Racist? Moi? Federal leaders miss mark

It’s no surprise, really, that the federal leaders failed to discuss white supremacy, systemic racism and colonialism in a serious way during the English debate on Thursday night.

Public discourse on these issues is stuck at a juvenile level of breathlessness. Did you just call so-and-so racist? Gasp.

We saw this in the previous election cycle two years ago with the reaction to photos of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau in blackface. Then every rival and their uncles opportunistically tripped over themselves to call him racist. (He was.) The leaders one by one opened their debates offering NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh their sympathies for the racism he faced in the hustings.

We’re now in the aftermath of the racial protests that shook the world following George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police. Singh still faces the same racism. Liberal candidates’ posters were defaced with anti-Semitic imagery. The run-up to the election was framed by Islamophobia after a white man killed three generations of a Muslim family and a harsh reminder of centuries of anti-Indigenous brutality with the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves on residential school grounds.

But the discussions stubbornly remain surface-level. At the debate Thursday, the words anti-Black racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia weren’t uttered once.

When the debate kicked off with moderator Shachi Kurl framing two pieces of legislation as discriminatory, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet bristled.

“You denied that Quebec has problems with racism yet you defend legislation such as bills 96 and 21, which marginalize religious minorities, anglophones and allophones. Quebec is recognized as a distinct society but for those outside the province, please help them understand why your party also supports these discriminatory laws,” asked Kurl.

Bill 21 bans civil servants such as teachers, police officers and government lawyers from wearing religious symbols to work. Bill 96 would make French the only language needed to work in the province.

“The question seems to imply the answer you want,” Blanchet shot back. “Those laws are not about discrimination. They are about the values of Quebec.”

At a campaign stop Friday, Trudeau said he found the question offensive. “It is wrong to suggest that Quebecers are racist,” he said. Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole said, “Quebecers are not racist and it’s unfair to make that sweeping categorization.” Quebec Premier François Legault said the question was an “attack for sure against Quebec.”

Note in these reactions, the gasp: Did you just call Quebecers racist?

Where is the focus on the people violated by laws and policies? Even a quick look at the party platforms show tackling racism is an afterthought. Not a key driver of every pressing issue facing the country from climate change to foreign policy to pipelines to affordability to the justice system.

All serious parties promised to tackle the lack of clean drinking water in First Nations and to fund investigations of unmarked graves of children at former residential school sites. They also promised to tackle hate crimes or online hate. All this, I’m afraid, is bare minimum.

Having been in power through these tumultuous times, the Liberal platform was able to tout specific policies. Nearly $300 million to fund loans for Black entrepreneurs, loans that by all accounts are not that accessible. Loans by definition also benefit the lender. So there is that.

They mention $100 million to support Black non-profits and $172 million over five years for Statistics Canada to enact a plan to improve the collection of disaggregated, race-based data. If only we devoted as much energy to implementing the actions that buckets of existing data already call for.

The platform is silent on racism in business practices or in health-care outcomes. Though it says a Liberal government would “prohibit RCMP against using neck restraints and prohibit the use of tear gas or rubber bullets for crowd control,” it fails to mention systemic racism in police forces.

Racism wasn’t important enough to be featured in the Conservative platform. On the contrary O’Toole aims to crack down on rail, road and pipeline blockaders, hire 200 more Mounties and introduce new mandatory minimum sentences. “Tough on crime” has long been established as a mode to perpetuate systemic racism in the justice system.

The NDP promised action to tackle white supremacists but did not say how. I did not agree with their push in January to label the Proud Boys terrorists — satisfying though it may be — because policing is part of the problem, not the solution. The party promised to look at the overrepresentation of Black and Indigenous people in jails and to close the racialized wage gap but was low on specifics.

The only specific promise the NDP makes is that the party would ban carding — the police practice of arbitrarily stopping disproportionately Black and brown-skinned people and documenting their personal details even though no charges are laid.

The Bloc offers a minimum nod to racism, saying only that the federal government should use anonymous resumés to counter hiring discrimination. But it pledged support for Indigenous selfdetermination.

Unlike the Liberals and Tories, the NDP and the Greens promise to respect Indigenous sovereignty.

The Greens said they would identify ways to “invest funds that are divested from police services in social and community services.” In other words, to defund the police.

On her largest public platform at the debate, leader Annamie Paul effortlessly shrugged off the internal divisions in her party as she delivered the biggest snub of the evening.

It came during a section on reconciliation led by APTN journalist Melissa Ridgen when Blanchet said his acknowledgment of systemic racism became a political tool wielded against Quebec instead of an engagement in thoughtful discussion.

Paul said that statement made her jaw drop because “I invited Mr. Blanchet to get educated about systemic discrimination.”

Wherever one stands with Paul’s views on foreign issues, as a female in a man’s world, a Black woman in a white man’s world, at that, her exchange provided a badly needed moment of inspiration in the debate.

Blanchet tried to interrupt. “This is my time, sir,” said Paul. “Nice time to insult people,” Blanchet said.

“That was not an insult,” said she. “It was an invitation to educate yourself.”

Nicely done.