How can boards create anti-racist companies?

2021/02/19 Leave a comment

Nice to see data-based arguments and practical suggestions:

In the 34 years since Canada’s Employment Equity Act was introduced, we haven’t yet normalized Black professionals in senior leadership or on boards. Black people have been underrepresented, marginalized or plain excluded — and with the added intersectional lens of gender, Black women have the worst experience of all. Being a numbers person, I like to start with data. Thankfully, recent reports have begun to break down representation in employment and on boards by visible minority status (Statistics Canada’s terminology, not my own).

Black leaders occupy less than one per cent of executive roles and board seats at major Canadian companies. What’s more, they hold only 0.3 per cent of corporate board positionsand 3.6 per cent of all board positions in Toronto, despite comprising 7.5 per cent of the city’s total population. In July 2020, just as the first COVID-19 lockdown was ending, the national unemployment rate was 10.9 per cent. In contrast, the unemployment rate for Black women was 7.7 points higher at 18.6 per cent, and for Black men, it was 4.2 points higher at 15.1 per cent. This data suggests that Black workers face systemic and institutional barriers to employment in Canada and therefore advancement to boards.

Embedded in our institutions, systemic barriers are everywhere, and are therefore normalized as “just how things are done around here.” You can’t see these barriers, so this invisibility makes it difficult to measure their impact on people who encounter them. As leaders at the boardroom table, it’s essential that we play a significant role in eliminating anti-Black racism and all forms of discrimination in our organizations.

In the months following the tragic murder of George Floyd, many companies realized they could no longer be silent. Some made public statements, pledged donations, or committed actions to revisit their diversity, equity and inclusion goals. But decades of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) work have already shown racial disparities in the advancement of Black professionals into board seats, so it’s safe to assume that doubling down on generic DEI efforts will not address the specific issues surrounding anti-Black racism.

So, how can boards take action to create anti-racist companies?

The fish rots from the head

As an individual board member, now is the time to add anti-racism to your core values. Start by educating yourself on anti-Black racism in the workplace. Build your networks to include Black people and organizations that serve Black communities. Ask willing Black people about their experiences, but come with humility and be prepared to have your views on race and privilege challenged without getting defensive.

As a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA), I have internalized the adage “tone at the top,” which describes an organization’s approach to preventing fraud and other unethical practices in the workplace. Racism in both overt and covert forms is an ethical issue that companies must address in the same way.

The board is ultimately responsible for establishing the tone of the organization, so it must embed anti-racism into its strategic priorities — not just pay lip service to it. Anti-racism objectives will be unique to each organization, depending on its industry, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. For instance, a tech company writing complex algorithms to identify faces for law enforcement wouldn’t have the same anti-racism policy as a farming operation employing temporary foreign workers from the Caribbean.

The only constant is change

Board composition is important to its overall effectiveness when it comes to meeting shareholder expectations and the demands of regulators. Several factors in board composition can slow down the advancement of Black people — most notably, skills matrices, term limits and qualifying criteria.

Board governance practices have embraced the skills matrix to identify competencies needed to increase board effectiveness, but these skills cannot remain static. Why not include anti-racist skills and competencies, such as learning how to talk productively about race with fellow board members or reviewing decision-making and policies from an anti-racist lens? If the current makeup of your board falls short in these competencies, consider training or increasing the size of the board and its committees.

The lack of term limits only serves to reinforce the status quo. Regulators and companies should adopt a maximum tenure for board members. It wasn’t too long ago that a requirement for a majority of independent directors on publicly traded companies was new, but now, it’s common practice. Companies can commit to recruiting and nominating at least one Black leader to its board as the next available term comes to an end.

Corporate boards also need to examine informal requirements for board members to be former CEOs or other senior executives or to obtain excessive credentials. Is this truly what is needed, or does it serve as another mechanism to reinforce exclusion? I know many talented Black professionals in the not-for-profit sector whose qualifications would be well-suited for a public board, even though they’ve never held a corporate c-suite title. Similarly, I know many Black professionals who carry a well-respected ICD.D designation (granted by the Institute of Corporate Directors) and still are not on any corporate boards.

Your choice: Carrot or stick

Some corporations will look at policies and processes to advance Black leaders as being good for business, such as reaching new markets, addressing skills shortages, and maintaining global competitiveness, or — even better — for social justice reasons. That’s the carrot approach. Others will require a direct strategy, such as tying results to CEO performance and compensation, or through legislation. Monetary penalties for non-compliance is the stick approach.

In Canada, federally incorporated companies and TSX-listed companies are subject to diversity disclosure requirements. Bill C-25 requires federally incorporated companies to report gender and race, as well as representation from Indigenous people and people with disabilities, in the composition of its board and leadership. “National Instrument 58-101Disclosure of Corporate Governance Practices” (NI 58-101) requires TSX-listed companies to disclose the numbers, targets and mechanisms to address representation of women in their director and executive ranks. If these companies do not comply, they must explain why. But NI 58-101 has defined diversity as the advancement of women only, neglecting how gender intersects with race, sexual orientation and disability.

The Canadian diversity rules lack teeth because there are no consequences for non-compliance. You might even say it’s easier to avoid reporting and instead just explain why, in the case of Bill C-25, non-existent targets were not met, or in the case of NI 58-101, why internal company targets were not met. Needless to say, it’s unsurprising that recent data suggests the proportion of women in executive leadership has remained unchanged and that there’s a marked absence of directors from other equity-seeking groups.

Other countries have established targets and enforced them. In the U.S., NASDAQ may become the first major stock exchange to mandate board diversity reports, and to require board diversity by having at least one member identify as a woman and one who identifies as being from LGBTQ+ communities or another underrepresented group. Under the NASDAQ-proposed diversify-or-delist rules, if companies do not publicly disclose board diversity data or fail to meet diversity requirements and do not publish a reason explaining why, they could be delisted from the stock exchange. These proposals, specifically the possibility of delisting, could have greater impact on diversification of corporate boards because NASDAQ sets the rules for 3,000 corporations listed on its exchange.

Bill C-25 and NI 58-101 need to go one step further by penalizing companies that fail to comply with the rules that establish racial diversity targets. Following an anti-racist approach means always remembering that race is in every room — including the boardroom.

There are no quick fixes to the complexity of dismantling anti-Black racism on corporate boards. Change will need to be deliberate, purposeful and prolonged, but board members are uniquely positioned to challenge “how things are done around here.”

Source: How can boards create anti-racist companies?

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Canada should say no to racism at the United Nations (20th anniversary of Durban Conference)

2021/02/19 Leave a comment

The legacy of Durban… Would be nice if there would be greater focus on China’s treatment of its religious and other minorities:

By bringing together all nations — democratic and non-democratic alike — the United Nations provides opportunities for both: For states that respect human rights, the UN can provide a forum for promoting that respect, while for states that violate them, the UN becomes a forum in which to defend, divert, and obfuscate.

One diversion tactic the latter use is to point human-rights standards elsewhere. They might use the vocabulary of human rights, but these words mean what they want them to mean.

The 2001 World Conference against Racism is a prime example. By singling out Israel, the concluding document was itself racist. The document called the Jews of Israel foreigners, even though Jews have lived continuously in Israel since prehistoric times.

The document further referred to their presence in the region as colonial occupation, even though colonization of the area had ended with the termination of the British mandate in 1948. The document blamed the plight of the Palestinians on Israel alone, as if all the terrorist organizations targeting the Jews of Israel, not least the Palestinian governing authority, had nothing to do with it.

While the strategies employed by rights-violating states at the UN to smother criticism are various, a notable component is an inordinate focus on Israel. Israel is small and geopolitically insignificant. A raft of states in the Arab and Muslim world are opposed to its very existence. Non-democratic states who are neither Arab nor Muslim, but who want to make sure the UN busies itself with anyone but them, are quick to join Arab/Muslim states in elaborate, prolonged, exaggerated criticism of Israel.

Zionism stands for the existence of Israel as the realization of the right to self-determination of the Jewish people. Anti-Zionism stands opposed. There is a confluence of agendas of the anti-Zionists states and the other non-democratic states. Anti-Zionists, having failed in their attempts to destroy Israel through force — in 1948, 1967, and 1973 — have switched to terrorism and delegitimization through demonization. A primary vehicle for this delegitimization strategy is the United Nations.

Jews are the prototypical victims of racism. They are a people whose victimization has been so awful, it gave racism itself, before the Holocaust a widely accepted ideology, a bad name. Yet, they themselves are labelled by anti-Zionists (in a typically tyrannical vocabulary inversion) as racist. Non-democratic states that repress their minorities and who truly are racist are more than happy to jump on this anti-Zionist bandwagon barrelling toward Israel and away from them.

We can be thankful that Canada and several other states walked out of the Durban Conference. But the anti-democratic/anti-Zionist coalition at the UN never misses a trick. It embraced a Durban Review Conference in Geneva in 2009, and a 10th-anniversary event in New York in 2011. Canada boycotted both, as did other rights-respecting states.

At the end of last year, the UN General Assembly decided by resolution that in September 2021 it will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Durban Declaration. Canada voted against this resolution, as did several other rights-respecting states. The anniversary celebration this fall is expected to call for the full implementation of the declaration.

Feb. 22 is the first day of the next session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. On opening day, a high-level panel is scheduled to discuss the upcoming 20th anniversary. Canada should there express again its concerns about the Durban document and make clear its intention not to attend the celebration.

Canada, despite all the obfuscation of the cabal of anti-Zionist and other non-democratic states, should work through the United Nations to combat real racism. One component must be standing continuously against the Durban perversion of the anti-racist agenda to serve racist ends, with Jews yet again the intended victims.

The fight against racism is too important to ignore. Through their resurrection of the Durban Document and their pretend accusation as racist of a people devastated by racism, truly racist states attempt to avoid the criticism they so justly deserve. Canada at the United Nations should continue to say no to racism, real racism, and no also to this 20th anniversary.

Sarah Teich is a senior fellow with the Macdonald Laurier Institute. David Matas is senior honorary counsel to B’nai Brith Canada.  He was rapporteur for the Jewish Caucus at the 2001 Durban World Conference Against Racism.  

Source: Canada should say no to racism at the United Nations

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‘Glaring gap’ in addressing anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism in RCMP’s new ‘cultural humility’ course, experts say

2021/02/18 Leave a comment

While I respect all of the experts cited, and find some needed suggestions for improvements, most of these experts have an understandable activist orientation and the Star could have made more of an effort to broaden the range of experts consulted. Their critique of the overall “fluffiness” is, of course, valid but this is typical of so many government documents….:

A mandatory online training course called “Cultural Awareness and Humility” that was rolled out last fall for all RCMP members and touted by the commissioner as an example of the force’s efforts to modernize misses the mark on many levels, according to experts who have reviewed the program for the Star.

One glaring gap, they say, is the lack of content addressing institutionalized racism, particularly anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism. Instead, the training emphasizes only implicit biases and reforming individual attitudes and behaviours.

Some noted that a section on the RCMP’s role in colonization was given short shrift — just three paragraphs.

One expert said a section dealing with how to avoid stereotyping in communications was so simplified it reminded her of course materials her nine-year-old daughter gets in school. Other sections, the experts said, contained outdated or confusing terminology.

“This does not increase accountability. A participant is simply given a certificate without needing to demonstrate any real change,” said Kanika Samuels-Wortley, a professor at Carleton University’s Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

“We’ve got to ask, with all the calls for police reform and concerns over negative encounters with the police, can sitting in front of a computer, that involves no human interaction, produce change?”

In a statement to the Star, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki said she was disappointed to hear the criticism, noting that the course is just one component of the force’s cultural learning strategy and was “not designed to single-handedly address systemic issues in the organization.”

“We consulted widely during the development of this training. I strongly believe that anything we can do to increase cultural awareness, sensitivity and humility is a benefit to the organization, and to the communities we serve.”

RCMP spokesperson Cpl. Caroline Duval added that a separate training course dealing with systemic racism, anti-racism and discrimination is in development “to address employees’ competency gaps in their ability to appropriately interact with racialized colleagues and the diverse communities the RCMP serves.”

“It will build the foundation for a common understanding of terminology, historical impacts, as well as disparities and inequities resulting from racism. Finally, it will introduce meaningful best practices for supporting people who have suffered as a result of racism. This includes being empathetic, recognizing the importance of learning about the needs of others and creating a culture of allyship.” 

Canada’s national police force has been under intense scrutiny over its internal culture and its policing of Indigenous Peoples and Black Canadians. Last year, Lucki drew criticism and calls for her resignation after saying in an interview that she struggled over the definition of systemic racism and its existence in her police force only to change course days later, acknowledging that “systemic racism is part of every institution, the RCMP included.”

The commissioner later told the Star she had listened and learned and that she had a plan to change the RCMP’s culture.

As part of that plan, she touted the cultural humility course.

How the program was made

The RCMP said the course was developed over a period of several months after consulting internally with its vulnerable-persons unit and gender-based violence working group and externally with an advisory council of elders and federal departments.

The Star paid $50 to access the training on an online repository for law-enforcement courses.

Its stated objectives include getting people to recognize how their personal beliefs and attitudes affect their daily interactions and perceptions; to respect differences in social and cultural norms in society; and to find ways to work with people from diverse backgrounds. Being open-minded and non-judgmental is a consistent theme.

The training, which consists of six modules and takes two to three hours to complete, is mostly text-based and laden with terminology, such as prejudice, bias, classism, ethnic stereotyping, microaggressions and intergenerational trauma, and their definitions.

The training includes interactive components, such as video clips of a residential school survivor and her grandson and a section in which officers are asked how they would respond to scenarios in which co-workers displayed racist or discriminatory behaviour.

Who assessed the course for the Star

To analyze the RCMP program, the Star turned to several people with backgrounds in issues of race, identity and criminal justice.

They were:

  • Kanika Samuels-Wortley, a professor at Carleton University’s Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice;
  • Carl Everton James, a York University professor of education and that school’s senior adviser on equity and representation;
  • Mylene Jaccoud, a criminology professor at the University of Montreal, specializing in restorative justice and criminalization of Indigenous people; and
  • Shiri Pasternak, a criminology professor at Ryerson University specializing in settler colonialism.

What they saw

Right from the beginning, the program hits a flawed note, said Pasternak, pointing to a line in the preamble that states: “Systemic racism is a term that is now being commonly used and it is a reflection of a society’s failure to prioritize everyone’s needs.”

“No, systemic racism is about structures of oppression, it’s not a failure of society,” Pasternak said. (Later in the training, a page does define systemic racism as “the policies and practices of organizations, which directly or indirectly operate to sustain the advantages of certain ‘social races.’”)

The preamble goes on to say: “The RCMP has always worked to create safe communities. We have always worked to protect people’s Charterrights. Now we are being asked to recognize that not every member of Canadian society feels supported.”

Pasternak called that language harmful gaslighting, noting the RCMP’s role in forcibly removing children from their homes to attend residential schools and documented failures related to investigations into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

The first module of the training emphasizes the importance of respecting diversity, embracing a range of cultures and avoiding making assumptions based on first impressions.

Samuels-Wortley said this section bombards the participant with uncommon terminology. For instance, a chart outlines different responses to diversity, from “acceptance of diversity” to a “rejection of diversity.”

“It would have been simpler to just say ‘racism,’” she said.

“It is as though the training material goes out of the way to be gentle and not use terminology that could offend.”

Far too simple

In a module devoted to communication, participants are told to be aware of stereotyping in their language.

For instance, participants are told: “Don’t use words, images, and situations suggesting members of a racial group are the same: e.g. ‘Don’t expect Jo to be on time. Everyone from that culture is always late.’”

The training also urges avoidance of racial identifiers. “‘Ms. Woo, an attentive client,’ is preferable to, ‘Ms. Woo, an attentive Asian Canadian client.’ ”

Participants are told they are “not expected to know everything about all different cultures and groups of people.”

“Cultural humility sets an expectation to learn as much as you can, particularly about key groups of people you typically work with. When you don’t know, ask. It is important to be observant, respectful, and adapt your own behaviours where reasonable and possible.”

This entire section, Samuels-Wortley said, is very general and “does little to address the complexities of communication with peoples from different racial groups.”

Pasternak agreed.

“My daughter is nine years old and just did a similar unit in her class,” she said. “The module reviews in general are pitched extremely low, not pedagogically designed — from what I can tell — for any particular critical thinking.”

Significant Indigenous issues left unaddressed

One page in the course summarizes Canadian laws and RCMP policies dealing with culture and diversity, such as the Canadian Human Rights Act and the RCMP’s bias-free policing policy.

But Pasternak wrote in an email the page would have benefited by having a primer on Aboriginal jurisprudence.

“One of the problems when police enforce, e.g. injunctions, is that they seem to have no knowledge or understanding about Aboriginal rights. They see land defenders as lawless agitators, but have no context for the legal rights Indigenous people hold,” she said.

One of the six modules is devoted to “cultural awareness in Indigenous communities.”

It describes the uniqueness of Indigenous languages and their contributions to the “rich linguistic mosaic of Canada,” as well as the importance of Indigenous art, culture and heritage.

“Taking in the rich history of Indigenous art is a great way to celebrate the multi-layered cultural tapestry of the many diverse communities of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis,” participants are told.

It is within this section that the RCMP’s role in colonization is summarized in three paragraphs. Participants are told this may be a contributing factor to the “fear that some communities may have toward police.”

A page on the vulnerability of Indigenous women and girls is also summed up in three paragraphs. Participants are provided a link to an “essential” source of reading material: the final report of the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

For such important and necessary topics, Samuels-Wortley said, the coverage is “embarrassing.”

Pasternak agreed, saying parts of this section contained “the most generalized pablum.”

“What on earth is the point of this page?” she asked, referring to the page on arts, culture and heritage. “To say native art is good?”

The page on the RCMP’s role in colonization frames the harm and violence only in the past, “when it goes right up until the current moment,” she added.

‘Constructing the other’

Given that we live in an ethnoculturally diverse nation, participants are told there will be times when officers encounter language barriers. Data is cited showing the number of people in Canada who report being an immigrant or permanent resident has climbed to 22 per cent and could reach 30 per cent by 2036.

James said he was troubled that the discussion around diversity seemed to be framed only in terms of immigrant cultural backgrounds.

“What about the people who have been here two or three generations?” he asked.

“We have to move away from constructing the other.”

He also homed in on a page that broke down definitions for the terms “ethnic group,” “ethnic minority” and “ethnic stereotyping.”

“Ethnic minority” is defined in the course as a group within a community that has different national or cultural traditions from the main population.

James said he would revise this. Look at South Africa, he said. The majority were Black but they were the minority because they were not part of the political power structure.

Calling out racism

The final module of the training consists of a variety of everyday scenarios in which a co-worker demonstrates problematic behaviour. Participants are asked how they would respond.

In one scenario, a colleague is overheard speaking on the phone with a citizen who smells smoke in the neighbourhood and is concerned it’s marijuana.

“You and your colleague know that the community centre hosts traditional blessing ceremonies/purification rites known as smudging that are performed by some Indigenous groups and are the real cause of the smoke and the smell that is being reported. As you listen to your colleague on the phone, he explains to the citizen, ‘Yes, they are burning sage. You know, it’s that stuff you put in spaghetti sauce. But, they are using it for smudging.’”

Participants are advised that should they face such a scenario, they should tell their co-worker he has “minimized the importance of the ceremony.”

“You can provide him with information about the significance of smudging and that in many First Nations or Métis communities, this ceremony can be tied to healing, cleansing and blessing.”

But Samuels-Wortley questions how likely it is that officers will confront fellow officers like this, noting it has been established there is a “culture of silence” within policing wherein officers do not feel protected, if they raise concerns.

Take-aways

The training program has “good intent,” but likely “few impacts,” said Jaccoud.

She said the training reminded her of cultural awareness training programs used in the 1980s to try to address overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the corrections system.

“You will never resolve structural problems with cultural programs,” she said.

Pasternak agreed it is not enough to treat this as a cultural competency issue.

“My overall take is that there isn’t any possibility that this course could make any positive difference in the policing of Indigenous people,” she said.

What is the ultimate objective of this training, Samuels-Wortley asked. 

“If it is to address concerns over police use of force, discretionary police arrests, to increase trust in the police among members of Black, Indigenous or racialized communities, this training does little to address any of these issues.”

The experts said the training program’s focus on individual ideas, attitudes and behaviours and raising self-awareness ignores how an institution’s culture can influence individuals within that institution.

“What about the institution of the RCMP — the structure on which it’s built and how much that structure probably also needs to go through the necessary changes in order to understand and incorporate the diversity of the people to be served?” asked James.

“That needs to be unpacked.”

James says there is merit to the training, but he’s curious what is done after the training is over to reinforce what was learned.

“I think there’s some worth to it, it provides information. But what do you do beyond this? What additional engagement do they have? What conversations do they have?” he said.

Duval, the RCMP spokesperson, said the force believes its cultural humility course is an important part of “advancing reconciliation and issues of systemic racism.”

Besides developing a separate anti-racism course, she said, the force is also preparing a timeline that outlines the historical relationship between the force and Indigenous people, training for front-line officers in restorative justice as a way to eliminate the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in custody, and courses focusing on “newcomers, immigrants and refugees.”

Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/02/16/we-found-the-rcmps-cultural-humility-training-course-and-asked-4-experts-to-review-it-for-us-heres-what-they-said.html

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Obscure Musicology Journal Sparks Battles Over Race and Free Speech

2021/02/16 2 Comments

Of interest:

A periodical devoted to the study of a long-dead European music theorist is an unlikely suspect to spark an explosive battle over race and free speech.

But the tiny Journal of Schenkerian Studies, with a paid circulation of about 30 copies an issue per year, has ignited a fiery reckoning over race and the limits of academic free speech, along with whiffs of a generational struggle. The battle threatens to consume the career of Timothy Jackson, a 62-year-old music theory professor at the University of North Texas, and led to calls to dissolve the journal.

It also prompted Professor Jackson to file an unusual lawsuitcharging the university with violating his First Amendment rights — while accusing his critics of defamation.

This tale began in the autumn of 2019 when Philip Ewell, a Black music theory professor at Hunter College, addressed the Society for Music Theory in Columbus, Ohio. He described music theory as dominated by white males and beset by racism. He held up the theorist Heinrich Schenker, who died in Austria in 1935, as an exemplar of that flawed world, a “virulent racist” who wrote of “primitive” and “inferior” races — views, he argued, that suffused his theories of music.

“I’ve only scratched the surface in showing out how Schenker’s racism permeates his music theories,” Professor Ewell said, accusing generations of Schenker scholars of trying to “whitewash” the theorist in an act of “colorblind racism.”

The society’s members — its professoriate is 94 percent white — responded with a standing ovation. Many younger faculty members and graduate students embraced his call to dismantle “white mythologies” and study non-European music forms. The tone was of repentance.

“We humbly acknowledge that we have much work to do to dismantle the whiteness and systemic racism that deeply shape our discipline,” the society’s executive board later stated.

At the University of North Texas, however, Professor Jackson, a white musicologist, watched a video of that speech and felt a swell of anger. His fellow scholars stood accused, some by name, of constructing a white “witness protection program” and shrugging off Schenker’s racism. That struck him as unfair and inaccurate, as some had explored Schenker’s oft-hateful views on race and ethnicity.

A tenured music theory professor, Professor Jackson was the grandson of Jewish émigrés and had lost many relatives in the Holocaust. He had a singular passion: He searched out lost works by Jewish composers hounded and killed by the Nazis.

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‘I’m Speaking Out:’ Calgary Firefighters Allege Decades of Racism

2021/02/13 Leave a comment

Of note:

When Chris Coy became Calgary’s first Black firefighter 25 years ago, his heroic vision of the profession was almost immediately upended.

First, he said, during training he was hazed more than his colleagues, strapped to a stretcher against his will and repeatedly doused with a fire hose. Then there were the co-workers who ostracized him at lunch. Throughout his career, he said, fellow firefighters used a racial slur directed at Black people.

For years, Mr. Coy said he suffered in silence as he feared speaking out would mean dismissal, or, worse, other firefighters not shielding him from danger in the field.

But since retiring in December, Mr. Coy has begun speaking publicly about what he said was decades of racially motived physical and verbal abuse, joining a group of current and former firefighters who have been voicing similar grievances. The city’s mayor and fire chief have acknowledged the racism within the department and pledged to address it.

“Here in Canada we are proud and sometimes smug about our commitment to diversity,” Naheed Nenshi, Calgary’s mayor, said in an interview. “I don’t want anyone who gets a paycheck I sign to feel that they aren’t valued because of the color of their skin.”

In Canada, a country that prides itself on its liberal humanism and multiculturalism, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made reconciling with Indigenous peoples an early priority of his premiership. Now, the country has been undergoing a national reckoning about institutional racism in its city halls, law enforcement and cultural institutions, particularly since the global uprising for Black rights spurred by last year’s police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Brenda Lucki, the chief of Canada’s storied national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was recently forced to walk back her previous denials of systemic racism within the force. Mr. Trudeau was among those arguing that police forces across the country were grappling with systemic racism.

While there have been complaints of discrimination in other fire departments in Canada, Calgary has become a high-profile case. The accusations of racism at the fire department were first reported by the CBC, the national broadcaster.

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B.C. premier ‘alarmed’ by systemic racism allegations, promises anti-racism law

2021/02/12 Leave a comment

To watch and see similarities and differences with other provinces:

British Columbia’s premier says the government is working on anti-racism legislation that may be introduced this year.

John Horgan also said Wednesday he was “alarmed” to hear allegations of racism at the Royal B.C. Museum, which should be a welcome and respectful place for all Canadians.

Horgan said Melanie Mark, the minister of tourism, arts, culture and sport, is working with the Public Service Agency to ensure allegations of racism are followed up on as part of its investigation.

He said the museum’s board and senior staff have taken multiple allegations of racism by employees seriously and the findings of the investigation will be made public.

The resignation of Jack Lohman, the chief executive officer of the museum, was announced earlier this week after nine years in the position.

In a news release, the museum’s board of directors said Lohman’s departure on Friday was “mutually agreed” to be in the best interests of the organization as it “addresses current internal issues,” without elaborating.

Last month, the First Nations Leadership Council said in a statement that it was “disturbed by several recent media reports” alleging “ongoing systemic racism and toxic working conditions” at the museum.

The museum said Lohman was not available for comment this week and board chair Daniel Muzyka would not be available until Thursday.

Horgan said Mark is well placed to help the museum, which operates as a Crown corporation.

“Nobody takes this more seriously than minister Mark and I’m grateful that she is in place at this difficult time for not just the leadership, of course, at the museum but (for) all of those across British Columbia who look so fondly at the museum as a public asset, a real jewel for all British Columbians,” he said.

Horgan says a revitalization plan for the museum is underway as the province works with the federal government to understand the value of the facility’s archival materials.

“We need to have a respectful workplace, we need to make sure that it’s open for everyone to come, free of persecution or any hints of racism.”

Muzyka will serve as acting CEO until a replacement is found for Lohman, who was described by the board as “an internationally recognized expert in museums.”

It said “the board of directors acknowledges, with appreciation, his nine years of vision and service.”

Source: B.C. premier ‘alarmed’ by systemic racism allegations, promises anti-racism law

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Class-action lawsuit claims French police discriminate often

2021/01/28 Leave a comment

Indeed:

In a first for France, six nongovernmental organizations launched a class-action lawsuit Wednesday against the French government for alleged systemic discrimination by police officers carrying out identity checks.

The organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, contend that French police use racial profiling in ID checks, targeting Black people and people of Arab descent.

They were serving Prime Minister Jean Castex and France’s interior and justice ministers with formal legal notice of demands for concrete steps and deep law enforcement reforms to ensure that racial profiling does not determine who gets stopped by police.

The organizations, which also include the Open Society Justice Initiative and three French grassroots groups, plan to spell out the legal initiative at a news conference in Paris.

The issue of racial profiling by French police has been debated for years, including but not only the practice of officers performing identity checks on young people who are often Black or of Arab descent and live in impoverished housing projects.

Serving notice is the obligatory first step in a two-stage lawsuit process. The law gives French authorities four months to talk with the NGOs about meeting their demands. If the parties behind the lawsuit are left unsatisfied after that time, the case will go to court, according to one of the lawyers, Slim Ben Achour.

It’s the first class-action discrimination lawsuit based on or supposed ethnic origins in France. The NGO’s are employing a little-used 2016 French law that allows associations to take such a legal move.

“It’s revolutionary, because we’re going to speak for hundreds of thousands, even a million people.” Ben Achour told The Associated Press in a phone interview. The NGOs are pursuing the class action on behalf of racial minorities who are mostly second- or third-generation French citizens.

“The group is brown and Black,” Ben Achour said.

The four-month period for reaching a settlement could be prolonged if the talks are making progress, but if not, the NGOs will go to court, he said.

The abuse of identity checks has served for many in France as emblematic of broader alleged racism within police ranks, with critics claiming that misconduct has been left unchecked or whitewashed by authorities.

Video of a recent incident posted online drew a response from President Emmanuel Macron, who called racial profiling “unbearable.” Police representatives say officers themselves feel under attack when they show up in suburban housing projects. During a spate of confrontational incidents, officers became trapped and had fireworks and other objects thrown at them.

The NGOs are seeking reforms rather than monetary damages, especially changes in the law governing identity checks. The organizations argue the law is too broad and allows for no police accountability because the actions of officers involved cannot be traced, while the stopped individuals are left humiliated and sometimes angry.

Among other demands, the organizations want an end to the longstanding practice of gauging police performance by numbers of tickets issued or arrests made, arguing that the benchmarks can encourage baseless identity checks.

The lawsuit features some 50 witnesses, both police officers and people subjected to abusive checks, whose accounts are excerpted in the letters of notice. The NGO’s cite one unnamed person who spoke of undergoing multiple police checks every day for years.

A police officer posted in a tough Paris suburb who is not connected with the case told the AP that he is often subjected to ID checks when he is wearing civilian clothes.

“When I’m not in uniform, I’m a person of ,” said the officer, who asked to remain anonymous in keeping with police rules and due to the sensitive nature of the topic. Police need a legal basis for their actions, “but 80% of the time they do checks (based on) heads” — meaning how a person looks.

Omer Mas Capitolin, the head of Community House for Supportive Development, a grassroots NGO taking part in the legal action, called it a “mechanical reflex” for French police to stop non-whites, a practice he said is damaging to the person being checked and ultimately to relations between officers and the members of the public they are expected to protect.

“When you’re always checked, it lowers your self-esteem,” and you become a “second-class citizen,” Mas Capitolin said. The “victims are afraid to file complaints in this country even if they know what happened isn’t normal,” he said, because they fear fallout from police.

He credited the case of George Floyd, the Black American whose died last year in Minneapolis after a white police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck, with raising consciences and becoming a catalyst for change in France.

However, the NGOs make clear that they are not accusing individual police of being racist because “they act within a system that allowed these practices to spread and become installed,” the groups said in a joint document.

“It’s so much in the culture. They don’t ever think there’s a problem,” said Ben Achour, the lawyer.

Source: Class-action lawsuit claims French police discriminate often

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Knock down anti-Black racism in medicine, two powerhouse advocates tell health-care sector in new CMAJ article

2021/01/12 Leave a comment

More on process-type recommendations to identify approaches to address issues, many of which reflect social determinants of health:

When rapper John River went to a hospital emergency room in 2017 with shortness of breath and severe headaches, he was treated like he was faking his symptoms to get drugs. When he turned to social media for help, well-wishers told him how he and his family acted and dressed at the hospital would impact the kind of care he would receive. No hoodies, for instance. His mother tried to button a dress shirt on to him as he lay unconscious on a stretcher. He was eventually diagnosed with a spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid leak from a prior procedure.

For years, Black people have shared, with data scientists, governments, academics, journalists and each other, terrifying stories of not being believed in hospitals, of receiving substandard care, of feeling like they were left to die.

In this COVID-era, race-aggregated data showing Black people disproportionately impacted by the virus has rightly raised awareness and alarm over the impact of racism across systems leading to that outcome.

“The field of medicine can no longer deny or overlook the existence of systemic anti-Black racism in Canada and how it affects the health of Black people and communities,” write OmiSoore Dryden of Dalhousie University and Onye Nnorom from the University of Toronto. 

In a Canadian Medical Association Journal article released Monday, the two powerhouse experts in the field of anti-Black racism in medicine say the health-care system needs to focus on — and redress — not only the reasons that send Black Canadians to hospitals but how they’re treated when they get there. 

Despite protests against anti-Black racism this summer, despite the UN expressing concern in 2017 of the plight of Black Canadians, “the impression that we got is that many Canadian physicians did not think that anti-Black racism is a problem in Canada,” Nnorom told the Star. And that “most physicians do not have an understanding of how racism operates as a system such that some groups are disproportionately disadvantaged.” 

With this article, Dryden said, the authors aimed to “tell practitioners and clinicians that your patients are not just bodies in front of you. They come with experiences. One of the experiences your Black patients come with is anti-Black racism.” 

Dryden is the James R. Johnston (JRJ) Chair in Black Canadian Studies at Dalhousie University’s faculty of medicine. Nnorom is trained as a public health physician and a family physician and has published several articles in medicine.

About a year ago, they set up Canada’s Black Health Education Collaborative by bringing together a group of scholars of Critical Race Theory from across Canada and working on creating curriculum around how anti-Black racism affects health outcomes in medical schools.

The many manifestations of racism in society — being passed over for a job or a promotion, being treated with suspicion in public spaces, being denied homes to rent, being unduly disciplined in school — all boil down to one unspoken assumption: that the person in question is not credible because they are not innocent. An assumption we like to give the innocuous label of “implicit” bias, even though its consequences can be tragically explicit. 

“This article and the conversations many of us have been having is identifying that racism is not an anomaly, it’s an everyday experience,” Dryden said. 

When Black people go to the hospital in pain, they are profiled as drug seeking, she said. Or the assumption is they don’t feel pain at the same level. Or if they are given medication that they’re not compliant and won’t follow guidelines. 

In her many public talks to health and medical professionals, Dryden tells them, “If you have a patient that doesn’t return, instead of thinking they’re not compliant, you might want to start with, ‘Did something racist happen and how do I find out?’

Although modern science conclusively busts the myth that race has biological origins, medical stereotypes rely on the belief that Black people are a different genetic species of humans. 

“Yes, the human genome has been mapped,” Nnorom said. “Yes, we know a person’s postal code has more impact on their health than their genetic code but it is difficult to completely remove that type of thinking. The history of medicine and these genetic biological associations with race dates back centuries.” 

The first program of medical education began in Montreal about 20 years before the end of slavery in Canada, Dryden said. “So it began at a time when Black and Indigenous are enslaved and that becomes the continuing flavour of education in Canada.”

If studies show how African-Americans have higher rates of diabetes or hypertension, the medical approach is there’s something wrong with their genetics or their culture or their practices that needs to be fixed. 

“The way we’ve been traditionally taught in medicine is to pathologize the marginalized group.” Nnorom said. “We’ve been taught to assume there is something wrong with the group that has been marginalized as opposed to thinking there was something wrong with society to create the conditions in which those communities find themselves.

“The process (of learning), you’d almost have consider it an unlearning.”

To address racism, the authors say health-care professionals should acknowledge its existence first. “We can do this by listening to the voices of Black Canadians, patients and health care professionals who have been grappling with anti-Black racism for generations, and by engaging with the many communities that have made recommendations for meaningful change to address the problem,” they write.

What would listening look like? 

“That’s a very good question,” said Nnorom, because while organizations might engage in consultations with focus groups in different communities, “what ends up coming out of that is not what the community has recommended. That is not true listening.”

Hospital leaders, administrators and academics would have to take up hard, uncomfortable work of “actually looking at recommendations by Black communities, to hold town halls start, to have Black community members at the board — and not just with one person because that would be tokenism.” 

Said Dryden: “There’s always an excuse for why something isn’t anti-Black racism as opposed to sitting with it for a moment (and thinking) ‘If this is racism what should I be doing differently?’ And nobody asks themselves that question. That’s the thing we want them to ask themselves.” 

This article is intended as a building block in that journey towards change, Nnorom said. 

“So that we can see a Black patient can come into a hospital and be treated with dignity, where their pain is recognized and they receive respect and empathy and not be treated worse because of the colour of their skin.”

Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2021/01/11/knock-down-anti-black-racism-in-medicine-two-powerhouse-advocates-tell-health-care-sector-in-new-cmaj-article.html

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2020 brought ugly truths about inequity to the forefront — like how Ontario’s Medical Association still upholds structural racism

2021/01/09 Leave a comment

A bit of a meandering critique, ranging from the well-demonstrated disparities in health to the narrower focus on OMA fee structure for non-insured services. While one can argue the inequity aspects (like in so many areas, not convinced that this is necessarily structural racism:

2020 was an awakening in the ongoing struggle against inequity.

Race-based health inequities highlighted the persistence of structural racism in health care. The importance of diverse representation in medicine became glaringly obvious, and the need to address a status quo of inequality became more urgent. The Ontario Medical Association, a membership organization that ‘represents the political, clinical and economic interests’ of Ontario’s physicians’, from family doctors to specialists, is a powerful organization and a major government partner in administering health care. 

In response to the 2020 awakening, the OMA released a year end communication stating it is committed to enhancing “equity, diversity and inclusion across all facets of the organization” and to promoting those concepts “including their importance at the societal level.”

But this statement is contradicted by their own actions and policies of the last several years. 

Reconciliation, for example, is one of the most pressing matters of our time. Yet, in 2018, the OMA took a major step backward, as the Governing Council summarily defeated a motion submitted by the Ontario Medical Students Association requesting that OMA General Council Meetings open with an acknowledgment and reflection on relationships with Indigenous peoples in Canada. A shift in physician culture towards acknowledgment of Indigenous peoples rights is a fundamental step toward healing. Without this physicians will continue to operate in perpetual structures of racism and exclusion, and health care gaps will not close. 

The 2020 pandemic also revealed the intimate links between race, income and health. Research shows that 87 per cent of Indigenous adults in Toronto live below the Low Income Cut Off. Black, Indigenous and other People of Colour (BIPOC) people made up more than 83 per cent of first wave COVID infectionsin Toronto, and they continue to be over seven times more likely to contract COVID than White Torontonians. BIPOC communities are also more likely to live in multi-generational, inadequate or crowded housing. Overcrowded and unsafe factories, employment in health services or personal support or delivery jobs that ensure those with privilege can stay home, account for much of the high prevalence of COVID in these neighbourhoods.

The OMA continues to perpetuate rules and policies which disproportionately impact racialized communities. 

The OMA publishes the Physician’s Guide to Uninsured Services: a document that details fees that physicians can directly charge patients. Examples include transferring medical records, providing telephone advice, or phoning in prescriptions. 

This 52-page OMA compendium is a remarkably detailed catalogue on how to bill for every conceivable service at a rate equivalent to 2.31 times the value of the 2014 OHIP fee schedule or $411 per hour. The OMA allots exactly 10 lines to the issue of patients’ ability to pay for uninsured services.

Doctors have no training in assessing the ability of patients to pay. The vast majority of doctors have had no experience with living on incomes below the low income-cut off or poverty line. Those who have experienced such poverty left that status long ago. Yet these same doctors are supposed to judge a patient’s ability to pay — patients whose annual incomes are in many cases a twenty-fifth or less of the physician before whom they sit. Patients are compelled to plead poverty in a humiliating interaction with their physician.

Who are these patients who must engage in such unequal bargaining with their physicians? Again, they are disproportionately BIPOC, including immigrants and refugees, who are massively overrepresented in the lower income classes. The OMA’s billing guide is a classic example of structural racism precisely because its effects are felt most by BIPOC communities.

Human rights vernacular is empty talk if the result is entrenched bias and its consequent harm. The OMA creates the culture within which Ontario’s physicians operate. It must tackle head on its own discriminatory practices.

Philip B. Berger is an Associate Professor in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of TorontoSuzanne Shoush is a Black and Indigenous mother, physician and Indigenous Health Faculty Lead for the University of Toronto Department of Family and Community Medicine. Semir Bulle is the outgoing co-president of the Black Medical Students Association at the University of Toronto and co-founder of Doctors for Defunding Police. Follow him at @SemirBulle.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/01/07/2020-brought-ugly-truths-about-inequity-to-the-forefront-like-how-ontarios-medical-association-still-upholds-structural-racism.html

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Association of Justice Counsel files grievance against Canadian Human Rights Commission, amid ongoing complaints of racism, discrimination

2020/12/23 Leave a comment

Of note and to watch:

The Association of Justice Counsel filed a grievance against the Canadian Human Rights Commission last week on behalf of its Black and racialized members, and, according to a number of sources with information about the commission’s operations, they say there is ongoing systemic discrimination and a disproportionate dismissal of race-based complaints at the commission.

The AJC, which represents around 2,600 lawyers employed by the federal government who work for the Department of Justice, the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, and provide in-house legal services to various federal agencies, tribunals and courts across the country, also includes members who are lawyers with the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

The AJC says it reactivated its policy grievance on Dec. 17, which it previously filed with the Treasury Board on behalf of their Black and racialized members at the CHRC, in October, after employees raised issues of system racism with CHRC management and after CHRC Chief Commissioner Marie-Claude Landry issued a statement on June 2 in support of Black Lives Matters.

The AJC says Black and racialized employees took the CHRC chief commissioner up on her statement in support of Black Lives Matters and provided the CHRC with a list of recommended actions to address “the complaints process, practices, and operations as well as shared Black and racialized employees’ experiences,” but said the CHRC responded by conducting a “unilateral, non-inclusive investigative process.”

The policy grievance argues that a contract has been breached. Following the filing of a policy grievance and when the employer responds, the parties involved negotiate to understand if compensation is possible. The Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board administers the collective bargaining process and the adjudication of grievances and complaints for the federal public sector and parliamentary employees.

“Together, the AJC and other bargaining agents representing Black and racialized members at the CHRC, have been pressing the CHRC to revisit its plans to ensure meaningful collaboration, transparency, fairness, inclusivity, credibility and psychological health and safety in their approaches,” according to the AJC’s Dec. 17 statement. “While the AJC and other [bargaining agents] have been engaging with the CHRC over the past few months, it’s apparent that trust in management’s ability to appropriately deal with the challenges before them has been put to the test as management appears to have lost the trust of those Black and racialized employees who have come forward.”

The AJC originally filed the grievance relating to racism and systemic discrimination at the commission in October, according to David McNairn, president of the counsel.

“We asked for that policy grievance to be held in abeyance while we tried to work on this issue, and recently, we’ve decided that it’s appropriate to move ahead with that,” said Mr. McNairn in an interview with The Hill Times last week.

“That policy grievance, unless it’s resolved, it would end up going directly before the board,” said Mr. McNairn, who also said that the AJC has had discussions with the management of the CHRC and have communicated about a number of items which they believe need to be done to address the situation.

“It’s a very sad and tragic story where the Canadian institution which is entrusted with protecting Canadians from racism and discrimination is itself, apparently, a source of racism and discrimination,” said Mr. McNairn. “There cannot be a greater tragedy than that, in my view. Obviously the commission has an incredibly important leadership role in setting standards for eliminating racism and systemic discrimination and has a mandate to protect Canadians.”

“So it’s extremely difficult to understand, but we have members who are employees there who are raising these issues with us, and we obviously want to stand behind our members and bring about some sort of meaningful change,” said Mr. McNairn.

According to the AJC’s website, earlier this year, employees at the commission raised issues of systemic racism with CHRC management and sought the assistance of their unions.

“When the CHRC issued a statement in support of Black Lives Matters, Black and racialized employees took the chief commissioner up on her invitation in that statement and provided the CHRC with a list of recommended actions to address the complaints process, practices, and operations as well as shared Black and racialized employees’ experiences,” according to the AJC’s website. “The commission responded by conducting a unilateral, non-inclusive investigative processes involving outside parties without consulting employees or their bargaining agents.”

‘The CHRC needs to be reformed’

Billeh Hamud, a lawyer who has represented clients at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Divisional Court, the Federal Court of Canada, and the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, told The Hill Times that “as someone who has practiced in this area, [the CHRC] needs to be reformed.”

“Based on my experience, part of the problem with the commission’s complaint process is their application of the case law with respect to racial discrimination,” said Mr. Hamud. “The commission applies a stricter test of racial discrimination when reviewing complaints than the courts and tribunals. As a result, cases with merit are being rejected by the commission.”

“It’s always subtle,” said Mr. Hamud.

Mr. Hamud also said the current system is contrary to our adversarial system of justice in Canada and that specifically, complainants do not have direct access to a third party decision maker who has heard the evidence, the merits of the complaint and can make a decision.

“What’s happening with the commission right now is because you have people who do not understand the case law in terms of racial discrimination when it comes to employment, for example, and they’re making decisions [and] not referring it to the Tribunal when in most cases, they should,” said Mr. Hamud.

According to documents obtained by The Hill Times, which outline the complaints referred to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal by ground of discrimination from 2014 to 2020, 18 complaints were received from 2014-2017 on the grounds of race, with 56 referred between 2018-2020, for a total of 74.

Accepted complaints by grounds of discrimination from January 1, 2020 to November 11 2020, came to 261, with national/ethnic origin complaints coming in at 263.

Complaints referred to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal by grounds of discrimination between January 1, 2020, to November 11, 2020, came to 47. Complaints referred as a function of national/ethnic origin came in at 44.

The Hill Times requested an interview with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, a request which was originally granted with a scheduled discussion with Chief Commissioner Marie-Claude Landry shortly before spokesperson Véronique Robitaille informed our paper that “because of shifting circumstances around the litigation process, we are unable to provide an interview for you today.”

According to the CHRC’s statement, “more than two years ago, we began a commission-wide process of internal reflection to strengthen the commission and its processes. Like many organizations, we recognize that there is much work to do to fully achieve equality and inclusion. That is why the commission has been examining how racism may manifest itself within our organization and what steps might be needed to address it.”

“While we’re pleased that the Treasury Board Secretariat reported this year that the commission was the only public service organization of its size to meet or exceed the Government of Canada’s targets for representation of all employment equity groups, we are committed to doing even more. We recognize that the Employment Equity Act, which is the basis for the TBS evaluations, needs to be modernized, and the CHRC will continue to advocate for this,” according to Ms. Robitaille.

“We know that Indigenous, Black and other racialized people face many societal, institutional and structural barriers to equality. That is why work is underway to ensure that the views and perspectives of Indigenous, Black, and other racialized employees on barriers that may exist within the Commission are heard and addressed.”

Ms. Robitaille also told The Hill Times that regarding the commission’s complaints screening process, they have solicited advice from experts over the past year, including from racialized communities from across the country, on how we can improve our complaints processes.

“Based on this and staff feedback we are making significant changes to the complaints screening tools that we use. We have also brought in experts to train our employees and commissioners, including specialized training on handling of race complaints, and launched a project to collect disaggregated data on our race-based complaints, a key recommendation which has been put forward by staff and stakeholders,” said Ms. Robitaille. “Early indications are that these changes are having a positive impact on the treatment of race-based complaints.”

Current model of the commission as ‘gatekeeper’ of complaints should be eliminated, according to report

Former Supreme Court of Canada judge Gérard La Forest, who was appointed to the top court in January 1985 and retired in 1997, chaired a panel’s report called Promoting Equality: A New Vision in June 2000 that was tasked with reviewing the Canadian Human Rights Act, decades following its passage in 1977.

According to the Canadian Bar Association at the time, “the current model of the commission as a ‘gatekeeper’ of complaints should be eliminated.”

“Victims of discrimination should be able to pursue their complaints even if the Commission does not want to be involved. We suggest a model for individual complaints which gives less of a role to the Commission as an investigative body and more to the Tribunal as an adjudicative body. The Commission should be the first point of contact for a complainant, and the Commission should make a quick determination as to whether it wants to be involved,” according to the report.

Finally, according to the Coalition for Reform of the Ontario Human Rights Commission who were cited in the report, “the existing commission style model does not reflect this fundamental distinction between public and individual interests.”

“By forcing all individual complainants to pass through the gatekeeper, there is no opportunity to directly present evidence to a decision-maker with the power to issue an enforceable order. This model creates a system that is paternalistic, disempowering and ultimately discriminatory because the only people in Canada who are forced to go through the system are the ones who are already identified as disadvantaged,” according to the report.

Atong Ater, member of the Federal Black Employee Caucus’ (FBEC) core team, told The Hill Times that “given what we have been hearing from within the Commission, particularly over the past summer, we couldn’t necessarily, in good faith, continue to engage with them.”

Ms. Ater said they informed the commission that in September, they would be putting a pause on engagements until there was progress that adequately recognized and meaningfully addressed the concerns of their Black and other racialized employees that they were bringing forward.

The AJC’s resumption of the policy grievance comes on the heels of a proposed class-action lawsuit by 12 former and current Black federal public servants alleging that Black employees have been systematically excluded from advancement and subjected to discrimination within the government for decades.

The representative plaintiffs, who have or continue to work for a number of federal departments, are seeking $900-million in damages as well as a mandatory order to implement a Diversity and Promotional Plan for Black Public Service Employees related to the hiring and promotion of Black employees within the public service.

Source: Association of Justice Counsel files grievance against Canadian Human Rights Commission, amid ongoing complaints of racism, discrimination

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