- Member of Parliament
- Minister of Justice
Attorney General of Canada
- Liberal
- Parkdale—High Park
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 63%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $120,537.19
- Government Page
- Jan/29/24 2:49:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to acknowledge that today is the seventh anniversary of a terrorist attack at the Quebec City mosque. We commit ourselves to commemorating those victims and to taking action on Islamophobia.
The point the member is raising about Islamophobia and all forms of hate is a very important one. We know that the radicalization of people who take violent and sometimes lethal acts in this country is fuelled by what they learn online. That is why we are committed to addressing this matter in a comprehensive piece of legislation that would tackle this pernicious issue and address and promote the safety of Canadians.
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- Oct/26/23 3:17:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what we are seeing in the wake of the violence in the Middle East manifesting in this country in terms of divisions, intolerance and active hatred is repulsive. It is, frankly, un-Canadian.
I agree completely with the member who just raised the question that these are things we must all stand against. Incidents of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and intolerance toward one another are not what we stand for as a people or as a Parliament. We have conviction now more than ever in our belief that combatting hatred is a task for all of us, one we must stand united on and must pursue with vigour.
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- Feb/7/22 9:50:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to participate in tonight's very important debate about a very pressing issue and a very important event that is occurring right outside this chamber and has been occurring for the last eight days or so. I want to thank the member forBurnaby South for bringing in and initiating this emergency debate.
As somebody who came to this chamber as a practising lawyer who had worked in the area of constitutional law and human rights for 15 years prior to first getting elected, let me start by saying that the right of protest in any democracy is sacrosanct. It is fundamental in any democracy. It is protected under section 2(b) of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, with good reason. The issue of speech and protected speech is at its apex when talking about political speech. That is the form of speech and it deserves the highest amount of protection. That is entrenched in Supreme Court jurisprudence.
What is problematic, however, is when speech, demonstrations and protest veer into hatred. I do not want to overstate the case. We know that there have been some instances of hatred. Perhaps not all of the protesters are engaging in this, but it does taint and flavour and characterize what we are seeing when we see it on a repeated basis.
What have we seen? We have seen swastikas and we have seen the Confederate flag.
What do those mean? The swastika is obviously a symbol of the Third Reich. It hearkens back to Nazi Germany. It is a very vilifying and detestable manifestation of what that regime represented and what it did to Jewish people, all sorts of minorities, racialized persons, religious minorities, LGBTQ2 communities and people who were Roma, etc. The Confederate flag obviously represents the institution of slavery. We heard very eloquently from the member for Hull—Aylmer how that feels for a person of Black skin, for a person who is racialized. We know how that feels for a person like me, a brown-skinned Muslim man, who takes his place in this House. Those are symbols we do not need here.
It means that what it has devolved into for the people of Ottawa, for even the people who work here in Ottawa, such as me, as we have heard repeatedly this evening, is starting to look a lot more like an occupation than a protest. When protesters destabilize people, when they disturb them intentionally and when they honk horns just to aggravate people, as the member for Kingston and the Islands indicated, the fight has been taken not to the government but to the people and the residents of this city.
That is problematic because it starts to affect people's behaviour. Perhaps that is what is intended here. Perhaps the intent is to put a chill on people's behaviour. It is problematic when a storekeeper cannot open their storefront and a cashier is worried about working at Rexall, and it is problematic even for members of Parliament, for my colleagues and, dare I admit it, for myself. When I went home after the Ukraine emergency debate one week ago, I was concerned for the first time in my seven-year parliamentary career about whom I might encounter at 10:30 at night on the streets of Ottawa. That is not a pleasant place to be in, and that is what, unfortunately, this has been driven to.
The next point I want to make is that it is always important to take issue with policy positions. That is what a democracy is all about. That is a good thing. I have been thankful that at least in the protest outside, some people had the good sense to carve out a lane of traffic for emergency vehicles. That is also a good thing. However, what I have still seen and what I saw last summer, this past fall, this winter and even just yesterday is that the people who drive those emergency vehicles are being targeted. They are being targeted with acts of hatred, acts of violence and acts of harassment. People should not fear wearing their uniform. We talk about the people in uniform who are keeping us safe, and they deserve to be credited.
There are other people wearing uniforms, uniforms that are called scrubs. People who are cautioned about wearing their scrubs in public are the people who have been keeping us safe. They are the people who swear the Hippocratic oath to keep everyone safe, no matter how heinous their attitudes, no matter how vile their positions. The people who keep everyone safe, both the people who are vaccinated and the people who are unvaccinated, deserve our respect, appreciation and gratitude. What some people are foisting upon them right now is exactly the opposite. I am not saying all people, but some people. That has to be stopped in its tracks.
I want to inject a third aspect into this discussion, which is about the notion of trucks being filled with gasoline being parked 50 metres from a legislative building such as the House of Commons I am speaking from. We know, I know, and Muslims know that trucks have been used as instruments of death and terror around the planet. What I am saying here is that we have to question things such as unconscious bias in terms of how we approach parked vehicles loaded with gasoline very proximate to a legislative building. I do not think it is vast speculation or venturing a guess here to say that if those were Black protesters, indigenous protesters—
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
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