Descendants of black loyalists in Nova Scotia seek land titles

2016/02/24 Leave a comment

Part of Canada’s history, captured in The Book of Negroes as elsewhere:

Residents of a black community in Nova Scotia say they’re hoping for progress this week in gaining title to their land, 200 years after their ancestors were handed rocky plots without clear ownership.

The Nova Scotia government provided land to black loyalists in the 1800s, but the Crown didn’t provide land titles – though it did for white settlers.

Dwight Adams, a volunteer with a community group in the North Preston area, says that up to one-third of residents in the community of about 3,700 people still don’t have title to the land.

“We don’t want to continue paying taxes and find out down the road we don’t even have a property to pass on,” he said during an interview.

Journalism students at the Nova Scotia Community College released an online documentary Monday depicting how a government-funded process to gain title in the 1960s lapsed.

It includes interviews with current residents still struggling to gain title.

The students also cited a petition presented to the Crown in 1860 from black settlers saying their inability to confidently build upon or mortgage their lands was creating hardship.

In 1963, former premier Robert Stanfield promised to fix the problem, setting up the Land Titles Clarification Act, which laid out a process allowing the residents to gain title.

However, Adams said many families were unable to make use of the free land surveyors or legal advice, and – over the course of several governments – the funding for the program was cut.

Applications for title are currently made to the land services branch of the Department of Natural Resources, with individual residents responsible for providing the required documentation.

Angela Simmonds, a Dalhousie law student, completed a study last year that says after some titles were settled in 2009, “it has been increasingly difficult for people in the community to get a response regarding their applications.”

Source: Descendants of black loyalists in Nova Scotia seek land titles – The Globe and Mail

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Female genital mutilation should be legal in its mildest forms: gynecologists

2016/02/24 Leave a comment

I can understand the logic – better a minor procedure than a major one, better regulated than underground – but hard to accept nonetheless given the message that the procedure sends about women and sexuality:

Countries that have banned female genital mutilation should allow less invasive practices such as small surgical nicks to girls’ genitalia as a compromise, two U.S. gynecologists said on Monday.

But campaigners against FGM strongly criticised the proposal, saying it would undermine global efforts to eradicate the internationally condemned ritual.

At least 200 million girls and women have been subjected to FGM in over 30 countries, according to UN estimates.

The ancient practice usually involves the partial or total removal of a girl’s external genitalia. In some cases the vaginal opening is also sewn up.

But some communities practice less invasive rituals such as pricking or nicking the clitoris.

The U.S. gynaecologists, writing in the Journal of Medical Ethics, argued that permitting more minimal procedures could allow families to uphold cultural and religious traditions while protecting girls from more dangerous forms of cutting.

Communities which support FGM often consider it a prerequisite for marriage. Many also see it as a religious obligation, although it is not mentioned in the Qur’an or Bible.

But female genital mutilation can cause a host of physical and psychological problems.

Gynaecologists Kavita Shah Arora and Allan Jacobs said procedures that slightly changed the look of a girl’s genitalia without damaging them were comparable to male circumcision or cosmetic procedures in Western countries like labiaplasty.

Laws against mild modifications were “culturally insensitive and supremacist and discriminatory towards women”, they wrote in the specialist publication that is published by the British Medical Journal.

‘Behind the times’

Female genital mutilation is practised in many African countries, pockets of Asia and the Middle East, as well as by diaspora communities living in the West.

The gynaecologists suggested that global attempts to stamp out FGM with legislation had failed and may by driving the practice underground.

“We are not arguing that any procedure on the female genitalia is desirable,” they said. “Rather, we only argue that certain procedures ought to be tolerated by liberal societies.”

Source: Female genital mutilation should be legal in its mildest forms: gynecologists – Health – CBC News

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U of T to track race-based data of its students

2016/02/23 Leave a comment

Ontario EducationAlways good to have better data to identify patterns of behaviour and ask whether additional measures are required.

We do have some data from the NHS regarding diversity in the education system at all three levels which I analyzed in my book, Multiculturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote. In essence, in Ontario, as elsewhere in the country, university employees are more diverse than the population at large but median-income data indicates that visible minorities are concentrated in lower earning occupations.

Ontario University GraduationIn terms of students, all visible minority groups have higher university diploma rates than non-visible minorities and Aboriginal peoples, although it varies considerably among different groups:

The University of Toronto has committed to continuously collect race-based data from its students, the Star has learned, unprecedented among post-secondary institutions in Ontario.

The undertaking by Canada’s largest university comes amidst a broader effort to tackle a lack of representation in the lecture hall among some groups and lend hard numbers to the push for equity in the public realm.

Angela Hildyard, U of T’s vice-president for human resources and equity, hopes to see the online census rolled out next fall for the incoming crop of students.

“We’re trying to be as comprehensive and progressive as we can . . . We’re trying to be much more reflective of our own community,” Hildyard said.

The voluntary survey will likely reveal “significant under-representation of black faculty and staff,” she said, noting the new stats could be used to gauge disparities and inform recruitment policies.

Young black leaders, whose demands helped secure the university’s pledge, embrace it as a positive move toward equity in the halls of higher education — one that trumps fears of latent stereotyping revived by the prospect of racial categorizing.

“There is still so much work to be done, but we’re welcoming this as an exciting first step in creating a campus where black students feel safe and welcomed,” said Yusra Khogali, a U of T student and member of the Black Liberation Collective, a campus protest movement with local chapters across North America. “We hope to see work like this replicated at other institutions.”

Black Lives Matter co-founder Sandy Hudson said the news has “great potential” for overcoming barriers, from student diversity to program content.

The survey will allow students to self-identify with one or several ethnic backgrounds and check off racial identities drawn from Statistics Canada, ranging from Black to Chinese, South Asian, and Latin American. Students can also specify a racial background other than the roughly dozen listed.

The info would be gleaned — from all 85,000 students eventually — as part of a broader demographic data harvest that reaps information on students’ gender identity, sexual identity, religion and other areas — all largely uncharted territory for post-secondary institutions at this scale.

Carl James, director of the York Centre for Education and Community, thinks crunching numbers in fields from education to incarceration is key to confronting prejudice. “The data is critical,” he said.

Detailed demographic statistics, including information on race, is routinely collected in U.S. schools and universities. The fact that racial data-tracking breaks new ground up north speaks to deeply rooted attitudes toward race in Canada, says James.

“We have tended to think as Canadians that race is something we don’t live by or identify people with, when in fact we do,” James said.

David Robinson, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, notes that “anecdotally” there seems to be a ghettoization of certain groups in particular disciplines. “Women for instance are highly concentrated in the social sciences, almost invisible in engineering. And I think there are parallels with racialized minorities.

“Right now there’s not a lot of data collection that’s going on across the country to evidence that,” Robinson said.

Administrators plan to unroll the census on the heels of a revamped employment equity survey for faculty and staff.

That bare-bones questionnaire, in place for several years and filled out by incoming employees, currently lists no racial categories beyond “visible minority” or “racialized.” For gender identity, “transgendered” can soon be ticked off alongside more traditional boxes.

Source: U of T to track race-based data of its students | Toronto Star

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India’s Extremists Turn on Left-Wing College Kids – The Daily Beast

2016/02/23 Leave a comment

Hindu extremism:

Change is inevitable. Change is constant. The world is changing, and so is India. But ever since The Donald Trump of India, aka Narendra Modi, and his militant right-wing Hindutva Party came to power, India is fast becoming a nightmare for its women and minorities, its Dalits and Harijans, its LGBT community, and yes, all lovers of good medium-rare steaks and juicy burgers.

There are scholars who will argue that the self-proclaimed “benign land of gentle chants and a thousand ‘Namaste’” has always been excessively hostile and extremely violent to the non-conforming.  History shows that India’s ruling elite more or less eradicated its Buddhist population (Indian folk lore often claims that they merely tricked the Buddhists into converting). Nonetheless, the division of the former Indus Valley Civilization, the formation of modern India, was on a pledge of plurality and on secular values. The Indian National Flag is tricolored, emphasizing its inclusiveness of all peoples and faiths. Therefore the accelerated return to the unbearable intolerance of alternative views and liberal values is disturbing.

For Kanhaiya Kumar, the student body president at Jawaharlal Nehru University, February 9, 2016 started perhaps like any other. But later that day he made a fatal mistake, in a speech at a protest rally at JNU—India’s Berkeley—wherein he criticized Modi and the Hindutva party, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Three days after his speech, Kanhaiya was arrested on charges of sedition. While being escorted by the police to the court, he was attacked and beaten up twice, according to Indian media—initially by a mob of lawyers, and then again a second time by a ‘man in dark glasses’ when he was being kept in a room at the court before the hearing. Later, Kumar was refused bail.

I understand that some might wonder how a person, under the watchful eye of the media and heavy police escort, can get beaten up on court premises. Well, please keep in mind that this is India; strange things always occur at Indian courts. On Dec 6, 1992, the Hindutva thugs demolished the Babri Mosque in the town of Ayodhya, on grounds that it stood on the exact spot where an Indian God, Ram, was born. The Supreme Court, while acknowledging the lack of evidence that the mosque stood on the spot where Ram was born—and while also acknowledging that there were multiple other locations in the town of Ayodhya with superior claims, let alone multiple other towns in India that had better claims as Ram’s birthplace than Ayodhya—still ruled in favor of the Hindutva position. Given the state of Indian courts, the two back-to-back beatings that Kanhaiya received is just par for the course. To an outsider this might appear bizarre, but to people in India, this is simply expected.

Source: India’s Extremists Turn on Left-Wing College Kids – The Daily Beast

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Hollywood’s Diversity Problem at ‘Epidemic’ Levels, Study Finds | TIME

2016/02/23 Leave a comment

Sobering statistics from a thorough study:

In one of the most exhaustive and damning reports on diversity in Hollywood, a new study finds that the films and television produced by major media companies are “whitewashed,” and that an “epidemic of invisibility” runs top to bottom through the industry for women, minorities and LGBT people.

A study to be released Monday by the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism offers one of the most wide-ranging examinations of the film and television industries, including a pointed “inclusivity index” of 10 major media companies — from Disney to Netflix — that gives a failing grade to every movie studio and most TV makers.

Coming just days before an Academy Awards where a second straight year of all-white acting nominees has enflamed an industry-wide crisis, the report offers a new barrage of sobering statistics that further evidence a deep discrepancy between Hollywood and the American population it entertains, in gender, race and ethnicity.

“The prequel to OscarsSoWhite is HollywoodSoWhite,” said Stacy L. Smith, a USC professor and one of the study’s authors, in an interview. “We don’t have a diversity problem. We have an inclusion crisis.”

The study, titled the Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversity, examined the 109 films released by major studios (including art-house divisions) in 2014 and 305 scripted, first-run TV and digital series across 31 networks and streaming services that aired from September 2014 to August 2015. More than 11,000 speaking characters were analyzed for gender, racial and ethnic representation and LGBT status. Some 10,000 directors, writers and show creators were examined, as was the gender of more than 1,500 executives.

The portrait is one of pervasive underrepresentation, no matter the media platform, from CEOs to minor characters. “Overall, the landscape of media content is still largely whitewashed,” the study concludes.

In the 414 studied films and series, only a third of speaking characters were female, and only 28.3 percent were from minority groups — about 10 percent less than the makeup of the U.S. population. Characters 40 years or older skew heavily male across film and TV: 74.3 percent male to 25.7 percent female.

Just 2 percent of speaking characters were LGBT-identified. Among the 11,306 speaking characters studied, only seven were transgendered (and four were from the same series).

“When we start to step back to see this larger ecology, I think we see a picture of exclusion,” said Smith. “And it doesn’t match the norms of the population of the United States.”

Behind the camera, the discrepancy is even greater. Directors overall were 87 percent white. Broadcast TV directors (90.4 percent white) were the least diverse.

Just 15.2 percent of directors, 28.9 percent of writers and 22.6 percent of series creators were female. In film, the gender gap is greatest: Only 3.4 percent of the films studied were directed by women, and only two directors out of the 109 were black women: Ava DuVernay (“Selma”) and Amma Asante (“Belle”).

USC’s study, which the school has been publishing in various forms for the last 10 years, also seeks to add a new metric in the conversation. The “inclusivity index” is a report card for the performances of 21st Century Fox, CBS, NBC Universal, Sony, the Walt Disney Co., Time Warner, Viacom, Amazon, Hulu and Netflix. Those companies encompass all the broadcast networks, most major cable channels, all of the major movie studios and three of the dominant streaming services.

Each was rated by their percentage of female, minority and LGBT characters; and of female writers and directors. None of the six major studios rated better than 20 percent overall; Time Warner fared poorest of all with a score of zero. The report concludes that the film industry “still functions as a straight, white, boy’s club.”

Disney, Sony, Paramount, Fox, Universal and Warner Bros. didn’t immediate comment Sunday night.

Some of the same companies, however, scored better when their TV and digital offerings were evaluated. Disney, the CW, Amazon and Hulu all scored 65 percent and above.

“When we turn to see where the problem is better or worse, the apex to this whole endeavor is: Everyone in film is failing, all of the companies investigated,” said Smith. “They’re impervious to change. But there are pockets of promise in television. There is a focus that change is possible. The very companies that are inclusive — Disney, CW, Hulu, Amazon to some degree — those companies, if they’re producing and distributing motion pictures, can do this. We now have evidence that they can, and they can thrive.”

Source: Hollywood’s Diversity Problem at ‘Epidemic’ Levels, Study Finds | TIME

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Ontario’s anti-racism directorate is a promising start: Op-ed

2016/02/22 Leave a comment

Commentary from community activists on Ontario’s planned anti-racism directorate and their proposed additional measures to reduce racism. Overly ambitious, given resource and other constraints (e.g., across all ministries and institutions – some prioritization would be helpful), but helpful to internal and external discussion of scope:

The Ontario Anti-Racism Directorate, on the other hand, is understood to be part of the government apparatus and is tasked with, among other things, helping the government to “apply an anti-racism lens in developing, implementing and evaluating government policies, programs and services.”

A promising start, but this anti-racism lens should also be used to evaluate legislation. Moreover, we are not convinced that the adoption of an anti-racism lens alone will eradicate racism. Clearly, there are a few more things that the directorate should and can do.

The directorate can be a repository of anti-racism expertise that different government departments can draw on in order to address racism systematically, and be responsible for research, analysis, and policy development based on the data collected and expertise of staffers.

It should take the lead in the creation of provincial standards for race-based data collection, and intra-governmental and inter-governmental implementation of the disaggregated data collection policies.

It must support the policy, legislation and program development and design process across the Ontario government by applying a racial justice lens so as to mitigate any harmful impacts on racialized communities (both First Peoples and peoples of colour).

And finally it should be a point of contact for communities to share their experiences, concerns and ideas about identifying and dismantling all forms of racism in Ontario

And to ensure greater accountability and government support, the head of the Anti-Racism Directorate should have the same power and role as a deputy minister, and be given similar capacity and budget as that assigned to the Ontario’s Woman Directorate and the Office of Francophone Affairs.

The establishment of the Anti-Racism Directorate is an important first step to redress racial inequality in this province. More must be done, however, if the government is serious about eradicating racism.

The government of Ontario must implement other necessary structural, program and policy changes including:

  • Establishing an Employment Equity Secretariat fully mandated and adequately resourced in order to implement a mandatory and comprehensive employment equity program in Ontario.
  • Collecting and analyzing ethno-racially and otherwise appropriately disaggregated data across all provincial Ministries and public institutions.
  • Amending the provincial funding formula for publicly funded elementary and secondary schools by introducing an Equity in Education Grant – a more robust redistributive mechanism rooted in a range of relevant equity and diversity measures and considerations – to ameliorate Ontario’s growing ethno-racially and otherwise defined learning outcome inequities and disparities.
  • Applying equity principles to all current and future government infrastructure investments – particularly renewable energy and “green collar” job-creating initiatives – to best ensure stable and sustainable futures for all Ontarians.
  • Establishing both the Anti-Racism as well as Disabilities Secretariats as mandated under the Ontario Human Rights Code.

Minister Coteau has indicated that he will set up an advisory body to assist him with the next step. It is critical for the minister to engage in a full and meaningful consultation process to ensure that the voices of racialized communities are heard and included.

Source: Ontario’s anti-racism directorate is a promising start | Toronto Star

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Canada’s top general launches push to recruit women

2016/02/22 Leave a comment

Military, RCMP, CSIS.001The Forces have struggled with increasing diversity for some time, as has the RCMP. The target of a one percent increase per year is ambitious; their annual employment equity report (available from the Library of Parliament) will allow public tracking of progress over the next few years:

Canada’s top general has set out to transform the military with a new effort to boost the number of women in the ranks.

Gen. Jonathan Vance, the chief of defence staff, revealed on Friday that he has given a directive to do what good intentions have so far failed to accomplish — get more women into the Canadian Armed Forces.

Vance said he has tasked Lt.-Gen. Christine Whitecross, the chief of military personnel, to boost the number of women in uniform by 1 per cent a year over the coming decade.

That would allow the military to meet its long-standing goal of having women make up 25 per cent of its members.

“I have asked Gen. Whitecross to increase the percentage, through retention and recruiting, . . . of women in the armed forces by 1 per cent a year over the next 10 years,” Vance told a defence conference on Friday.

“If we don’t make it a task, if I don’t give an order, it’s not going to get done. We can’t just hope that it happens. We’re going to try hard to meet our diversity targets the same way.”

Officials said later that Vance had given the directive on Wednesday during a meeting with Whitecross.

…But meeting the goal could be a challenge. There are some 15,000 women in uniform, making up 15 per cent of the regular and reserve forces.

In all, the defence department has about 66,000 full-time soldiers, short of its approved staffing level of 68,000, and about 21,000 reservists, well below its target of 27,000.

In the past, many women who joined the military were familiar with the organization, thanks either to family connections or past involvement with cadets, Leuprecht said. As the military now looks to recruit more women, it will have to broaden its appeal, he said.

Leuprecht also said that the armed forces must work to have women better represented in trades across the organization, rather than concentrated in areas such as logistics and medicine.

Vance made clear Friday that his efforts to diversify the ranks won’t stop with boosting the number of women.

“I’m also wanting to increase all manner of diversity in the armed forces to better reflect the Canadian public. It’s important. We are of the public,” Vance said.

Visible minorities currently make up 6.5 per cent of the armed forces, short of the goal of 11.8 per cent. Aboriginal peoples represent 2.5 per cent of those in uniform, shy of the goal of 3.4 per cent.

 Source: Canada’s top general launches push to recruit women | Toronto Star

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How Harper Lee helped Canadians ignore racism in our own backyard – Hill

2016/02/22 Leave a comment

Lawrence Hill makes valid points regarding the teaching of To Kill a Mockingbird in Canadian schools:

However, the rote and ongoing use of To Kill a Mockingbird in the classroom points to our very Canadian-ness, and to our collective disinclination in Canada to examine racism and black history in our own backyard. How utterly convenient it is for Canadian children and adults from Dawson City to St. John’s to read about racism in the Deep South of the United States in the Great Depression, and to avoid discussions about slavery, segregation, other forms of racial injustice as well as the civil-rights movement in Canada itself.

In my experience, one of the unfortunate offshoots of the success of To Kill a Mockingbird and its hold on our psyche has nothing to do with the author or the book, but rather, how we have allowed it to dominate our meditations – especially in school – about racial injustice in Canada.

Harper Lee cannot be blamed for her own success. She is not at fault for our own collective disinclination to look beyond her novel and acknowledge the existence and eventual rooting out of slavery in the Maritimes and present-day Quebec and Ontario.

We have only ourselves and our own reticence to confront history to blame for the fact that many Canadians to this day are more familiar with the American Civil War and with the life of Martin Luther King Jr. than they are with the struggle to eradicate racial segregation in Southwest Ontario and in Nova Scotia; the movement of the black Loyalists from New York to Nova Scotia in 1783 and then, for many, back to Africa a decade later; the movement of 600 blacks from California onto Vancouver and Salt Spring Island in the mid-19th century; the settlement of blacks from Oklahoma and Texas in the Canadian prairies at the outset of the 20th century; the waves of immigrants coming to Canada from Caribbean nations starting in the late 1960s, and the simultaneous bulldozing of Africville in the north end of Halifax.

Black history in Canada is as complex and varied as the history of any racial or ethnic group, but we have lost sight of that, partly as a result of our obsession with evil in another era and another country.

Although it richly written and wonderfully drawn, To Kill a Mockingbirdemploys a narrative approach that has been used time and time again to address racism in North America. Racism and injustice is perceived through the eyes of benevolent whites, and the stories feature white characters over black. Indeed, in To Kill a Mockingbird, as well as in Harper Lee’s follow-up novel Go Set a Watchman, published in the last year of her life, black characters are minimally sketched. With the exception of Calpurnia, a black woman who works in the house of Atticus Finch, Harper Lee presents to her readers racism and evil, minus dimensional black characters.

Source: How Harper Lee helped Canadians ignore racism in our own backyard – The Globe and Mail

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Belgium, Christianity and Islam: In and around Brussels, the practice of Islam is outstripping Christianity | The Economist

2016/02/22 Leave a comment

Interesting article regarding religion in Belgium and the implications of greater religiosity among Muslims:

All that is part of the background to a study of religious attitudes among Francophone Belgians, conducted by the Observatory of Religion and Secularism, a helpful resource for the study of faith in Europe.  Respondents came in equal numbers from Wallonia, the country’s Gallic-oriented south, and the Francophone majority in Brussels.

The pollsters were surprised by how many respondents still professed some attachment to a religion. Among all respondents, 20% called themselves practising Catholics and 43% non-practising Catholics; 6% were practising Muslims and 1% non-practising Muslims. With other religions accounting for a few points each, that left 26% who called themselves atheist or agnostic. Jean-Philippe Schreiber, a professor of religous studies who co-commissioned the poll, said a remarkably high number of Belgians “claimed a religious identity” even if it did not affect their behaviour much. That certainly applied to loosely affiliated Catholics; and it might also be true that not every respondent who identified with Islam actually prayed and fasted as the rules lay down.

Then turn to Brussels, some parts of which host large communities of Moroccan and Turkish immigrants, mostly from religiously conservative regions of those countries. Among respondents in the city, practising Catholics amounted to 12% and non-practising ones to 28%. Some 19% were active Muslims and another 4% were of Muslim identity without practising the faith. The atheist/agnostic camp came to 30%.

Among all respondents, levels of active adherence to Catholicism seemed to diminish dramatically with age, while the practice of Islam increased correspondingly. Thus among respondents aged 55 and over, practising Catholics amounted to 30% and practising Muslims to less than 1%; but among those aged between 18 and 34, active adherence to Islam (14%) exceeded the practice of Catholicism (12%). Admittedly the sample (600 people in all) is small. But if this trend continues, practitioners of Islam may soon comfortably exceed devout Catholics not just in cosmopolitan Brussels, as is the case already, but across the whole of Belgium’s southern half.

The pollsters are struck by the fact that many Belgians retain a cultural loyalty to the Catholic faith. albeit a diminishing one. The percentage of avowedly “practising Catholics” far exceeds the numbers who actually turn up at mass, as any cleric will confirm. But one thing is pretty clear. If anything holds Belgium together through its third century of existence, Catholicism will not be the glue.

Source: Belgium, Christianity and Islam: In and around Brussels, the practice of Islam is outstripping Christianity | The Economist

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Woman who ran Ontario’s first anti-racism office ‘not enamoured’ of Wynne’s ‘knee-jerk’ plan to revive it

2016/02/20 Leave a comment

Good cautionary advice, noting the need for more emphasis on enforcement of existing policies. However, there is a strong case for a ‘race’ or diversity lens being applied to policies and programs, just as there is for gender:

The woman who ran Ontario’s since-shuttered anti-racism secretariat two decades ago is today unconvinced the province needs to reopen the office under a different name.

Anne-Marie Stewart was the head of the Ontario Anti-Racism Secretariat, opened in 1992 under then-premier Bob Rae. She oversaw the office for three years, and helped implement programs to tackle racism and discrimination within the Ontario Public Service and in the community, until it was shuttered by Mike Harris’s government.

But with 23 years of hindsight, Stewart is unconvinced another office is the answer.

“It sounds like they are going to more or less repeat something that was disbanded. I’m not sure that that’s an effective way to go about addressing the situation,” she said on a call from Trinidad. “I think this is a knee-jerk response to the situation. I’m sure the government is well-meaning. I’m sure that the people who are pushing for it are well-meaning. But it’s not going to work if it’s not done properly and I don’t think they’re doing it the right way.”

Premier Kathleen Wynne announced Tuesday that Minister Michael Coteau would have “anti-racism” tacked onto his existing profiles. He would be in charge of the new office, which would aid government in reviewing issues through a “race lens.” The hope is to combat recent issues like violence by police against people of colour or hate crimes targeting Syrian refugees. But the announcement, packaged as part of a response to Black History Month, included no cash or timelines.

“I’m not enamoured of this at all….I’m not even sure that today something so elaborate is needed. What is needed is to enact the policies. Make sure right across the government they do what is required and it will work,” Stewart said. “As with any kind of the thing the government is trying to do, there should be legislation and policies and people should follow them and the government should enforce them.”

The office she ran had an annual budget of $743,000 in 1994/95 (about $1.1 million today), according to a government briefing note from 1997. It ran grant programs, education efforts and hiring equity efforts. Its broad mandate “was to increase the capacity, self-sufficiency and leadership of racial minority and Aboriginal communities and to assist them in gaining equitable access to all government and non-government programs and services.”

NDP leader Andrea Horwath, who started pushing for a secretariat last year, said the government plan, without a mandate and funding attached, seems half-written.

“Well I mean again I don’t now what the government has up its sleeve, I don’t think anybody does,” she said, adding that her party’s proposal was to get something up and running quickly to start seeing action for those who need it.

Work is already underway to find an assistant-deputy minister to start running a shell of an office and draft its mandate and budget, minister Coteau said Thursday afternoon. He sees value in the standalone office as a place for ideas to to flow through and policies to be analyzed. He compared it to a “think tank” for good ideas to increase equity.

“I think that a standalone directorate is strategic because it allows for us to capture best practices. It’s almost like creating an internal think tank, a place where ideas can be brought forward,” he said.

Source: Woman who ran Ontario’s first anti-racism office ‘not enamoured’ of Wynne’s ‘knee-jerk’ plan to revive it | National Post

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