E/CN.4/2004/18/Add.2 page 19 62. Members of the Arab and Muslim communities have reported that they are confronted with high unemployment issues whereby highly qualified professionals (i.e. doctors, nurses, engineers, pathologists, etc.) cannot find jobs in their fields and are forced to drive taxis and become corner-store owners. They consider that there is severe underrepresentation of Muslims and Arabs in Canadian politics as well as in senior and middle management levels of government. This also fosters a negative perception of Muslims and Arabs as non-contributors to Canadian society, the Special Rapporteur was told. 63. Muslim women face serious challenges post-September 11, such as bullying, negative attitudes, racial slurs, rejection from employers because they wear the hijab, or they are forced to give up wearing it. The impacts of such practices on Muslim women are depression, mistrust of the community at large, and violence. Status of Women Canada has provided technical and financial assistance to Muslim women to address their concerns about the media. H. Language-related discrimination 64. The Special Rapporteur was informed of the perverse effects of the Official Languages Act, which would tend to discriminate against non-European French speakers in Canada. Problems arise in French-speaking areas outside Quebec with regard to the rights of francophone immigrants under federal and provincial laws, regulations and policies. It is stated in the preamble and in section 39 (1) of the Official Languages Act that “The Government of Canada is committed to ensuring that English-speaking Canadians and French-speaking Canadians, without regard to their ethnic origin or first language learned, have equal opportunities …”. The law in itself is not discriminatory. In practice, however, the related regulations have defined criteria for determining who is considered French-speaking and who is not. Thus the term “mother tongue” is the main criterion used in the regulations prepared by the Treasury Board and applied by Statistics Canada in its census of the French-speaking population. This mother tongue criterion also appears in article 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. According to the official document of the Government of Canada entitled “Charter of Rights and Freedoms: A Guide for Canadians”, the mother tongue is defined as the first language learnt and still understood. 65. The effect of choosing the mother tongue as the criterion for belonging to a language group in the English-speaking provinces is in practice to exclude non-European communities, the francophone, racial or ethnocultural minorities, from legal entitlements, such as access to French-speaking services, access to francophone schools or access to benefits. Although they originate from French-speaking countries and officially use the French language, the mother tongues of the members of those communities are not French. In other words, as the law is implemented in practice, only the two communities of European origin, which were the founders of Canada, that is, those belonging to the white race and of British or French origin in particular, effectively enjoy the rights and privileges granted by the Official Languages Act. 66. The representatives of the French-speaking communities to whom the Special Rapporteur spoke explained that, according to regulations related to the Act, the provision of government services depends on significant demand in the official minority language, that is, French in the English-speaking provinces. Since the members of communities of African, Asian or Caribbean origin, referred to as “allophone francophones”, are not taken into account in the censuses of Statistics Canada, they are not entitled to the same benefits as, for instance, persons from Quebec