Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here. We appreciate your presentations. I'm sorry to hear some of the personal stories that basically tell us that this is not the Canada that we want to be living in. We want improvements. We want to change how we look at each other so that visible differences—or other differences, for that matter—shouldn't be the basis of how we treat each other.

Ms. Choudhry, you spoke about your personal experience and how the teaching of equality needs to start at a young age. I want to tell you a bit about my experience with the Ahmadiyya community. My father ran a taxi company. We basically had people from all over the world who moved to Canada and drove taxis with him. To me, as a person, I don't look at people and their differences as the basis for how I treat them. In fact, it's the exact opposite. I've grown up with a lot of Muslim friends. Some of my best friends were Muslim friends. The way I see them is just as human beings—that's it. I'm hoping that eventually our younger generation doesn't focus on the physical differences or the differences in religious beliefs—all of that.

I've grown up like that. I see the name “Naeem Chaudhry” here, under “Witnesses”. I call him “Uncle Chaudhry”. I remember staying at my dad's best friend's house, staying there overnight, and his children being our best friends. I'm saddened to hear these stories when this happens in the Canada that I grew up in, where we weren't necessarily taught these differences, and I appreciate the fact that we need to start very young in targeting our younger generation to teach them to treat everyone equally.

My question is going to be on the hate crimes. Can you speak to the meaning of the term “hate crime”? You alluded to that in your presentation, Ms. Choudhry.

I guess we have two Ms. Choudhrys, so the question is for both of them, please.

Our focus in this study is on how we move forward so that what happened in London, Ontario, doesn't happen again. Can you briefly speak about the meaning of the term “hate crime”? Then we'll go to how our government and we parliamentarians can make things better or how we can address and support Muslim women.

Jag Sahota

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