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Canada''s security agenda a threat to multiculturalism.

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Muticulturalistic Canada is under threat of extinction. Post September 11, racial profiling, religious discrimination, and the condoning of targeting Arabs and Muslims in Canada's security agenda, have often been seen as acceptable practice by the government. Arab Canadians are routinely discriminated against in schools, workplaces, the U.S. border, by the police and CSIS. This is unacceptable in a country that prides itself on multiculturalism. Speech to RCMP and police officials, Ottawa, Ontario, February 27, 2003.

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Anxiety, fear, alienation, marginalization, betrayal, and disillusionment. This is how September 11 and its aftermath have left Arab and Muslim Canadians feeling--indeed reeling. There have been many causes for this: Key among them is what would by Canadian standards, easily qualify as an excessive, overzealous security agenda.

Allow me to briefly list a chronology of what has become known as the backlash to September 11. Mere hours after the events of that day there came an unleashing of acts of hate and racism directed at Arab and Muslim Canadians on the streets of our cities, in schoolyards and workplaces from neighbors and strangers alike, from vandals who attacked places of worship. While such...

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