophobia requires an intersectional approach attuned to race, gender and class, and one that considers improving the life chances and opportunities of those facing discrimination and disadvantage.

Second, in dealing with Islamophobia, there is, of course, a need to be considering individuals like the Quebec City Mosque shooter or the man who targeted and killed the family in London in 2021. However, as well, there should be consideration of institutional and systemic dimensions, including the media and the state and governing institutions. For example, there is no doubt that the language that politicians use, the policies they pass, or the practices and world views of state security personnel may feed Islamophobia and a closed Canada vision.

Just in August, the Association of Canadian Studies released a survey that shows that, since Bill 21 was passed in 2019 in Quebec, it is Sikhs, Jews and especially Muslims that feel less accepted, less safe and less hopeful. And amongst women, it was particularly Muslim woman who felt marginalized.

And then third and last, any form of racism or hate has spillover effects, and solidarity is crucial. We need ongoing interdisciplinary research on how solidarity is fostered in our digitalized and quickly changing world. We know from surveys, for example, in Canada and elsewhere that those that have anti‑Semitic views also have anti-Muslim views.

In the days following 9/11, in Canada, both Sikhs and Muslims were attacked by violent co-citizens as well as security personnel. So combatting Islamophobia, therefore, should not be approached as only a problem for Muslims. It’s a problem for anyone who values having more of an open Canada, and the open Canada really requires solidarity across lines of difference.

So knowledge about how to foster solidarity in the fast-paced digitalized post-pandemic world that we’re in really demands research across disciplinary boundaries such as that supported by —

The Acting Chair: Professor—

Ms. Abu-Laban: — programs —

The Acting Chair: Sorry, but can you wind up, please?

Ms. Abu-Laban: Okay. It’s the last sentence.

Such as that supported by programs like the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council as well as the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Thank you.

The Acting Chair: Thank you very much. Thank you to all of you. I’m going to start off with a question for you, Mr. Loyola. You are very brave. You addressed an issue we all think about and worry about, which is building bridges between Muslims and Indigenous communities, and I am sure you have given it some thought. Can you give our committee any recommendations, because we’re also looking at solutions, and any recommendations — because there is no doubt that there is a big gap between Indigenous people and our community.

Mr. Loyola: Well, before being elected to office, on top of being a spoken word artist, I was also an activist in the community. And, for over 15 years, we identified the fact that the racism against Indigenous people is learned by immigrant populations as they begin adapting and living here in Canada, and I experienced it myself and people telling me about Indigenous people and the stereotypes that exist.

So I think over the past especially five years, I think that the Muslim community in particular, but also other communities, have been doing their very best to respond to the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and start building those bridges between these identity groups — whether it be ethnic or religious or national and Indigenous people — so that they’re all invited to the circle.

I think the Canadian government, number one — and my sister here, Dunia Nur, said it very well — these things have to be resourced appropriately. If we truly want the bridges to be built, then resources — economic resources, professional resources, whatever the case may be — need to be given to community members to do this work, because a lot of the times, community organizations are expected to do this on a volunteer basis, but there’s an incredible amount of time and effort that go into creating these spaces. The community in general is calling for the Canadian government to truly resource this appropriately.

The Acting Chair: Thank you very much. We will now go on to questions from senators. And, senators, may I remind you that you have five minutes each.

Senator Martin: Thank you to all of the witnesses. I have written down so many notes, and I only have five minutes. Maybe I can just come to what I think each of you have said, which is the importance of solidarity, the multi-faceted aspect of Islamophobia and the community that is affected.

I know you said we should resource appropriately and I agree, but how will this coordination be best done? There is a new growing community. As you say, it’s very multi-faceted, and yesterday we heard from witnesses as well, needing more than just a single commissioner, needing maybe a council. There needs to be leaders from each of the communities. I’m really keen on understanding how best this multi-faceted issue and this very complex multi-faceted community as a whole can come together.

So we know we need resources, but what are the specific strategies and/or approaches? My question is really to all of you, but maybe I can begin with Ms. Nur.

Ms. Nur: Thank you, senator. I would start with simply identifying the intersectionality aspect of Islamophobia because that has been the most harmful component of the experience of Islamophobia as a woman of African descent who is also Muslim that comes from an immigrant refugee population. And then second, it is go directly to those communities because sometimes the people that you see on the table speaking and giving recommendations on Islamophobia might not necessarily be those that are being impacted on multiple different layers.

We all are experiencing Islamophobia as Muslim community, and unfortunately what happens most times is there’s a level of normalization against violence of Muslim community that is ideologically and politically driven; for example, the impact of Stephen Harper is still there. If you look at Alberta, there have been a lot of people in public offices that have made a lot of comments and hatred towards Muslims.

When you look at the reporting and the attacks on Black Muslim women, we have reached out to every single layer in every single layer of government. We’ve received no response from anybody. And when we go to the masjids, there’s a different level of intersectionality when it comes to Black Muslims. We’re left out in every single corner, and sometimes that’s painful to hear.

When we’re talking about building solidarity and Islamophobia, the issue is also anti-Black racism, gender-based violence and Islamophobia.

The last thing I want to leave you with, please, is my conclusion, which is looking at Islamophobia from race, gender, religion and social economics. Once you put that lens into place, then you’re able to have the effective intervention. Anyone that sits here that says, “Here is my recommendation,” I think would not be true to the community that I’m from. We have not been consulted, we need consultation and we need a space for only Black Muslim women particularly that has not been given to us.

Senator Martin: I’ll hear from Mr. Loyola next. Since you are a legislator, I’m curious as to the consultations that have been done provincially and maybe address what Ms. Nur is talking about.

Mr. Loyola: Yes, well, there have been a number of consultations done by the Alberta NDP specifically on the issue of racism here in the province of Alberta and one specifically on Islamophobia.

But to answer your question on resources, I think that a lot of the times, organizations in the community are kind of pitted against each other because, okay, well, one of you is going to end up with getting the funding for a particular project. So I think what would be best is to create a level of cooperation amongst people in the community to see — to award granting and resources for the community to come together and make sure that all voices are being heard and that there is true cooperation at the community level and find a way to fund what the community is doing as a whole. Because, often, as I say, you know, organizations are asked to submit a proposal and then the funding is given to one organization, and that’s it. So I think that by creating cooperation and getting people to work together on a collaborative project and then funding that, it would be a greater move forward for the government.

Senator Martin: May I ask one follow-up question? So when you say community as a whole, it’s my understanding that the community is quite multi-faceted, and so is there a coordinating organization? How would that coordination get done? It’s hard for someone on the outside to understand the community, so how will that coordination be done so that there is representation from the whole?

Mr. Loyola: Well, that is truly a challenge. I’m not going to lie. But by setting a standard whereby cooperation will be rewarded and money is granted to a cooperative model, at least you’re building a standard that is actually bringing the community together.

Now, obviously that has to be analyzed, and both Yasmeen and Dunia Nur have stated that there needs to be looking at it from a cross-intersectional lens. So for those proposals that are rewarded, you need to make sure that that intersectionality is incorporated and that there’s representation from different communities, right? That would be my suggestion if, let’s say, I was on a board that were awarding grants. Those would be the things that I would be looking for.

The Acting Chair: Thank you. May I put you on second round?

Senator Martin: Yes. Thank you.

Senator Arnot: I’m really happy to hear from the panel this morning and hear about the linkage between the Muslim community and Aboriginal people in Canada, the Indigenous people, because I think that the treaty relationship is something that has been ignored. And, in fact, the treaty relationship is a blueprint for harmony, and it is an avenue in reconciliation which is very important. And to hear the Muslim communities supporting the Indigenous perspective on that issue is really heartening.

I commend the panel for raising that issue in that fashion. I also want to say to the National Council of Canadian Muslims, I worked with Ihsaan Gardee when he was executive director on a project I’m going to mention in a second. And I will also mention the Dean of Education of the University of Alberta, Jennifer Tupper, who is an expert in citizenship; I worked with her on this issue as well.

I’m going to put forward this idea, because I see a commonality, and I’d like you to comment on it, and it’s the idea that the power of education hasn’t been tapped and that we need to get into schools. We need to make a paradigm shift. We need to change the culture in the community by changing ethos in the schools throughout, and there’s an organization that has been building materials to do just that. It’s the Concentus Citizenship Education Foundation.

I put it forward because I know some of the panel members would be quite interested in this idea, and that is that we need to teach Canadian students what it means to be a Canadian, what are the rights of citizenship, but, more importantly, what are the responsibilities that come with those rights and how you build and maintain respect for every citizen, no exception, and that’s fundamental principle of these resources.

And it also speaks to five competencies in Canadian citizenship, that all Canadians should be ethical, enlightened, empowered, engaged and, most importantly, empathetic. In order to do that, we have to teach Canadian citizens these ideas sequentially starting in grades K to 12. If we want to change the cultural in the community, you need to change the culture in the school, so I commend these ideas to you.

We need to teach Canadian citizens, I believe, civic literacy. We need to teach them democratic literacy, principles of compromise, cooperation and collaboration. We have a fundamental failure in Canada that has resulted in, I believe, the core issues that give rise to Islamophobia, give rise to racism, and we need to address that in a very effective way.

We are a pluralistic Canadian society. We need to do it intentionally, purposely, sequentially, and we need to address these fundamental themes, because we need to teach all Canadian students that you have a responsibility that comes with citizenship, and the fundamental responsibility is to respect your fellow citizens.

I’d really like the panel to consider that, and I mention this because I can see that members of the panel might be interested in some of these ideas, and I know that Concentus is coming to speak to this panel in Toronto later this year, but I would like a response and any comments or considerations that the panel would have for our whole committee about these ideas.

Ms. Abu-Laban: Maybe I’ll start and just say that, of course, education is really important. As you know, it’s a provincial area of jurisdiction, so we have a lot of variation in the education that’s given across the country and so a proposal on those lines can raise some complexities because of that.

The other thing I’d observe is that we’re living in a time period when what is referred to as critical race theory, but perspectives about race and racism are kind of under attack, and that is included even in this province, in Alberta. So I think that is something that people need to be aware of as they’re talking about the education system, because what kind of education are we talking about?

The final point I want to make is that just as I think there’s a consensus here that there needs to be an intersectional approach around Islamophobia, there also needs to be recognition of the systemic nature of Islamophobia, and that means looking at multiple institutions. So it’s not simply the education, but it’s also policing and security. It’s also the media, right? So you can do all kinds of wonderful things in schools, but if there’s a lot of racist things coming from the media and from social media, then it undermines those efforts.

So that’s why I’m really sort of highlighting the need for this ongoing kind of multi-disciplinary research because we are in a very quickly changing environment. I mean, it has changed a lot even over the course of the pandemic. We’ve seen changes in the political culture in Canada, so we have complex issues before us, and it requires nuance and thinking in multi-dimensional ways about how to address something like Islamophobia.

The Acting Chair: Senator, may I put you on second round?

Senator Arnot: Can we extend the panel for a few minutes because we didn’t start on time?

Mr. Loyola: And we still have comments from the panellists on this particular issue.

The Acting Chair: Let’s finish your comments on this, Mr. Omar, and then we’ll stop.

Mr. Omar: From NCCM, from all the community consultations that we often do when it comes to issues of Islamophobia, time and time again we hear that an educational approach is one of the best ways to address Islamophobia in Canada. And also from our consultations, we know that many incidents of violent Islamophobia do occur in schools, so I think it’s definitely something to consider.

And, of course, one of our recommendations from our 61 recommendations just before the national summit on Islamophobia is to reform the education system, to teach our students about Islamophobia and just make them aware about Muslims in general in Canada because I think our educational system does lack that approach. And even when it comes to just the average citizen, that’s from elementary to high school, they often don’t know much about Muslims or Islam in general, so I think having an educational approach is one of the most important ways that we can address Islamophobia and other forms of discrimination.

The Acting Chair: We will go on to Senator Simons, and you all know her well, and she’s a real activist senator, and so it’s a pleasure to have Senator Simons here today.

Senator Simons: It’s a pleasure for me to welcome all of my Senate colleagues to Amiskwaciy Waskahikan where we are all treaty people.

I want to dig right into some public policy questions. There have been a lot of concerns. particularly in the COVID era, about the digitization of hate, the tactic of rage farming by politicians, the concern about radicalization of people via online sources. The government is struggling with a way to come up with legislation to deal with online harms. I first met Mr. Omar just a couple of weeks ago at a round table where we discussed some of these issues.

I wanted to ask you, starting with Mr. Omar and then Dr. Abu‑Laban, about what challenges we need to consider when we talk about some kind of methodology to deal with online hate in a way that doesn’t boomerang and become an instrument for Islamophobia in the wrong hands. I know this is something that Mr. Omar talked about when we spoke a couple of weeks ago.

Mr. Omar: Thank you for that question, senator. I would just first like to start off by saying that NCCM does support a legislation to regulate online hate; however, our main concern is always to ensure that any legislation is fair and balanced and does at the same time challenge hate online but still leaves room for free speech. And I think for the current online hate that’s being proposed currently, I think one of the major concerns for us is to ensure that the terrorism factor is not very broad because, as you know, one of the five areas that will be looked at is terrorism. And so from the definition so far as we see it, it’s very broad, and we just need to narrow that down a little bit more.

Ms. Abu-Laban: Yes. That’s a very complicated question, because you are also talking about companies, Facebook, Google and so on, that have interests in what happens, and they may have algorithms that kind of lead people in certain directions, so I think we’re talking about a very complicated issue.

And I would say that we need an approach around online media that’s not just linked to Islamophobia but is conceptualized more broadly than just hate, because it’s also about threats; it’s about other kinds of things that may be happening on social media. And so if you say you don’t want it to boomerang and become Islamophobic, it’s about thinking about it in a broader kind of context about a shifting and changing culture and one where, if social media is actually becoming our public sphere, it goes back to your point about rights and duties as citizens. What are the duties of citizens in an online public sphere and what does respectful interactions look like?

I’m not giving an easy answer to this because I think it’s complicated, but it’s also complicated by the fact that there are companies with interests in this issue.

Senator Simons: So for Ms. Nur, we all know that it’s women of colour in public life who have been most targeted, followed probably by politicians of colour in public life, Mr. Loyola. I’d like to hear from each of you on this really complicated issue about how we balance free speech interests with the concerns about the fact that a lot of these social media platforms have become real agents of spreading hate.

Ms. Nur: Yes, that’s the biggest concern especially for me as a person that is boots on the ground working, supporting, and is also a political commentary in regards to some racist policies that are sometimes enacted at a systemic level. I have been targeted, and it’s a pretty scary time for our community.

And I think one of the things that can happen is — we once had an opportunity to sit with Bill Blair when he was the Minister of Public Safety, and we had a lot of rich conversations around that. But we definitely need more resources because here’s the part that gets scary for our community: When we think about resources in terms of surveillance, we know that that will not be used rightfully for right-wing extremist groups. And as matter of fact, that will be the rhetoric in terms of targeting and surveilling Muslim communities, and we have a lot of those issues. So we need to figure out a way that’s well balanced and bring, I would say, race critical scholars and also people that are experts in terms of the internet world in how to protect our communities.

I think there are a lot of rich conversations that can happen. And also what media runs to is also very important, and some of the positive aspects of community solidarity that is not highlighted. I will give you a concrete example. In Edmonton we had a young boy and we had a tragedy, but that built a community solidarity. No one talked about it, and it’s not in the media, but it brought two communities together, and that was the Muslim Black community and the Indigenous community, because we had a kid that drowned, and we had four people in Edmonton who are Indigenous that jumped in that water and risked their life. That’s not spoken about. But when it’s bad news, everybody amplifies it. So we need to figure out how to build community solidarity and empowerment in a digital world and that needs to be resourced. We need to look at legislative framework when it comes to surveillance as well.

And the elephant in the room, when we talk about free speech, surveillance and so on and so forth, the truth is, historically, when you look at our government and some of the racist policies that were enacted, they were against the Muslim community and it targeted Muslim people. So when it comes to how do we build this policy, Muslim people are scared because we know that it will impact us and it will not rightfully be used for people that have done tremendous harm. I hope that answers the question.

Senator Simons: It does. Mr. Loyola, you and I both know, because you and I both use social media —

The Acting Chair: Senator Simons, I’m sorry. I’m going to have to cut you off. I’m really sorry.

Senator Simons: Second round, please.

The Acting Chair: I have a question for you. I have so many questions for all of you, but I also have to be tough with myself. Ms. Nur, I was listening to you very carefully, and I wanted to ask something that has come up in Vancouver. I wasn’t really thinking is that it has come up, and it is that we need to look separately, a separate group with gendered Islamophobia, and especially the attacks that are happening on women. And I was wondering if you had given any thought to that.

Ms. Nur: That’s pretty much our whole lived experience, and I’ll be very honest. It’s complicated topic to speak of because, when we come to circles and we come to discussions like this, you want to come with a lens of solidarity with your Muslim brothers and sisters, an extension to all human beings to be protected, their rights to be also preserved and our culture to be celebrated.

The issue is that Black Muslim women have faced a lot of tragedies and homicide and violence in all levels, and there’s little to no attention, specifically when it comes to African women that are from the refugee community and newcomers. And that’s why I’m not even too sure in terms of — I would like to know more of what the citizen act would look like, because we come here as compassionate people. We come here as wounded people. We come here from lands that have been colonized and went through significant enslavement, and the European countries had a lot to do with that. So we come from that tragedy of genocide and colonization and enslavement, and we become displaced in this land non-voluntarily. Now we’re now on Indigenous territory that are also going through their own colonial and sad history. And then you bring these two communities together, and you also bring the fact of anti-Black racism that I’ve experienced in the masjid. You bring the issue of gender-based violence that I’ve experienced from Muslim men. And you want to be in solidarity, you want to protect your brothers and sisters, and we’re told to think cohesively, but it’s not reciprocated.

So what do you see African Muslim women do? They sit in the back, they stay quiet and they let the world take lead, and we just follow. And we’re afraid to ask critical question because we will be shunned and shamed from our own community and we know that we need those protections because we will be attacked from outside forces.

I say that we need to bring Black Muslim women together, and we need to actually have a summit alone just for that, because if you look — especially in terms of the decade of people of African descent — the largest community internationally is actually the African community when it comes to being a Muslim. And as a Somali woman, there is a lot of rich history in terms of Islamic heritage; for example, the prophet Sallallahu Wasallam, when Muslims were persecuted, the first place that they went to seek refuge in the time of the prophet Sallallahu Wasallam was actually in Abyssinia and they went through Somalia, and the first mosque that was built in the world was in Somalia. When we go to the mosque, we don’t hear that. We hear Bilal the Black slave, and then we leave those spaces because it’s hurtful.

Then we go to other spaces that are academic and critical race thinkers, but then we hear the anti-Black racism; then we leave those spaces. Then we join our brothers and sisters from the Black community; then we hear Islamophobia rhetoric that is internalized among Black people themselves, and then you leave that community. And the mental health, the detriment and how that eats you up that you belong to nowhere, no one is speaking about that.

I can give a lot of consultation answers, recommendations and throw it around. I don’t want to because that’s a disservice to my sisters because we have not had a disaggregated research investment to just engage our community. And that’s why I’m in a lot of pain, and I think you can tell as I speak because the violence is so multi-layered, and we found a way to keep ourselves safe, and that is rich with African-Indigenous culture that’s pre-colonial, that is rich with Islamic faith that looks at humanity and extending love and service and reconciliation.

When an Indigenous person attacked a Black Muslim woman, we recognize the tragedy of intergenerational trauma and residential schools. What did we do? I reached out to the Native Counselling Services court worker. We brought those families, and they had a conversation, because we know that criminalizing an Indigenous person will not help or heal, and jails are not a place that serves as a place of rehabilitation or restoration, and that strengthened our relationship. Does media cover that? Do politicians hear that? Do public services pay attention to that? No. So that’s why this conversation has been painful because of our own lived experiences of being left out continuously.

The Acting Chair: Thank you very much. Senators, panellists, I have the very tough duty of saying that we have to end this conversation here because we have a very tight schedule today, and the clerk tells me I have to end on time today. However, I want to tell you that please see this as the beginning of our conversation, and we may not have this open conversation, but we can certainly continue with our conversations. I have to admit to you that yesterday, after a full, full day of hearing, we were so overwhelmed and we thought what more can we hear? And yet you all have brought very different perspectives today, and you have given us a very rich understanding, and we definitely have a lot to think about. So we thank you all, and I sincerely apologize to my colleagues and to you for cutting the conversation down.

Senator Salma Ataullahjan (Chair) in the chair.

The Chair: I shall now introduce the second panel of witnesses. Each witness has been asked to make an opening statement of five minutes, and we shall hear from all witnesses and then turn to questions from senators. So we have with us this morning Jibril Ibrahim, Chairperson, Somali Canadian Cultural Society of Edmonton; Farha Shariff, Senior Advisor for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Decolonization on behalf of the dean’s office, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta; Houssem Ben Lazreg, Professor of modern languages and cultural studies, University of Alberta; and finally we have Bashir Ahmed Mohamed.

I will now invite Mr. Ibrahim to make his presentation.

Jibril Ibrahim, Chairperson, Somali Canadian Cultural Society of Edmonton: Thank you so much. I just want to take this opportunity to thank the Senate for taking the time to come all the way from Ottawa to hear from Edmontonians. Thank you so much for that.

Somali Canadian Cultural Society of Edmonton is a leading non-profit organization established in 1991, incorporated 2001. It’s registered also a charity under the Tax Act.

Islamophobia in Canada refers to a set of discourse and behaviours structure, which expresses a feeling of anxiety, feeling hostility and rejection towards Islam and Muslims in Canada.

The root cause of this Islamophobia we see is caused by the following: Media and cultural portrayals of Muslims that equate Islamic beliefs with religious fundamentalism and politically inspired violence and terrorism; political parties, especially extreme-right parties, and movements exploiting anxieties and resentment rooted in growing inequalities and economic insecurity and downward pressure on living standard; domestic political currents that scapegoat a vulnerable group as being responsible for a perceived deterioration in physical and economic security, a perception fostered by the news and the media outlets; Quebec provincial government banning hijabi women from working for the government. This has given license to the people who have hate for Islam and Muslims.

If I talk about the community level here in Edmonton, what has been reported in the news media is nothing compared to what people are reporting on the ground to us as community leaders. The physical attacks are on the rise. There has been case where women, you know, coming out of Tim Hortons who had coffee poured over them. And some of them also report that eggs are being thrown at them while strolling in the neighbourhood to get fresh air.

A number of women, you know, were harassed while shopping and the perpetrators asking them to go back to their own country. Several women have reported to us that they have been traumatized by those encounters, that they don’t feel well to leave their own house. A number of the women have reported being followed while driving, being intimated and harassed.

The news media have reported several hate crime-related incidents in Edmonton. Even the police have reported an increase in hate crime-related incidents. The data from the police shows that in 2018 it was 70; 2019, we see it at 57; 2020, 60; and then in 2021, we have about 97 incidents. And those do not include what we see on the ground as community leaders and so on.

The challenges also we face is that Edmonton police is not the right place to report hate crimes. There are documented incidents where individuals who wanted to report hate crimes, when they get to the police station or called, they were not taken very seriously.

We have divided the people who experience hate crimes mostly are women, Black and Muslims, into the following categories: Individuals who have been experienced hate crimes but are afraid to report it because they are afraid that the perpetrators may follow them to their house and cause them harm; the second group, they want to report it, but they also have language barriers that prevent them from reporting; and the third and the last group, they want to report it, but they were prevented from reporting by the Edmonton police.

The solution — and the solution is only provincial. I know that this is a federal discussion we are having now — is that we will need to create a separate entity where hate crimes can be reported. That entity could work with the police to complete the investigations, right?

And we talk about a lot of hate crimes, a lot of actions, a lot of things are happening, but the question now is what do we need to do, what actions need to be taken?

We need to create a database. What cannot be measured cannot be improved, as the saying goes. We will need to create a national database for hate crime incidents and map using a GIS or geographical information system mapping. This will help give us invaluable information.

Whether it’s related to poverty, mental health or a criminal act, you know, change the definition of hate. As I mentioned previously, someone coming out of a Tim Hortons and pouring coffee over a hijabi woman, that doesn’t constitute hate crimes as we know the definition of the Criminal Code at the federal level, so that has to be looked at. And also chasing someone on the street while they’re driving or trying to cause them to have an accident, those are not part of what we have at this moment.

The police have reported to us that we don’t have anything on the books to judge these people other than just mischievous. There has been a case where a woman was just sitting in front of a mosque with their kids waiting for a class in the morning when the mosque was closed, and an individual comes and takes a baseball bat and hits the windshield destroying it, and the kids are traumatized now. They don’t even want to ride in the vehicle anymore and they want to go with their parents, so those are the experience that the community is feeling.

The change of the definition of hate crimes that reduce the threshold of hate crimes is very important as a deterrent. There has to be a quarterly report on hate crime incidents visually available on the internet or somewhere on the website that is kind of transparent so at least we know where we are in terms of regional. And then if we have that geographical mapping or GIS, we will know what areas having more incident, and then maybe we can look into that and find out, you know, what can we do. Is it related to mental health? Is it related to something else? We don’t have this information available at this moment.

Why are the amendments of the Criminal Code required? Over the last several years, we have seen increase in hate crimes perpetrated against BIPOC communities in Canada. Hate crimes perpetrated against the Canadian Muslim community, in particular, have increased both in frequency and lethality.

Since 2015, there has been an upward trend in police reported hate crimes. Canada went from 1,362 hate crimes reported in 2015 to 1,946 in 2019.

Hate-motivated crimes have a particularly devastating effect. They make entire community unsafe. Research suggests that survivors of hate-motivated crimes suffer psychological injuries, mental health-related issues, and the survivors of non‑hate‑motivated crimes do not. Additionally, hate-motivated crimes are becoming a growing public health crisis with an increase in attacks on Muslims, Blacks, Indigenous and other minority communities.

Create a database for people who are charged to create a similar database as sex offenders, where their names are added in. When they move into a new neighbourhood, they will need to be identified as someone who was convicted of hate crimes so the neighbours are aware. Once they finish their sentence, in order for them to come of the database, they will need to be required to complete 200 hours of community work as a restorative justice, and they will need to work with the same community that they offended and maybe get a release letter from them.

Most Canadians do not realize that there are no specific legal provisions that deals with what many call as a hate crime. That means if an individual walks up to another person on the street and assaults them while yelling racist slurs and it is determined that the attack was indeed a hate crime, there’s no specific hate crime section of the Criminal Code to charge that person.

The Chair: Mr. Ibrahim, I’m sorry but we give five minutes. You’re way beyond five minutes —

Mr. Ibrahim: Sorry about that.

The Chair: If you could just end with these issues you raised, there will be time for question and answer period.

Mr. Ibrahim: Okay.

The Chair: Thank you so much.

Mr. Ibrahim: Thank you so much.

The Chair: Next, Farha Shariff, you have the floor.

Farha Shariff, Senior Advisor for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Decolonization, on behalf of the Dean’s office, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta, as an individual: Thank you so much. I’d like to begin by acknowledging that I am a settler of colour, a second-generation Muslim woman, the daughter of immigrants from Uganda and Pakistan. We are all uninvited guests.

My parents came to Canada in the early 1960s as students to the University of Alberta. They later brought my grandparents from Uganda in the early 1970s during the time when Idi Amin threw all the South Asians out of Uganda.

I live, teach, unlearned and learned on the unceded territories of Treaty 6, Metis region 4. The Indigenous peoples whose land lived and living histories, languages, cultures and ways of knowing and being impact and influence the diverse personal and professional communities in which I live and work.

It is my commitment as a Muslim settler of colour, a daughter, a mother of three women and an educator to be deeply invested in my own unlearning of colonial structures and systems of White supremacy that have persisted for centuries. My ongoing and active commitment to decolonization and co-conspiratorship with Indigenous peoples to learn aside them is lifelong, generational and a legacy I will leave for my children.

I have also been the target of Islamophobia. My parents have been the targets of Islamophobia. My three children, girls, have been the targets of Islamophobia. My husband has been the target of Islamophobia. The living stories of Islamophobia exist in this room.

I can go on and summarize some of the points that brother Jabril presented in terms of statistics. Islamophobia is an example of systemic racism in Canada. Canada has its own histories and policies that promote Islamophobia. Islamophobia in Canada has been recognized as a priority area for research and documentation as acknowledged in motion 103, which passed in the House of Commons back in 2017. However, out of the 30 recommendations, only 1 mentions Islamophobia as part of the generic statement condemning systemic racism and religious discrimination. This motion, which was passed after the horrific attack in Quebec at a mosque in 2017 where six men were shot during evening prayers, challenges our collective understanding about multiculturalism.

Media reports rushed to blame this tragedy on U.S. anti‑Muslim hatred that was exemplified by Donald Trump’s Islamophobic rhetoric and policies, but a study about White nationalist website Stormfront found that Islamophobic statements and sentiments were prominent more amongst Canadian subscribers than in the U.S. According to researcher Zine and others, the rising rate of Islamophobia in Canada has impacted Muslims long before this tragedy and continues to increase.

There is an entire industry, as brother Jabril mentioned, related to supporting Islamophobia in 2022, and it perpetuates fear, negative stereotypes about Islam, Muslims, which leads to hate, violence and discrimination. This industry includes the media, media outlets, politicians, academics, think tanks, far-right groups and ideologues, and the donors who fund their campaigns. These individuals, groups, and institutions create a system that supports and engages in activities that vilify and marginalize Islam and Muslims in Canada.

Statistics Canada has found that hate crimes against Muslims in Canada has grown 253% from 2012 to 2015. There was a 2016 Leger poll that found a steady decline in francophone views of Islam since 2012, with 48% of Quebec respondents holding negative views.

At the heart of Islamophobia is the rise of White nationalism and xenophobia in online spaces emerging from the privacy of the internet chat rooms and appearing openly in public demonstrations across Canada over the past two years. The presence of White supremacist nationalism across Canada has gained renewed momentum. There are over 100 White supremacist groups operating in Canada. The Canada Border Services Agency declared that right-wing ideology in Alberta specifically is growing. However, Muslims and other racialized groups will always bear the collective guilt and responsibility for actions committed or alleged.

For example, the recent RCMP arrest of two Muslim men on alleged terror charges in Kingston, Ontario, led to Conservative leader Andrew Scheer to call for tighter controls on refugees to Canada.

I have my own stories of Islamophobia and being the target of Islamophobia. Most recently, last year, I had to work from home after making a comment — a professional comment — where my advice on whether or not something was racist was recorded in the media. An individual surfaced and harassed me publicly and professionally, sought out information about my place of work and forced me to have to work from home. I had to seek the advice of Edmonton police, who also told me that the incidents towards me did not constitute hate.

I cannot express to you the psychological harm that that experience afforded me. I cannot express to you the psychological harm that comes with having to live your life in fear. I almost said no to this invitation because of fear of what would happen should I speak my academic and personal lived truth. I had concerns about where I would park, how I would walk to this hotel, and I am not a visible target other than my skin colour. I have chosen not to wear hijab, so that adds a further layer of representation for women. And I have the privilege of education. I have the privilege of having a position at the university where I can speak my truth and speak the truth for other women as well. Not all women have that privilege.

I have some specific recommendations as per the Canadian Islamophobia Industry Research Project suggestions: Examine and map the political, ideological, institutional and economic networks which stimulate Islamophobic fear and moral panic in Canada; define the Islamophobia industry in Canada, as well as surveyed recent trends and strategies employed by agents of Islamophobia; create profiles of key public, media and political figures as well as organizations who produce and distribute Islamophobic ideologies and propaganda; generate outcomes to collaborate effectively within a broader network of Muslim and allied advocacy groups in Canada. The intent to implement enhanced outreach strategies for target audience including government, media and the general public.

Make academic research relevant and accessible with policy and community forums to support community advocacy and social justice interests. The responsibilities of teacher education programs across the country are necessary to consider as a means to teach pre-service teachers and students about racism, oppression and Islamophobia. There is a need to equip teachers with the knowledge and skills required to counter these sentiments in schools.

Curriculum renewal that is not full of right-wing ideology is needed across all provinces and is required as a priority to ensure that the understanding of the function and effects of Islamophobia are included in the mandated social studies curriculum.

Designate January 29 as a national day of remembrance and action on Islamophobia. Making this a federal day would be an act of solidarity with the Muslim communities around Canada and the world to help ensure that lessons learned from this tragedy will not be forgotten.

Have better long-term coordination, data collection, reporting and planning amongst different branches and levels of government.

More education is needed in all public sectors including health care, education, the judicial system, law enforcement and other public institutions to actively educate and sensitize average Canadians to the problem of systemic racism, religious discrimination, specifically Islamophobia.

The Chair: I’m sorry to interrupt, but you are way beyond the five minutes.

Ms. Shariff: No problem. I will wrap up.

The Chair: If you can wrap up, and then there will time with questions and answers. You’ve raised many issues, and I’m sure senators will have questions.

Ms. Shariff: Thank you.

Houssem Ben Lazreg, Professor of modern languages and cultural studies, University of Alberta, as an individual: Good morning, everyone, including the honourable members of the Senate. Thank you very much for affording me this golden opportunity to provide my input and testimony on Islamophobia in Canada. I would like to start first by acknowledging that we are located on Treaty 6 territory, traditional lands of the First Nations, Métis, Inuit and all First Peoples of Canada whose presence continue to enrich our vibrant community.

[Translation]

The University of Alberta, which is where I’m from, respectfully acknowledges that it is located on Treaty 6 territory, the ancestral lands of the First Nations and the Métis people.

[English]

While Muslims are monotheistic in belief as they worship one god, they are rich in heritage and heterogenous in identity. The global Muslim umma reflects this diversity among it, whether it’s among its populations. As such, Muslim people and communities must be analyzed within and through their multiple intersectional identities. It’s essential to honour the historical legacy and to affirm the contribution and excellence and advance their resistance and liberations of Muslim people and community around the world.

Unfortunately, Islam has been often presented as being counter to Western practices and values. And this thing got worse after the 9/11 attacks, and anti-Muslim racism became fuelled by ongoing refugee crises, cultural imperialism, the global war on terror and the political landscape of fear.

Muslim communities here in Canada continue to be disproportionately affected by discriminatory practices, police violence and oppressive counterterrorism surveillance measure. And here we are talking about securitization of Muslim communities. Muslim communities are viewed always from a security lens. They are always kind of portrayed as the danger to the national security.

It’s heartbreaking to say that nowadays Muslims are being murdered as they pray in mosques, and we have the Quebec mosque shooting as the last episode of that violence.

And on a personal note, in the days that followed that attack, I honestly became scared to go to the mosque. The fact that when we start praying, I always had that reflex of looking back at my shoulder. Who knows? In my mind, it has become like this idea. Who knows, one day, something similar could happen to me. Why? Because I just came to pray with people of my faith. And it has become kind of an idea that haunts me, the fact that we go to the mosque and then suddenly somebody will come with a rifle and just put an end to our lives.

And that idea became worse after the Christchurch shooting in New Zealand. It means it keeps happening. So just going to the mosque has become a deadly affair, like a trip that can cause someone to die literally.

It is also heartbreaking to notice that during walks, people can be killed even when they are doing walks, and we saw that in London, Ontario. Three generations were eradicated by a White terrorist by ramming a whole family, and then there is one boy, 9-year-old boy, who survived.

A question: How would we talk to that boy? How would we explain to him what happened, that his mother, his grandmother, his grandfather, they were gone. Imagine if that kid was yours. What would we tell him? How would we tell him that this a society that you are going to grow up in? Imagine the trauma that kid is going to live with until the end of his life, deprived of his parents, deprived of the love of the parents and the grandparents. The boy’s story will be something that haunts Canadian society forever.

Visibly identifying Muslim women, same thing, are afraid to take the LRT, even in Edmonton, and we have witnessed so many instances of hijabi women being aggressed in the LRT stations. When we follow up with the cases, what happened? Were there any repercussions? Pretty much, these incidents keep happening, which means there is nothing efficient being done.

Mosques and Islamic centres are being vandalized and threatened. And here we can check the number of cases where people come and they draw things on the mosque, on the walls, bomb threats to the mosques. Why would I have to go through that just going to the mosque to pray? It’s either I’m going to be shot one day probably, or somebody is threatening to bomb me in a mosque.

So all this lies at the core of Islamophobia or what I prefer to call “anti-Muslim racism.” And here I would like to make a comment on the terminology itself. Although Islamophobia is the fear of threat of Muslims, there is also a debate even should we use “Muslimophobia,” which signifies the hostility towards Muslim groups and communities or individuals while Islamophobia is the hostility toward Islam a religion.

Islamophobia remains as the term that is most recognizable in public discourse, but unfortunately, I think it does not accurately convey the making of racial and religious others that fuels the forms of discriminations Muslims face in Canada. Calling this a phobia suggests that this discrimination is solely a problem of individual bias, which obscures the structural and systemic production of anti-Muslim racism. This is not a clinical phobia or a psychological issue.

In other words, the terms “Islamophobia” sheds more light on the fear of non-Muslim peoples rather than focusing on real material, emotional, physical, and psychological effects of the violence perpetrated against Muslim communities.

Thus, I would like to reframe “Islamophobia” as “anti-Muslim racism” to accurately reflect the intersection of faith and religion as a reality of structural inequality and violence rooted in the history of Canadian colonialism.

Conceptually, a focus on anti-Muslim racism is connected to an analysis of history and forms of dominance from White supremacy, slavery and settler colonialism to multiculturalism and the security logics of war and imperialism that produce various forms of racial exclusion as well as incorporation into racist structures.

I also invite you to challenge the idea that the problem is one of individual bias and that simply knowing more about Islam will necessarily lead to a decrease in anti-Muslim racism. I further suggest that learning more about how structures of violence, inequality and war have produced anti-Muslim racism and discrimination and its wide-ranging impact on everyday life is essential in order to challenge its assumptions, logic and practices.

The second comment I would like to make is that anti-Muslim racism and hostility is often intersectional. This is something that we probably need to address since Muslim women may face a triple penalty as women, minority ethnic and Muslim. It’s a deadly package.

The same applies to Muslim LGBTQ communities. Muslim women here are feared and seen as the enemy within the society because they are viewed as not in tandem with the Western ideal of womanhood. Here the symbol of the veil, of the hijab, is crucial as it is not only taken as a sign of submissiveness but also as a sign of Islamic aggression. In this way, the dress contributes to the way in which Muslims are able to perform and experience public spaces and life in Western society in general. As a result, academics — I’m citing here — have a view that the head scarf is experienced as if a second skin.

The third idea I would like to mention is the idea of the Muslim as a homo sacer. Homo sacer is a concept developed by the Italian philosopher Agamben. And Agamben’s concept of this homo sacer emerges from the ancient Greek distinction between natural life or a simple fact of living common to all beings and a particular mode of life.

He notes here that the homo sacer is a person reduced to a depoliticized naked or bare life who can be excluded or exempted from society and, therefore, allowed to be killed by anyone with full impunity. Muslims are killed with actually a full impunity; thus, the Muslim body became the space of exception over which different degrees of violence, verbal, emotional, psychic, physical is permitted. The Muslim body has become this body that can be killed without repercussions. It can go unaccountable. It’s as if we allow the internalizing, the legitimatizing and normalizing dehumanization of the Muslim body in more subtle and invisible ways.

The fourth comment is related to the media. Multiple analyses of Canadian media have concluded Islam and Muslims receive disproportionately negative coverage, both quantitatively and qualitatively, and they are more likely to be presented as terrorists, as having more violent motives.

And the fifth and last point is the work that we need to do to stop Bill 21. And I know that the National Council of Canadian Muslims is putting a lot of efforts to strike down that bill. Can we imagine that we are living in a 21st century, in a democratic society where we are allowing the legislation of laws that makes a certain group of people a second-class citizens?

Literally, on a personal level, if I want to become a teacher — I’m actually a teacher here at the University of Alberta. If I was a Muslim woman and I want to become a teacher, I would have to quit my job because I wear a hijab. Where on earth could that happen?

The Chair: I’m sorry. I have to interrupt you. You’re at 10 minutes, so —

Mr. Ben Lazreg: Sure.

The Chair: — we need some time for questions and answers.

Bashir Ahmed Mohamed, as an individual: Hello. I was born on December 12, 1994, in Nairobi, Kenya, and given my name, Bashir Ahmed Mohamed. My name in Arabic means “the one who brings good news.” I was born a stateless refugee. Kenya did not grant my family citizenship, and the Somali government did not exist.

In February of 1997, my family received asylum and we came to Canada. When we landed, it was the middle of winter, and my sister convinced me that snow was sugar, so I put it in my backpack and it all melted, and that was my first ever experience with Edmonton.

I’m not entirely sure why we were settled in Edmonton, but there was a section on our refugee papers that said, “person willing to support you,” and inside that box were two words, “Edmonton, Alberta.” And Edmonton became my home.

I grew up on the north side in a social housing unit called Dickensfield III. I still remember my friends and how we used to race around the neighbourhood on our bikes or stay late into the summer nights playing basketball. But life was difficult. I was growing up during the large wave of Somali murders. Young kids about my age were dying without meanings. In grade 8, December 2, 2008, a young Somali boy was murdered right outside of my house. I remember the police cleared his body overnight, and I walked to school right past where he died. His name was Ahmed. His murder is still unsolved.

The hatred the Somali community faced in the 2000s was my first experience of being othered, of being hated for simply existing. The second time I experienced this feeling was when I tried to fly after receiving my Canadian citizenship. I was 16. I remember going to the counter and having a warning appear on the screen. The warning said “DHP passenger.” I later learned that DHP means “deemed high profile,” and I was subject to extra screening, not because of something I did, but because my name was similar to somebody else on the list.

And it kept happening each time I flew, a reminder that I was not a normal Canadian. In three hours, I’m actually flying back to Victoria where I’m posted, and I wasn’t able to check in online so I assume this will happen again.

These events are just an example of the weight I carried growing up. This weight held me down and increased as Islamophobic rhetoric and hate crimes increased, hate crimes such as the Quebec Mosque shooting or the Christchurch attack, crimes that are influenced by Canadian politicians and popular Canadian alt-right internet figures — figures that promoted and continued to promote the racist and unproven myth of White genocide.

Despite this heavy weight, I graduated high school, graduated university. I worked as a civil servant in the Alberta government; and at 24, three years ago, I joined the Canadian Armed Forces where I currently serve as a naval officer, yet I’m still held down by a force that sees me as a criminal, untrustworthy and suspect.

This force is difficult to explain, but it’s a force that is strengthened by government policy, political dog whistles and indifference. It’s a force that manifests itself as being flagged in the airport as high profile or being the potential target of a mass hate crime. It’s a force I cannot invade even as an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces, especially as an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces.

When I joined the military, I joined because I believed in the mission and the role the military plays in serving and protecting Canada. I made a promise to Canada and when I take off my uniform, that same promise is not given to me. When I take off my uniform, I carry that same weight and fear I grew up with.

This position is difficult to explain and I do not know why I’m in this position, but when I was born on December 12, 1994, and given my name, I was subject to this ever-growing force. I had no choice. But you, senators, have a choice and the power to resist this force. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much. Wow. As the chair, I normally don’t ask questions in the beginning or say something, but today I’m going to take that liberty, senators, if you don’t mind.

Houssem, you touched on that subject briefly. Yesterday, one of our witnesses said what you said just now about the term “Islamophobia” not really being adequate. It’s inadequate, because it’s limited to the fear of Islam and does not extend — and here I tweeted about this yesterday — to the consequences of this fear such as discrimination and violence, and we heard all those stories just now.

So as a chair — and I know Senator Jaffer and the rest of us, we’re struggling. We called this study Islamophobia, and I’m rethinking this. And so I think we have to come up with — it’s anti-Muslim racism, is that powerful enough? Here we’re thinking what do we call this study now, now that we are hearing this. Yesterday was our first public hearing. We heard a similar thing and you said it today. So we have to rethink everything.

And to you, Bashir Ahmed Mohamed, you feel there are forces that you cannot fight. I as a senator have been pulled aside, and I think Senator Jaffer has similar stories, as do my children in fact. The names have so much to do with it. My daughter, younger one, Shaanzéh Ataullahjan, somebody asked her to change her name because she graduated from the law school in Toronto, but she was struggling to find employment, and her name had a lot to do with it. She said, “I will not work anywhere which is not comfortable with my name,” so I thank you. I thank all of you. I know the struggles, and this is the struggle that we all have on a detail basis.

And now I will stop and I will turn to Senator Jaffer to be followed by Senator Simons.

Senator Jaffer: Thank you very much. All of you have raised so many questions, and I know I have to respect my other colleagues who may also have questions.

All of you have raised so many questions, and I have so many questions of you, but I’ll only be able to ask you a few, starting with you, Mr. Mohamed. You know, when you say you’re in the Canadian Armed Forces, you’re a naval officer, and you still have this problem with the flights. I won’t begin to tell you my problems. But I’m surprised. Are they not trying to clear this up?

Mr. Mohamed: Yes. So they created a system called a redress number, so anyone who is flagged by the no-fly list can put a number in when they book a flight. I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but it’s called a Canadian travel number when you book flights, so that’s specifically for people who are flagged.

I, out of principle, have not applied to that program because the very fact that I’m applying for this special number and have to enter this number every time means I’m a different Canadian than somebody else.

CSIS has a budget of like half a billion dollars, so it blows my mind that they still are focussing purely on names when flagging people. In terms of a way to fix this, I think the easiest way is scrap that redress system and just have better intelligence, have a better security infrastructure. And that to me is a failure.

In terms of this issue, it became a big thing a few years ago with no-fly kids. I was a part of that group. But the solution, I feel, is a Band-Aid. And because I refuse to get that number, I still face those difficulties

Senator Jaffer: Thank you. I have a question for you, Ms. Shariff. We both have similar backgrounds — your family and I do — so I can relate to many things you were saying. I just want to know if the university supports you.

Ms. Shariff: Absolutely. Actually, I contacted Bashir around summertime of last year when I was struggling with this issue because he too has struggled with being the target in the media. My department supported me wholeheartedly. I got a phone call from my chair. I got a phone call from the dean. I was embarrassed. I somehow feel like I brought it on myself.

And it’s an issue for academics because, especially in my area of research which is anti-oppression and anti-racism, so how convenient that a Muslim woman has a PhD in anti-oppression. My parents for the longest time begged me not to study anti‑racism. I think my parents are still in shock of what I do for a living, which is educating people on what anti-Muslim hate is. But the university, my department, my area, did support me wholeheartedly.

Senator Jaffer: Thank you. And I have a question for you, Mr. Ibrahim.

Mr. Ibrahim: Yes.

Senator Jaffer: Since this morning and all of you, I hear this, and I have to tell you that II cannot believe that — I do believe; don’t take me wrong — that the police are not more active. You are very well known across the country. You’re a community head. What kind of relationship the police have with you and community?

Mr. Ibrahim: The relationship that the police has with the community has not been great. It has a lot of things to do with — we are about 70 youth killed in Edmonton due to gang related. There has never been any of them brought — the perpetrators or those individuals that who caused it. That’s an area that the community has been having a discussion with them. And they don’t take seriously at all.

We have seen, for example, a case where a Ugandan boy was beaten by seven boys at school. His mom went to the police before she took him to the hospital, and they told her to go back to school and talk to the school administration. This is not pursued at all. So she had to take her son to the hospital, and they stayed there overnight, over the weekend. And she came back to Monday again to report what happened, and she was having a language barrier. She spoke Swahili; she didn’t speak English. They were not taking her very seriously. Then she got mad and she was very upset. She started talking to them in whatever language that she knew. Then they felt that they needed to send someone. Someone has been sent home to her place. But nothing has been done. Even the chief of the police came on — this is in the news actually — and he said that this is consent fight. Can you imagine having one boy and seven kids to have a consent fight? That doesn’t even make sense, right?

So the kind of relationship the police have with the marginalized groups and racialized groups, they don’t have a good relationship at all, because we bring forth a lot of issues that they haven’t done anything about it, and that’s what they don’t like.

Senator Jaffer: One more question —

Mr. Ibrahim: One more that I want to add here is, just Canada Day, we had an incident where someone called and left a hateful message on our voicemail at the community. We were planning to have a Canada Day. It was on the eve of Canada Day. And I said to myself tomorrow we’re going to be having hundreds of people coming to that event. I didn’t want to take a risk with this person because the way they left the message was, “Are you Somalians and rat-headed Muslims, ‘F’ you’re going to be celebrating Canada Day or not?” That was the voicemail. And this person wasn’t even hiding himself; he used his own telephone, cell phone.

I sent an email to all the contacts that we had from the police as an email, but I didn’t trust. Because it was kind of on a holiday, I thought they would say that because it was holiday we haven’t checked our emails, so I took to the next step, and even though I was supposed to call the non-emergency line, I called 911, and I talked to them. And I said this is what we have. I have sent all the voicemail, all the information. The telephone is there. Tomorrow we have an event. We need support. I don’t want to be intimated because we want to celebrate Canada Day. We need a police to come to help us. It was on the news that they even acknowledged that they failed for that day.

Nobody had shown up. People came in. We had to lock the doors, you know. We were hoping that nothing would happen because even people walking to the event could have been attacked. That’s what we were afraid of.

So that’s the kind of relationship that we are talking about. Even when you call 911 and you left information, sent an email. We have all that information available to us. Until now, the chief of the police hasn’t even called to apologize for that.

Senator Jaffer: I’ve run out of time. I have a question for you, Mr. Lazreg, but I will wait for the second round if there is one. Thank you, chair.

Senator Simons: My first question is for Dr. Shariff. You’re actually working in a program that is designed to make the University of Alberta a less racist, more inclusive place. This is your whole academic area of expertise. I wondered if you could give us a couple of examples of the practical work that’s being done at Alberta’s largest university and some other practical solutions that you might see from your research about how we tackle these problems as a community.

Ms. Shariff: Thank you for the question. I just started on September 1, so it’s slow going. As a program area in the Faculty of Education, we are looking at specifically how we recruit, hire and retain scholars of colour, Indigenous scholars. We are revising many aspects of our HR structure, so to speak, because there is a little bit of a gatekeeping process currently with regards to who gets to access these tenured positions.

We are working closely with school boards to talk about the importance of anti-racism in schools. I will say boldly that many school boards have anti-racism policies in place, but they’re just policies.

Pedagogy and curriculum are two, as you know, different beasts. Pedagogy is the way teachers approach their teaching, how they teach. Curriculum is what they’re told to teach, and we have many different ways to study and analyze curriculum.

So at the university, specifically in our area, we are looking at ways to really encourage teachers, and it is a voluntary aspect at this point to consider anti-oppression as being lifesaving, quite frankly. And so we have huge work to do, and the work is slow as most equity work is, and my goal for this role that I have is to work very closely with schools and school boards, to hold them accountable to make anti-oppression a priority.

[Translation]

Senator Simons: Now, even though I’m not at all bilingual, I’d like to ask a question in French because we’re in the Senate of Canada; it’s a bilingual institution. I have a question in French for Professor Ben Lazreg.

We have a very diverse Muslim community in Edmonton. For francophones who come here from Maghreb and Southern Africa, are there enough services for francophone Muslims? Is there any support or are there connections between the anglophone or Arab community and the francophone Muslim community?

Mr. Ben Lazreg: Thank you for your question. We used to have an organization called AMPAC — the Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Committee. I worked with that organization —

[English]

The Chair: May I just ask you to stop for a second? We want to provide the other witnesses with the translation. It will just take us a minute. It’s channel 1.

[Translation]

Mr. Ben Lazreg: Thank you for your question. As I said, I did some work with the organization I named earlier, AMPAC. We suggested a few ideas for presentations on the francophone campus, the Saint-Jean campus, and especially in lycée classrooms to raise student awareness of the negative effects of Islamophobia. As a North African or sub-Saharan community, we have that connection to the Francophonie and especially to French perceptions of immigration and assimilation. So, because we’re francophones in the countries we come from, we’re influenced by the debate on secularism, assimilation and immigration.

Unfortunately, stereotypes and misconceptions have sometimes been perpetuated in francophone communities. Through these presentations we made, we tried to break down Islamophobia in the francophone context. As I said, the debate is being influenced by the secularism debate, which is highly controversial, unfortunately; it really gets a lot of ink flowing.

We’re having this debate in Quebec. Practically the same debate is happening in France. People are talking about the separation of church and state. Through that lens, Muslims have been targeted by this notion of secularism, especially Muslim women because of their hijab. They are now required to adapt to or assimilate into the dominant culture, which means they must remove the hijab. If they really want to show they are adapting to francophone culture, they have to remove the hijab.

It turns into a loss of freedom, because it kills the idea of freedom. As a free individual, you are free to wear whatever you like and say whatever you want to say. Then one day, a country, a government imposes a law on you that limits those freedoms. Efforts are being made to rectify this issue, but I think more should be done, especially within organizations in Edmonton’s francophone community. A number of organizations are working on it and offering support services, but I feel much more should be done in terms of awareness and engagement among young francophones, both at immersion and French schools.

I have a little story to tell you: I taught a few courses in the St. Albert community. When I was teaching at the school in St. Albert — it was a French school — there were books in the classroom. I was curious. I wanted to look at those history books. They talked about the Crusades. When I read the first two pages, I even took some photographs on my telephone; I took photographs of a few pages. How are the Crusades being presented to these primary school and lycée students? I believe it’s the equivalent of middle school.

The way it’s presented — this may be related to Farhad — the way Islamophobia is presented in the curriculum, in the educational programs... This is how the Crusades are presented in those books: The Muslims wanted to attack Europe. It’s the Muslims’ fault. The Europeans were just sitting at home and all of a sudden, the Muslims decided to declare war on the Christians.

Those books also perpetuate some other ideas. They also showed that the Christian Europeans wanted to civilize the Arabs. Why? Because at that time, the Arabs were committing acts of sacrilege against Jerusalem, and therefore perhaps against churches. They were doing impure, unwholesome things there. So the notion of a crusade was introduced in a problematic way.

We’re talking about public schools here. No wonder these children have negative perceptions of Muslims later on, because at that age they embark on a curriculum that tells them the following about Muslims: They threatened us during the Crusades. We were the ones who went to liberate Jerusalem, and they were the barbarians.

Senator Simons: It begins in the classroom.

Mr. Ben Lazreg: It begins in the classroom, sadly.

Senator Simons: Of course, we have a new curriculum in Alberta. It’s problematic; that’s the polite way to describe it.

Mr. Ben Lazreg: Exactly.

Senator Simons: Yes.

[English]

Do I have time to for one more question?

The Chair: Certainly, Senator Simons.

Senator Simons: I have question for — I was going to call him Bashir, because I have known him from a long time ago.

So you and some friends recently launched a podcast. I think it has died down, but it looked at issues around the Edmonton Police Service and its policing of Black and other marginalized communities. I was listening on the car ride here and the new chair of the Edmonton police commission is a Muslim himself. Do you see any improvement over the last few months at a time when, in light of what happened in Ottawa, I think a lot of Canadians from every kind of background are feeling a lot more disquiet about policing than they have, perhaps, in their privileged experience before?

Mr. Mohamed: So for some context, years ago, I was one of the co-founders for Black Lives Matter Edmonton, so we worked on a lot of policing issues. And in 2019 we started that — we started that podcast looking into Edmonton policing. I don’t think there’s been better material changes. I just think they’ve gotten better at using the right language.

I joined the military in December 2019, and I went off to do my training in the summer of 2020. And before that — it was kind of funny — BLM was something that no one really wanted to align themselves with. You know, we were kind of sketch. We weren’t sketch; people saw us as sketch, so politicians didn’t want to align with us, and it was kind of weird. So I go off to do my basic military officer qualification, and then I come back, and suddenly everyone has it in their social media, the police chief was saying it. Politicians who didn’t support us were at that big rally where 15,000 people showed up when we struggled to get 70 people. So I think people just got better with using the language.

I think a lot of the fundamental policing issues still exist. For example, there are still issues with police and hate crimes. A lot of sensitivity issues. I remember I was biking down Rogers when the arena was being built in 2016. I’m sure you remember.

Senator Simons: Vividly.

Mr. Mohamed: Yes. Someone got mad at me, and they called me the ‘N’ word, and the police said this is not a hate crime. And I guarantee that if that happened again, I would be told the same thing. So, yes, there are some fundamental issues. I think the police commission is very powerful, so I’m hopeful. James Baldwin said, “I have to be an optimist because I’m alive,” and that’s something I still believe in.

And to be clear, I don’t think it’s bad that people have adopted the language. I just think some may use it as cover to prevent themselves from actually doing the work.

Senator Simons: I pass the baton.

Senator Arnot: I want to thank the witnesses for having the courage today to come and put forward these ideas, and I can say a couple of things. I’m really hearing strongly that “Islamophobia” is a word that doesn’t really capture what we are with, which is anti-Muslim racism, anti-Muslim discrimination, anti-Muslim hate. And maybe we need to refocus some of that in the committee because I can see now, in a way, Islamophobia is a kind of a soft term, and it might be a reason that promotes the simplistic responses that police services apparently are giving here.

I think we’ve heard as well that police services need to do much more, but it’s leadership. And it’s leadership at the top whether it’s the premier or the Minister of Justice, the Director of Public Prosecutions. In some of the stories we’ve heard here this morning, it’s clear that there was criminal intimidation, criminal harassment, criminal mischief. You know, the idea that it’s a hate crime, I agree; we need a hate crime provision in the Criminal Code, but obviously the tools exist. They’re not being used, and services are getting away with it.

One of the things I’m thinking as well, and we’ve heard it before, is about the intersectionality issues. When incidents occur, data needs to be collected. Who collects it? The police. They have to have an intersectionality lens to collect it effectively and so we can have an intersectional response, and that’s not going to happen if they don’t even take the information down and don’t act on it. So you’re raising a very serious issue with the police service and the public.

I’ve seen as well some police services that I’m aware of in my province, that are very proactive, progressive leadership, but at the frontlines, that isn’t reflected. And so I’m thinking that this study, our study, needs to really focus on that and ensure that we give a foundation for a stronger response, a more serious response, because I think we know that one of the reasons that this study started is because Islamophobia wasn’t taken seriously and it needs to be perhaps with better term.

I think we’ve heard really strongly your positions, and I’m really disheartened to hear some of the realities that you are putting forward here.

One thing I do want to say, and I’ve said it to other panels — and my colleagues here have heard me say it before, but I’m going to take the time to say it to you because I see that this panel is particularly articulate and really understands these issues well.

There is a set of resources that was created by something called the Concentus Citizenship Education Foundation in Canada. These resources are designed to fit in the existing curriculum so that you don’t have to change curriculum. That’s another whole issue. We take the existing curriculum — and in Saskatchewan, for instance, the last time the social studies curriculum was changed was 1989. Even as bad as that is, you can create resources to fit into the curriculum. And the curriculums in Canada from coast to coast in the provinces and territories are relatively the same. It’s not that hard.

These resources were created in Saskatchewan by the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission, taken over by Concentus now.

These resources have now been customized for the Ontario curriculum and therefore can be used by teachers. Teachers are the change agents. Teachers have the ability to shape the future of society, and the power of education is something we haven’t tapped into, in my opinion.

One of the problems we have in this country is that we have failed to inculcate in students what it means to be a Canadian citizen, what are the rights of citizenship, but more importantly what are the responsibilities that go with those rights, and how you build and maintain respect for every citizen without exception. It’s a different kind of approach. It’s getting down at a commonality. You know, it’s all about citizenship, the responsibility and respect and obviously we don’t have enough respect, and people aren’t taking the responsibilities of citizenship properly.

These resources I speak of talk about five essential competencies for Canadian citizenship. Every student should be enlightened, ethical, engaged, empowered and, most, importantly empathetic, the five ‘E’s, so we call it the new three ‘R’s and the five ‘E’s.

I bring that to your attention because I see advocates here, potential advocates, to help open doors in communities in school divisions to see these resources used. I commend these resources to you, and I let you know that they do exist.

I have worked in the past with Dr. Jennifer Tupper, who was the dean of education at the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina, and now of course at the University of Alberta. She is a champion for citizenship education. And teaching the pre-graduated students in the college of education about these resources is really important because there’s a common denominator I’ve heard from teachers: The reason I became a teacher was to do exactly what this is trying to do. It’s not teaching students what to think. It’s more about how to think. What are the critical thinking skills I have to use in arming students with the tools to create the kind of society in which they wish to live.

I make all those comments to you. I want to make sure I haven’t missed any. There are some very important things. I know I’ve missed some things, but I want to let you know that this committee has heard what you’re saying. I think we have a lot of thinking to do, but I would like your response to some of the comments I’ve made and what you think about these impediments. When police services don’t respond properly, what do you think we can do as committee to make recommendations to cure that obvious impediment?

The Chair: Thank you, senator. Is your question directed to any specific witness, or do you want an answer from everyone?

Senator Arnot: I want three answers from each witness.

The Chair: So, witnesses, we have a limited amount of time so if you can be as brief as you can with your answers. And, Senator Martin, I think we should have time for your questions.

Senator Arnot: I thought we were going to extend this.

The Chair: We have 20 more minutes.

Senator Martin: Okay.

Mr. Ibrahim: It goes back to the education. You know, that is where it goes back to. The police, for example, nowadays only a Grade 12 education is what you need. I think the amount of money that they make, maybe we need to raise that to a college graduate who have the background to understand communities. But also as part of their education, it should be part of working with communities, understanding different cultures as a community work, kind of as a professional development.

And one other area that I’m a member of the Coalition for Canadian Police Reform, and that’s a federal level, trying to create kind of a college for the police. One of the things that I mention there is I’m an engineer myself. I’m certified by APEGA. So if I design something and it fails, no union can protect me from keeping my job. So why not certify individual police to give them certifications and require them to have a certain level of professional development? And if they violate their code of conduct, then they’ll be losing their job. The union can protect them in terms of salaries and negotiations, but they cannot protect their jobs. If doctors can lose licence, engineers can lose licence, why not police officers? Unless we take it to that level, we’re not going to be having police that have good conduct in terms of dealing with the public.

And community education is very important because they don’t even understanding the cultural aspect of each community here, so I just want to add that in there as well. Thank you.

Ms. Shariff: Thank you for your comments, Senator Arnot. There are two things I’d like to mention. One, I think there needs to be political will provincially to recognize that certain curriculums are problematic. It’s not a secret that Alberta is struggling in that department. And now, more than ever, there has been racist conceptualizations of what is deemed important to teach children.

Back to Dr. Lazreg’s comments about St. Albert, I grew up in St. Albert ironically, which is why I’m doing what I’m doing for a living, but not much has changed.

In terms of addressing curriculum, there needs to be political will, and there needs to an understanding that this is how we educate future police officers. They grow up in a system, so it is systemic, which speaks to the notion of the proper term to call this study. I too was going to address the issue of anti-Muslim hate or racism because racism denotes that this is a systemic problem. Phobia, just to echo your words, denotes that it’s an individual deviation.

And so understanding what anti-racism and anti-oppression is and specifically discussing anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, which is threaded in language, in images, in competencies and outcomes, specific and general, from K to 12. It needs to be intentional.

I’m very familiar with the program you suggested, as working with Dr. Tupper very carefully and for the last many years. It is definitely a focus at the University of Alberta. Specifically, we have a course that students have to take whether they’re in elementary or secondary education called EDU 211, professional and personal context for Aboriginal education for teachers. There needs to be additional courses at the pre-service level, but not all of it can fall on the shoulders of pre-service and practising teachers.

I think, as mentioned before in my statements, that education is needed in all public sectors. I work very carefully and closely with folks in the Faculty of Medicine to address racism in health care. I have worked with Edmonton police. And to your point, brother Jibril, that they only have to have a Grade 12 level of education, something happens when you get to mix with different folks from different areas of the world who have diverse world views in a post-secondary institution. So the judicial system, law enforcement and all of other public institutions need to take accountability, and it can’t just fall on the shoulders of educators, but, yes, educators have a very heavy responsibility. However, there needs to be political will.

And there was a lot of support and data that’s coming out of the UK that addresses why we need to shift our language from “Islamophobia” to “anti-Muslim hate.”

And lastly, and this is my last point, if we’re going to address the study, we need to understand, and pronunciation and language is important. Muslim is with a soft ‘S’, and Islam is with a soft S. So it’s Muslim, Islam. Thank you.

The Chair: I’m sorry. We just heard that the Queen has passed away, so we have to suspend. I’m sorry. Senators, I have to pass a motion to say that we suspended. Do you agree with that decision that we suspend? Thank you so much.

Before we suspend, I just want to tell you that if you have anything you felt you should have said to us, you can do a written submission to us.

I apologize, but it’s procedure for us in the Senate of Canada that we have to suspend.

(The committee suspended.)