Trudeau’s next step toward fighting racial discrimination

On Jan. 30, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Canada will officially recognize the International Decade for People of African Descent.

This groundbreaking acknowledgement came as a result of years of lobbying by African-Canadian communities and their supporters. It was also recommended by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) to Canada in its 2017 concluding observations.

In addition, Trudeau promised “to build a better, more inclusive country that recognizes the contributions of all, and creates better opportunities for more Canadians.” This, he pledged, would be done through “improving research and data collection to better understand the particular challenges” faced by Canadians of African descent.

This announcement should be celebrated, not just by African Canadians, but by all Canadians who want to see anti-Black racism and racism against other racialized groups eliminated.

Just days after, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage released the report, Taking Action against Systemic Racism and Religious Discrimination Including Islamophobia. In contrast to the prime minister’s announcement, the committee report received hardly any media coverage. Yet if adopted, the report will have far greater impact than the symbolic, albeit significant, gesture by Trudeau.

Among other things, the report calls on Canada to update and reinstate the previous Canadian Action Plan against Racism, and broaden it to include religious discrimination, including Islamophobia.

It pushes the government to complete the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action and comply with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. It also urges Canada to set measurable targets to ensure such a plan is sustainable and accountable, and to collect disaggregated data to monitor the impact of policies to eliminate racial inequality and the racialization of poverty. Similar to the call to proclaim the Decade for People of African Descent, many of these recommendations echo the UN CERD’s observations about Canada. The standing committee report could not have come at a better time.

As the 2016 census has shown, Canada is more diverse than ever, with communities of colour making up a fifth of the population, of which 30 per cent were Canadian-born.

While full census data on their economic and social condition has yet to be released, what we have learned so far suggests communities of colour continue to face many challenges. They fare worse in the labour market, earn less income, and consequently experience a higher level of poverty compared to white Canadians.

This should hardly come as a surprise given accumulating research showing the persistence of workplace discrimination. An example is the 2017 study by Ryerson University and University of Toronto that confirmed Canadians with Asian sounding names have a 34-percent less chance of getting job interviews.

Disparities also persist in the health, criminal justice, correctional and child welfare systems, especially for people of African descent as well as Indigenous peoples.

The previous five-year Canada’s Action Plan against Racism was introduced in 2005 when Paul Martin was PM. Subsequently, the plan, as well as any governmental commitment to address racial discrimination, was consigned to a political black hole.

While the 2005 report did provide a framework for tackling racial discrimination, its emphasis on promoting diversity rendered it less effective as a tool for redressing systemic racism. Besides, certain vital concerns — such as tackling Islamophobia — were omitted in the 2005 report, a trend that has become more prevalent over the last 13 years.

With the standing committee report now shining a new light on the 2005 Action Plan, Canada should seize this opportunity to acknowledge systemic racism, to introduce a revitalized action plan and implement measures that will lead to real and substantive change.

Examples of such measures are included in the standing committee report, namely, develop and implement tools that foster equitable hiring within the federal public service, adopt an equity lens towards public policy, similar to the gender based analysis lens, and create an anti-racism impact assessment framework to remove unconscious bias in policy decision making.

Indigenous communities and communities of colour who have been in the forefront of the fight against racism will no doubt have many other ideas worthy of consideration. Trudeau should be commended for making anti-Black racism a priority in the fight against racism. Having taken this important first step, he should follow through with proper policy tools and funding commitments so all people of colour will “have a real and fair chance at success.” Avvy Go is clinic director, Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic; Debbie Douglas is executive director, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants; Shalini Konanur is executive director, South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario.

As the 2016 census has shown, Canada is more diverse than ever, with communities of colour making up a fifth of the population