THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RIGHTS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Monday, October 31, 2022
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights met with videoconference this day at 4:01 p.m. [ET] 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: 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, and now I would like to introduce the members of the committee who are participating in this meeting. I have Senator Arnot from Saskatchewan, Senator Gerba from Quebec, Senator Jaffer from British Columbia and Senator Omidvar from Ontario.
Our committee is studying Islamophobia under its general order of reference. Our study will cover, amongst other matters, the role of Islamophobia with respect to online and off-line violence against Muslims, gender discrimination, as well as discrimination in employment, including Islamophobia in the federal public service.
Our study will also examine the sources of Islamophobia, its impact on individuals, including mental health and physical safety, and possible solutions and government responses. After holding two meetings in June in Ottawa, our committee held public meetings last month in Vancouver, Edmonton, Quebec City and Toronto. In addition, we visited mosques in those cities.
Today, we are continuing our meetings in Ottawa to hear from national organizations and from representatives from other parts of the country. Let me provide you some details about our meeting today. This afternoon we shall have two one-and-a-quarter-hour panels with a five-minute break between panels. In each panel, we shall hear from the witness and then the senators will have a question-and-answer session.
Now I will introduce our first panel of witnesses. Each witness has been asked to make an opening statement of five minutes. We shall hear from all the witnesses and then turn to the questions from the senators.
In the room with us today from the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at Canada we have Faheem Affan, Assistant National Secretary Public Relations and Director Parliamentary Friends Association. On the screen, we have Professor Yasmin Jiwani, Department of Communication Studies, Concordia University. And we have Omar Mouallem, who is an author, journalist and filmmaker. I will now invite Faheem Affan to make his presentation.
Faheem Affan, Assistant National Secretary Public Relations and Director Parliamentary Friends Association, Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at Canada: Assalamu alaikum, peace and blessings be upon you.
In the name of Allah, the gracious, the merciful, thank you for providing this opportunity for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at to provide remarks in front of this committee. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at in Canada is the oldest organized Muslim community. We have branches from coast to coast with mosques and community centres in over 50 Canadian cities.
We are Muslims who believe Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, India to be the promised reformer of Islam. Our motto is “Love for All, Hatred for None,” and we try to live by it.
Islamophobia has been on the rise for many years. Muslims and those who look like us receive hate daily, both in person and online. It is our duty and responsibility as a nation to work together to protect our innocent Muslim fellows and all others from any kind of hate. Today, the goal of my remarks is to provide direction on the themes that are required to guide policies to prevent Islamophobia.
I have eight points to present.
Number one: At such tense times, it is important that Canada stay united. It is the terrorists and hateful people who desire to divide us.
Number two: In terms of Islamophobia, given that the far right is gaining influence, it is important that the government and the authorities take this threat seriously. We appreciate that following the killing of an innocent Muslim family in London and, on a much smaller scale, the hateful vandalizing of our mosques, the Canadian government reacted with sympathy and strongly condemned these anti-Muslim attacks.
Number three: If fear of Islam is on the rise, we consider it our duty to redouble our efforts to spread Islam’s true teachings and to remove the misconceptions and fears that exist. Our mosques, our centres and events are open to everyone to attend. As an example, we have opened our mosque in Calgary as a cool-down centre during the extreme heatwaves in summer. Additionally, for many years our mosque Vaughan, Ontario has been a regular for the Out of the Cold program during the winter months. And as a further example, our mosque in Ottawa is used by the local community during the holiday season for a Christmas market.
Number four: One of the biggest causes of anti-Muslim sentiment is the constant media coverage portraying immigrants and Muslims in a negative light. Disproportionate negative coverage has spread disinformation and has caused people to become more fearful of Islam and Muslims over time.
Negative comments about Muslims from authority figures encourage the public to further spread that hate, especially online. Donald Trump’s time as president of the United States is a prime example of this. Online hate and harassment of Muslims increased significantly during his time because he regularly expressed disdain for Muslims and immigrants.
Thus, the media and politicians must act with more care and consideration. Their words carry weight and influence others. They must act with responsibility and not just focus upon the negative stories around immigrants, Muslims and Islam for the sake of sales, clicks and votes.
Number five: A growing cause of anti-immigrant sentiment is economic frustration, which is leading people to blame immigrants and Muslims for issues they see in society. Therefore, the government should ensure it balances the rights for all people in Canada, including immigrants and all others. Frustrations should not be allowed to fester.
Number six: Often people ask Muslims to integrate within Western society. However, it is important to recognize what true integration is. I will use a quote from a speech of the Caliph, Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, our supreme leader, where he stated:
Integration requires a person to strive his or her utmost to help their society and nation’s progress. It is not integration to demand that the minority reject their peacefully held religious views or to adopt customs or traditions that are at odds with their faith.
This message also needs to go out from leaders and media — that we should respect one another’s differences.
Number seven: The Ahmadiyya Muslim community has always encouraged positive discussion about one’s faith instead of attacking other people’s beliefs. This approach will create more awareness of people’s faiths and their positive aspects and will discourage the villainization of other religions. To promote this value, our Jama`at hosts hundreds of interfaith symposiums, and we have held the longest-standing World Religions Conference in Canada.
Number eight: We should focus on our similarities as a society, rather than our differences. As the Caliph of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has said:
The Holy Quran has instructed Muslims to call People of the Book and others to that which is common amongst them. The Holy Quran does not tell people to scrutinize one another’s differences, rather, it speaks about looking at that which is common between people.
To conclude, in our opinion, education is the true solution to ending anti-Muslim sentiments and hate against each other, regardless of which religion you belong to. Community gatherings where we can share our unique experiences and backgrounds help build bridges of understanding in local communities. We, the Ahmadiyya Muslims in Canada, regularly hold interfaith dialogues on campuses, at community centres and at places of worship, and we hold events to educate communities and our fellow Canadians about the peaceful nature of Islam.
The responsibility lies on us to learn about other communities and teach others about the similarities we have rather than discussing the very few differences we have. It is absolutely vital that during such difficult times we all stand together against extremism. Terrorism has no religion and no targets. We are all susceptible to the vehement implications of terrorism and must not let these actions taint the true picture of what it means to be Canadian.
Thank you for your time today, and Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at Canada looks forward to further dialogue and continuing our efforts to combat all forms of hate. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Yasmin Jiwani, Professor, Department of Communication Studies, Concordia University, as an individual: Thank you so much, and I would like to thank the committee for inviting me to this panel and to commend it for its study of off-line and online Islamophobia.
As a starting point, I want to use Jasmin Zine’s definition of Islamophobia: “ . . . a fear and hatred of Islam and Muslims (and those perceived as Muslims) that translate into individual actions and ideological and systemic forms of oppression . . . .” Islamophobia is a form of cultural racism given that Muslims come from many different cultures and backgrounds, and Canadian statistics confirm the increasing prevalence of Islamophobia.
My comments here today are confined to online Islamophobia, although online and off-line are intricately linked, one validating the other and vice versa.
Online Islamophobia gains its potency from the hyper-mediated nature of many social media platforms. These platforms are interconnected so that posts on one platform cross over and spread to others. However, this is accomplished through various other affordances, which I will touch on briefly.
First, many social media platforms allow for anonymity. The user is not held accountable for their comments.
Second, these platforms rely on a commenting system, which works on an attention economy predicated on popularity. The highest number of clicks or likes results in increased status and popularity for the user, and it also converts to economic gain for the platform.
Third, the very nature of the platform often encourages short, condensed comments or images that don’t require a recent argument to support a point of view. Rather, such comments tend to be opinions predicated on likes and dislikes. These then replicate the original message and facilitate its spread across media platforms and amongst users. Add to this the easy and instantaneous access afforded by many online platforms and the ensuing result is an amplification and intensification of the original message.
Fourth, the existence of trolls and bots increases the likelihood of the spread of Islamophobic messages. In our research on Twitter, my colleague Professor Ahmed Al-Rawi found the existence of a Russian bot in the tweets that were posted immediately after the Quebec mosque shooting and immediately after the last federal election. These tweets were Islamophobic.
Fifth, social media platforms tend to encourage networks and digital enclaves that act like echo chambers, bringing together like-minded users who then reinforce each other’s messages or posts. Many of these networks transcend geographical boundaries. For instance, the name of the Quebec mosque shooter, Alexandre Bissonnette, was carved on the ammunition of the Christchurch shooter. Though these events happened in different countries and at different times, the shared information made possible by social media networks demonstrates how viral Islamophobia is.
Sixth, social media platforms enable the transmission of coded language through memes and other condensed symbolic forms and linguistic devices. These formats allow toxic messages to get past gatekeepers. Coded language like “free speech” and “Canadian values” work to camouflage the ideologies of the users.
The amplification and intensification of Islamophobia online moves the Overton window so that ideas that were once considered unacceptable are now considered acceptable, thus normalizing the extreme.
The implications of Islamophobia are well documented in the literature. Islamophobia is a form of violence, and if we draw the parallels between how victims of gendered violence are impacted and made to feel powerless, unworthy of societal attention and disparaged, then we can apprehend how Muslims feel as they are targeted, stereotyped, marginalized and alienated.
In conclusion, in addressing this committee’s focus on potential solutions, I would like to mention two recommendations. First, research has demonstrated that when it comes to topical issues, such as immigration, the trolls, bots and racist commentators take the lead in posting messages that reflect their opinions. These then escalate and aggregate. The sheer number of posts work to legitimize the message. Hence, it is imperative to cut down on the avenues available to post such comments.
Second, media literacy is a necessity. Without digital literacy, it is easy to get hooked on and drawn into internet rabbit holes that are misogynistic, Islamophobic and racist.
In closing, I would like to thank the committee for its invitation and for the important work it is doing in examining Islamophobia in Canada. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I will now turn to Omar Mouallem for his remarks.
Omar Mouallem, Author, Journalist and Filmmaker, as an individual: Thank you honourable members for inviting me today, the last day of Islamic Heritage Month.
Following the National Action Summit on Islamophobia in 2021, the National Council of Canadian Muslims recommended 61 ways to counter anti-Muslim hate. I will focus on two of them.
The first is recommendation 21, which is to allocate funds, through the Anti-Racism Secretariat or the ministry of heritage, to organizations to facilitate grassroots storytelling, visual and oral history projects and creation of community archives. The second is number 59, which is to invest in celebrating the history of local Canadian Muslims.
I sincerely believe that one of the best antidotes for hate is cultural education, in particular, historical education. Unfortunately, when it comes to Islamic history, there is a tendency to separate it from our Canadian and Western history, or to focus on the influence of the so-called golden age as if the relevance of Western Islam is in the distant past. In fact, Muslim communities took root in the Americas not just before Protestants, but before Protestantism existed. Islamic culture has been present literally since Christopher Columbus, who had sent an Arabic-speaking interpreter to speak with the first Indigenous Americans they encountered.
As many as a third of enslaved Africans were Muslim. Across the U.S., Brazil, the Caribbean and almost certainly in pre-abolition Canada, they held communal worship, often practising secretly in ad hoc mosques.
I spent much of the last decade documenting untold stories of Western Islam for my book Praying to the West: How Muslims Shaped the Americas. As I filled 100 pages of it on Canadian Muslims alone, I wondered why Historica Canada has yet to dedicate a single heritage minute to them, despite the urgency of anti-Islamophobia campaigns.
The fact is, people fear those they don’t understand. But would they fear them less if they knew that their ancestors on the Prairies likely relied on Muslim peddlers to supply them with household necessities; or that some of the settlers became homesteaders themselves or fur traders who learned the basics of Indigenous languages to compete with the big five companies; or that these immigrants led to constructing the first mosques across the North American Prairies; or that decades later, their progeny helped African and Palestinian refugees in Inuvik, Northwest Territories to construct the hemisphere’s northernmost mosque and, more importantly, a desperately needed food bank on the site of that mosque; or that the practices of these congregants of the aptly named Midnight Sun Mosque set precedents for Islamic laws that are now recognized by Muslims around the globe? Can we not spare a Heritage Minute to make this common knowledge?
Since we can’t separate Canadian history from the history of the greater Americas and European colonialism, it’s worth thinking about Islam’s broader Western influence in motivating the first recorded uprising of enslaved Africans in 1521, leading the Spanish kingdom to declare one of many bans against transporting “slaves suspected of Islamic leanings”; in shaping Caribbean nations like Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana, both of which have had Muslim head of states; in being instrumental to the African-American civil rights movement; and in shaping not just hip hop but the very origins of blues music. In my opinion, this should be late elementary education at the very least.
The fact is, online hate starts off-line, with ignorance in our homes, workplaces and in schools that overemphasize Eurocentric history and Christian ideals, thereby erasing the importance of minorities. Anti-Muslim racism is a complex phenomenon, but a miseducation is at least partly to blame for leading too many to believe that the prevalence of Western Islam is like a new viral outbreak instead of an essential gene in modern America’s DNA.
It’s human nature to fear what we don’t understand, but if Canadians — Muslim and non-Muslim — knew their Islamic history, would there be less reason to fear it? I believe so.
We should not wait until October each year to remember this heritage. We should incentivize provincial and local curricula to teach this history and fund storytellers, museums, libraries and, yes, Historica Canada to promote this history. We should embrace the unique diversity of Canada’s Muslim population to demonstrate that Islam is not a monolith.
Thank you for listening and for your time, honourable members.
The Chair: Thank you all for your presentations. Before asking and answering questions, I would like to ask members and witnesses in the room to please refrain from leaning too close to the microphone or remove your earpiece when doing so. This will avoid any sound feedback that could negatively impact the committee’s staff in the room.
We will now proceed to questions from the senators. As was our previous practice, I would like to remind each senator that you have five minutes for your question, and that includes the answer.
Senator Jaffer: Salaam alaikum to all three witnesses. You all have very long experience on these issues, and, certainly, listening to you all, we have learned a lot.
I want to start with you, Ms. Jiwani. I know you are in communications now, but from the time you were a student, you were very much also involved with issues of women and Islam, just generally women’s rights. One of the things that the committee has been hearing a lot about is the attacks on women. When we were in Edmonton, it really hit me, the different attacks on women.
What role do you and Mr. Mouallem think that the media can play in portraying Muslim women in a better light than they are doing? If you could both answer, starting with you, Ms. Jiwani.
Ms. Jiwani: Senator Jaffer, thank you for that question. Yes, it has been one of the issues that has happened a lot in Quebec, particularly with the passing of Bill 21.
Muslim women have been targeted and have been targeted for a long time, partly because of the visibility of the hijab. That’s one explanation, but the other thing that I noticed with the online commentary that I have examined — and this relates directly to what Mr. Mouallem was talking about — the stereotypes that have been there all along in the media, that are part of the wellspring of Orientalism, continually feed into a notion of what Muslim women are like.
In Quebec, it’s become a matter of basically ripping off the veil and removing the hijab forcefully, whereas in other parts of the world we see Muslim women trying to keep that intact and alive.
I think part of the reason why the media continually trades on these old stereotypes is because they are easy. They feed in. They are part of what one author has so nicely called the “quick-fix Arab scenario.” You have the stereotypes, and you just use them. But I think the element where mass media can really work is to begin to break down, as Mr. Mouallem has said so articulately, the notion that Islam is monolithic. There are so many instances of women not wearing the hijab and so many of them wearing the hijab. That’s one thing that has to be structured.
The second thing is: What is the hijab? And what is the significance of the fact that it’s interpretation has varied? How often has it become a symbol that has been harnessed in the interests of women making a claim? When you see young French women in France, for instance, they have taken on the hijab purposely to acclaim and assert a Muslim identity.
It’s how the symbol is being used that needs to be interrogated. This is where media literacy comes in.
One of the big things is when we think about shows like “Little Mosque on the Prairie,” which made a sufficient impact in terms of rupturing the stereotypes, but how many more such shows have we seen? That’s one thing.
The second thing is that once the writer for that original show was let go, the show itself changed texture. So do we have our own creative productions within our own power? That’s the other thing. We can tell the stories, but who is controlling the stories?
Of course, the kind of representation we receive in the mass media becomes absolutely important for Muslims. And it should not be Muslims that are just assimilated Muslims or informers, basically, but Muslims who have diverse perspectives and who can bring those perspectives to the media. Of course, the media has to be open to that.
Mr. Mouallem: Thank you, professor, for saying that eloquently. What can I add to that?
First, the answer to that is, ironically, to cede more space to Muslim women to speak for themselves about why they choose to wear or not wear a hijab. It is a deeply personal decision, and fixating on it, as the media often does, creates this otherism, this exoticism, that can lead to ignorance, and that ignorance can fuel or instigate more hate.
In the end, what I would love to see from popular culture and media in the representation of Muslim people — female, male or non-binary — is a humanization of them in the truer sense of what it means to be human, which is to be imperfect. So often representation is either there to paint them in a negative way or in an overly positive way when, in fact, Muslim people are just like everyone else. They are no better or no worse. They are just regular people. So that normalizing of Muslim families, of Muslim experiences, of going to mosque or not going to mosque, or wearing a hijab or not wearing a hijab, I would love to see it normalized and neutralized in how it is portrayed in media.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Professor Jiwani, you’ve partly answered my questions, but I’d like to return to what you said.
You spoke about social media that operate anonymously or disguised as something else. At the same time, you are recommending that it should be possible to do something to prevent them from continuing to promote an anti-Islam message. What action can we take when we know that people are hiding behind a false front? What do you recommend could be done to restrict the action of influencers like that on social media?
Also, with respect to conventional media, we have the evidence today, because one of the witnesses who appeared spoke to us about certain factors that show the media use a glossary — for example when the word “Zen” is used, we think of a certain community, and when the word “terrorist” is used, we immediately think of Muslims. How can we deconstruct this existing glossary currently being used by conventional media?
My question is for all the witnesses, and Ms. Jiwani in particular. Thank you.
[English]
Ms. Jiwani: Thank you. The issue is that there are so many different platforms. Each platform seems to have some kind of an in-built requirement or in-built guard with the monitors who check in. The problem is that this is done differentially. It is not across the board. It is not uniform. Plus, we are not taking into account that those people who act as monitors are doubly victimized when they listen to this hate and have to follow it.
There are many instances where we see on Twitter, for example, before the Elon Musk purchase, this would happen when it came to certain kinds of hate, such as around misogynistic issues, but not so much around Islam.
As you say, the connection to the stereotype of the Muslim as terrorist is so tight and embedded that to break it becomes very difficult in those instances because “terrorism” is a coded word. When you put it in a comment, it does not necessarily get picked up as Islamophobia.
The second thing that I want to draw attention to is one of the issues that you pointed out, which is the whole notion of how can we regulate this when anonymity has been promised? Well, there are a number of news platforms that actually do not require anonymity; they want you to sign in and be registered, but nothing happens because there is only a passive gatekeeping function.
For instance, Global News, which I examined in terms of their coverage of the women who are married to ISIS fighters and returning to Canada, in that coverage, although it was explicitly stated in the guidelines for posting that one could not post anything Islamophobic, who was actually looking after that? Many of the comments just went through. Nobody was actually keeping track, even though many of these people had already registered.
So anonymity works in some instances, but in other instances, the very fact that you have this medium open and that people can write — Every article that I have ever published that has anything to do with Islam immediately generates backlash. Immediately. You do not have to say anything else, just the word “Muslim,” and right away you have a whole organized alt-right wing that comes in. That is what happens.
Anonymity becomes only one element. It has to work in concert with everything else. That is, you cannot have these avenues open. I just want to end by saying that — sorry, my time is over.
The Chair: It’s okay, you can finish your thought.
Ms. Jiwani: Thank you. At the time of the truth and reconciliation hearings, one of the things that the CBC did was actually close down the comments on anything to do with Indigenous issues. Why can’t that happen across the board?
The Chair: Do you have another question, or would you like someone else to answer? Omar, then maybe Faheem, would you like to answer?
Mr. Mouallem: Thank you. This is a very complex thing. How do you regulate online speech while also respecting free speech and also acknowledging and respecting the fact that these are operated by private companies, most of which are not Canadian in the very least?
Beyond engaging with these platforms in a serious way, I’m not sure what can be done. At the very least, I suppose these platforms should be expected to respect our free speech laws if they want to operate in Canada.
That very difficulty is the reason why I emphasize early education. When encountering hate speech and anti-Muslim hate, I think that it becomes very difficult to radicalize people when they know better and when, from an early age, they have learned to respect and understand Muslims, when they understand the role that they have played in the society around them, when there is really less reason, or no reason, to fear them because they already feel like they know Muslim people, if not personally, then they know them culturally through their education, through pop culture and through the everyday conversations they might have in schools, workplaces and homes.
The Chair: Thank you. Faheem?
Mr. Affan: Thank you very much. I agree with what Omar was saying in that it is very hard to control social media, but again, the emphasis is on education. Whenever you see these groups, they can be identified, then dialogue can be opened with them to see why they are commenting like this against Muslims. Maybe an education and an open dialogue with them will change their mindset, and they will learn about Islam and the beautiful qualities of the religion. Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Education is indeed an important factor. To educate the media, whose reporters have all undergone training that has taught them a number of rules, where they learn that freedom of expression comes with certain responsibilities, I don’t know where to begin in terms of educating the conventional media.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you, Senator Gerba. Omar, I will let you have the first response, since you are a media person.
Mr. Mouallem: The answer probably lies in the employment decisions within those media companies. The more diverse they are and the more their newsrooms are comprised of racialized people, the less likely there is going to be this continuation of very racist ideas or veiled White supremacy.
I look at the tenor of media in Quebec. In particular, the trash radio or radios-poubelles, which is so popular there and might have played an important role in the tragic shootings on January 29, 2017, how much of that has to do with the lack of diversity in those newsrooms or the lack of Muslim or Middle Eastern representation in those newsrooms? I would hazard to guess a lot, that having someone from a marginalized community near you in your newsroom, in your radio station, will make it a lot harder for you to say or print some of the vile things that you might otherwise say or print and, maybe with time, even change your mind.
The Chair: Thank you. I see Professor Jiwani is shaking her head.
Ms. Jiwani: The reason I am shaking my head is because oftentimes education is seen as a panacea for everything. All of the studies that I have read, including from people in the school of journalism who have done theses on this, who are minorities in the newsroom, have actually been made to feel really targeted and really silenced in those places so that they assimilate into the dominant ways of seeing. I cannot see how that would change because the way trash radio works, and the way it works over there, is because it somehow resonates so well with that public’s notion of what Islam is like, what Muslims are like.
Even hearing the imam of the mosque, the grand mosque in Quebec City, talk about the way in which even the police were not there to help out. So saturated is Islamophobia in that society, in that texture, that I cannot see how having that kind of representation would work unless you have regulation that follows. Education cannot be the panacea. It has to work hand-in-hand with the state. It has to work with legal regulation. Representation is only one part of it. Because if you only have one or two people, they are going to be completely overwhelmed and contained and controlled by the journalistic schools that are there within those newsrooms.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Arnot: Thank you, witnesses, for coming here today and enlightening us.
I come from the position that hate speech is virtually unregulated in this country and it needs to be regulated in a much more robust and effective manner. I am just wondering if the witnesses have any comment on that issue.
One of the things I would like to state is that the definition of “hate speech” was very succinctly and with great clarity analyzed in the Whatcott case in the Supreme Court of Canada in 2013. I do not think that it is that difficult for anyone to understand what hate speech is if you look at the indicia of hate that was outlined in that case.
In particular, in this country, I am wondering what the witnesses think about the CRTC’s effectiveness in regulating hate speech. I know that Bill C-11 is coming to the Senate. We are analyzing that. I wonder if you have any comments on what kind of teeth need to be put into Bill C-11 to effectively regulate hate speech.
I am wondering, in addition, are there any examples in other places, for instance Germany or Britain, where there has been a more effective way of holding these social media platforms to account.
A third idea that you may want to comment on is the Anti-Racism Secretariat. In your opinion, has that secretariat been effective, robust and strategic in actually making any real difference in Canada with respect to the mandate that they have?
Ms. Jiwani: Senator, thank you so much for all of these questions. They certainly leave a lot of room for thought.
I am afraid that I am not going to be able to comment on the policy aspect of it.
I can certainly tell you about my encounters with the CRTC many years ago when there was a television broadcast where the reporter actually described the Asian beetle in ways that were very similar to how one was stereotypically describing Asian immigrants in B.C. I wrote to the CRTC and provided a recording of this and nothing happened.
The thing is that so much of the language is coded. When we think of memes like Pepe the Frog, it just gets by these censors. It is not going to do anything. That is where you really need a kind of analysis of how this kind of racism is exported, how it is articulated, the kinds of words that are used in support, which are constantly changing. That is one aspect of it that I wanted to point out.
The second thing is that freedom of speech itself has become a banner of sorts, where there is no real understanding of what freedom of speech is about, particularly in the Canadian context where such freedoms are measured against societal good. There isn’t an understanding of that. In fact, everybody seems to be more drawn to and use the American notion. Maybe part of it has to do with the fact that so much of the media we consume is American.
Yes, in Europe there are very strong measures around hate speech. I am thinking particularly about the European Union and how its communication division has come out with so many things including, in fact, one of my mentors who came out with a whole guide on how the media can refrain from reporting using Islamophobic language and that has yet to be adopted here.
Senator Arnot: Could you provide a copy of that study that you just referred to, to our clerk, please? Anything especially on the European model.
Ms. Jiwani: Yes, will do.
Senator Arnot: Thank you.
Ms. Jiwani: Thank you.
The Chair: Would anyone else like to answer Senator Arnot’s question, Omar or Faheem?
Mr. Mouallem: I would just echo what the professor has said that there is a lack of understanding about what free speech means in Canada. The giant influence of American culture has unfortunately misled people to think that our free speech laws are the same as they are in the United States.
Others maybe think that our hate speech laws are a lot stronger than they actually are, that the threshold is much lower than it actually is. Anyone who has tried to prosecute someone on hate speech laws knows that the threshold is very high and it is very difficult. It is not very often that you see people like the notorious YouTuber Kevin Johnson who I believe was jailed or maybe charged or convicted last year for his notoriously anti-Muslim screeds on his YouTube channel. This does not happen very often. I cannot speak to whether it is a good thing or a bad thing to have the threshold where it is right now.
It can only do good for Canadians to understand the full limits of free speech in this country and not be confused by other countries’ laws and interpretations.
Mr. Affan: Thank you very much, Omar. I agree. There is a very blurred line between freedom of speech and the word “hate.” Again, it comes to the education that we emphasize. It should be taught at all levels, starting in school and continuing into professional life. What is the difference between free speech and hate? What can hurt other people and what cannot?
Again, it comes down to education. That is what I was going to emphasize. Thank you.
Senator Arnot: I agree with what the witnesses are saying. In particular, speech has always been fettered, whether it is through fraud, hate or defamation. In Canada, we are uniquely placed because the Supreme Court of Canada has clearly defined what it is, as I pointed out earlier.
I just want to follow up on another issue, and perhaps this is for Mr. Mouallem. In relation to recommendation 21 in the NCCM’s 61 ways to deal with anti-Muslim hate, do you have any comment about the Anti-Racism Secretariat’s effectiveness, how robust it is and how strategic it has been in actually making a difference in Canada?
Mr. Mouallem: I don’t; I’m sorry. I do not know enough about it.
Senator Arnot: Thank you.
Senator Omidvar: Thank you to our witnesses for being here. I will focus on the role of the media as an enabler of Islamophobia. I am going to quote a study that was cited by Haroon Siddiqui in an article in the Literary Review of Canada where he notes that 75% of people in the West rely on the media for their information about Muslims. What many of us know about Islam, or what we think we know, is filtered primarily through the media. Without a doubt, the media functions as the most powerful and influential conveyor of Islam.
Do you agree or disagree with those observations? Perhaps Professor Jiwani and then the others?
Ms. Jiwani: I totally agree with those observations. Having read that same article and having followed how, in fact, the coverage in the Toronto Star changed when Haroon Siddiqui was there as editor versus what happened after, I would say is clearly telling. Definitely, the media totally influences.
One of the things that I would add to that is that within the younger generation, it is not the mainstream print media that is the influence. It is social media. How in fact social media then borrows from that, condenses it and puts it out into these little bite-sized pieces that are very consumable makes it go further and further. This is where classic works like Edward Said’s Orientalism show that many of the stereotypes and tropes are still there. They have not changed.
Senator Omidvar: Professor Mouallem, you are a journalist. We all know that talk radio is uniquely —
Mr. Mouallem: Toxic?
Senator Omidvar: It feeds and proliferates Islamophobia and other forms of hate in a particularly prolific manner.
I host a podcast. I interviewed a journalist, Supriya Dwivedi, who actually left a talk show platform because her own organization did not do enough to protect her from the onslaught of hate that she received, and I am sure that the story is common.
Do you think media organizations, whether they are traditional media or new media, do enough to protect journalists and columnists?
Mr. Mouallem: I can only speak to mainstream traditional media. No, I do not think that they do. There is a common adage that it comes with the job, that hate mail and threatening letters come with the job.
But what is lost on a lot of the employers and the management in traditional media is that the nature of these threats has changed. They have become more targeted, more personal, more detailed and more threatening. They have also become more targeted at people’s identity, whether it be because they are women and/or Brown and/or Muslim or Black. The nature of this has become a lot more frightening. Yet, there is still this assumption and attitude, which is quite prevalent, that it should just be a part of the job. It is not just at the upper management of newsrooms. I think it is also within the RCMP and police services who are quick to dismiss these threats as if, again, they are not to be taken seriously. Well, they should be, and eventually I think we are going to learn through the tragic outcome of an event how seriously these threats should be taken.
Senator Omidvar: I have a brief question to all three of you about the Islamophobia summit that was held in 2020. What has changed since then? Has the needle shifted at all from your point of view?
Mr. Mouallem: I believe it was in 2021, at least since the recommendations. Not much has changed but not much time has passed. This is going to be a generational effort.
One thing I will say is that over the past few years the awareness of Islamic Heritage Month has grown. Each year I see it becoming more prominent. I see more public and other schools celebrating it. It is being made known. I do think that there is something positive in the air that is happening at a local level, at the very least, that gives me reason for optimism.
Senator Omidvar: Thank you. Mr. Affan, I was taken by your testimony that your local mosque in Ottawa engages with other religions, hosts a Christmas fair, et cetera.
Are you aware of interfaith efforts that provide a structure to these kinds of exchanges and to what extent those interfaith conversations are important in dealing with Islamophobia?
Mr. Affan: I will not comment on everybody else, but I know what our community is doing is very helpful. It is the local media who play an important role, even though social media has more effect. But you will be surprised when you go to these small towns. Our mosque is in Ottawa, but it is in Cumberland, a small town. When we were buying the place and going to open the mosque, there was huge negativity there. People were afraid. They did not want it. We worked with the local media there, and we opened everything up for the people. They are now holding their community meetings, Christmas market and even their summer markets there in the gym, which we provided to them.
We do hold a lot of interfaith dialogue. As I mentioned in my statement, we are one of the organizations that has a very long-held interfaith conference in Canada. It has been held now for many years, and people from other religions have been invited to talk about their similarities. It does help, especially when you go to the small towns where you will be surprised that many people do not even know about Islam. They have no idea who the Muslims are, even at this point. I met an MP from a small town a few years ago, and I told him about the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at Canada and they did not have any idea. So it is very important that the media and the interfaith dialogues happen in those small towns so that we can teach the people from those towns what Islam is. All that they know about Islam is from the media, and it is related to terrorism.
The Chair: Thank you. Professor Jiwani, did you have anything to add?
Ms. Jiwani: I want to say one thing, which is that oftentimes it is the people who are victimized who have to do this type of work. That often surprises me.
I remember with the Ahmadiyya community, they had a wonderful initiative in Montreal where they invited people to their homes for dinner. Part of it was to basically shake up or remove that whole tenor or that appearance and mystique around being different and the terror narrative.
Because I have worked so much on violence against women and those areas, seeing racism and Islamophobia as forms of violence, I am left wondering how much of this initiative and impetus is left on the victims of that kind of violence to do that work of educating rather than states or institutions doing that work or being mandated to do that work.
I wanted to leave the committee with that because I think this is an issue that is part of the whole structural element underpinning Islamophobia. We need to account for the ways in which relations of power are being perpetuated in this way.
The Chair: Thank you. It’s interesting, Professor Jiwani, because that was going to be my question in response to something that you said, Mr. Affan. You said that the responsibility lies on us.
Are we placing too much responsibility on Muslims? We are left doing all the work as a community that is sort of, I could say, under siege. We have to do all the work to explain ourselves.
I would also like to know, with respect to the open houses you had, how successful were they?
Mr. Affan: I said that because it works. We have done a lot of open houses. The media is not portraying a positive image of Muslims, so somebody has to do the work. If the government is not taking this initiative, then it is our responsibility to educate people about the peaceful nature of Islam and how peaceful Muslims are; you can’t relate them to terrorism.
We do these open houses where we invite neighbours into the mosque. They can just walk in, chat with people and learn about Islam. Surprisingly, their image of Islam is what they have learned from the media, which is all negative.
I know the responsibility should not be put too much on Muslims, but we have to start from somewhere. If nobody is taking action, somebody has to. Somebody has to educate these people on what Islam is. That’s what we are doing. That’s what we are trying to take a lead in.
As the professor mentioned, a couple of years ago, we ran this campaign. During Ramadan, across Canada, a lot of families invited their neighbours to come and break a fast with them. It was a very positive thing because most of them didn’t know about iftar and Ramadan. Actually, some of them fasted with us in the following years, fasted with Muslim family friends for a whole day, just to experience it. It was a very positive experience.
Yes, to answer your question, we need to start somewhere. We can’t wait and then just see that things are going to happen. We need to start educating, especially if the government is not taking responsibility or if media is always portraying a negative image of Islam.
The Chair: Thank you. Professor Jiwani?
Ms. Jiwani: I agree that we should start somewhere, but I’m also thinking of the fact that this has been going on for a long time. When I see younger people, particularly people who I have the privilege to teach, they are not going to be so patient, and they are not going to stay in a position where they feel like they have to go out there to educate.
I think part of the issue, for me, is seeing that rift and also seeing what the impact is when you have marginalized and alienated youth who are always being othered. How do you create those networks of support in order for them not to be re-victimized over and over again or to become ambassadors of the faith? That’s not their role.
So I think there are other elements that have to be worked at structurally. I don’t think we can just place it on the individuals or the families.
I also think the other thing that has to be taken into account is intersectionality. We can’t assume that all Muslims are the same and come from the same place. If you’re racialized and a Muslim — for instance, a Somali — how are you going to be dealt with? It’s going to be totally different than if you’re an upper-middle-class Brown body.
I think we need to really factor that in with respect to who is being criminalized, isolated and distanced in that way. How do we incorporate them in a way where there is a level of safety and support, even though, going back to the previous example that Mr. Mouallem also mentioned, that even within the academy, the government and the media, there is no safe place? In each one of these instances, wherever we are being attacked, we are being attacked, and there is nobody standing in. So I think those elements have to be separated out.
Mr. Mouallem: Thank you for asking this question. I’m of two minds. On one hand, I personally understand what a burden it can be to feel this expectation that you need to defend your people and speak on behalf of other Muslims or Arabs or Middle Eastern people. This is true for every racialized or marginalized group.
That burden is unfair, but at the same time, what is the alternative to that? I think the alternative is people who are not representative of that group, who are imposing their ideas of people within that group, speaking on their behalf.
I think it is important that we cede space to other Muslim people or Black people or Black Muslim people to defend their rights and to speak to their personal experiences. However, I think that should come from the people who want to take on that role. They will be motivated for a variety of reasons, one of which I think is because they are hopefully being raised and encouraged at an early age to understand what their civil rights and human rights are. So with age, one would just naturally want to speak to that and possibly take on leadership roles, where they are in a position like I am today in speaking to this panel.
The Chair: Thank you. Mr. Mouallem, you spoke of cultural education. We had Nouman Ashraf from the University of Toronto appear at our committee, and he spoke of cultural fluency instead of cultural sensitivity. We were trying to understand what the difference was between cultural sensitivity, cultural fluency and cultural education. What does that mean? How do we enact that in classrooms? When do we start?
Mr. Mouallem: I can only guess what it means, just learning this for the first time. Cultural fluency, though, sounds to me like you’re speaking from a more naturalized education, or you’re speaking as someone who already has the tools to understand, at least somewhat, another person’s cultural background or someone’s culture in general.
Presumably, if you do have those tools and feel empowered to do that, it is because you have been well educated, either at the school level or just through your social encounters with people in your communities. That’s what it sounds like to me.
Now, you can maybe tell me whether I’m right or wrong, or maybe one of my co-witnesses knows better.
The Chair: I think I will turn to Professor Jiwani to step in. I have always spoken of being culturally sensitive, and then we get cultural education, cultural fluency. I’m trying to remember what he said.
Ms. Jiwani: The way that I understand cultural fluency is, to use a term which is a little different, is that it is “cultural capital.” So do you have enough cultural capital to be able to understand what the other system is about?
The example that I always use in my classroom is: You go out for a fancy dinner somewhere, and there is all this cutlery lined up. Would you know which fork to start with and which knife to use?
Each place has its cultural capital. The cuisine and the culinary area have it. Academia has it. How do you write a letter of support? How do you fill out an application?
If you have those tools, it makes you fluent in that cultural system. When you don’t have the tools, you can’t read the signs. You can’t read what each thing is meant for.
When you’re on the highway going to Quebec, if you don’t know French, you’re not going to understand what those signs are that are telling you to slow down, because they are in French.
It’s knowing the system. It’s having the capital to understand the system.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Jaffer: From all the answers you have given, there are so many questions, but as a practising Muslim, I don’t want to do the good work that the Ahmadiyya community does. I feel that I’m a full member of Canadian society. Muslims don’t need to educate because, as Professor Jiwani said, it always falls on us. But we don’t have a choice.
Mr. Affan, your community does a very effective job, or used to during all the years I have been here, of reaching out to parliamentarians and doing a lot of active work with parliamentarians. Do you think that was effective? Do you see any change on the ground with the tremendous work you have done?
Mr. Affan: Yes. As I was just mentioning before, working with parliamentarians helps them to understand what the true teachings of Islam are and what Islam is. Also, they can take it back to their ridings, and when they are talking to people, they can explain it. We have seen many parliamentarians who didn’t know anything about Islam, but after coming to our events and interacting with us, they happen to know about Islam.
I will give you an example. Two years ago, I met an MP. He had no idea what iftar is, what Ramadan is, and what Muslim culture is, and what the difference between Islam and other religions is. His knowledge was only based on the media. I’m talking about an MP from a small town. After that, he learned a lot. Now he is taking those things back into his community and trying to help the people there understand what Islam is and taking that negativity out from those people who have no idea about Islam.
So, yes, it has helped over the years to educate, and it felt very good — I hope I answered your question.
Senator Jaffer: My question is quite big, but maybe I can cut it down. It is to all three of you, starting with you, Professor Jiwani. The hearings we had, especially in Edmonton, are really haunting me. I heard from the women in Edmonton that they were assaulted — maybe Mr. Mouallem can speak on this — and when they laid the complaint, it was they who were charged. I was really shocked by that. You know, when — talked about police education, I thought we had done a lot of police education on Islam. What more do we have to do as Muslims?
Ms. Jiwani: I’m going to go back to the previous question and tie it into this one, because this is where I think they are really linked.
The Chair: May I just say something? We heard a similar story of a mother who was abused, and the police came and charged her too. There seems to be a pattern with our police, where they will quite often charge the victim.
Ms. Jiwani: It reminds me of the zero-tolerance-on-violence issue that, as women’s groups, we had really fought against, because when you have zero tolerance, you’re assuming that both parties are the same. The women who would call the police were often the ones who would end up in jail, because they were seen to be equally culpable.
So there is that one area, but I want to go back to the notion of context, because that initial contact that the Ahmadiyya community makes, that’s a crucial contact point. But the thing is, does it translate to other areas?
The most recent report that came out about the Canadian border guards, for instance, stigmatizing and profiling Muslims, shows you that encounters with institutions is where we have a problem. Whether it’s the police, whether it’s the education institution, each one of these institutional bodies is where the encounter happens, and the profiling and securitization of Muslims is something that is being passed down.
When a group is considered to be a problem group, it doesn’t matter if the women are also the victim, because they are still seen as a problem, and the problem also gets incarcerated.
This is where we come back, Senator Jaffer, to your first question to me about Muslim women. I go back through all of the research I have done on colonialism and the question arises, why did women’s bodies always end up being the focal point? Part of it is when you regulate women’s bodies, you regulate that community. So how you treat them is really the beginning point.
Senator Jaffer: Professor Jiwani, when you talk about how you regulate women’s bodies, one thing that really offends me about feminists — you and I have been feminist activists forever — is they say, “What we do with our bodies is our choice.” Yet when it comes to women’s attire, they are not there to defend us.
Ms. Jiwani: Definitely, yes.
Senator Jaffer: How does that work?
Ms. Jiwani: It’s the same thing. Again, it’s like what we are seeing in Iran. Women basically don’t want the hijab. Young Muslim women in Montreal and in France want the hijab. In India, they want the hijab. But it’s never their own autonomy; it’s always being controlled by the state. So the state propaganda that goes down, and the whole notion of feminism as liberating and free — Western feminism is in direct contrast with third-world feminism, as you well know, which has always argued that there is no one issue. There is an intersectionality.
All of these issues concern us, whether it’s justice, autonomy over bodies, reproductive rights and so forth. They all concern us. Therefore, we can’t take one issue and say, “Oh, it’s just a hijab. Oh, it’s just a dressing.” It’s all connected to how much control and power we have over our lives.
Senator Jaffer: Thank you.
Senator Omidvar: I find the tone of the discussion very interesting. I think I hear a great deal of frustration in Professor Jiwani’s comments and some optimism in Mr. Mouallem’s and Mr. Affan’s comments.
I would like to know from you, Professor Jiwani, because you are focusing on institutional capacity, on policies, on legislation, on regulation, which is our bread and butter, what recommendations would you like to see in our report that would address your frustration?
Ms. Jiwani: I have already said what I would recommend, but part of it also has to do with where are those rights of the individuals, whether it’s Muslims, Muslim women, racialized people? How are those rights actually being respected? What is happening around racial profiling? What kind of regulations have we got that will stop border guards from stopping Muslims every time they see them, or when they see your passport, putting you aside? I would like to see that kind of change.
Having been in this movement and in this work for the last 40 years or more, beginning with the Committee for Racial Justice in Vancouver, I’m beginning to see that if these institutions don’t change, there is no way. There can be improvements at the lived level as we acquire cultural fluency to be able to navigate our ways through the dominant society, but how much of that is falling on us, and how much does that impact our communities and our children?
My optimism also lies in the kind of work that Mr. Mouallem does, because counter-stories, counter-archives, become one way in which we actually as a nation cannot only remember but relive the kinds of things that our parental generations and our youth generations have gone through.
Right now, Jasmin Zine’s book Under Siege: Islamophobia and the 9/11 Generation, which documents Muslim youth talking about what they have gone through, this is a critical work, counter-stories in terms of theatre. This is critical work because this is what puts our voice out there, on our terms and on our conditions. That’s what needs to penetrate through the entire fabric of institutional structure.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Mouallem, would you like to respond to that question?
Mr. Mouallem: Yes. I’ll add that — because I know we’re coming to the end of this — as far as recommendations, I recommended about three or four things, all of them to do with promoting Islamic heritage and culture through storytelling, essentially. It is unusual that at no point in this have we talked about Quebec’s laicity laws. We have talked about protecting women’s rights to choose how they dress and control their bodies in other countries like Iran, India and France as if it’s this far-off issue. It’s not. It’s at home. Bill C-21 is now the law of the land. We don’t have to look outside of this country to see what those restrictions on human rights look like for Muslim people. It’s here at home.
My recommendation is policy that addresses that and addresses this very serious violation in Quebec right now.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Mouallem. At this hearing, Bill C-21 didn’t come up, but every time any witness comes, we do talk about Bill C-21. The witnesses do talk about this bill. Some of us sitting here have taken the time to even speak in the chamber against Bill C-21.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: It’s true that Bill 21 did not come up. I come from Quebec and I know that this piece of legislation has done a lot of harm and I wanted to return to Professor Jiwani and Mr. Mouallem.
When you live in societies that claim to be secular, as is the case in Quebec, the claim is that you can educate people, the media, and all parties involved in Islamic history and heritage. I’d like to hear a bit more from you to know where to start. How to get this kind of education working in the knowledge that even in the Muslim community, there are all kinds of factions? Some women wear the headscarf and want to keep it, while others do not; then there is what Islam says or does not say about the issue. There are even some witnesses who came and told us what they are experiencing. And what they are experiencing is discrimination and Islamophobia, even within their Muslim community.
So where to begin and how to structure that kind of cultural approach, educational approach and awareness approach when it’s already difficult to do so between Muslims?
[English]
The Chair: If I can ask the witnesses to be brief. We have gone 10 minutes over our allotted time, so I would appreciate brevity. Thank you.
Ms. Jiwani: Thank you, madam senator, for asking me that question.
There are a couple of things I want to say at the outset. Patriarchy is not confined to the Muslim community. This is one of the things that often gets targeted. Every time there is a woman who is killed, it is called honour killing, if it happens in the Muslim community. Every time it happens outside the Muslim community in secular society, it’s called femicide.
One of the ways in which we enter this discussion is through identifying the commonalities. This is something that I do in the classroom. If one group is women is fighting to wear the veil and another group of women is fighting not to wear the veil, the question is who has rights over their bodies?
The state having the right to say whether a woman can veil or not veil is the biggest issue. Bringing it back to that basic definition of feminism, which is that women’s rights have to be respected, that’s one thing.
Part of the issue is the secularity of Quebec. One of the reasons I mentioned all these other places and not Quebec is because I’m always terrified of Quebec bashing. This has to do with the history of the province. So having been under the yoke of a church for so long, anything that is in any way connected to religion becomes a stigma.
It’s a matter of acknowledging the history of the province and acknowledging that we respect that history, but encouraging everyone to now look at this other history. That’s another way we can approach this, that sort of mass education. It’s a matter of like, sure, things got trapped in. If we go back to the veil, there are all kinds of interpretations of how upper-class women wore the veil which then got translated down. It was the Queen who wore the hat, and a lot of the women in the West Indies started wearing a hat as a result of that.
It’s that kind of replication of elite culture that has also come down. Interrogating and breaking that apart really brings home the point of how constructed this whole issue is and that it really doesn’t have to do with the rights of the person; it seems to be the control of the state and its interpretation of that history.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Mouallem, a brief response?
Mr. Mouallem: Thank you for your question. You brought up a very important point about, not so much the lack of cohesion between various Muslim groups and mosques’ opinions and interpretations of the faith, but really about the diversity. I think that the number one misconception about Islam is that it is monolithic, and that is absolutely not true. It is the second-biggest faith in the world, and like any large religion, it has many different branches, denominations, cultural inflections and national inflections.
I spent about half of the last decade travelling across the Americas. In that time, I visited probably about 50 different mosques from about 13 different denominations, maybe even more. As someone who grew up Muslim, I was stunned by the diversity of the beliefs. So it is important when we speak about Islam, we talk about not Islam, but rather Islamic faiths. When we talk about Muslim, that we refrain from using the term “Muslim community” or “the Muslim communities” when it is many Muslim communities. Reinforcing that diversity, reinforcing that there are many different interpretations and practices, can only do us good.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Mr. Affan?
Mr. Affan: I agree that the state and religion should always be kept separate. This also touches on a question that Senator Jaffer asked about how the work we do with parliamentarians helps. We always advocate that religion and state should be kept separate. It is not the state’s responsibility to tell a woman to wear the hijab or not wear the hijab or wear the veil or not wear the veil. It is women’s own choice; it is the person’s own choice to do it. The state should not be interfering in that. That is one thing which is part of the education that we do with the parliamentarians.
Also, in the meantime, we work with law enforcement agencies doing the same kind of education. In many places when the new graduated class comes out, before they start working in law enforcement agencies, they come to our mosque for one day of training where we tell them everything about Islam and the culture. We teach them about what Islam is, what the culture is and what the difference is.
We also teach them it is a woman’s own choice. It is their freedom of choice. What they want to do, they should be able to do it. Nobody should tell them what to do.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I want to take this opportunity to sincerely thank our witnesses for agreeing to participate in this important study of ours. Your assistance with our study is greatly appreciated. If you feel that you missed something that you would like to add, you can always make a written submission to us. Thank you so much for your time.
Honourable senators, I will now introduce our second panel of witnesses. Each witness has been asked to make an opening statement of five minutes. We shall hear from all witnesses and then turn to questions from the senators.
From the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, we have Evan Balgord, Executive Director; from Mosaic Institute, we have Lee Naturkach, Executive Director; and Citra Ahmed, Social Services Coordinator at the Al Rashid Mosque in Edmonton.
I will now invite Evan Balgord to make his presentation.
Evan Balgord, Executive Director, Canadian Anti-Hate Network: Thank you very much. For the past six years now, I have been following the rise of Canada’s new far-right movement, which began in 2016 as an anti-Muslim movement.
I want to make note of five factors that led to that moment. The first is the pre-existing Islamophobia because of the “war on terror” in what has been called the Islamophobia industry in so-called counter-jihad blogs. The second is the election of the Prime Minister. Whenever someone is perceived as progressive and multicultural is elected, there is always a far-right backlash. The third is the Syrian refugee crisis that was fuelling xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment, especially anti-Muslim hate. That, in turn, fuelled anti-Muslim hate groups. The fourth is that those anti-Muslim hate groups actually franchised here — the Soldiers of Odin began setting up here. The fifth factor is that Donald Trump’s campaign, which was explicitly racist and hateful toward Muslims, gave people licence to share those hateful views.
At the time, though, this was predominantly online. It was very hateful — many Facebook groups and things of that nature — but it was predominantly online until there was a defining moment. The Liberals introduced Motion 103 to broadly condemn Islamophobia. Many pundits and politicians said that would criminalize all criticisms of Islam.
That was, of course, a lie. Rebel Media was a key pusher of that narrative, and it was shortly after their anti-M-103 conference in Toronto that we saw the first anti-Muslim protests in Toronto, which became an almost weekly affair. Hate groups that you might recognize — the Three Percenters, the Proud Boys, the Soldiers of Odin — they were all part of it. Not all of them, but some of them, were full-blown neo-Nazis and White supremacists.
Those demonstrations spread around Canada. The protesters assaulted and attacked counter-protesters. Later, some of those people and groups would set fire to Qurans and others would record people going to mosque.
When M-103 passed and the sky didn’t fall, this new far-right anti-Muslim movement needed a new issue to keep their demonstrations going. They started to focus on being anti-government, anti-left and anti-anti-fascist. Flash forward to the end of 2018: There were anti-austerity protests in France that called themselves Yellow Vests. The pictures and videos were angry. There were big crowds. The anti-Muslim groups, streamers and activists were inspired. They stole the name, said they were in favour of oil and gas and Western separation and they became the Yellow Vest Canada movement. Within a week or two, there were fully 250,000 people in their Facebook groups.
We documented hundreds of examples of death threats to politicians and overt hatred toward Muslims, because, while they were talking about new issues too, those were their roots. If you complained about the racism or the violent talk, they would kick you out.
Yellow Vest Canada organized a convoy called United We Roll. They didn’t get the turnout they wanted and, feeling demoralized, they started to deflate. However, many of those streamers and organizers would go on to become key players in the anti-lockdown movement that resulted in the convoy and occupation of Ottawa earlier this year.
I want to make a special note of this because you can trace the far-right movement in Canada today to anti-Muslim roots in 2016.
I want to share with you what I believe are some sources for anti-Muslim online hate in Canada. It doesn’t exactly happen in a vacuum. In August 2019, human rights lawyer and Canadian Anti-Hate Network board member Richard Warman made a criminal complaint to the Ottawa Police Service about Rebel News. I’m quoting now from the complaint:
The Rebel News videos convey hate messages that overwhelmingly portray members of the Muslim community as terrorists, criminals, paedophiles, rapists, inherently evil, and attempting to take over society. . . . The Rebel News broadcasts attack the Muslim community in the same ways or worse than material for which others have already been criminally convicted in Canada.
One of their editions by Faith Goldy was entitled “More Muslims Equals More Violence.”
Rebel Media also published a Tommy Robinson video in which he called Muslims “enemy combatants that want to kill you, maim you, and destroy our way of life.”
There are many more examples. In fact, the complaint is fully 53 pages long. In our opinion, it’s all the evidence police would need to lay a charge, but nothing happened. The Rebel Media video and articles that Warman cites in the criminal complaint inspired their viewers to leave comments like “Muslim men have for too long lived as sexual savages,” “these people reproduce like rodents” and “you must burn them alive, blind them, kill them — it is the only way.”
Putting Rebel Media aside for the moment, there is an organization called Action4Canada. Their mission statement begins like this: “Our mission is to protect Canada’s rich heritage which is founded on Judeo-Christian biblical principles.” They are anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+. They are extremely opposed to sexual education. They describe LGBTQ+ persons, and especially trans persons, as sexual predators and pedophiles. This is what they say about Muslims:
The problem is that no matter what country moderate, or progressive, Muslims enter . . . the Radicals always follow. And they have the power, money, and intent to bring the destruction. Their goal is world domination . . . one nation at a time.
In order for Canada to remain a beacon of hope for those who are fleeing death and persecution, we must be willing to not only face the threat but expose it and eradicate it.
Then there is LifeSiteNews, which more of you might have heard of. It’s a Christo-fascist newspaper founded 25 years ago by the Canadian anti-abortion group Campaign Life Coalition. They’ve been removed from YouTube for COVID disinformation, but they have an extensive email list. They publish 4,000 articles a year and claim to reach over 20 million readers. Their articles portray Muslims as a dangerous invading force. There are headlines like “It is reasonable for European Christians to be fearful of mass Muslim immigration” and “Muslims are preparing to take over Europe through Greece, and the EU doesn’t care.”
I share some of these examples with you today because while we can and should talk about the role of social media platforms, we should also look at who here in Canada creates the racist and conspiratorial content that I believe significantly leads to online hate and harassment.
Finally, I want to touch extremely briefly on Hindutva, a Hindu supremacy movement that targets Muslims. Its ultranationalism is represented by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, a paramilitary group founded in 1925. A subsidiary of the RSS, the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, or HSS, is here in Canada. The Hindutva movement online, a combination of trolls and bots, significantly harasses Muslims and anyone critical of their movement. It —
The Chair: Can I ask you to go a little bit more slowly? The translators are having difficulty.
Mr. Balgord: Sure.
They justify and celebrate anti-Muslim violence, often sharing horrific videos of assaults and murders, and they have harassed and intimidated Canadian academics.
I mention Hindutva because, while I mostly wanted to touch upon groups and individuals I think are responsible for spreading online hate against Muslims in Canada, I do want to note that, here, we have a movement, and one with the tacit support of its government, that targets Muslims around the world but is also significantly felt here in Canada.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
The Chair: Thank you. Now I will turn to Lee Naturkach from the Mosaic Institute.
Leigh Naturkach, Executive Director, Mosaic Institute: Thank you so much for inviting us to this conversation today. On behalf of the Mosaic Institute, thank you for allowing us to provide testimony to this committee. We appreciate that these efforts are part of a larger goal, which is to create a stronger, more united Canada for us all.
We share that vision. Mosaic is a national not-for-profit that equips people with the knowledge and skills to dismantle prejudice. We work with diverse voices to inform solutions to community and systemic problems through research, dialogue, policy, education and training. There is so much work to be done in addressing the stark ongoing reality of Islamophobia across Canada.
The Mosaic Institute’s 2019 testimony and recommendations to this committee on online hatred pointed to the growing role of social media and anti-Muslim hate. Sources of Islamophobia include individuals, media, politicians, academics, institutions, far-right groups, White supremacist extremists and their supporters.
Ignorant and intentional perpetrators spread negative stereotypes of about Islam and Muslims through many channels that lead to discrimination, violence, hate, destruction and murder at the extreme end.
Canadians are more likely to harbour negative stereotypes about Muslim Canadians than other major religions. Police-reported crimes targeting Muslim religions increased 71% in 2021, and many, as we know, go unreported.
The Mosaic Institute is a bridge, a convenor, a platform and a resource for people and communities to identify, understand and address prejudice. Since we last met in 2019, we’ve connected directly with over 1,000 youth and over 500,000 people online and in person across Canada.
Overwhelmingly, we witnessed the need for an increased and intersectional approach to address prejudice including Islamophobia. What members of Muslim communities have shared with us regarding the impact of Islamophobia include othering, surveillance, hostility, harassment, a demoralizing lack of bystander support, of having to choose between faith and safety and how many are seen as Muslim but not Canadian.
Young, visibly Muslim women share the extreme toll on their mental health of constantly assessing physical space, safety, fear and the related physical impacts.
It is critical to acknowledge and address intersectional experiences of Islamophobia, particularly for Black and visibly Muslim women. There is often a noticeable erasure of their voices, lived experiences and agency. As some individuals shared with us, “We find comfort in solidarity in times of tragedy. We also need you to show up every day in schools, subways, malls, offices, on our streets, by our side to protect and preserve our place in Canada.”
At Mosaic, we equip people to show up. We help youth develop critical thinking skills and create tangible action plans improve communities. We convene scalable dialogues, bringing together people with differing views to connect and co-create solutions. We produce community research that informs policy recommendations to address prejudice. The burden of addressing Islamophobia cannot only be on the shoulders of those who are impacted by it. We have the stories. We have the data. We have the recommendations. What we need now is continued action and accountability to work together.
The Mosaic Institute is willing to act as a partner to work with government and others to fight Islamophobia together. To that end, our recommendations for consideration by the committee include: One, meaningful and ongoing outreach, engagement and leadership of diverse Muslim perspectives in decision-making spaces. This requires continued to work to connect with grassroots collectives to build stronger networks and approaches.
Two, implement, with appropriate resources, the remaining recommendations shared in the reports from the 2021 National Summit on Islamophobia created by the National Council of Canadian Muslims and the Canadian Council of Muslim Women.
Three, invest in activities that nurture connection across communities and institutions to develop understanding and shared experiences and dialogue.
Four, provide multi-year support for Muslim groups as well as organizations conducting work addressing prejudice and hate, including initiatives focused on perpetrators.
Five, support campaigns and intervention programs focused on bystanders that compel action and provide skills to intervene when witnessing hate.
Six, provide accessible and effective education and training that includes anti-Islamophobia content for government, federally regulated employees and representatives.
Finally, set an example as leaders through fighting mis- and disinformation, condemning Islamophobia in all its forms and counteracting dismissiveness and denialism, acknowledging and condemning the existence and rise of White supremacism in Canada, challenging tightly held beliefs and diversified notions of what it means to be Canadian, and share and centre diverse Muslim perspectives, art, content and stories, as well as sharing and celebrating the contributions and history of Muslims in Canada over the last century.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to answering your questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much, I will now turn to Citra Ahmed.
Citra Ahmed, Social Services Coordinator, Al Rashid Mosque, Edmonton, As an individual: Salaam alaikum. [Arabic spoken]
May God’s blessing and mercy be upon you all. I’m addressing you today from the walls of Canada’s first mosque, the Al Rashid Mosque, built in 1938. What was once a beautiful land that welcomed Muslim pioneers is today home of one of the highest rates of Islamophobic attacks against Muslims. Islamophobia has manifested itself as vandalism of mosques, physical attacks, physical assaults on Muslims, including —
The Chair: Can I ask you to speak a bit slower? The translators are struggling.
Ms. Ahmed: I do apologize, I will.
Islamophobia has manifested itself as vandalism of mosques, physical assaults on Muslims, including violence against Muslim women wearing the hijab, especially Black women. In January 2017, six Muslims were killed in a shooting attack at a Quebec City mosque. Last year, three generations of Muslim Canadians were killed while practising one of the most mundane things: taking a walk. These stories have become our new reality.
I have two beautiful nieces. They are 16 and 15. Like many teenagers, they like to hang out with their friends and get into trouble. They are also Black and Muslim — and I say that with sadness because being a woman, Black and Muslim not only puts you at a disadvantage in a system that is structurally built to be racist against you, it also means that you are prone to be targeted by physical, verbal attacks while simply riding a bus.
Young Muslim women in Quebec cannot longer dare to dream of being teachers or police offers if they ever want to embrace their hijab. Our country no longer feels safe for Muslims. While we have failed to protect our Muslim Canadians in person, we are able to implement changes to start protecting them online: harsh and serious laws that hold perpetrators that spread Islamophobic ideologies that paint a picture of Muslims as savages, oppressive terrorists and violent beings accountable. These are the same ideologies that Hitler painted the Jewish community with to justify the Holocaust — the same ideologies that the Indigenous communities struggled with for decades that resulted in oppression.
The internet has created a safe environment for spreading hate and targeting minority communities. With everyone hiding behind a keyboard and no laws in place to hold them accountable, they are thriving. The internet and social media have become a breeding ground for violent, extremist ideas that are actively promoted across many digital platforms. The rampant presence of hate material has radicalized thousands of followers and expanded networks of extremist groups locally and internationally which is allowing extremists to gather and expand online like the hate group that attacked the Al Rashid Mosque in 2019, the Sons of Odin. Its members found each other online through common hate rhetoric towards Muslims through their content.
I hear a lot from police officers who say that reporting is important to combat Islamophobia. I hear it from researchers and from government officials, as it influences funding allocated to anti-racism projects. It should be noted that members of marginalized communities are wary of reporting hate crimes to the police for fear of not being taken seriously, being re-traumatized or interacting with officers who have no cultural sensitivity or trauma-informed training.
When working on such an important project like this one, we tend to look at data and numbers reports to make well-informed recommendations or decisions. We almost always forget that these are real people who have been through this extremely traumatic experience with no system to support them. Victim support is needed in all of our cities. Our Muslim brothers and sisters deserve the best mental, emotional and financial support that we can offer them. They do not deserve to be going through this alone. Our Muslim communities should not be burdened with the responsibility of providing support for these families without being given the funding.
Living in hate, Islamophobia and racism has been my reality. It has been my story, but I will be damned if I allow it to be my daughter’s story. Let us not let history repeat itself. We can no longer sweep Islamophobia under the rug. We can no longer use Islamophobia as campaign promises to gain votes. We need serious action with stronger laws and non-tolerance policies to protect Muslims.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to answering your questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Senators who were there in Edmonton will remember too that some of the most emotional testimony we heard was from the young Black women in Edmonton who wore the hijab, who were regularly abused and spat on and had their hijabs pulled. I will turn now to Senator Jaffer.
Senator Jaffer: Thank you to all three witnesses. You have given us so much rich information that it is hard, in just a few minutes, to ask you questions and give you time to answer them.
I will start with you, Ms. Ahmed.
We were warmly welcomed to the Al Rashid Mosque. We were treated to a good evening of sharing knowledge and hospitality. You have spoken very articulately today as well. When you say that young Black women who wear the hijab — or old; it does not matter — are attacked, they are reluctant to report that to the police. Can you elaborate on that, please?
Ms. Ahmed: Yes. Thank you for the question. I have had a lot of conversations with women who have been attacked in the city, or even with women who have not reported, a lot of them being my friends or even things that I have experienced and I haven’t reported.
The issue we see is that many times an attack happens and instead of being labelled as a hate crime, it is labelled as just an assault. There is no proper prosecuting. There is no proper reporting to elevate it so the Crown even understands that it has a large impact on the greater community. It’s not just about one woman being attacked. It causes women across the country to live in fear of going outside. Right?
A lot of times, after an attack has happened — even in Edmonton here, and we have had quite a few — the ones that are reported are never followed through. We have just had the Southgate attack in Edmonton. I know the family very closely. Sentencing just happened and the judge was a lot harsher, and the sentence was 16 months. When you look at 16 months, you have to consider whether 16 months equates with how the family has struggled or how the community lives in fear.
I do a lot of programming with the younger girls. When we talk to them, they tell us they don’t know if they want to wear the hijab anymore because they’re scared about what will happen to them if they go outside and get hurt. They wonder who will help them. We talk a lot about the bystander effect where nobody says anything while the attack is happening.
We have a generation of kids that have been raised to feel like they don’t belong in Canada. My daughter is second generation. How many generations does it take before they get to be considered Canadian and are not treated differently and can walk out on the streets? When can they be the same as everyone else?
A lot of times I think people are scared to come forward, because the perpetrators receive a slap on the wrist. It’s as if they don’t matter, right? Even when they bring it forward, the officer doesn’t take the time to even come meet them where the attack happens or the perpetrators walk away with no jail time and no fines — no nothing. When that constantly happens, people don’t report because they don’t see the use. It’s just sitting there. Nothing happens.
Senator Jaffer: Your mosque does a lot of proactive work in the community. Even then you say that you have tremendous backlash. I just want senators who were not at that mosque when we were there to know that so much is being done to reach out to the community. Even then, we are hearing such — it’s not a good picture. Thank you very much, Ms. Ahmed.
I have a question for the Mosaic Institute. In your study of online hate, you heard from transgender and non-binary individuals. What did you hear from them about how transphobia intersects with Islamophobia? Ms. Naturkach, can you please expand on that?
Ms. Naturkach: The intersection is there. With people who are experiencing the most oppressive forms of hate, there are obviously a lot of shared experiences. Certainly, those identities are not necessarily mutually exclusive either. I think that’s important to consider as part of this.
We would be happy to share some more of the data and back-up information for specific testimonials if you would like to hear that as part of the report. We really just provided a high-level summary of feedback, but we certainly can pull those pieces out for further consideration.
Senator Jaffer: Thank you, we would really appreciate that.
My last question is to Mr. Balgord. What you said — I’m not wanting to digest because it’s then difficult to even function as a practising Muslim. But can you please tell me a little bit more about this movement that started in India? How do you know that it’s established in Canada as well?
Mr. Balgord: Sure. I will not represent myself as an expert in this particular movement. I can give a general overview, and then for any follow-up information, I would recommend National Council of Canadian Muslims, or NCCM. They have done a study specifically on the influence of Hindutva on Canadian Muslims and more broadly, which I recommend. I know they have a draft form right now that they are polishing up. It’s very informative.
Generally speaking, when we report on instances of anti-Muslim animosity and anti-Muslim hate, we can see online the accounts coming in from the Hindutva movement that will start spreading hate toward Muslims or justifying hatred of Muslims. We can see it in our own Twitter account and in our own replies.
We know it has some influence here. I shared an article with the clerk where we discuss it. There have been some incidents of people in Canada — who seem to be associated with the Hindu supremacy ideology or with RSS or its affiliate HSS, which operates here — who are also spreading hatred toward Muslims. We have reported on a couple of examples of it. We have had other tips and things that we haven’t had time to report on.
That’s how we know it’s present here. We have reported on it a couple of times. We have seen the influence when we talk about it on social media, and we have had tips that we haven’t fully reported. I would very much recommend the NCCM’s report on it, which will be ready very shortly, I believe.
Senator Jaffer: Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you. Just a supplementary to Senator Jaffer’s question: I noticed on my Twitter feed — I think it was even last week from the committee — that when I tweeted, I got some Islamophobic comments. It seems to be a group effort. It won’t be just one person. There will be a whole group attacking you. I will turn to Senator Arnot.
Senator Arnot: Thank you to the witnesses. I’m interested in getting at a particular point. I’ll just outline it by saying this: I believe that hate speech in Canada is virtually unregulated on the internet and that we need to be much more strategic and robust in approaching these issues. Hate thought and hate speech beget hate crime. We know that. We know as well that the Supreme Court of Canada has very succinctly and clearly defined what hate speech is. It’s in stark contrast to the approach in the United States. In my opinion, our constitutional law is much stronger on this.
I’m really seeking this idea: Do you believe the CRTC has the teeth it requires to regulate hate speech? Do you believe that the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the Canadian Human Rights Act have the teeth to regulate hate speech in a manner that would make a significant difference in our culture in Canada?
I’m wondering if you can comment on successful models in other places — particularly the EU — that hold social media platforms to account. I would like the witnesses to comment on that and make any recommendations about how Canada might better regulate hate speech and use the tools that we have or give those tools a much more robust and significant presence.
The Chair: Was that question directed to anyone in particular?
Senator Arnot: Not in particular, but I think Mr. Balgord probably has some important comments to make there. I believe all the witnesses would have some opinion about this. I think it’s important that we attack hate speech because that is at the root of a lot of anti-Muslim hate and the crime that we see in Canadian communities.
Mr. Balgord: I’ll try to address each of the things you touched on briefly. Then, on the hate component, I will talk more broadly about what we might do.
In terms of the Human Rights Commission, it’s my view that the commission oftentimes acts as a homework assignment for victims, unfortunately. It mostly deals with issues, for example, of workplace discrimination and harassment. I know it does more than that, but we don’t see it very present in the work that we do.
In terms of the act itself, we used to have a provision that many of you may be familiar with, namely, section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Section 13 was important because it allowed victims of hate speech — or even somebody acting on behalf of victims — to bring a complaint to a tribunal. That tribunal could order a cease and desist and a small fine, with the power of a court order. This was used successfully several times — actually, by one of our board members, predominantly — to shut down a number of neo-Nazi groups. This was a while ago. This was in the early days of the internet.
This law was taken away by the government of the day, who felt that the Criminal Code, section 319, was sufficient to deal with these issues. Section 319 prohibits the wilful promotion of hatred towards a group.
Here is the problem, which I have alluded to: We believe that Rebel Media has broken the law in terms of subsection 319(2) and provided all the evidence required to the Ottawa Police Service to lay a charge, in our opinion, and they choose not to. All too frequently, the police are not particularly interested in pursuing section 319 causes. The penalty is less than a slap on the wrist; it’s very insignificant.
We need to bring back section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, because it deals with the issue of the police being a gatekeeper. It allows individuals to represent themselves or to represent victims in a way that police aren’t gatekeepers. It’s still a court process, a legal process. There is good due diligence. It just does away with the police culture issue.
We have been consulting for over two years now on what this new online safety bill should be. I still don’t understand what, if any, relationship it has with Bill C-11, the CRTC issue. To my understanding, it wasn’t much, but I was never able to get at the heart of it. If you and your colleagues are, I commend you. I’m not sure how they are related, so I’m afraid I’ll have to skip over that.
In terms of online hate, we have proposed what I’m calling an ombudsperson model. The regulator would have the power to broadly investigate social media companies and issue recommendations — such as the whistle-blowers that have been coming out lately from Facebook and other places. The regulator could look at information like that and could go out and get that information themselves. They could basically show up and demand certain information from the companies on the algorithms and whatnot and then issue recommendations. Where the companies choose not to issue those recommendations, the ombudsperson could go to a court, ask it to make an order and then order them to make certain changes to how they operate their business to deal with issues like hate. It’s a flexible model.
The way the government seems to be moving is more in line with other jurisdictions, like where the U.K. was headed, but then that was aborted. There has been a great loss of faith among various non-governmental organizations — both here and in those other jurisdictions you were talking about — in terms of the direction that governments are going on those particular files.
This is a very large subject to get into. I would be happy to follow up at some other point if you would like to connect on that, but I don’t want to take up more time. Thank you.
Senator Arnot: Mr. Balgord, if you have any studies or information about the EU’s approach and its success in holding social media platforms to account, as a model that we could learn from, I think it would be quite helpful.
Mr. Balgord: I’ll say briefly that I don’t think there is any evidence that there has been any success to date.
Ms. Naturkach: I would add that while there seems to be a gap in knowledge around what is happening globally, that is work that Mosaic does in terms of convening a comparative study of EU and other national approaches to hate speech. We would be interested in working on something like that to help understand the landscape in a better way.
Senator Arnot: Thank you.
Senator Omidvar: Some of my questions were addressed by the witnesses in response to Senator Arnot’s question, but I’m going to probe a little further with Mr. Balgord.
In 2021, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, in partnership with 30 other organizations, provided recommendations to the federal government — including the establishment of an independent body to enforce and audit online hate regulations — maybe this is the ombudsman you are speaking about — that online hate regulations carry significant financial penalties to compel pro-social behaviour from social platforms and that large platforms be required to leverage their algorithms to detect and proactively remove hate content.
Are those recommendations still alive or have you adjusted them, given the way things have evolved?
Mr. Balgord: The ones you have listed are still very much alive and would be captured under the ombudsperson model that we are suggesting. We do have a more up-to-date one-pager on the ombudsperson model that goes into a bit more detail on what we are asking the government to do. I would be happy to provide that to the clerk.
Senator Omidvar: Please do. Thank you. That will be very helpful.
In Canada, or outside Canada, is there a proxy for what you’re proposing in terms of an ombudsman to deal with hate? We have an articulated approach in Canada to anti-Semitism. Irwin Cotler has been named — I forget what his title is. Are you looking to replicate some of those approaches?
Mr. Balgord: No. We’re looking at a truly new and independent regulator that would have the power to conduct broad investigations. They could compel evidence and testimony from social media companies and look at the algorithms. They would be a safe space for whistle-blowers from those companies to go to, for example. They could also work collaboratively. It could be both an antagonistic and collaborative approach at the same time. Having learned from those investigations, they could issue recommendations to those platforms.
This is not on the topic of hate, but it’s an easy example. Let’s say a study finds that young people, and especially young women, are developing eating disorders because of thin inspiration content on Instagram or TikTok. We could learn that through this ombudsperson, or they could learn that from external studies also being done, and incorporate that information but then issue the recommendation: Content that is associated with this kind of subculture or sub-movement that we call “thinspiration” is not allowed to be promoted into the feeds of persons under the age of 18, for example.
That could be a tangible recommendation that the ombudsperson could give. If the companies themselves were unwilling to do it, then the ombudsperson could go to a court and ask for that court to make an order. The companies would have to comply with the recommendation once it becomes an order. If they do not, that’s when significant monetary penalties might be applied. That’s one example of how the model might work.
Senator Omidvar: Thank you. My next question is possibly to all of you but particularly to Ms. Ahmed. I noted what you said, that Muslim women in Edmonton — and likely all around Canada — hesitate to file charges because nothing comes of these charges and therefore they’re victimized by the police.
The Government of Canada introduced Bill C-36 in the last Parliament. It died on the Order Paper, but a version of it will come back. That will make hate speech a discriminatory practice under the Canadian Human Rights Act, which would mean that victims would have the capacity to file claims under the Canadian Human Rights Act.
Do you agree with this approach? What else do you think should be included in federal hate speech legislation?
Ms. Ahmed: Thank you so much for the question. I think that approach does help. What is important is that a lot of times, even if the laws are there, it comes down to local police enforcement and how they report it, how they are labelling it and if they view it as a hate crime. Because a lot of times that’s the first connection that a woman has when she is filing her complaint of a hate crime that has happened.
A lot of times when you’re dealing with officers and they are not sensitive and don’t understand that there is a greater implication, that causes an issue. We have had a lot of conversations, for instance, locally with the Edmonton police here. We were discussing what they can do to help the problem. One of the things that we were discussing is that anything that comes as a hate crime should be treated with the white glove approach, for example. Officers need to understand that there is more to it. It’s really important that the officers — because that is a first contact that you have — that they are really supportive of the victims.
Part of the reason that a lot of times sentencing doesn’t follow through is that officers haven’t put a lot of information in their notes. They don’t have the community impact statements. They don’t have the victim impact statements explaining why what happened is a hate crime. I do think having better laws to protect them helps, but I think that it’s a systematic change that needs to happen on all levels. It has to happen on the federal, provincial and local level. A lot of times it’s hard to tell someone who has been victimized to come tell her story, and then she has to continue telling her story and fight for it. We have to get groups involved to advocate for her, which is what we do a lot of times. You have to advocate to even get an officer to come listen to her story. That is where the problem is.
The problem is we re-traumatize the victims over and over again when they have to talk about what happened to them. Sometimes when you are talking to someone, if they don’t have the empathy and are not dealing with you in an empathetic way, they can shut down that victim. The biggest issue is victim services doesn’t understand the implications of a hate crime. There are not specialized therapists that we offer them in the meanwhile to help them express how they feel. I do think it’s a multi-level approach on all levels.
I apologize for all the stuttering and everything. I apologize for that. I thank you for the question. Hopefully I have answered it.
Senator Omidvar: Thank you so much, Ms. Ahmed. Perhaps the others could weigh in on this proposal that will come to us.
Mr. Balgord: I’m sorry, you have a proposal coming to you in regard to —
Senator Omidvar: We will have legislation coming to us on hate speech, not online, just hate speech. It will enable victims if they don’t get heard at the local police force, it will give victims another route to complain to the Canadian Human Right Commission. The onus is back on the victims. I still wonder what you would make of this legislative proposal.
Mr. Balgord: If it’s anything like section 13, we would really welcome it. Anything that removes police as being a barrier and allows people to seek some kind of resolution on their own or on behalf of someone else in their community, we see as welcome. We have heard many stories, just like Citra has heard, about people who try to report to the police and are dismissed, disrespected. It’s really awful. It comes down to a police and culture issue.
Dr. Barbara Perry has done a study on many of the police services in Ontario asking them, including members of the hate-crime units, what they thought of hate crime, what they thought of how they think other police members perceive hate crime. The general gist of the results is that police don’t take it seriously and don’t care. They don’t see it as more important than other crimes. There is just a massive cultural problem within the police, and we are very pessimistic about the possibility of addressing it. We believe in finding as many methods as possible for people who are targeted by hate crimes to find other routes to positive solutions.
Ms. Naturkach: I would echo that again to reiterate what everyone has said here about the onus being on the victims. What is the multi-level and multi-pronged approaches that can help enhance these pathways so these things can get addressed in a more effective way. Again to reiterate what everyone else has shared her here.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: I think that most of my questions have been answered, but I would nevertheless like to ask Mr. Balgord something.
You mentioned an ombudsman who could centralize complaints. But then it appears that victims don’t want to complain or that when they do, the complaints are not dealt with. You also mentioned a complaint of several pages in length which is still being processed; if you could share that with us, we’d be grateful. How do you see the role of an ombudsman, when we’ve seen that victims no longer want to complain and that even when they do, the complaints are not dealt with?
My second question is for Ms. Naturkach. You made several recommendations, including that there should be dialogue to find solutions and also focus on a range of activities that would bring people together. You also mentioned challenging established social beliefs. Where should we start? What do you feel is the top priority among all these recommendations?
In closing, I have a question for Ms. Ahmed. You said that your daughter was wondering whether she should wear the hijab. What do you say in response to a question like that from a daughter asking herself about wearing a hijab and choosing between acknowledging and challenging her Muslim culture?
[English]
Mr. Balgord: I believe the first question was directed to me, so I’ll take that. In terms of the ombudsperson model, this is actually a part that I think gets tricky. I think organizations have different feelings on this matter.
The government was originally looking at some kind of proposal; I believe they called something like a recourse body. The idea was that when someone made a complaint to a social media company, and the company said that the hateful statement didn’t violate their policies and they would not remove it, the government was imagining an independent body, separate from the social media company, where you could bring your complaint. Then, this body might issue a ruling and make the social media company take something down.
We felt that this was very wrong-headed for a few reasons. The first is timeliness. By the time that somebody makes a hateful comment and a social media company even looks at it can be 24, 48, 72 hours. Whatever period of time it is, most of that harm to that person is done quickly, often. It’s within those 24 hours that there can be a viral campaign of targeted harassment against a person.
It’s already slow, and then to have another body adjudicate, we’re kind of missing the point, which is that there is just too much online hate out there, anyways.
That body, if there was a body that we created that heard individual complaints from people, it would immediately be oversubscribed because of how awful things are out there.
The idea behind the ombudsperson proposal is actually not to address individual complaints. It is to learn from them and then advocate for systemic changes, because there is so much hate out there that to look at every piece of it that somebody might bring forward and complain about is not realistic. We just cannot create a regulator with a staff that large. The social media companies themselves can’t and won’t even do it. We need to look at algorithmically preventing and removing some of this kind of content, and, of course, there is always going to be human moderation as a part of that.
We did not imagine the ombudsperson dealing with individual complaints. We were thinking of it more in the way an ombudsperson at a city, for example, would hear everybody talking about how their garbage wasn’t getting picked up and then would make the garbage pickup people have a different policy to address many of those issues at once rather than trying to make one-off solutions for every person that complained. That is the idea behind the model.
I know that this does not give victims a place to complain. It does not give them an individual recourse. The goal is to try to effect systemic change.
The Chair: Thank you.
Ms. Naturkach: I think I am up next on the question list.
Where do we start? I think that is a great question, and it is hard to decipher where. I think starting from a place of what has been prioritized already by community is the place to start for us as an organization — to listen and to let them lead.
Our role at Mosaic Institute is really largely upstream. We work with education and at those beginning stages of welcoming people into a conversation through our model of respectful dialogue and through working with schools and youth programs and in community.
Again, to reiterate, it has to happen at all levels. Where do we start? We start with education and changing understanding. We help youth understand things like identity and communicating through difference, those soft skills and those pieces that can challenge notions they may have picked up through influences within their community. We start there and work with them to create — again, as I mentioned — those social action plans that can be put into action and create that change within not just community and organizations but on that systemic level.
In regard to dialogue, there’s been some examples of how we can convene groups who have had more success in coming together with policing or community groups to talk about what that is. To be effective, you can have more broad-based campaigns, which are certainly important, but you can also work at the community and local level to get success that can be scaled and that can be hopeful and provide hope across the country.
There are always so many places to start that are within the wheelhouse of Mosaic Institute. Starting with ourselves, myself, doing this work over the last 25 years, unlearning on my own individual level has been so imperative to helping understand how to move forward in a better way.
Every one of us needs to challenge ourselves about what self-education we need to do in order to really understand how to work together in the best way. The multi-level piece also begins with the individual, and, again, that is where Mosaic starts, and I would say, as leaders, that is where we need to begin first to move forward.
The Chair: Thank you.
Ms. Ahmed, do you have anything to add to that?
Ms. Ahmed: Yes. I will answer the question that was asked to me about what I would say to my daughter.
I want to clarify that my daughter is a toddler. I work a lot with the youth here and young girls, and that is where the topic of the hijab comes up a lot. The same way I talk to the girls, I have prepared myself for what I will have to say to my daughter eventually as she grows, because it is her reality.
When it comes to the hijab, when the girls come to us, and they say, “I’m scared to wear it. What if people treat me different or I get hurt?” I always tell them that if they want to wear it, they should be able to. They do not need to change themselves. Society needs to start to change.
Realistically, I always tell them they need to hold their head up high and stay true to who they are. We always try and work on building their self-esteem, because it is a huge self-esteem blow to the girls, right, especially the young girls, because it is what they see all around them.
Unfortunately, as a community, we have had to have these self-defence classes and teach them, but it honestly starts with education. It starts with the fact that these young girls do not need to be burdened by learning how to defend themselves. They should be able to wear what they want to wear without being scared to go outside.
That is not the Canada that they need to be growing up in. Unfortunately, they’ve lost a lot of their childhood by having to stress about it, and it is a stress that no child should ever have to bear. But I have always told the girls that if they want to wear the hijab, and they are just scared to wear it, that they should not have to hold that burden on themselves. They should not have to have that fear. Society needs to change; it is not them. I think that is the biggest thing.
Unfortunately, it’s a conversation that we keep having, and it’s a conversation through which we are still learning how to help them, because a lot of it has to do with healing beforehand.
I want to reiterate what Leigh Naturkach was saying in regards to education. Education is the most important thing. It has to start with what they learn in school. If we are not teaching the kids from a young age in the education system that it is okay to be different, it is okay to be true to who you are and it is okay to wear your religion on your sleeve and not be judged by it, I think that is the biggest thing.
My whole goal being here, and my whole goal in general, the reason why I fight hard for this is because I don’t want the racist things that I heard growing up and everything I went through with my schooling — I was born and raised here in Edmonton — everything I went through shouldn’t be what these girls are still going through. The conversation needs to change. Society needs to change. That’s what the problem is.
I’m 30 years old and wearing the hijab. I am scared sometimes; I worry. So imagine a six-year-old, a seven-year-old, a nine-year-old or a ten-year-old. I don’t have the answers. I say to them, “Listen, it’s a struggle for all of us,” but it is a struggle that they shouldn’t have to face in the time that we are in now.
The Chair: Thank you. We literally just have five minutes left.
Did you have a supplementary?
Senator Omidvar: I just want to make a correction for the record, and if the clerk would kindly make that change. I don’t want to be disrespectful.
Irwin Cotler is Canada’s Special Envoy in Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism.
The Chair: Yes. Thank you.
I have a quick question or maybe even just a statement to you, Mr. Balgord. Do you think that the average Canadian should be worried about the rise of right-wing groups?
The other thing is that every time we have an incident — whether it was of the killing of the Afzaal family or anything — we get thoughts and prayers, and that’s it. There is no other action taken by the government.
Mr. Balgord: Certainly. Yes, we should all be very concerned with the rise of the far-right movement in Canada, which is predominantly an anti-democratic movement. It has racist elements and parts to it that should concern all of us, but we should also be concerned because it is an anti-democratic movement.
We went from a time period, when I started doing this work around 2016, where there were maybe 20,000 to 40,000 Canadians that were part of groups on Facebook that would hate Muslims. Then they rebranded themselves into the Yellow Vests Canada movement, and within weeks of this rebranding and adding on the extra grievances that they were talking about, they were up to a quarter of a million.
Then COVID hits. Then those exact same people were the ones who were in the COVID conspiracy spaces. They were radicalizing and recruiting new people who are vaccine skeptical or consuming misinformation or disinformation about COVID online. So we have this problem that is growing exponentially. In the United States it resulted in an attempted coup on January 6, 2021. Here it resulted in an occupation.
While I have been doing this work, we have gone from 20,000 to who knows how many now — well over a million, to be sure — people who are supportive or sympathetic to this far-right and often anti-democratic and often racist movement.
I do want to make clear, though, that not every person who is part of it is necessarily violent or racist, but they are contributing to a whole that tolerates those things and is bringing our entire democracy into question.
Yes, I do think it is escalating. I see nothing putting the brakes on it, and I’m very concerned.
To your question about the government — what do we need to start doing about it? — I will say a lot of these programs that are intended to combat hate or racism that have quite a lot of money attached to them, they fund a variety of projects, some of which are very good, a lot of which is research and almost none of which is particularly aggressive.
We want to see funding not just go toward research but to fund a movement to counter their movement. They have pundits. They have streamers. They have an entire movement that can bring a bunch of people in vehicles to Ottawa. We do not have any movement to combat that. Movements can only beat movements.
We need to be building a pro-democracy, inclusive movement that would protect people in Canada, especially members of equity-deserving groups, from the rise of the far right. I would call it a pro-democracy movement. The government should be putting money towards that. It is a non-partisan thing, a pro-democracy movement. I believe that movements have to beat movements, and the far right has grown in such strength that we need to create a movement to counter it, which I would call a pro-democracy movement. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We have come to the end of our time. I want to take this opportunity to thank all the witnesses for agreeing to participate in this very important study. Your assistance with our study is greatly appreciated.
(The committee adjourned.)