Sure, I'm happy to speak to the issue.

It's been a while since I've been back in the school system. Look, I went through the public school system, right from junior kindergarten through to high school. I grew up in Scarborough, east of Toronto. I guess it's part of Toronto, but on the east side. I don't know if the curriculum has really changed a lot since I went through the system.

What really stood out to me is that it wasn't really part of the curriculum at all. You don't learn about other people's religions, faith systems or cultural practices and those kinds of things. Maybe you pay some lip service here and there for a celebratory event, but in terms of an actual deep dive into what are people's belief systems and these tenets that Canadians live their lives by....

The only time I learned about it was when I was a high school student and I signed up for an elective class, which was [Technical difficulty—Editor], one of my favourite classes. I absolutely loved it. I loved learning about.... I obviously know my own faith tenets, but learning about others was so eye-opening. It was a learning experience that continues to pay dividends now in my career decades later. But it was an elective course. It was me and 25 other students who happened to be in the course. Nobody else was in it. I'm hopeful that from a curricular perspective that more attention will be paid to this for young folks who are coming up through the system so that they're learning these things from a younger age and it's not just 30 people out of a 2,000-person school who are getting this kind of education.

I think that is important. The multi-faith events happen and certainly those who participate I'm sure get a lot from it, but oftentimes you're preaching to the choir. I think that's also true of the world religions classes, for those of us who were interested in taking it, because we obviously had an interest in it and we wanted to learn. We wanted to not be ignorant, wholly ignorant, of these kinds of things.

How do you get to those folks who are not part of this choir? That's the challenge. From an interfaith perspective again, you can't force people into those kinds of programs.

I think, Ms. Wong, you spoke about how we get a lot of training by international media. That's just the reality of our society. If that's the case, the folks who are not in the choir, if that's how they're being educated, then we have to start thinking about how we can ensure that where they do get their education from reflects the education they need to be getting. If that's going to be the source, let's do what we can to ensure that source has the right messaging in it, or at least counter-narratives to the harmful messaging that it contains.

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