Christopher Dummitt: Systemic discrimination is legal in Canada

Apart from the header, valid questions although I am not convinced the DEI programs necessarily “exacerbate ethnic conflict in Canada:”

…The question is: how long will this remain the case? And, even more importantly, what counts as evidence for disadvantage? Who gets to decide whether current-day disadvantage comes from discriminatory treatment or not?

The reality is that different social groups have different social outcomes. As Thomas Sowell pointed out years ago, it would be bizarre to think that they wouldn’t. The question is: are these differences a result of choices, cultures and random chance — or are they a more nefarious expression of discrimination, either systemic or outright?

One of the odd things to happen in our intellectual circles — our universities and even our law schools — is that this question is rarely asked with an open-ended curiosity as to what the answer might be.

One wonders whether it even comes up when employers or universities set about establishing discriminatory affirmative action programs. Or, more likely, are they working from a consensus within the institution that there really are disadvantaged groups — and that this is obviously caused by discrimination?

We should be clear: it’s entirely possible that disadvantages are caused by subtle forms of discrimination that continue despite Canada’s now very equal legal system. It’s certainly possible — and the idea ought to get a fair hearing.

But in many progressive circles today, it’s now considered rude to even ask the question — to wonder whether social and economic differences between groups might be caused by something other than prejudice.

This is why the topic of viewpoint diversity — in our universities, our law schools, in the world of expertise — isn’t the esoteric topic it might seem.

Even as the wider Canadian society seems to be retreating from the excesses of cancel culture and woke shibboleths (good news on that front), the staffing of our knowledge institutions, our universities and our law schools still overwhelmingly comes from those on the left — from the same groups who assume that socioeconomic variation is, de facto, linked to discrimination.

These are the people who get to decide when — if ever — the only legal form of systemic discrimination allowed in Canada (affirmative action) will ever end.

There’s plenty of evidence coming out of think-tanks and even Statistics Canada that the Canada of 2025 has moved a long way from the Canada of 1981, where affirmative action was justified. The most economically well-to-do Canadians are not those of European ancestry — despite the popular perception to the contrary. The groups of Canadians with the highest income — and highest levels of educational attainment — are those of South Asian and Chinese ancestry. Whites tend to come in the middle of the pack, while Black Canadians and Indigenous people are lower down the economic scale. If affirmative action is going to continue, the public needs to be reassured that those justifying its existence, at the very least, keep up to date with which groups are up and which are down — though even this framing shows how divisive such policies would be.

There’s also plenty of evidence that the “race conscious” programs allowed by the Charter — and pushed by DEI advocates — actually exacerbate ethnic conflict in Canada.

There could, of course, be evidence that continued systemic discrimination justifies affirmative action. But it would help to know that the organizations instituting these types of progressive discrimination are at least open to the idea that Canada can, and will, move on.

Source: Christopher Dummitt: Systemic discrimination is legal in Canada