Barbara Kay: Getting to the heart of what M-103 was always all about

2018/03/19 Leave a comment

Somewhat paranoid in that 29 out of the 30 recommendations were drafted to reflect horizontal concerns regarding racism, discrimination and prejudice.

One may or may not agree with the recommendations (I certainly find that it reads too much like a laundry list with insufficient focus and have my doubts about some of them) but the overall horizontal approach is to be welcomed.

Given Budget 2018’s increased funding for the Multiculturalism Program and new funding improved data collection and research and measures to address issues faced by Black communities, it is hardly, as Kay argues, merely “obfuscatory preamble”:

On Feb. 1, the National Heritage Committee submitted the report called for by the passage of M-103 last winter.

M-103 surprised its backers when it turned out not to be the slam dunk they thought it would be, given that its founding predecessor document, Petition e-411, which called for a “whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religion, including Islamophobia,” quietly slid as if along greased wheels to acceptance.

Thus, the words “including Islamophobia” having passed under the public radar before M-103 was introduced, M-103 backers were caught off guard when the polemical sky lit up with full-throated debate around what the hell “Islamophobia” actually meant. If it was bigotry against Muslims, why wasn’t “anti-Muslim” good enough?

The Conservatives tried to have the motion amended with that substitution, but M-103’s supporters — notably among them the unelected Muslim advocacy group, National Council of Canadian Muslims, formerly CAIR.Can, and MP Iqra Khalid — with the full support of the Liberals, dug in their heels on “Islamophobia,” without ever clearly denying that it could also mean “criticism of Islam.”

And so, although the motion passed in March 2017, it passed amidst controversy and alarm amongst a great number of Canadians who worried we were being hoodwinked into a plan to curtail freedom of speech where one specific religion was concerned.

From this organic constituency there arose a group called Canadian Citizens for Charter Rights and Freedoms, coalescing around the clear and coherent analysis of M-103 by Royal Canadian Air Force Major (ret’d) Russ Cooper, a decorated CF-18 combat pilot, who amongst other achievements, took on national responsibilities in the field of post-9/11 civil aviation security. The focused and task-oriented Cooper followed the M-103 hearings in meticulously documented detail, publishing regular reportage of witness testimony.

Now Cooper has written a detailed and compelling analysis of the Heritage Committee report. Most of the report’s 30 recommendations, Cooper concludes, should be subjected to rigorous scrutiny by politicians, for many, if implemented, contain the seeds for further public dissension and potential freedom-of-speech curtailments warned against in the first go-around.

One of M-103’s objectives was, in its words, to counter a “climate of fear and hate.” But the report’s own statistics do not bear out the existence of any pervasive “climate” of broad-based hate and fear. In 2015, 1.9 million crimes were reported. Of them, 1,300 were deemed hate crimes, or one-tenth of one per cent of all crimes. A “dissenting report” by the Committee’s Conservative members noted that from 2009 to 2016 — with a Canadian population rise of three million people in that period — hate crimes actually decreased “nearly 13 per cent on a per capita basis.”

The report notes a 61-per-cent increase of hate crimes against Muslims from 2014 to 2015. The actual numbers went from 99 to 159. All hate crimes must be taken seriously, but statistically, given Canada’s Muslim population of over one million, these statistics are not culturally significant. Rebecca Kong, chief of the Policing Services Program at the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, stated the number of hate crimes was so small they did not support the assertion in Petition e-411 that there was a “notable rise of anti-Muslim sentiment in Canada.” (By the numbers, anti-Semitism ranks as Canada’s most common form of hate crime, and it is rising in frequency, yet even it is not so statistically significant to warrant a “whole-of government” approach to combat).

In fact, no hard evidence was adduced in the report to prove that anti-Muslim bias is systemic in Canada. The Quebec mosque massacre was mentioned as evidence of “white supremacism and radicalism in Canada,” although the mosque killer has not yet been linked to any organized political movement nor charged with an act of terrorism.

Indeed, among those testifying at the hearings, the only witnesses who brought actual evidence to bear on the assertion that religious bias was “systemic” throughout Canadian institutions were Christians. Representatives from Trinity Western University, the Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada and the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada all offered concrete examples of the state forcing, or attempting to force, counter-conscience beliefs and behaviours, most notably the practice of euthanasia. I am not being facetious when I suggest that Christians have a more evidence-based right than Muslims to feel they are victims of systemic institutional bias.

Which is why I view with extreme concern the still-undefined term Islamophobia popping up in the report’s 30th recommendation for a National Day of Action to combat it. Clearly that is the glittering prize for M-103’s backers; the rest is obfuscatory preamble. If an official Day of Action against Islamophobia is granted, even fair-minded and objectively warranted criticism of parts of the Islamic faith, and perhaps even Islamism itself, would be increasingly legally fraught. I believe that is the point of the exercise.

Source: Barbara Kay: Getting to the heart of what M-103 was always all about

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M-103 report makes few recommendations about Islamophobia

2018/02/03 Leave a comment

One of the relatively few articles to date on the committee report (L’islamophobie divise encore le Parlement canadien being another). Have only glanced at the report but this article provides a reasonable summary.

Amused that the Committee advocated restoration of Canada’s Action Plan Against Racism. Apart from funding the collection of police-reported hate crimes data by StatsCan, most of the other initiatives were of limited utility (during the evaluation of CAPAR, I stated that it was too small in scope and impact and it would be no great loss if it was not renewed – save for hate crimes).

The policy and program capacity of the multiculturalism program has been greatly reduced so it will be interesting to see whether the government response is serious or, as previously with CAPAR, largely symbolic:

The report arising from the Liberals’ anti-Islamophobia motion, M-103, was made public on Thursday, and calls for a national action plan on racism and religious discrimination, better data collection on hate crimes and cultural sensitivity training for law enforcement.

But the report, titled “Taking Action Against Systemic Racism and Religious Discrimination Including Islamophobia,” makes almost no recommendations that specifically target Islamophobia, despite months of controversy over the use of the term in the motion tabled by Liberal MP Iqra Khalid in December 2016.

The report does recommend that Jan. 29 “be designated as a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Islamophobia, and other forms of religious discrimination,” in response to requests from Muslim groups after six Muslim worshippers were killed in a Quebec City mosque shooting on Jan. 29, 2017. On the one-year anniversary of the attack, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a statement about the shooting and the importance of fighting Islamophobia, but did not declare the day a national day of action. Last week, the heritage department told the Post the government “has received and noted the proposal” from the National Council of Canadian Muslims.

Of the 30 recommendations, only one other specifically mentions Islamophobia, and only to say that the government should “actively condemn systemic racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia.”

The report does not recommend the creation of any new laws. M-103 itself is a motion, not a law.

The original motion, which called on the government to conduct a study and come up with an approach to eliminate racism and religious discrimination “including Islamophobia,” generated a firestorm of controversy last year. Conservatives claimed the motion would restrict free speech because, they felt, the term Islamophobia is poorly defined. During committee hearings, several witnesses expressed concern that the motion would effectively stifle criticism of Islam.

But the recommendations outlined in the M-103 report target racism and religious discrimination in much broader terms. The report suggests the government should update the Canadian Action Plan Against Racism, published in 2005, and broaden it to include religious discrimination. Other recommendations call for the government to establish uniform guidelines and a national database for the collection of hate-crime data.

The report also recommends that federal, provincial and territorial governments take a closer look at the comparability of education and credentials obtained outside Canada, to combat employment barriers. Other recommendations call for more funding for research and for law enforcement to investigate Internet hate speech.

The report notes that the committee heard “differing views on the use of the term Islamophobia,” but does not offer an accepted definition of the term.

In a dissenting report, the Conservatives cast doubt on the premise of the whole exercise, calling into question whether Canadians are actually living in an “increasing public climate of hate and fear,” as the motion states. Their report suggests the per capita rate of hate crimes has declined since 2009.

The Conservatives also listed 26 different definitions of the term Islamophobia provided by different witnesses who appeared before the committee. “The concerns raised, regarding the dangers of an over-broad definition, or of attempting to condemn ‘Islamophobia’ without defining which thoughts and actions are thereby also being condemned, were widespread,” reads the Conservative report.

In their own list of recommendations, the Conservatives called on the government to “cease using the term ‘Islamophobia,’” and reiterate its support for freedom of speech and religion.

In an interview, Conservative MP David Anderson said communities and faith groups want to tackle issues of discrimination themselves, without government interference. “We don’t need the government to be overseeing every part of Canadian life,” he said. But he said the Conservatives agree with some of the report’s recommendations, including the need for better data collection. “No one is denying that (discrimination) exists.”

In a supplementary report, the New Democrats accused both Liberals and Conservatives of “political posturing” that diminished the committee’s work to tackle racism and religious discrimination. The report argues the government should have been more open to changing the language of the motion to include “an agreed-upon definition” of Islamophobia, but that “partisan politicking” got in the way.

“People wanted to know, in the context of the motion, what the term Islamophobia meant and what was the intent behind it,” NDP MP Jenny Kwan told the Post. “We could have all worked together to dampen the fear and the misinformation.”

Kwan said it made sense to include the term Islamophobia in the motion, because of the documented rise in hate crimes against Muslims. She believes the parties could have come up with a definition of the term that would have let all parliamentarians agree unanimously to the motion. But in an attempt from Liberals and Conservatives to appear to be on opposite sides of the issue, she said, that didn’t happen.

M-103 was passed by the Liberal majority last March, in the wake of the Quebec City mosque shooting. Throughout the hearings last fall, Liberal committee members frequently expressed frustration at the focus of some witnesses on the wording of the motion, and tried to steer the focus away from Islamophobia and onto racism and religious discrimination more broadly.

Anderson said the Liberals “misunderstood” how strongly Canadians would feel about the issue.

Source: M-103 report makes few recommendations about Islamophobia

Link to report: Committee Report No. 10 – CHPC (42-1) – House of Commons of Canada

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Islamophobia won’t be the central focus of parliamentary committee’s M-103 report, sources say

2018/01/26 Leave a comment

After all the posturing and positioning (and some hysteria) during the M-103 debates, it appears the heritage committee will be framing its recommendations in a broader context. Stay tuned to see what the report says and the degree to which the report is a consensus report or not:

The parliamentary committee tasked with preparing a report on racism and religious discrimination as required by M-103, the Liberal government’s controversial anti-Islamophobia motion, is about to make its recommendations public. But after months of debate over the definition of Islamophobia and the use of the term in a motion intended to address all forms of racism, sources say Islamophobia won’t be a central focus of the M-103 report.

The report’s recommendations largely don’t single out Islamophobia, say some sources with knowledge of the heritage committee’s discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the report. “It’s certainly not the focus of the report,” one said, adding that Islamophobia is referenced, “but not at great length.”

Another source said that while the report does mention the debate over the definition of the term, it doesn’t “go on and on and on about it.”

M-103 was a motion tabled in December 2016 by Liberal MP Iqra Khalid, but only gained steam after the shooting in a Quebec City mosque last January that left six Muslim worshippers dead. The motion called for the government to “condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination” and for the heritage committee to conduct a study on how the government could eliminate discrimination “including Islamophobia.”

Though a motion and not a piece of legislation — and though M-103 did not call for the creation of new legislation to address Islamophobia — it quickly became a political lightning rod, with many Conservatives arguing it would stifle free speech, as, they said, the term Islamophobia is poorly defined. A Conservative counter-motion calling for a general study of religious discrimination without singling out Islamophobia was defeated by the Liberals before M-103 was passed in March.

When the heritage committee began its work in September, some members said they’d been contacted repeatedly about the motion by constituents, some of whom expressed fears about Sharia law.

Debate continued over the wording of the motion throughout the committee’s public hearings, leaving Liberal members at times clearly frustrated and at pains to explain that the motion wasn’t just about Islam. “I personally feel we spent a lot of time on this issue of the terminology as opposed to addressing the root cause of the problem,” Liberal MP Arif Virani said during an October hearing.

There have been other signs that the Liberals have wanted to take the focus off Islamophobia, despite the motion’s connection to an attack on Muslim worshippers. “We’re not following the motion word for word,” Liberal committee chair Hedy Fry told witnesses in September. “We’re not having to slavishly follow anything in this motion.”

During the same hearing, NDP MP Jenny Kwan conceded that the language of the motion was “perhaps not the best.”

The heritage committee blew past its 240-day deadline for tabling its recommendations back in November. Sources say debate over the word Islamophobia continued into the committee’s roughly 10 hours of private meetings in December as the report was being prepared.

On Dec. 11, for instance, Conservative MP Scott Reid said on social media that he planned to move a motion to include a suggestion in the report that M-103 should use “anti-Muslim bigotry” instead of “Islamophobia.”

“The Conservatives were focused on the word, and after a while it became bordering on ridiculous,” one source said. Another said the in camera meetings were “complete madness.”

Still, another source said it was important to debate the term. “And I think that just based on the variety of evidence that we had before the committee, that goes to show you that it was a discussion people felt it was important to have.”

Ultimately, sources suggested, the report acknowledges disagreement about the word Islamophobia, but the recommendations don’t focus on anti-Muslim hate over any other type of discrimination.

That would be in line with many of the recommendations put forward by witnesses last fall, which included better collection of hate-crime data, better education, more training for police officers, and an updated national action plan against racism. Few of those recommendations singled out any ethnic or religious group.

The committee is expected to release its report shortly after the House of Commons returns next week.

Source: Islamophobia won’t be the central focus of parliamentary committee’s M-103 report, sources say

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Iqra Khalid urges MPs to take unified approach in Islamophobia study

2017/09/19 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see the degree to which the Conservatives play a constructive or obstructive role in the Committee study – and whether the Liberals resist partisanship in their approach.

Their choice of witnesses will be as revealing as their interventions (don’t have the complete list to be able to assess the respective balance but the inclusion of Tarek Fatah on the Conservative list suggests that their approach may not have changed):

The inclusion of the phrase Islamophobia in a hotly debated motion passed by the House of Commons last year was meant as an example of forms of racism, the Liberal MP who sponsored the proposal said Monday.

Iqra Khalid told the House of Commons heritage committee that her motion calling for parliamentarians to condemn Islamophobia and for a study on systematic racism and religious discrimination was about the study itself that began Monday.

“It uses the example of Islamophobia to make a larger point about the problem of all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination — that we have to find ways to tackle that broad problem in Canada as a whole,” Khalid said.

Khalid said she was motivated to introduce M-103 after hearing several stories of racist acts against different faiths in the fall of 2016. When she looked into the issue, she found the statistics to provide context to the problem were lacking and something had to be done.

“The objective of the motion was to bring forward this study, it is upon this committee as a whole to take that unified approach to study the issue, to work with each other to find those recommendations to assist us as policy makers,” she said.

Khalid’s motion passed in a vote of 201-91 last spring. It called on MPs to recognize something had to be down to “quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear,” and to that end, the House ought to condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination and direct the heritage committee to study the issue, including how better to gather hate crime data.

The conflict around the motion centered largely around the word Islamophobia, setting off protests on Parliament Hill and arguments across the country over the meaning and implications of the phrase.

Khalid told the committee she defines it as “irrational fear or hatred of Muslims or Islam” that leads to discrimination.

But opponents say the word it is vague and essentially means criticism against Islam of any kind is forbidden, and some saw Khalid’s motion as the first step in criminalizing that criticism. Conservative news outlet Rebel Media seized on that issue with gusto, forcing it into the Conservative leadership race as contenders were grilled on their positions.

The Conservatives had sought to remove the phrase and instead broaden the motion to refer to multiple faiths.

They lost over objections from the Liberals that they would be watering down Khalid’s effort. Several Conservatives raised their own motion in quizzing Khalid on Monday about her intentions.

“Both of us would have liked to have found ourselves on the same side of the vote in the House on the issue,” Conservative David Anderson said.

“We are sir,” Khalid replied.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said she had never seen as much “fomented anger, concern and misconception” around a House of Commons motion as she heard around Khalid’s.

She and other MPs told Khalid they’d received calls that the motion would lead to Islamic religious law, known as Sharia, being introduced in Canada or that it would give Islam a protected status in Canada greater than that of other religions.

Khalid was asked to directly address some of the specific concerns, but didn’t tackle them all, saying while there were misconceptions, it was time to move forward.

“The conversation that Canadians had over the past number of months was a very important conversation,” Khalid said.

“It is a great way to lead up to this study.”

Source: Iqra Khalid urges MPs to take unified approach in Islamophobia study – The Globe and Mail

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