More on diversity and minority representation in the entertainment industry:
And there is the hope—at the very least, a passionate desire—that the experience of a minority American has been universalized. The success of black-ish hints at that, as does the anecdotal experience of its cast. “I really love that we’ve brought family television back,” Ross said. “It’s a multigenerational comedy that makes people laugh and think all at the same time.”
Still, too, we may be far from fully realizing the idea of normalization—at least, to lend credence to Barris and Ross’s points, to the degree that “diversity” ceases to be a defining word in a conversation about one of TV’s best and most popular sitcoms.
A highlight, and perhaps the most incisive presence of the diversity panel, was actress Tichina Arnold, who, as she said, began acting at age 11 “during a time where there were glass ceilings everywhere.”
Mahoney, sitting next to her, laughed at the undersell: “Glass walls, glass floors, glass doors…”
But, now a star on Survivor’s Remorse, she’s been able to witness the progress and experience the immediacy of the change as it’s happening. And she has an interesting idea for what’s been behind the evolution.
“I thank God for social media,” she said. “I do. It could be a gift and a curse if not used correctly, but I think social media is one of the reasons why we’re all here on this stage, because social media has opened us up. It’s forced show business to listen, to pay attention to so many types of people and individuals out there.”
Mahoney is ready for the attention. And she’s ready to work for it.
“So there’s a line in the sand, and what my job is now is that I have to move that line in the sand,” she said. “And I have to walk in, and I have to confront people who are very comfortable in old, old ways of thinking.”
She paused.
“It’s exhausting,” she concluded. “It’s boring. But, as I often say, we’re built for it.”
By my count, of the seven members, four women, one indigenous person, no visible minorities. Will be interesting to see how this process works and the results it generates:
Members of the new advisory board nominated by the legal community include: Susan Ursel, a senior partner with a Toronto law firm who has been recognized for her support of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and two-spirited (LGBTT) communities in Canada; Jeff Hirsch, president of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada and partner with a Winnpeg law firm; Richard Jamieson Scott, a former chief justice of the Manitoba Court of Appeal and counsel, arbitrator and mediator at a Winnipeg law firm, and Camille Cameron, dean of the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University and Chair of the Canadian Council of Law Deans.
The Prime Minister said opening up the process helps reassure Canadians “that all members of the Supreme Court are both fully qualified and fully accountable to those they serve” across the country.
“The appointment of a Supreme Court justice is one of the most important decisions a Prime Minister makes. It is time we made that decision together.”
All candidates must be functionally bilingual, the government says.
The three members of the advisory board appointed by the Trudeau government include: Ms. Campbell, who served as prime minister in 1993 when she led the Progressive Conservative Party, former Northwest Territories premier Stephen Kakfwi and Lili-Anna Peresa, president of Centraide of Greater Montreal. Centraide is the Quebec presence of United Way Canada.
The government will mandate the advisory board to support the goal of a gender-balanced Supreme Court that also reflects Canada’s diverse society. With Justice Cromwell’s departure, the bench is equally split between men and woman and so a new ninth judge will tilt the balance one way or another.
“A diverse bench brings different and valuable perspectives to the decision-making process, whether informed by gender, ethnicity, personal history, or the myriad other things that make us who we are,” Mr. Trudeau wrote.
One day when Penny Collenette was director of appointments for Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, her executive assistant slunk into her office clutching a list. “You’re not going to like this,” she said. Collenette looked at it: 18 people recommended for an advisory group on a sensitive public policy issue. All of them were men.
Before the Liberal government was elected in 1993, they made a campaign promise to appoint more women. When they took office, Collenette asked to see the numbers: of about 3,000 people appointed by governor-in-council — deputy ministers, heads of agencies, Crown corporations, ambassadors, judges, returning officers and commission members — women made up between 26 and 29 per cent. Over the first year or so, Collenette kept an eye on that number like it was a stock ticker. With each list of proposed names, the proportion of women nudged upward, bit by bit.
She knew what this list of 18 men was going to do to the progress they’d made. She had a good relationship with the minister in question — even years later, she won’t say which one — so she called him up to say his department needed to do better. He whined a little, but three weeks later produced a new list: nearly half were women, and a few were Indigenous women, too. By the time Collenette left in 1997, the proportion of women in those posts had reached 39 per cent. “In a way, I suppose it was just naïveté,” she says. “We said we were going to do it, so I thought I guess we’d better do it. And of course, personally I wanted to.”
Two decades on, lagging progress — the ranks of women in top government positions is now lower than when Collenette left — has spurred a raft of highly visible attempts to rebalance the scales in Canadian politics and public service. The blunt, by-the-numbers approach of affirmative action is an imperfect and sometimes controversial way to move the ball forward, but — particularly in politics — it may be the only way to upend the entrenched systems that favour men and overlook women. “That we’re still so far behind on this one suggests there are still some really pernicious ideas about women in politics,” says Melanee Thomas, a professor of political science at the University of Calgary. A large and growing number of countries employ gender quotas in politics, and many have seen dramatic improvements in representation as a result. Canada is well behind, and the country’s ranking on gender equity has been slipping for years. The major roadblock is also where the clearest solution lies: with political parties and nominations. “If parties demanded that this would be different, it would be different,” Thomas says.
Publicis Groupe SA put the chairman of its Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency on leave after he was quoted dismissing the debate on gender bias as “over.”
In a wide-ranging interview with Business Insider published Friday, Saatchi & Saatchi Executive Chairman Kevin Roberts said he doesn’t spend “any time” on gender issues at his agency, saying the issue is “way worse” in sectors such as financial services, where there are “problems left, right, and centre.”
“It is for the gravity of these statements that Kevin Roberts has been asked to take a leave of absence from Publicis Groupe effective immediately,” Publicis Chief Executive Officer Maurice Lévy said Saturday in a statement. “It will ultimately be the Publicis Groupe Supervisory Board’s duty to further evaluate his standing.”
Roberts’s remarks don’t uphold the no-tolerance policy toward behaviour or commentary in the “spirit of Publicis Groupe and its celebration of difference,” according to the statement. “Promoting gender equality starts at the top, and the Groupe will not tolerate anyone speaking for our organization who does not value the importance of inclusion,” Publicis said in the statement, which also was released internally to employees.
Publicis is a multinational advertising and public relations firm based in Paris. It has owned Saatchi & Saatchi since 2000.
Roberts, 66, didn’t respond to an email sent to his work address. Prior to becoming chairman, Roberts served as CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi from 1997 until 2014. A citizen of New Zealand, he was born in the north of England, according to his biography on Saatchi & Saatchi’s website.
Roberts’ views “are not mine, and nor are they the position of the agency,” Robert Senior, worldwide CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, said in a statement. He said he was proud that 65 per cent of the agency’s staff was female, including women in senior leadership roles across the business.
Levy, who is 74 years old, added: “Diversity & inclusion are business imperatives on which Publicis Groupe will not negotiate. While fostering a work environment that is inclusive of all talent is a collective responsibility, it is leadership’s job to nurture the career aspirations and goals of all our talent.”
A study released by the Race Discrimination Commissioner shows senior leaders in Australia remain overwhelmingly Anglo-Celtic or European in heritage.
It found, out of 201 chief executives at ASX 200 companies, only 10 were of non-Anglo-Celtic, non-European heritage.
None had an Indigenous background.
In federal parliament and the public service and among university chancellors, cultural diversity was also found to be dramatically under-represented.
The report’s author, University of Sydney Business School dean Greg Whitwell, says bias and discrimination on selection committees remains a barrier to equal opportunity.
“The tendency is to have a bias towards choosing people whom you think are ‘just like us,’ who have a similar background, a similar attitude, just a similar sense of humour, a similar sense of looking at the world.”
Professor Whitwell says the prevailing belief that leaders should be dominant and aggressive is another roadblock.
“In a sense, you can’t win. If you’re the stereotypical quiet, respectful Asian, then you’re damned, because you’re too quiet, you’re too respectful. But if you’re too aggressive, speaking loudly, you’re forthright, then you’re violating the stereotype, which, in turn, leads the selection committee to think negatively towards you.”
Australia Post and Optus are among the few Top 200 companies in Australia to have appointed culturally diverse leaders.
DAWN, an organisation that advocates for diverse leadership, says there is a pool of diverse talent ready to utilise.
Chief executive officer Dai Le says organisations need to look into how to harness it.
“I think we need to look at quality. I think we need to look at capability. Because we just cannot have just one group of people on boards, because there’s no diversity of thought, no diversity of perspective.”
The study calls for senior leaders to make it their personal mission to advance cultural diversity and for organisations to set diversity targets and gather data to track their progress.
Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane says Australia needs to be honest with itself and recognise it still has work to do to be truly inclusive.
The change from making Canadian citizenship a requirement to a preference brings the RCMP in line with the overall public service, although this change is unlikely to make much of a difference to recruitment.
As noted in earlier posts and in the above chart, the RCMP diversity numbers are poor:
The Mounted Police Professional Association of Canada (MPPAC) said Sunday management has caved in to political correctness and the “knee jerk” changes amount to lowering standards.
“Essentially we face operational security issues as well as serious repercussions in service delivery if we hire people to meet political vs. operational criteria,” the association said in a statement through spokesman Rob Creasser.
On the issue of allowing permanent residents to apply to become Mounties, the association asked, “As a Canadian icon, shouldn’t the national police be Canadian?”
Internal records obtained by the National Post through access-to-information legislation show when the force announced the changes in May, officials anticipated questions over whether hiring non-citizens could affect the RCMP’s image and “what the RCMP represents.”
The RCMP’s proposed response says fewer young people are interested in policing careers and the force is struggling to attract “not only applicants, but also diverse applicants.”
Allowing permanent residents to apply would improve diversity and help the force deliver “culturally sensitive policing.”
The documents note the force’s senior executive committee has set recruitment targets of 30 per cent women, 20 per cent visible minorities and 10 per cent aboriginal.
Still, “RCMP recruiting standards remain very high and we continue to seek to attract the most qualified applicants from all backgrounds,” according to the documents.
The RCMP has a proud tradition as a national symbol of Canada, and that will continue
“The RCMP has a proud tradition as a national symbol of Canada, and that will continue. This change will also directly contribute to the RCMP’s commitment to ensure a workforce that is representative of Canada.”
Despite the new measures, the RCMP will still give priority to applicants who are Canadians citizens.
Permanent residents must have lived in Canada for at least 10 years, but if hired, they will be not be pressured to become citizens as that is a “personal choice.”
The force is also exempting more people from having to take the entrance exam, a test designed to gauge aptitude for police work.
University graduates have been exempt since June 2015. Now, they are being joined by people with two-year college diplomas.
In a further streamlining of initial screening, applicants need not prove they are physically fit. All physical testing now takes place during the 26-week program at the RCMP’s cadet training academy.
These changes were adopted in response to complaints the application process was “too long, inflexible and outdated,” the RCMP says.
Sgt. Brian Sauvé, co-chairman of the National Police Federation (NPF), another association representing some Mounties, said Sunday while the federation does not have a problem with opening applications to permanent residents — this will help the force represent Canada’s “blend of great people” — it has serious concerns with the other changes.
All applicants should undergo aptitude and fitness evaluations before joining the training academy, he said. Without them, the force runs the risk of more people getting injured during training, as well as higher attrition rates later as recruits realize policing is not for them.
But I think for most advocates of greater diversity on the bench and public and private institutions more generally, the fundamental purpose is to encourage a greater diversity of life experiences and views to inform and improve decision-making.
We all have our implicit biases and assumptions. Judges are no exception, even if their training and decision-making (“slow thinking” to use Kahneman’s phrase) are designed to help them be more mindful of these biases.
It is not simply assuming that female, visible minority and indigenous judges will necessarily make different decisions than male, non-visible minority or non-indigenous judges, but that their different backgrounds may provide a different perspective to interpreting the law.
Moreover, the legitimacy of public institutions requires a reasonable correlation between the population and their representation in these institutions.
How would Richarz feel if the numbers were reversed with only 2.1 percent of federal judges being white?
So while I fully agree with Richarz that improved judicial diversity is not a panacea for over-representation in prison or other similar issues, this does not undermine the overall case for diversity:
A recent report by Policy Options magazine reveals that indigenous and minority representation on Canada’s judiciary registers in the low single digits. This has led to the predictable hue and cry over a “judiciary of whiteness” from assorted legal analysts cum race-baiters. The real problem, however, is not with a lack of minority representation on the bench, but with the patronizing and divisive assumption that having more minority judges will serve as a sort of panacea for certain racial groups’ over-representation in prison. The clamour for more minority appointments to the bench is simply a smokescreen for pushing broader political ends that will ultimately do nothing for the communities it purports to help.
There are a number of troubling assumptions underlying the contention that greater minority representation on the bench will result in more positive outcomes for minority defendants. The first seems to take as a given that, say, an African-Canadian judge will cut a black defendant slack based not on the law, nor on the facts of the case, nor on the judge’s legal experience, but on nothing more than a sense of racial solidarity. This would be unacceptable in any other contexts. A male judge acquitting a male defendant of sexual assault based on a wink-wink, nudge-nudge “you know how it is” would raise immeasurable howls of protest.
Such an approach also unfairly reduces minority judges to just that, a minority judge. Becoming a judge is no easy task. Never mind the long hours at law school, passing the bar exams, spending a decade or more as a practising lawyer and earning the recommendation of one’s peers; all that is thrown out the window when one is simply reduced to “the Asian judge” or “the black female judge.” Perhaps for activist lawyers who have built careers on sowing racial divisions such labels do not matter, but for minority lawyers simply wanting to work and be treated no differently from their white colleagues, being reduced to a mere token is undoubtedly patronizing and unfair.
Adding to this is the unfair denigration of the thousands of judges serving across Canada. While it is certainly fair to note that the judiciary is somewhat “male, pale and stale,” it is quite another to conclude based on that that the judiciary is riddled with closet racists, homophobes and misogynists as a result.
None of this matters, of course, to activists who would simply reduce the legal profession and judiciary to its constituent elements of race and sex. Their end game, however, is not about greater equality or fairness or whatever other trendy legal cause célèbre arises; it is about their own power, self-aggrandizement and profit. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but also the TV face time and lucrative government contracts.
Judges are not the victims in this instance. For better or for worse, they have largely insulated themselves from the slings and arrows of the rabble-rousers and society generally. Who suffers most is the communities activists purport to help. Underlying causes of criminal overrepresentation in black and indigenous communities are overlooked in favour of sexier, more profitable Band-Aid solutions.
It is an unfortunate trend among progressive organizations in which political opportunism trumps all. In the United States, the leading cause of death among African-Americans aged 15-34 is homicide, according to the Centre for Disease Control. Among all African-American homicide victims, 90 per cent are killed by other blacks. Last weekend, 11 people in Chicago — all black — were shot and killed, yet Black Lives Matters was elsewhere, disrupting yuppie food festivals and clambering for airtime on CNN. This is a crisis, and people are dying. The solutions will be complex and never complete, but surely a more diverse bench isn’t the first place the hard work should start.
Ultimately, if activists want to help their communities, they must focus less on cheap agitation and political stunts, and more on actually supporting those in need. There is no doubt room to improve our judicial system, but tokenizing those serving in it is not the way to do it. Promoting and sponsoring education, work training opportunities and self-respect, rather than treating communities as hapless minorities in need of a Svengali-like saviour, are key. Perhaps it means less screen time on the TV talk shops, but activists’ political opportunism must take a back seat to actually serving their communities.
Interesting comment about the small ‘pipeline’ of potential visible minority and Indigenous judges bequeathed by the previous government (for my analysis of judicial and other diversity, see my free download in iPad/Mac version (iBooks) and Windows (pdf) Version)::
In Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first chance to name a judge to the Supreme Court of Canada, the search for diversity is bumping up against the reality of limited choices – raising the odds that a government that chose just three white males in its first 15 judicial appointments will pick one for the country’s most powerful court.
Mr. Trudeau has an opportunity to make a historic mark. If he names a woman for the job that comes open in September, he would give the court the first female majority in its 141-year history. If he names a member of a visible minority or an indigenous judge, that, too, would be a first for the court.
His Liberal government has left little doubt that it would like to find a well-qualified candidate from one of those groups.
“If it’s possible, they’re going to give it to a female, bilingual, visible minority – if they can find that person,” a Liberal party insider said.
But the search is proving to be a challenge. The opening comes with the upcoming retirement of Justice Thomas Cromwell of Nova Scotia and convention dictates that his successor must come from Atlantic Canada. The Prime Minister’s insistence that new appointees to the country’s highest court be functionally bilingual limits his choices further.
And there are no obvious bilingual stars among women on the region’s appeal courts (the most frequent source of Supreme Court judges) and in its law firms, more than a dozen legal observers in Atlantic Canada said in interviews. As for visible minority or indigenous judges, the pipeline was left largely empty by the former Conservative government.
And so Mr. Trudeau’s attention may yet turn to white males. Among the leading candidates in that category are Justice Marc Richard of the New Brunswick Court of Appeal and Chief Justice Michael MacDonald of the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal.
The above chart captures the diversity of all 38 Liberal government head of mission appointments in 2016 to date with respect to all appointments as well as those that are classified at the ADM level (EX4-5):
The Liberal government cleaned diplomatic house on Tuesday, announcing the appointment of 26 new ambassadors, high commissioners and consuls general from Havana to Tel Aviv. The list is heavy on foreign service experience, short on overtly political appointments and pristinely gender balanced. In a statement, Global Affairs Canada said the recalls and new postings “ensure its diplomatic leaders represent a wide diversity of Canadians.”
Ferry de Kerckhove, former high commissioner in Pakistan and ambassador to both Indonesia and Egypt over a long career in the foreign service, said the appointments signal a conscientious shift in approach for Justin Trudeau’s government. “We’re back to what I would call normalcy in diplomatic appointments,” he says. “It confirms the Prime Minister’s early statement about giving back to the foreign service its role in representing Canada abroad, and also giving back its ability to actually do their job, which is to report, comment and provide advice.”
Tuesday morning started off with a big shuffle as 26 new diplomatic appointments were announced, some replacing political appointments made under the previous Tory government.
As it did with its last shuffle, the department included a statement at the top of the list of appointments stating the government’s “commitment to ensure its diplomatic leaders represent a wide diversity of Canadians and include a greater gender representation.”
While the appointments include 13 men and 13 women, the overwhelming majority of heads of mission being replaced are men. Only four female ambassadors have been rotated out, compared to the 22 men.
A few of the new appointments are simply rotations from ambassadorial positions in other countries, while a few brand new political appointees have been added to the heads of mission team.
Patrick Martin’s astute analysis of the postings to the Mid-East:
Israel has been watching for evidence of a shift since Canada’s Liberals won the October election. Within hours of being sworn in, Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion announced that Canada will strive for a more balanced policy in the Middle East, one that includes reaching out to “other legitimate partners in the region” besides Israel.
He even described Canada’s role as being that of an “honest broker” – no words make Israeli leaders shudder more than those two.
Stephen Harper’s government was very good to Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu’s government knew it had a staunch supporter in Canadian Ambassador Vivian Bercovici. It also knew the next Canadian representative could not be so one-sided.
But in Deborah Lyons, whose name as the ambassador-designate leaked two months ago, the Israelis are being mollified by the appointment of a fair-minded career diplomat of substantial seniority. Ms. Lyons, most recently, has been Canada’s ambassador to Afghanistan, a posting that gives her credibility in conflict zones. But prior to that is where her résumé gets really interesting.
She served as deputy head of mission in Washington, as chief strategy officer of the Department of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa and as a trade counsellor for high-tech industries in Tokyo. Few words give Israelis goosebumps more quickly than “high-tech.”
Does this high-level appointment reframe Canada’s relationship with Israel and the Middle East? Perhaps, but it depends on what policy changes follow the appointment.
The departure of Bruno Saccomani as Canadian ambassador to Jordan will be welcomed by those Jordanians who care about such things. The Royal Hashemite Court grimaced at the appointment of Mr. Harper’s former head of security to lead Canada’s mission in Amman.
Mr. Saccomani lacked the experience of a foreign service officer, but also lacked the ear of the Canadian prime minister, which would have compensated for his not being a diplomat.
In Peter MacDougall, the Jordanians are getting an upgrade. Mr. MacDougall’s expertise is in refugees and in setting standards for admission to Canada – two very valuable traits in a country hosting nearly two million Syrian refugees and the place from which Canada chooses those it will allow entry.
The change of ambassadors in the United Arab Emirates is about equal in quality – both the outgoing Arif Lalani and the incoming Masud Husain are senior officials with lots of expertise and experience.
Which is a good thing, because the Gulf countries matter more than ever – with tensions over Iran, Syria and Yemen, and concern over the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
Former Clerk and High Commissioner to London on the balance of skills that career and political backgrounds bring to appointments:
After several years watching appointments, I realized that political appointees do these jobs differently. Each person brings different strengths and skills to the job.
David MacNaughton and Gary Doer before him have a strength as Canadian Ambassador to Washington that most other ambassadors do not. They are seen as well-connected and understand politics. When they speak to American political or business leaders they know they speak with the PM’s voice. That is remarkably valuable in doing the job.
When I met political, cultural and business leaders in the U.K. and they heard I had been Secretary to Cabinet, they took me more seriously (more than I deserved to be taken). When we want to be taken seriously at the UN, or in Washington, London and Paris, then the person representing Canada may best be a career diplomat schooled in the intricacies of diplomacy, or a career public servant knowledgeable and experienced in the key issues of the portfolio, or a “political” appointee who has access to the prime minister. It depends.
However, there can be too many political appointees. To run a career foreign service we need to have senior offices available for the careerists to aspire to. However, that there are political appointees is not a bad thing.
The appointments announced Tuesday should be judged on the quality of the people and not on whether they helped get the Prime Minister elected. Every prime minister has appointed former ministers, party apparatchiks, and business people, career public servants as well as career diplomats to the rank of Ambassador or High Commissioner. They should be judged on their talents, what they bring to the job and ultimately on what they accomplish.
I like to think that because I had been a senior public servant with access, I added value to representing Canada that was more than many others could do. My predecessors each brought different strengths to the job and did it differently, not better or worse.
All those Ambassadors and High Commissioners announced Tuesday will do their best to represent Canada well. Many of them will do a very good job and accomplish great things. We should wish them all well.
A study showing a dearth of minority judges in Canada has advocates suggesting the country must seize a unique opportunity to increase racial diversity in a “judiciary of whiteness.”
“After many years of saying this is an important issue, it’s very disappointing to see how low the numbers are,” said Naiomi Metallic, a 35-year-old Mi’kmaq woman who is the chair of aboriginal law and policy at Dalhousie University.
Naiomi W. Metallic, an associate lawyer at Burchells LLP, is seen in Halifax on Tuesday, June 14, 2016. Metallic, a Mi’kmaq who is the chair of aboriginal law and policy at Dalhousie University, says both the provincial governments and Ottawa need to accelerate the process to establish a more diverse judiciary. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan
A May report in the online version of Policy Options magazine estimates just one per cent of Canada’s 2,160 judges in the provincial superior and lower courts are aboriginal, while three per cent are racial minorities.
Andrew Griffith, a former director general of Citizenship and Multiculturalism and author of the article, says he’s hopeful the Liberal government will follow up on promises of reforms, but he adds, “at the current level, there’s an obvious gap.”
His study was a laborious task of poring through hundreds of biographies to create a “reasonable picture” of judicial diversity, as neither the federal Office of the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs nor most provinces keep statistics.
“It’s a judiciary of whiteness,” said Metallic, who is also a member of a Nova Scotia Bar Society committee trying to address racial issues in the profession, in an interview.
“Powerful institutions ought to reflect the societies they serve.”
Last month, the Trudeau government included an aboriginal judge and an Asian Canadian among federal 15 appointments, and Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould has made a general commitment to increase diversity in the judiciary.
But Metallic — who graduated from the Indigenous Blacks and Mi’kmaq program at Dalhousie University over a decade ago — said she and other advocates will be watching carefully over the next year, with more than 41 vacancies currently open among federally appointed positions, and about 40 provincial positions open across the country. There are also openings in the country’s Federal Court and the Supreme Court of Canada.
Several provinces declined to provide estimates on the number of vacant judgeships.
Marilyn Poitras, a lawyer in Saskatoon who is Metis and a professor at the College of Law at the University of Saskatchewan, said having only two indigenous judges out of 101 judges in a province where 16 per cent of the population is aboriginal is unacceptable.
The country is losing out on the opportunity to gain from Indigenous perspectives on everything from sentencing to the factors that lead to crime, she said.
“When you start to incorporate Indigenous thinking into the justice model, you start talking a lot more about preventative measures and that’s where we should be taking things,” she said in an interview.
Both Poitras and Metallic point to a growing pool of minority graduates to draw from. For example, Dalhousie has graduated 175 black and aboriginal lawyers through a specialized program over the two decades — creating a pool of potential applicants for Nova Scotia’s five upcoming positions.
Griffith found that in the lower courts — where the bulk of the child welfare and criminal justice cases are heard — there were only 52 visible minority judges and 19 indigenous judges among the 1,132 judges.
In Quebec, Griffith noted three visible minority judges out of more than 500, despite bar society figures showing over 1,800 of its roughly 25,000 lawyers identify themselves as being from visible minority groups. The province said it doesn’t keep figures.
In Ontario, one of the few provinces where the judicial advisory body keeps figures on the lower court appointments, there were 24 visible minority judges out of 334 judges, even though one quarter of the province’s overall population identifies as a visible minority.
And in Nova Scotia, where Metallic practises, there are four non-white lawyers who made it to the bench — two blacks, one person of Sri Lankan descent and a Chinese-Canadian — and two indigenous judges, out 99 judges.
Robert Wright, a black social worker, says the figures should be higher in a province where the criminal justice sees an over representation of black and aboriginal accused, and child welfare cases frequently require sensitivity to cultural difference.
Wright, who was a civilian representative on the province’s judicial advisory committee, says black candidates were proposed in the past decade, but weren’t chosen.
Then, in 2009 the province amended guidelines on appointments, calling for 15 years of minimum practice — which dramatically reduced the potential list of applicants.
Like Metallic, Wright is hoping for change over the next year.
“The core issues of today include unrepresented litigants, an over-representation of aboriginal and black accused, a recognition of historical racial discrimination in the courts. These things must be perceived as the most pressing issues in jurisprudence in Canada today,” he said.
“Is the court we currently have tooled to address those issues? The answer that comes back is ‘No.'”
Multicultural Meanderings 