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The Muslim community has had a challenging year with rising Islamophobia in Canada and the world, Premier Kathleen Wynne told the 2017 Reviving the Islamic Spirit conference.

The year 2017 included a violent rampage at a Quebec mosque, and legislation in that province that would bar women who choose to cover their faces from accessing public services, she said.

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“Violence is the worst consequence of the rising tide of Islamophobia and racism in Canada and around the world,” Wynne said to applause. “But what happened in Quebec was not an isolated incident. Police statistics tell us that anti-Muslim hate crimes are on the rise.”

Wynne was introduced at the conference, an annual three-day event that organizers say attracts 20,000 people from across the country, as the first premier to call on the federal government to open the doors to refugees fleeing the Syrian conflict.

Photo by Ernest Doroszuk / Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network

Ontario has welcomed more than 22,500 Syrian refugees in the past two years and provided $10 million for supports to help them settle in the province, she said.