CCMW's National Action Summit on Islamophobia Recommendations
Recommendations
CCMW endorses the recommendations of the National Council of Canadian Muslims and those put forward by legal academic and journalist Azeezah Kanji and Tim McSorley of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group.
Following are recommendations addressing the concerns of Canadian Muslim women and girls made by our members and other stakeholders who have shared their experiences and ideas with us.
1. Apply an intersectional anti-Islamophobia lens to review federal, provincial, and municipal policies, legislation, regulations, bylaws, programs and services to detect anti-Muslim, Islamophobic bias and develop a plan for remediation.
2. Fund research on the gendered and intersectional nature of Islamophobia and its impact on social determinants of health as well as economic and educational outcomes of Canadian Muslim women and girls, trans and non-binary individuals.
3. Pass Bill C-36, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act and to make related amendments to another Act (hate propaganda, hate crimes and hate speech. In case of an election, reintroduce the bill regardless of the party in power.
4. Ensure that the Task Force on the Employment Equity Act Review includes expanding designated groups and disaggregating data to enable identification of employment barriers for Canadian Muslim women, taking into account their intersectional identities.
5. Require Ministers of Labour to address employment barriers faced by Canadian Muslim women and girls.
6. Require the Ministries of Educations to review elementary and secondary school curricula from an anti-Islamophobia lens and ensure that anti-racism and anti- Islamophobia content is included in them.
7. Commit to availing of CCMW’s Anti-Islamophobia 101 and Countering Cyberhate 101 workshops for:
a. Federally and provincially regulated employers and unions, including federal, provincial, territorial and municipal government employees.
b. School board trustees, teachers, principals, superintendents, directors of education, administrators, decision-makers and all other employees in the school system.
c. Faculty members, department heads, deans, governing bodies, and all other employees in post-secondary institutions.
d. Police services and law enforcement agencies.
e. Lawyers, paralegals and judges.
f. Hospitals, community health centres, social and community service providers, and settlement service providers.
8. Pass municipal bylaws to address street harassment and other hate-motivated incidents, including citizen bystander training to intervene safely.
9. Fund initiatives that celebrate the contributions and achievements of Canadian Muslim women and girls and to tell their stories through multi-media vehicles to address negative stereotypes and disinformation.
10. Promote civic engagement by introducing a buddy-system for Canadian Muslim women and girls, especially those who may be more vulnerable due to age or disability, to accompany them while walking or taking public transit.
11. Adopt an upstream approach to countering racist ideologies by incorporating more anti- racist, anti-oppressive, anti-colonial, and intersectional education across all levels of primary and secondary school education.
12. Allocate additional funding to grassroots organizations, to support their efforts in delivering more culturally adapted mental health care to survivors of Islamophobic attacks.
13. Allocate additional funding to support survivors in need of legal services.