Multiculturalism articles of interest March 2026

2026/03/31 Leave a comment

Articles and opinions related to multiculturalism that I found of interest in March:

  • Racial and Ethnic Disparities
  • Activisim/Advocacy
  • Quebec Bill 21
  • Representation corporate boards and public serice

Disparities

Picard: To address racism in health care, we need to collect data on race

Agree, without data, over reliance on anecdotes:

…It’s important, of course, that data are collected voluntarily and that people’s privacy is respected as it is with all health records. 

The public needs to know, too, that the information will not appear on their health card or on medical charts. Rather, it is used in an aggregated fashion to reveal trends and inequalities between racial or ethnic groups, without identifying individuals. 

The big barrier to collecting and using race-based data is technical: digital health systems still need to adapt. But we know it’s doable, even on a large scale. 

During the pandemic, for example, the Coronavirus Rapid Entry Case and Contact Management System (CORES) included data on race, income and household size. As a result, we learned Black, Indigenous and people of colour in Toronto were over-represented in the tally of COVID-19 cases and deaths. That allowed, among other things, targeted vaccination campaigns. 

The data also allowed people who are too often marginalized and ignored to be heard, an important first step in correcting disparities. 

Race, culture, language and socio-economic status can all have a profound impact on health, individually and collectively. 

Allowing gaps in data collection to persist is bad for our health, and our health system. 

Source: To address racism in health care, we need to collect data on race 

StatsCan: Criminal court outcomes of Black accused persons in Canada, 2016/2017 to 2022/2023

Latest useful StatsCan study highlighting disparities

  • There were 100,450 Black accused persons in adult criminal courts between 2016/2017 and 2022/2023. Black people (6.2%) were overrepresented as accused persons in adult criminal courts over this period, relative to their representation among the adult population of Canada (3.7%).
  • The proportion of Black accused persons in adult criminal courts has generally increased over time, from 5.7% of all accused in 2016/2017 to 7.1% in 2022/2023. 
  • Between 2016/2017 and 2022/2023, the proportion of Black people in adult criminal courts in Nova Scotia and Ontario was more than two times higher than that of Black people in the total adult population of these provinces. Black people were also overrepresented as accused persons in criminal courts in Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta and New Brunswick compared with their representation in the total adult population.
  • More than 4 in 10 (42%) cases involving a Black accused person completed in adult criminal courts between 2016/2017 and 2022/2023 resulted in a guilty decision. This was equal to the proportion of cases involving Black accused persons that were withdrawn, dismissed or discharged over this period (42%).
  • Compared to the rest of the (non-Black) accused population, Black accused persons less often had their case result in a guilty decision and more often had it withdrawn, dismissed or discharged. 
  • Black accused persons most often received a guilty decision for cases where the most serious offence was a Criminal Code traffic offence such as impaired driving (69%) or an administration of justice offence such as breach of probation (49%), and least often for cases where it was a violent offence (33%). 
  • Between 2016/2017 and 2022/2023, just under half of violent crime cases (47%) and property crime cases (46%) involving Black accused persons were withdrawn, dismissed or discharged.
  • Similar proportions of Black and non-Black accused persons were sentenced to custody upon being found guilty in adult criminal courts (29% versus 27%). Probation was the most common sentence handed down to both Black and non-Black accused persons. 
  • It took nearly two months longer for court cases involving Black accused persons to be completed in adult criminal courts between 2016/2017 and 2022/2023, compared to non-Black accused persons (219 versus 165 days).

Source: Criminal court outcomes of Black accused persons in Canada, 2016/2017 to 2022/2023

CMA: Black Canadians more likely not to fill prescriptions because of financial constraints, study finds

Another insightful study:

Black adults in Canada are more likely not to fill prescriptions because of financial constraints than white adults, according to a new study that highlights disparities in prescription medication coverage as a major barrier to equitable health care.

The study was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal on Monday. Its authors concluded that the prevalence of cost-related prescription non-adherence – defined as the inability to fill a prescription or delaying, splitting or skipping doses because of financial pressures – was 75 per cent higher among Black adults than white adults.

Coverage for prescription medications was also lower among Black adults, the study showed. In 2022, for example, 72.5 per cent of Black adults were covered compared with 80 per cent of white adults. 

One of the study’s authors, Oluwabukola Salami, a Canada Research Chair in Black and racialized peoples’ health at the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary, said this study is the first of its kind and broadens the understanding of how Black Canadians experience health inequities.

“We know that Black people are more likely to have cardiovascular disease, to have certain types of cancer and to die from any of these conditions. But we always looked at how access to care is a challenge to Black people,” Dr. Salami said.

“This study presents new findings related to medication specifically.”…

Source: Black Canadians more likely not to fill prescriptions because of financial constraints, study finds

Activism/Advocacy

Amira Elghawaby entend poursuivre son combat contre la laïcité à la québécoise

Suspect may be harder given lack of a government platform and support staff and resources:

Amira Elghawaby, ancienne représentante spéciale du Canada, continue de s’opposer à la loi 21 sur la laïcité malgré l’abolition de son poste.

Bien que son poste ait été supprimé par le gouvernement de Mark Carney, elle se dit en paix et prévoit de rester active dans la scène publique.

Elle exprime des inquiétudes quant à l’efficacité du nouveau comité consultatif sur la lutte contre le racisme et la haine.

Source: Amira Elghawaby entend poursuivre son combat contre la laïcité à la québécoise

Jamie Sarkonak: The crusading judge who helped Liberals build a race-based sentencing regime

Sarkonak appears to be following judges with activist backgrounds as seen in her previous column on Justice Go.

There is a judge on the Ontario Superior Court of Justice whose signature move is letting violent men walk free because of racism. One of the architects of race-based sentencing, his name is Faisal Mirza, and he was appointed to the bench by former prime minister Justin Trudeau in 2022.

Mirza’s flourish of race-based acquittals is not a case of a judge gone rogue: indeed, it’s perfectly on-brand. He was writing about the need for more racial considerations in the Canadian justice system in 2001, before he even became a lawyer. Back then, he argued in the Osgoode Hall Law Journal that mandatory minimum sentences for drug and weapons offences would be racist because of the disproportionate impact they’d have on Black people.

Toronto police, he asserted, were racist because of the arrest statistics they produced: in 1988, Black individuals comprised 51 per cent of drug arrests, 82 per cent of mugging arrests and 55 per cent of purse snatching arrests. This, he said, was evidence of over-targeting. He concluded that more mandatory minimums would exacerbate the effect, because the threat of being convicted on a charge with a guaranteed jail term would disproportionately pressure Black accused persons to make plea deals and forfeit the opportunity to expose racist police at trial.

This became a career pursuit. When the Supreme Court was deciding whether to strike down the mandatory minimum for illegally possessing a loaded firearm in 2014, he argued as an intervener in the case that its disproportionate impact on Black individuals needed to be taken into account. The court ultimately ruled that this mandatory minimum was unconstitutional.

In 2018, Mirza laid the foundation for Ontario’s racial sentencing regime. He was the defence lawyer of Kevin Morris, a Black man who was convicted of various firearms offences. They were lucky to draw the hyper-progressive, destructively lenient Shaun Nakatsuru for a judge. Mirza filed two racial context reports about Morris and Black people as evidence, and the judge emphatically agreed to consider them. He settled on a 15-month sentence to account for the racial factors, even though three years was considered the starting point. On appeal, the Ontario Court of Appeal made racial considerations in sentencing the province-wide rule in 2021….

To his credit, there have been instances where Mirza refrained from applying a racial discount, and from tossing out evidence because of racism, but it doesn’t excuse the other times when he let his biases reign. It’s undeniable that he has a habit of projecting racism in assessing any interaction with the state and undermining public safety with his assumptions. One day, it’s going to end up getting someone hurt — if it hasn’t already.

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: The crusading judge who helped Liberals build a race-based sentencing regime

Dummit: How accommodation hollowed out Canadian nationalism

Not an easy country to govern given differing regional and group interests. Will be interesting to see how the (still) forthcoming revision to the Harper era citizenship study guide provides a cohesive and coherent national perspective:

….Taken as a whole, this legacy of national hesitation makes governing difficult. Is it any wonder that Carney spends so much time abroad signing international agreements? Foreign policy is one of the few areas where a Canadian government can still act as a single whole with relative clarity about the national interest.

But Carney’s real test will come when he finally returns home.

Canada’s genius has always been accommodation. But accommodation, repeated often enough, can gradually hollow out the idea that the country itself even has a single political purpose.

When Carney eventually tries to move forward with projects deemed nationally significant—whether mining developments, high-speed rail, or (God forbid) a new pipeline—he will run directly into Canada’s familiar pattern of internal division.

That’s when we’ll truly find out who is willing to embrace an “Elbows Up” style of nationalism. Until then, we’re left wondering: whose elbows? Defending which nation?

Source: How accommodation hollowed out Canadian nationalism

This woman is suing Canada for its ban on adoption under Muslim law

Inevitable that the ban would be challenged. Of course, this predominant affects Muslim families but perhaps a more appropriate challenge would be with respect to Pakistan’s application of kafala:

A Toronto woman is being denied the right to reunite with her adopted children because Ottawa does not recognize adoptions from Pakistan under Islamic rules, a court has heard.

Jameela Qadeer is the maternal aunt of Salman, Umme and Umm; she and her husband raised them as their own in Pakistan after her sister died of a brain hemorrhage in 2012. The Pakistani court has granted them guardianship of the kids and authorization to travel after their biological father, who was absent in their lives, abdicated his responsibility for their care.

An Ahmadiyya Muslim, a sect of Islam deemed heretical in Pakistan, Qadeer fled to Canada in 2017 and was granted asylum. However, her adopted kids have not been allowed to join her. Since 2013, Ottawa has stopped accepting adoption from Pakistan because it says the Islamic rules known as kafala only allow for guardianship of children, but do not sever biological ties as required by Canadian law.

In a fight to reunite the family, Qadeer and her sister’s children, along with two Muslim organizations, have taken the federal government to court, challenging the refusals of permanent residence to the children, and the constitutionality of Canada’s ban on recognizing adoption from Pakistan. 

They contend that Canada’s immigration policy has disproportionately affected Muslim families and denied them equality rights under the Charter, even when a guardianship arrangement following traditional kafala is permanent and sanctioned by a foreign court. 

“That categorical refusal does not only affect the individual applicants,” Armaan Kassam, lawyer for the National Council of Canadian Muslims told the opening of a three-day Federal Court hearing this week. “It affects Muslim families across Canada who adopt through foreign court-supervised guardianship processes.”

Warda Shazadi Meighen, lawyer for the children, said her clients’ biological father officially abdicated his responsibility in 2013 to Jameela Qadeer. Before leaving for Canada in 2017, Qadeer and her husband were granted judicial guardianship by a Pakistani court under national guardianship laws, giving them exclusive custody. ,,,

Source: This woman is suing Canada for its ban on adoption under Muslim law

Quebec Bill 21

Khan: In Quebec, laïcité has become its own kind of religious orthodoxy

Ironic but accurate:

…In the meantime, there is no legal recourse to challenge laws that are clearly discriminatory. Those primarily affected by these bills are veiled Muslim women – whom Quebec ostensibly wants to liberate, while strengthening gender equality. In its oxymoronic quest to impose freedom, then, the government is excluding those very women from the job market and impeding their financial independence. And it’s so 1950s to hear the high priests of laïcité – François Legault, Bernard Drainville – tell women what they can and cannot wear.

Given the situation, it’s time to tell the world about Quebec’s laïcité mission. Canadian embassies, high commissions and consulates should be clear to prospective immigrants (especially from la Francophonie) that their religious freedoms and expression will be curtailed in la belle province. Here at home, the federal government, along with the governments of Ontario, New Brunswick and Manitoba, should help those adversely affected by Quebec’s laws resettle in francophone communities in the rest of Canada, if they wish to leave. They deserve an opportunity to thrive without compromising their faith.

And finally, something must be done about the notwithstanding clause. Governments show no slowdown in its use, while the wider public seems unaware of its fundamental threat to basic freedoms. Perhaps a jarring public education campaign is in order, using the spectre of Donald Trump. After all, his administration has overseen attacks on domestic human rights, circumvented judicial warrants, tried to suspend legal protections to immigrants and denied equality before the law. Little wonder he wants to absorb Canada: The notwithstanding clause would allow him to do all that legally.

Source: In Quebec, laïcité has become its own kind of religious orthodoxy

Kutty | When parents are shut out of classrooms over what they wear, we have a problem

Absurd and unreasonable:

Two mothers in Quebec were recently told they could no longer volunteer at their children’s elementary school unless they removed their hijabs. For one of them, it meant being shut out of a classroom she had supported for years — not because of anything she did, but because of what she wears.

They are not alone. Across Quebec, people of faith — including Muslim women who wear hijabs, Sikhs who wear turbans, and Jewish Canadians who wear kippahs — are being pushed out of classrooms and public life unless they conceal visible expressions of their identity. In a separate incident, twelve Muslim women reportedly lost their teaching jobs because they refused to remove their hijabs. These are the lived consequences of Quebec’s secularism law, Bill 21, which prohibits many public-sector employees — including teachers, police officers and government lawyers — from wearing visible religious symbols while performing their duties.

The constitutionality of this law is now poised for its most consequential test. Canada’s Supreme Court is now hearing arguments in a landmark case examining whether Bill 21 violates fundamental rights, including freedom of religion and equality under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Quebec has invoked the notwithstanding clause — Section 33 of the Charter — a rarely used constitutional mechanism that allows governments to override certain fundamental rights, including freedom of religion and equality, for renewable five-year periods….

Source: When parents are shut out of classrooms over what they wear, we have a problem

Representation

StatsCam: Representation of women on boards of directors and in officer positions, 2023

Useful study with breakdowns:

Statistics Canada is releasing new data on the gender composition of leadership and strategic decision-making roles within publicly traded corporations, privately held corporations and government business enterprises operating across a variety of industries in Canada.

This data helps inform the objective “More company board seats held by women, and more diversity on company boards” and the indicator “Proportion of board members who are women, by type of board” in the Leadership and democratic participation pillar of the Gender Results Framework.

Additional information and other studies and statistics related to gender and enterprises can be found in the Gender, diversity and inclusion statistics hub, the Business performance and ownership statistics portal and in the Representation of women on boards of directors and in officer positions: Visualization tool.

Women hold just under one-quarter of director positions

In 2023, women occupied just under one-quarter (23.2%) of seats on boards of directors, increasing 0.5 percentage points over the proportion of women recorded in 2022 (22.7%). 

Just over half of boards (50.3%) did not include any women directors in 2023. In addition, 25.8% of boards had one woman director, while boards with two or more women directors accounted for 23.9% of the total. 

Educational services has the highest representation of women directors, followed by the utilities and finance and insurance industries

Educational services had the highest proportion of women directors in 2023, with women holding 35.3% of board seats. This reflects an increase of 4.9 percentage points from 2022. 

The utilities industry recorded the second-highest share in 2023, at 34.1%. Corporations in finance and insurance followed, with women representing 28.2% of board members. 

The agriculture industry had the lowest proportion of women directors, with women occupying 8.8% of board seats….

Source: Representation of women on boards of directors and in officer positions, 2023

Treasury Board not tracking impact of public service job cuts on equity groups

Will be curious to see the respective numbers of hirings, separations and promotions in the forthcoming TBS EE report. Hopefully, TBS will continue to provide the breakdowns by visible minority groups.

Slides from last year’s EE report.

Advocates are raising concerns about how job cuts will affect public servants in equity groups — something the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat says it’s not tracking. 

The federal government has committed to cutting the number of public service jobs by about 40,000 from a 2023-24 peak of 368,000 as it looks to find savings.

Departments and agencies across the public service have started notifying staff of coming job cuts.

Barb Couperus, a spokesperson for the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat — which oversees government operations — said the office does not collect information centrally on the impact of workforce adjustment on employment equity designated groups.

Equity groups include women, Indigenous people, people with disabilities and members of visible minorities.

Couperus said heads of departments are responsible for managing their workforces.

She said departments will continue to pay “close attention” to maintaining representation and meeting their obligations under the Employment Equity Act.

The act requires federally regulated employers, including the government itself, to take steps to eliminate employment barriers and maintain proportional representation in the workplace for members of equity groups.

During layoff periods, Couperus said, departments can prioritize keeping staff from equity groups if there are gaps in representation.

Nicholas Marcus Thompson, president and CEO of the Black Class Action Secretariat, said he is “disturbed” to learn the Treasury Board isn’t tracking the impacts of job cuts.

“What that suggests is that this is not a priority for this government,” he said.

Over the past five years, the government has hired approximately 5,000 Black workers throughout the entire federal public service, said Thompson. It also has increased the number of Black executives from around 99 in 2020 to more than 220, he said.

“What we’re seeing now is that those gains are being lost as a result of workforce adjustment,” said Thompson, adding his organization has started tracking data on workforce adjustment. “Many folks have reached out to us to find out what their rights are.

“Usually with workforce adjustment, the first to go are folks that were the last to come … So far our data is showing that, despite these equity gains, it’s now turning out to be equity losses.”

Thompson said his organization wants to see the government require equity impact assessments before workforce adjustment decisions are made. It also wants the government to be transparent about the process and publish data on which demographics are being affected.

Rabia Khedr, national director of Disability Without Poverty, said people with disabilities working in the public service will be feeling anxious.

“Generally speaking, a lot of times people with disabilities may be at an entry level position, so that makes them vulnerable,” said Khedr.

The most recent employment equity report for the public service says that as of March 2024, 9.7 per cent of federal executives were people with disabilities, up from 4.6 per cent in March 2019.

Khedr also said she’s unhappy about the lack of central tracking of the impacts of job cuts on equity groups.

“That then leaves it to the individual leadership within departments to make those critical decisions,” she said.

“It really depends on the leadership and their commitment to diversity and inclusion … There’s a risk that equity-denied groups might be more vulnerable in terms of who gets cut and who stays.”

Source: Treasury Board not tracking impact of public service job cuts on equity groups

Filed under DEI, discrimination, Interculturalisme, Laïcité, Multiculturalism, Religion

Wand: Discrimination by design? Race-based admissions in Canadian medical and law schools

2026/02/28 Leave a comment

While I largely disagree with the recommendations, good to have this data analysis on the impact of these preferences:

…Key findings include:

• In nine of 14 schools, the non-racial-minority, or non-Black, non-Indigenous applicant group had the lowest acceptance rates. Even among the five remaining schools where the “Discretionary” and “Black” applicant racial groups had the lowest acceptance rates, those rates were much higher than if the applicants from these two groups had been required to compete against all applicants, regardless of race.

• Thirteen schools (with two exceptions for LSAT-specific analysis) admitted fewer non-racial-minority or non-Black, non-Indigenous applicants than would have been the case had they selected applicants according to their top-ranked academic performance.

• Further analysis showed that 216 applicants or 10 per cent were admitted with lower grades out of 2,150 medical and law school first-year students who were all from designated racial minority applicant groups. A similar admission pattern was also observed for LSAT/MCAT scores, with 132 racial minority applicants admitted with lower scores, or 6.1 per cent of the total number of admitted students. This analysis indicates that race-based admission policies result in the admission of academically weaker students.

• In every school that provided admissions data, the non-racial-minority or non[1]Black, non-Indigenous applicant groups experienced the highest number of rejections despite higher academic scores than the admitted applicant from other racial groups with the lowest academic score from their group.

• Most medical schools and many law schools refused to release their race-based application and admission data at all. This lack of transparency raises serious concerns about accountability in publicly funded institutions.

The implications are troubling. Institutional racism potentially erodes fairness and undermines public confidence in our standards for medical and legal education. Such racism is also remarkably resistant to scrutiny – operating behind policies that limit access to basic admissions data.

These findings give some specificity to broader concerns about DEI in Canadian universities and colleges, where critics have raised alarms about the growth of DEI bureaucracies, opaque hiring policies, and admission practices that prioritize group identity over merit.

Canada also stands out internationally. University officials in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands reported that race is not considered in admissions decisions for medical or law schools.

Policy recommendations to address the racial segregation and discrimination identified in this report include:

• Provincial governments should prohibit the use of race as an admissions criterion in medical and law schools.

• To restore academic rigour, these schools should rely exclusively on objective measures such as the MCAT, LSAT, and required prerequisite coursework. Provinces should consider suspending funding to medical and law schools that continue to factor race into admissions decisions.

• In addition, provinces that continue to consider race in medical and law school admissions should be required to publicly release race-based application and admission data using consistent, transparent measures of discrimination, preferably measures similar to the measures used in this study. Without this disclosure, governments cannot effectively oversee or correct the disturbing trend of racial discrimination that threatens the overall academic strength of our medical and law students.

Recent public debates in Canada, including high-profile campus protests, faculty resignations over DEI mandates, and legislative scrutiny of “equity hires,” reflect growing concern that universities are straying from their core missions under the banner of DEI. Rather than sorting applicants by racial category, universities should focus on ensuring that all prospective students, regardless of race, have the academic preparation needed to compete fairly. This includes access to tutoring, frequent testing, and meaningful academic feedback well before the application stage….

Source: Discrimination by design? Race-based admissions in Canadian medical and law schools

Filed under DEI, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Black and Griffith: Visible minority women are still sidelined in competitive ridings

2026/02/18 2 Comments

Our latest. Conclusion:

…In other words, party candidate selection incorporates affinity effects that give preference to visible minority candidates for all major parties in these ridings. Given this, it is less surprising that studies of election outcomes indicate that affinity effects are less important than “candidate competitiveness, Canada’s first past the post electoral system, and local context,” Elections Canada says, because those effects are effectively baked in at the candidate nomination stage.

This indicates positive discrimination for visible minority candidates in these ridings and the possible converse in ridings with lower numbers of visible minorities, largely rural ridings.

While one can make the crude case that nominating more visible minority women candidates would allow federal political parties to tick off two diversity boxes at once, the evidence indicates that this is not the case: women visible minority candidates do indeed have a higher percentage chance of being sacrificial lambs. This suggests they do experience biases in the political process across two fronts, as both women and visible minorities.

To encourage improved representation, the political parties should adopt a transparency approach similar to Senate Bill S-283 would require each party to provide annual information on the policies and programs they have enacted to increase the representation of designated groups (women, visible minorities, Indigenous Peoples and persons with disabilities).

This could be accomplished by the chief electoral officer administering a voluntary self-identification questionnaire to nominated candidates, thus allowing for post-election reporting on candidate and MP diversity.

Canada’s federal political parties may resist this transparency-based approach, but its use in federally regulated industries and the public service for close to 30 years has proven effective.

Source: Visible minority women are still sidelined in competitive ridings

Filed under DEI, Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with , , ,

HESA: Merit Wars

2026/02/10 Leave a comment

.To watch:

..…The question is: how is the Ford Government going to approach all of this?


As near as I can tell, it has four options.

It can take stock of the full variety of pathways and adjudication of merit and say “eh, this is all too complicated/post-secondary institutes are doing a decent job”. It should go without saying that this is almost certainly the least likely outcome.

It can leave contextualized admissions alone but try to limit the practice of special pathways for Indigenous, racialized or otherwise underserved students. That is, it might give a pass to programs where 10-20% of places are reserved for certain underserved groups, but at the same time say “75% in reserved pathways (as TMU proposes) is too much”. I suspect this is the likeliest option.

It can leave contextualized admissions alone but eliminate pathways entirely. This would mean eliminating things like the U of T’s Indigenous Student Application Program and many other programs like it. My read of Conservatives’ views on this is that they tend to be warier of Indigeneity initiatives than they are of critiquing EDI as a whole, seeing more justice in the claims advanced by Indigenous communities than they do for Black ones (for instance). I think this is less likely than option 2 but would not rule it out.

It could seek to eliminate both pathways and contextualized admissions and tell institutions that the only thing they should use is high school grades.  

That last one might sound radical, but pay attention to what the Ford government has been doing in secondary schools, and in particular the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), which runs a large number of schools which were formerly selective (e.g. Schools of the Arts, Special STEM focus schools, International Baccalaureates, etc.). The selectivity process, naturally, was criticized because marks are often correlated with family income, and so 3 years ago, at the peak of the EDI wave, the TDSB decided to abandon selections and make all these schools lottery-based, which in theory at least would make access to these programs more equitable.

I have no idea whether this policy met its goal or not; to my knowledge there has not been a publicly released study on this. But it caused a number of people to freak out. Accusations of penalizing students who worked hard, of “devaluing merit” began to circulate. And there was some force to those arguments, particularly (IMHO) for elite Fine Arts programs where students no longer had to submit portfolios as evidence of talent/interest, which I think is a bit odd. I have never seen any surveys about this issue, but my guess is that it rankled particularly hard among parents in the entitled upper-middle class and aspirational Chinese families, since these are the groups that tend to do best in a “marks-only” system (for more on how Chinese parents view contextual ideas of merit, do listen to my podcast interview with Ruixue Jia, co-author of The Highest Exam from last fall).

And so, Ford government to the rescue! The government instructed the TDSB to ditch the policy, to loud applause from Trustee Weidong Pei, who gained office campaigning against lotteries. Replacing the lottery system? Well, according to the TDSB “Applicants will be seated based on their overall applicant score; a combination of select report card marks connected to their program of choice and an evaluated demonstration of knowledge and skills”, which sounds a lot like the previous marks-only based system, with all the class-and culture-based biases that brings. 

In other words, if the TDSB’s experience is anything to go by, the Ford government will go straight to option 4. And if that happens, it will be a seriously contentious affair since almost certainly it will mean a big reduction in students from underserved groups getting into high-demand programs. 

Now, none of this is going to happen in this admissions cycle (at least I bloody hope not). The likeliest scenario is that the government makes a move in the spring or summer, in order to put new rules in place – whatever those rules end up being – in place for the fall 2027 admissions cycle. So, we have a few months left before the wars start. But when they start, it won’t be pretty.

Source: Merit Wars

Filed under DEI, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

“How Trudeau Liberals’ DEI obsession helped kill Canadian culture”

2026/01/26 Leave a comment



Good long and disturbing read:

…Some blamed a misreading of DEI as “Diversity, Equity, and Exclusion,” or the Canada Council’s zealous “decolonization” agenda; others noted that with only about 25 per cent of editorial staff male, female editors naturally preferred female perspectives; and some disputed that White male authors were disadvantaged at all, or, if true, that it mattered. Whatever the cause, male writers appear to have fallen out of fashion. The 2025 Sobey Arts Award shortlisted twenty-six women and twelve Indigenous artists among thirty nominees — none of the four men were White. Recent Giller and Governor General’s prizes show similar trends: roughly two-thirds of winners were women, and only one White man among them. These results likely reflect publishing priorities rather than overt bias, yet they signal a profound cultural shift.

Fundamental to any program to resurrect Canada’s book business is the necessity to reform its major cultural institutions. Over the last decade or more, they have become deeply politicized, pursuing a specific and polarizing social and economic agenda. They have turned it into a wedge that excludes certain people from consideration, certain forms of address from polite society, and certain manners of speaking as incompatible with good behaviour. The penalties for violating these often ambiguous standards can be devastating. These strictures have narrowed the boundaries of discourse and cast a chill on what can be said, written, or shown, radically restricting artists’ freedom of expression.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion were never supposed to evolve in this direction. Properly understood, it is not a negative, punishing exercise in ideological purity, but a formula for discovering and celebrating what had previously been arbitrarily suppressed. Murray Sinclair, the chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, made the point explicitly when he explained that reconciliation was not about tearing down the statues of John A. Macdonald, but raising up statues to Big Bear. It is a program that calls for a deep understanding of both the good and the bad in historical figures and events. It assumes that people are sufficiently sophisticated to hold two thoughts in their heads at the same time. Some of the things Macdonald did were good; some were bad. There is no need to choose sides, only to see clearly what happened. That is precisely why it was called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

When major funders like the Canada Council set out to “decolonize” Canadian literature, they are pursuing a political agenda as surely as the censors of the Soviet Union insisting that all writing conform to the dictates of “socialist realism.” When tenured bureaucrats can harass people for wrongthink, and when it’s possible to lose essential public support for straying beyond the boundaries of correct and morally appropriate thinking, creators and cultural workers will be cautious, often second-guessing themselves. Great work flourishes in environments where people can take risks, knowing that the worst consequence will be failure, not penury and banishment.

The DEI project in Canada’s cultural agencies, government, publishing houses, and media needs to be recalibrated. It needs to focus on its original aims of combatting racism, sexism, and intolerance. It needs to seek truth, not for the purpose of punishment, but for learning. When mistakes are made, when the wrong word or hurtful language is thoughtlessly used, it needs to be treated as a teachable moment, not as a call to puritanical vengeance. It needs to start from an assumption that the overwhelming majority of Canadians are people of good will. Do they sometimes make cruel mistakes? Of course. The important thing is to learn together and bank the fires of self-righteous rage.

— A former executive vice-president of the CBC, Richard Stursberg has written widely on Canadian media and cultural policy. His previous books include The Tower of Babble, named by the Globe & Mail as one of the best books of the year, and The Tangled Garden, which was short-listed for the Donner Prize for the best book on public policy written by a Canadian.

Source: “How Trudeau Liberals’ DEI obsession helped kill Canadian culture”

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ICYMI – Jamie Sarkonak: The CRTC’s top-down diversity mandate comes for Big Streaming ICYMI

2025/12/03 2 Comments

While some like Sarkonak find this ill-thought, there is a history behind these initiatives as many government programs overly favoured previous beneficiaries or incumbents rather than ensuring better representation. And having good or better data is a basic (the Employment Equity Act relative success is arguably largely based on public diversity reporting:

…In addition, the Broadcasting Act now states that the broadcasting system should support programming created by and for non-white communities. While it didn’t outright state that quotas and demographic tracking were now required, that’s increasingly how it’s being interpreted.

In its decision to mandate the collection of diversity statistics, the CRTC notes that some television and radio broadcasters are currently required to include statistics on the presence of women in “key production roles” and track spending on content by Indigenous and official language minority producers.

It considers those data collection initiatives a success, and thus, “the Commission is of the view that the report lends itself well to be expanded to gather information on all equity-deserving groups (specifically, racialized people, people with disabilities and individuals who identify as 2SLGBTQI+, in addition to women).”

Big online streamers operating in Canada under this new regime will have to submit these diversity statistics as part of this. The current lack of data, the CRTC complained, “results in a partial picture of production spending and representation of equity-deserving groups in the production sector.” That information is important because it helps to “monitor compliance and trends and to ensure policy goals are met, especially when it comes to representation of equity-deserving groups.”

We aren’t at the point where the CRTC is ordering Netflix, HBO and Paramount+ to spend a minimum proportion of their production budgets on “diverse” shows and production teams, but we’re awfully close. In 2022, the CRTC ordered the CBC to do just that with its budget for commissioned TV and documentary programs. This year, the English side of CBC was required to dedicate 30 per cent of spending in that category to “diverse” production teams.

Last year, the CRTC also announced that it would be taking a five per cent cut from online streamers to redistribute to industry groups in Canada whose missions include the advancement of DEI in broadcasting. And in July, the CRTC tweaked its funding formula for online news to incentivize coverage of “diverse” communities….

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: The CRTC’s top-down diversity mandate comes for Big Streaming

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Conservative MPs denounce ‘Liberal racism’ and DEI during Jamil Jivani event

2025/11/21 Leave a comment

Good example of some conservative perspectives on DEI, mirroring some of excesses of liberal perspectives:

….Jivani’s Tuesday event was primarily a broadside at progressive ideologies writ large, but it also referenced federal programs and initiatives. The Prime Minister’s Office was not immediately available for comment on the event, though Jivani said all Liberal MPs were invited to attend his forum, however none took part. 

Jivani — who spoke about his upbringing as the son of an Irish-Scottish mother and a Kenyan father — said people like him “should not be treated as charity cases” and should not be subjected to “lowered” standards to access opportunities.

“I also stand here in opposition to Liberal racism because I completely reject the twisted narrative of Canadian history that liberal elites use to justify the open discrimination against Canadians of European descent and their children. Your heritage in this country should never be used as a weapon against you,” the Bowmanville—Oshawa North MP said, eliciting applause. 

“It’s also my belief that together, we can end Liberal racism by speaking very truthfully and bluntly about what it is, and highlighting the ways that it manipulates our society and divides people against one another.”

In service of that goal, Jivani ceded the stage to three Conservative MPs to share their views on the subject: Calgary’s Shuvaloy Majumdar and two rising stars within Tory caucus, Newmarket-Aurora’s Sandra Cobena and Richmond Hill South’s Vincent Neil Ho….

Source: Conservative MPs denounce ‘Liberal racism’ and DEI during Jamil Jivani event

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Parkin: Spot the backlash [DEI]

2025/11/12 Leave a comment

More interesting analysis that bucks some of the commentary:

…But maybe we’re not looking closely enough. Thanks to the support of our survey partners at the Diversity Institute and the Future Skills Centre, the survey sample allows us to narrow the focus. Follow along in the chart below, which starts with the responses for employed adults in general, but then zeroes in on gender, racial identity, sexual orientation and age.2

Can you see the backlash taking shape? No, me neither.

Certainly, opinions are influenced by age. Older people are less likely to say that they’ve been positively affected by DEI policies (this holds true for older people in general, not just older white men). But opinions mostly shift to the neutral position (no impact). The proportion of white, heterosexual men age 50 and older who say their own opportunities have suffered as a result of DEI is only five percentage points higher than the average.

Source: Spot the backlash

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Jamie Sarkonak: Carney’s budget is more subtle on wokeness, but the agenda is still strong

2025/11/06 Leave a comment

Noting the change but discounting the extent:

Tuesday’s budget wasn’t like those of the high Trudeau years, encrusted with identity politics at every turn. But the spirit of the old regime lives on under Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has opted for a deficit of $78.3 billion along with the continuation of social justice programs and diversity mandates.

This year, one-time “investments” are numerous. The federal anti-racism secretariat — the entity that spurred a government-wide clampdown on forced diversity and hiring quotas in Ottawa in 2021, in response to the Black Lives Matter movement — is getting $2 million in 2025-26, and nothing else after that. The Canadian Heritage program for DEI in sport is getting $8 million in 2025-26, and, again, nothing afterwards.

Even better, the Liberals are spending $28 million over the next two years on Canadian Heritage’s Digital Citizen Initiative, which has been around for years now. It could arguably be called a propaganda program, as it essentially involves funding government-aligned influencers to dispel “disinformation” and researchers to track “anti-Liberal” media, among other things. This budget claims that the funding tap will shut off in 2027 … but we’ll see about that.

The National Film Board, which restricts non-Indigenous individuals from using archive footage for commercial purposes, is getting a $4 million bonus next year. Federal museums, which have been slammed with diversity mandates in the Liberal era, will get $12 million.

Identity-based business funding is back, as well. The federal women’s entrepreneurship program is supposed to get $39 million next year, with nothing to come after. Black entrepreneurs, meanwhile, were told in September that they were getting another $189 million over the next five years for race-based business funding (this wasn’t written into the budget documents, however).

How many of these programs will actually end in a year or two, it’s hard to say. It’s easy for the government change its mind next budget season — better, even, because doing this helps keep the projected deficit lower….

Perhaps most disappointing of all is the continued existence of Women and Gender Equality Canada, which will be getting $500 million over the years 2026 to 2030. The department exists to funnel government money to Liberal-aligned social justice organizations and create new crises relating to menstruation, among other things, and really doesn’t have a point in an age where gender equality has largely been achieved.

Regardless of any spending cuts, the core philosophy of the Liberal government has remained the same since 2015: spend on the mosaic model of culture; prioritize supports on the basis of identity and privilege. Under Carney, it’s no different.

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: Carney’s budget is more subtle on wokeness, but the agenda is still strong

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Jamie Sarkonak: Liberal diversity mandates must end if we’re to solve the judge shortage

2025/11/03 2 Comments

Not sure if there is real evidence for the assertion “focus on diversity necessarily comes at the expense of excellence” and citing one example rather than a broader sample does not cut it. The shortages assertion may or may not be true, as the government has a record in many areas of not meeting targets and levels:

…This tends to involve standard-bending because the pool of bench-eligible senior lawyers is going to be more white and more male than the country as a whole. The senior tiers of any profession reflect the demographics of students in professional schools 40 years ago, not today. While excellent candidates can be found from all walks of life, the Liberal focus on diversity necessarily comes at the expense of excellence. And because the Liberals are obsessed with maintaining an acceptable ratio of white male to “diverse” appointees, we can infer that they’d rather leave some seats empty until a correct number of diverse judges can be put forward at the same time. Shortages ensue….

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: Liberal diversity mandates must end if we’re to solve the judge shortage

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