After a tumultuous time in Quebec, the public eagerly awaited the Bouchard-Taylor Commission Report on reasonable accommodation. However, when it was released, it appeared to say to Quebecers, “relax, there is no crisis.” As a result, few ripples resulted, especially in the rest of Canada. This is a tremendous shame because the report provides valuable and timely guidance for all Canadians, especially the media and its role in the sociocultural integration of minorities, particularly in relation to Muslims.

In examining the most recently reported decisions on accommodation, the report found that in 15 of 21 cases there were “striking distortions between general public perceptions and the actual facts.” On the media, the report notes that, “their considerable power makes them a strong lever for integration as well as a very efficient stereotype mill.”

The report verifies that “[a]t the root of discrimination are stereotypes, which are both a cause and consequence of stigmatization... The slightest incidents are exploited to sustain and perpetuate negative impressions that the media machine often espouses, thus to some extent giving them credence.”

Michael Adams, president of Environics Research Group, described in his book, Unlikely Utopia, the most significant findings from his survey of Muslims in Canada and the attitudes of other Canadians to them. He stated: “The disjunction between how Muslims view their desire to integrate and how other Canadians view it is pronounced: while Muslims see themselves as wanting to participate in and adapt to Canadian society... the population at large tends to doubt this willingness.”

Evidence of significant discrimination and hostility to Muslims in Canada is readily apparent and verifiable, but the impression the media provides to most Canadians is that it is Muslims that that are discriminatory and hostile.

In the Environics survey, 17 percent of the Muslims were of the opinion that most or many Canadians were hostile to them, and even 28 percent of the general population held that opinion. A total of 66 percent of Muslims were either very worried or somewhat worried about discrimination against Muslims living in Canada, and 31 percent of Muslims reported they’ve “had a bad experience” related to their race, ethnicity or religion in the past two years.

Despite these experiences, 94 percent of Muslims expressed pride in being Canadian, with the most frequently expressed sources of pride related to Canada’s freedom and democracy.
It is important not to establish a hierarchy of victimization. For example, in addressing wide-spread concerns that the commission hearings provided a platform for anti-Semitism, the report confirmed that of a thousand speakers at their hearings, most of the offensive remarks were aimed at Muslims, with about a dozen at Jews.

An earlier survey in 2004 of Canadians for the Canada Unity Council found that 30 percent of respondents were less likely to vote for a political party if its leader was hypothetically a Muslim, about three times less likely than if the leader was Jewish, black or a woman. The same survey found 45 percent of respondents felt that anti-Muslim sentiment was increasing among the people they knew and 18 percent agreed with the notion that people from Islamic countries should be prohibited from immigrating to Canada.

J. Michael Cole, a former CSIS intelligence analyst, believes that cultural insensitivity and racism “represent what is probably the greatest threat to Canadian security in the long term.” The conflicted comfort of few reported incidents of backlash against Muslims in Canada immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, has now been replaced by anxiety from a steady drumbeat of manufactured crises and bigoted punditry.

Consider the media’s sustained reaction to complaints against Maclean’s magazine filed with various human rights commissions for having published in print and on the Internet a significant number of anti-Muslim articles, including one by Mark Steyn.

While these Muslims were only accessing the same institutional processes which other communities have used, and only after attempts at informal resolution failed, there has been unprecedented hostility directed at both the commissions and the complainants. The reaction is clearly linked to the nature of the parties themselves.

As Jonathan Kay of the National Post explains, “Journalists control the commanding heights of Canadian culture. Why would you want to alienate them?... Journalists put food on the table by putting words on the page. The surest way to enrage them is to slip a gag over their mouths... In the long run, is that going to improve the way that Muslim issues are covered by this same pissed-off media?”

In an environment of concentrated ownership and convergence, the very entities that provoke and shape public opinion and policy on the sociocultural integration of minorities rebuff requests for fair accommodation or rebuttal of views and take affront at any attempted scrutiny by any neutral arbitrator with powers to sanction.

Journalists are reasonably well acquainted with the law where it impacts them: they know there is no group libel or defamation and that the Criminal Code standard for hate speech is very high. Unlike television and radio, which are regulated, print media can choose to opt out of press councils. While crude hatred is avoided, the same intent and message can and is conveyed in more sophisticated language and argument.

The legal avenues of reasonable accommodation may very well not be applicable to the situation of the print media, nor necessarily should they. However, the concepts of “interculturalism” and “concerted adjustment”, enunciated by the report, which rely on informal negotiation and the search for a compromise, can result in solutions that satisfy both parties, provided that is their mutual objective.

The commission also  remarked on the weak response of the press council, and of political and social leaders who could have done more from the outset to put things back into proper perspective, but that was a topic left for another day.

Naseer (Irfan) Syed is a principal lawyer at the firm of Kutty, Syed & Mohamed, in Toronto. He was the chair of the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association from 2001 to 2005.