I want to thank the member for his remarks. I’m wondering if he could elaborate for us—because he and I both share a city where a number of our residents don’t feel safe right now. They’re talking to us through our community offices about not feeling safe on campus. I’m wondering if the member could give this government some advice about what it can do.

I note that the blue-ribbon panel had asked for $2.5 billion in additional funding from this government. Most of the mental health supports on post-secondary campuses in Ottawa Centre are struggling, with wait-lists in excess of six months for mental supports for students. So I’m wondering what the funding message could be to this government to make sure that people do feel supported and safe on campus.

Is that something you think this government should change and is it something you’re committed to change?

As I understand Bill 166, now at third reading before this House, this is about making sure that there is accountability and student supports available to people on our campuses. As I mentioned in the Q&A with the member for Ottawa South, I am being contacted increasingly—our office is—by students, staff and faculty on post-secondary campuses who do not feel safe. So the timing for this bill is fortuitous. But what I want to say in the time I have, Speaker, is that the focus of the bill, in my opinion, is misplaced, and certainly the applications and the resources that I’ve heard the government say will arrive with this bill, I think, at the moment, at least, are not going to the right areas.

Again, just speaking as someone who has taught at post-secondary institutions, I want everybody, if you can, to put your mind in the mind of a 38-year-old university professor, who, on June 28, 2023, was attacked by a 24-year-old student who walked into a hall at the University of Waterloo. The first thing that 24-year-old asked the professor was, “What’s being taught in this class?” And when the professor said to that 24-year-old student, himself a student at the University of Waterloo, that it was a gender studies class, the student pulled out two large knives and proceeded to attack the professor. The only reason the professor wasn’t critically injured is that she resisted, but two other students in that class of 40 got up to try to resolve the matter.

I’ll never forget that day and the reporting that came out of the University of Waterloo, because I have had situations—not violent situations in class, but I have had situations in classes where I’ve taught where tempers have flared and people have jumped to their feet and you thought altercations were going to break out, because, frankly, that is what post-secondary education should be about: It should be about exploring ideas, even when passions flame, even when things can get difficult in the classroom. Because I want to believe that that’s what our colleges and universities should be doing: They should be challenging us to think about our place in the world and how we use the skills that we have. But I have never encountered a situation like that, Speaker.

I wish I could say that in recent years it’s an isolated situation. But we also know that the same pattern that police studies and court evidence has shown was present in the mind of this 24-year-old student, who was asocial, who was troubled, who openly disliked Pride events at the University of Waterloo and who would regularly intervene in campus online groups, spewing hatred against queer and transgender groups on campus. The same pattern repeats itself with a college dropout in London, Ontario, on June 6, 2021, who, on the third occasion, he’d marshalled—he’d tried to marshal the courage twice before, but on the third occasion managed to run down an entire Muslim family. I asked myself in the aftermath of this, as we’ve had so much debate and reflection, given the terrorism charges that were laid against this 20-year-old, what can we do through post-secondary education to make sure that people who have fallen so deep down those rabbit holes of hatred that they would see Muslim neighbours as somehow a threat—what are we not doing on campuses?

And then, again, something that’s less known about the Quebec City mass shooting on June 27, 2017, is that that 27-year-old—and purposely, Speaker, I’m not naming the perpetrators, because I’m not interested in giving them any infamy, because I know that’s one of the reasons why they committed their lethal acts. I’m not going to name them—was a political science student at Université Laval and had been known in his class, on his campus and online to specifically target Muslim neighbours—to specifically target them, to at least a few times walk around the Sainte-Foy mosque. And for the 40 people that he found worshipping on that day and the six fathers and brothers who are dead as a consequence of those lethal actions, I again ask the question for this House posed by this bill: What are we doing on campuses to reach hatred and diminish it before it manifests in a lethal act? I think that’s a very important question.

When I looked at the blue-ribbon panel that the government amassed to give it advice on what to do with colleges and universities, and when I listened to the member for London West, both in this House and at committee, ask questions—worthy questions—we kept coming back to a similar theme: We aren’t putting the faith in the resources in colleges and universities to make sure that students, staff and faculty have access to the resources they need when they’re in a troubled mental health state, when questions and difficult circumstances pop up. We are not providing the resources necessary.

The blue-ribbon panel asked for $2.5 billion; the government has given the post-secondary sector $1.2 billion, so half the ask. I know at Carleton University, as I said earlier in the question to the member from Ottawa South, there is often at least a six-month waiting list when students ask for urgent mental health supports on campus—six months; six months when you’re exhibiting behaviours that suggest that you could harm yourself or perhaps others.

So what we’ve done in the city of Ottawa is, through our community health centres, created a program called Counselling Connect: that, within 48 hours of intake—that’s the goal—it gets people access to three psychotherapy sessions that are culturally appropriate and as fast as possible. The goal is within 48 hours of intake. I know this program right now is helping over 700 people in the greater city of Ottawa. Some of those folks are students. That would make sense. That program, Counselling Connect, costs community health centres in our city, who are strapped for cash, believe me, $600,000. But I want to believe that if Bill 166 wanted to provide the supports to students, staff and faculty on our campuses, it could partner with an organization like Counselling Connect. That would have real impact to make sure that people got the help they needed when they needed it.

Speaker, I’m also mindful of the fact that this bill is before the House at a time when many of our neighbours, many of our citizens, are mobilizing—understandably, given the horrors that we are seeing in the war between Israel and Hamas. I know the members opposite, the minister—the Premier has openly asked for encampments that are cropping up on university campuses to be dismantled, that they believe these encampments to be embodiments of hatred.

What I want to encourage my friends opposite to consider—because I visited the encampment at the University of Ottawa, I visited at the end of the workday here the University of Toronto encampment. While I may not agree with everything I’ve seen and everything that’s written down, I can honestly say that I have never seen better organized, empathetic young people trying to ask decision-makers in this country to do what they can to create more tolerance, peace and understanding. I am amazed. When I walked into the encampment at the University of Toronto, I had to go through almost a 10-minute interview intake. So I was aware, as a politician, that I was not to be photographing or videoing people. If I wanted to conduct media interviews on site, I needed to contact them first. It was their encampment and there were rules around how I behaved and how I treated others. On this site, there was an Indigenous part—I believe it’s still there—with a sacred fire. I was blown away by the level of organization. The consistent message that I heard at least from students saying: “We want to be a voice for peace. We want Canada to be a voice for peace.”

So I am discouraged, I’ll be honest, when my colleagues in this House are asking for these encampments to be dismantled, without reckoning with that message that I hear loud and clear. I heard it at home and I heard it across the street at the University of Toronto. I would like to think that that is exactly the kind of message that should be embodied in our programs on campus: a greater understanding of each other; that we aren’t intimidated by each others’ symbols. We’ve had the debate in this House about the Palestinian kaffiyeh not being permitted in this chamber.

We have to see each other for our whole person. When heinous and horrible acts are committed with cultural symbols or religious symbols, we don’t hold an entire culture accountable for that. We hold the individuals responsible for that. So I actually, earnestly, want my friends in government to hear that message. I want them to think about what is happening on campus across Canada—it’s not a threat; it’s an opportunity.

I look at two stories, and I will end with this from home, from the University of Ottawa. In the first story, I’m going to be protecting the student’s identity because she fears reprisal. We’re going to call her Miriam, for argument’s sake. Miriam is an arts major, a Palestinian student. She recounted to me an instance where a colleague in her class, who had served in the Israeli military—serving in any military is an honourable thing—had said in class that he believed every Gazan needed to be eliminated for the goal of peace to be achieved. She was stunned, absolutely stunned—mouth-dropped-open stunned. The gentlemen identified himself as a professional sniper and talked openly about how he believed that what he was doing was contributing to the cause of peace. She was stunned. She filed a formal complaint, and the response of the human rights office, sadly, at the university was to say, “Do you need counselling?” Do you need counselling?

Again, our classrooms should be places of vigorous debate where people of different perspectives should be able to hold forth, but the kind of open anti-Palestinian racism—like open anti-Semitism, open Islamophobia—open forms of hatred that I am seeing on our campuses, where so many neighbours are falling down these wells of hatred, we have to provide the mental health resources and training to the campuses so they can respond. If we don’t do that, what we don’t respond to—which seems uncomfortable in a class on one day—could be a lethal event that we respond to later, and, frankly, we saddle the first responders who are there with the trauma of having to witness that, not only the people who live through it.

I also want to talk about Dr. Yipeng Ge, who has been a public advocate, who is a medical resident at the University of Ottawa who is suspended for his social media posting on Palestinian human rights—suspended. He was not given the grounds for his suspension for a week and a half, he was just told that he was not to go to the medical school anymore. This is a medical professional who has travelled the world, worked in refugee camps, seen horrible things, helped people in incredibly difficult circumstances, given an arbitrary suspension.

When Dr. Ge approached us, I simply listened, I tried to get a sense of how the university was dealing with the matter and I said to him, “What do you want from me?” He said, “Joel, I would love it if you would engage the university, love it if you would talk to them.” I said, “Sure. The University of Ottawa are my friends. We work together all the time.” I’m sad to say that there has been no public apology offered to Dr. Ge. There has been no public comprehensive investigation. He has decided—and this is really one of the more shameful things I can remember in recent history, at a very difficult time—not to go back to the University of Ottawa, even though his suspension has been lifted and he’s allowed to, because he feels like his integrity has been questioned and he feels like the people responsible for castigating him for his beliefs have not been held accountable.

I would welcome the government’s interest in making sure that there are student supports, that we do hold campuses accountable. I think it’s worthy. I do see the rise of hatred on our campuses and I want to be part of the solution to deal with it, but we can’t do this in an arbitrary manner and we have to make sure that the resources are available at a local level that people can seek help.

Again, I just want to be as clear as I end: I am not saying that the way we deal with this is that we label people as being hateful and we segregate them and we marginalize them. No—I am actually encouraging a strategy of dialogue and conflict resolution here, modelling what we want to see between countries in the world at a local level through the campuses. The most skilled conflict resolvers, mediators, that I’ve met at a campus level do precisely this all the time, but we ask them to do a lot with very little budget. I’ll end with that.

I’ll say that the bill is coming to the House at a very opportune time, fortuitous time, but I think its focus needs to be ensuring that you at least meet the demands of the blue-ribbon panel—the $2.5 billion—and that we have some trust and collaboration with our campus partners. When we feel they have misstepped and they haven’t done their due diligence, as I think is the case with Dr. Ge, then we make sure that the province does insist that due process is followed at the campus level. I thank you for your attention.