The Senate
Motion to Strike a Special Committee on Systemic Racism--Debate Continued
June 23, 2020
Senators, I rise today to speak to Senator Bernard’s motion, as presented to us by Senator Lankin, to establish a special committee to study anti-black and anti-Indigenous systemic racism in Canada.
Systemic racism is pervasive in this country. I have listened with concern as so many of our colleagues have relayed their experiences with racism over the past several days and weeks, for example, Senator Moodie’s portrayal of life as a black person in Canada; Senator Omidvar’s account of double standards right here in the Senate; Senator Anderson’s account of living as an Indigenous Canadian and raising Indigenous children in a world where racism is a daily lived experience.
I appreciate the advice of the Cree elders that Senator LaBoucane-Benson shared with us last week. That anger, if properly directed, is a great gift.
I thank my colleagues for sharing their experiences and perspectives with the chamber. While this is a difficult topic, I am grateful for the opportunity to listen and to continue to expand my understanding of how racism manifests itself through our society.
What can or should those of us from non-racialized backgrounds do to fight systemic racism? Last week, our colleague, Senator Brian Francis, said publicly:
Indigenous, Black, and other racialized people cannot be expected to continually do the emotional labour of educating the wider public on the impact of systemic racism.
He went on to point out that non-racialized people must identify our privilege and the benefits that we have accrued at the expense of others. We must also do the work. I take that as a call to action for all of us and for all Canadians of goodwill.
I have spent my entire career in the research business, and research will play a vital role as we go forward. I note, especially over the past few weeks, expressions of opinion from some people wondering if systemic racism even exists or what it means, and expressions coming from those both with privilege, as well as from members of the general public.
Let me begin by putting some data, some facts, to the phenomenon of racism to add to the perspectives that we have heard.
According to the 2016 census, for example, black Canadians earn significantly less than non-racialized Canadians, regardless of how long their families have been in Canada. First-generation black Canadians earn about $13,000 less annually than immigrants who are not members of visible minorities, and third-generation black Canadians still earn $16,000 less than third-generation non-visible minorities. Black Canadians are nearly twice as likely as non-visible minorities to experience low incomes and to have higher unemployment levels.
These are just some examples of what systemic racism looks like in Canada, but these dynamics take root long before people enter the workforce. I was particularly struck by the results of a StatCan General Social Survey conducted in 2016, which found that fully 94% of black Canadian youth between the ages of 18 to 25 aspired to obtain a university degree, but only 60% thought that they would actually achieve it. In comparison, 82% of all other youth aspired to a university education, and almost all of them, 79%, felt they would achieve it.
Senators, research is often impersonal and detached, yet this finding speaks to me in particular about how racism can snuff out, block and stifle the aspirations of many motivated young people, just as Senator Moodie so poignantly described in the chamber last week.
Here are some other research findings that speak to systemic racism: Three years ago, my former colleagues at the Environics Institute launched the Black Experience Project in collaboration with Toronto community organizations, to identify issues in Toronto’s black community, which is Canada’s largest black community. Among their research findings from the large survey of the community are as follows: Two thirds of Toronto’s black residents reported experiencing unfair treatment because they are black. Here are a few examples: 59% said that others expected their work to be inferior; 56% reported being treated rudely; 54% reported being observed or followed while in a public place, all because they are black. That was the reason that they gave.
Experiences with police services were just as bleak. Over half of black Torontonians reported that they had been stopped in a public place by police, and among young men aged 25 to 44, the figure was 79%. Thirty-eight per cent of black Torontonians had been harassed or treated rudely by police. Among young black men, that figure was 60%.
Another international survey conducted for the Canadian Race Relations Foundation in 2019 found more of the same. The majority of black Canadians across the country, 54%, and over half, 53%, of Indigenous people have personally experienced discrimination due to their race or ethnicity from time to time or, in fact, regularly. Such experience is also shared and reported by significant numbers of South Asians, Chinese and those of other racialized groups.
The COVID crisis has only served to increase the discrimination toward Canadians of Chinese background. A survey conducted by the Angus Reid Institute last week and reported yesterday in the media, found that half of the respondents of Chinese background have been called names or insulted, and 43% report being threatened or intimidated with reasons associated with the pandemic.
These kinds of research findings, and others, speak clearly to the existence of racism in this country.
After quoting to you all these research findings, you might want to reach the conclusion that there is plenty of race-based data to answer all the questions we might have about racism in this country. Unfortunately, this is not the case. In their detailed recommendations on actions to be taken to fight racism, the Parliamentary Black Caucus identified serious data gaps and called on the federal government to immediately lead in the collection and stewardship of disaggregated data, race-based data on police intervention and public sector employment, and the racialization of poverty. To quote the Parliamentary Black Caucus, with respect to those missing numbers, “It is hard to change what one cannot measure.”
I support their calls to action. The collection of disaggregated data in many more areas of society is an important step toward developing inclusive social and economic policies.
I want to say that there is actually some good news on this front. Statistics Canada has beefed up its collection of race-based data considerably, with more changes to come. The census, of course, has collected disaggregated race data for many years, as have the annual General Social Surveys and other surveys conducted by StatsCan. An upcoming GSS will look at social identities and discrimination with disaggregated data, and a new division of Statistics Canada called the Centre for Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Statistics will be a hub for intersectional analysis.
It is vital that we collect data on gender, disabilities, ethnic origins, immigrant status, language and socio-economic measures to understand how racism intersects with other statuses. Beginning this summer, the mighty monthly Labour Force Survey is, in fact, going to add race-based measures, after 75 years, to all the measures of wages, labour force activity and all of the other statuses that are already collected in the Labour Force Survey.
I would say that Statistics Canada is definitely working on this area, but they still have more work to do. They still have to collect and disaggregate more of their data. That might be some of the good news, but for now the not-so-good news.
The COVID crisis in particular has exposed a serious lack of race-based data in public health, and we have heard the call for more of this data so frequently over these past three months. Much of this missing data, which is the so-called “admin data,” is the responsibility of the provinces — most, but not all. Most of the provinces have been very reluctant to collect this data, for whatever reasons they may have. This reluctance carries over into other areas, into education, social services and policing data.
This continued laissez-faire attitude with these sectors is to the detriment of all of us. We must work to change this situation, and I believe that the special committee especially will help keep up the pressure. As we have seen over the past few months, putting pressure on these organizations, the provinces and others to collect the data has actually resulted in some promises on their part to do so. We learned that we have to keep up the pressure, otherwise it’s going to go away; they won’t make the changes. Therefore, this committee is going to be very helpful for us to keep up the pressure in this area and others.
Colleagues, in conclusion, I support the motion introduced by Senator Lankin on behalf of Senator Bernard to establish a special committee on systemic anti-black and anti-Indigenous racism in Canada. This committee, I believe, is the best way to tackle many issues, not just issues related to data but many others that have been identified by black parliamentarians in their statement on anti-black racism and identified as well by our colleagues here in the chamber.
I look forward to studying the work of the special committee as it moves toward action to end systemic racism in its many forms in this country. Thank you.
I would like to take the adjournment of the debate.
I believe we have another senator who wishes to join the debate first.
Honourable senators, I rise today to speak in support of Motion No. 54, Senator Bernard and Senator Lankin’s motion to strike a Senate special committee on racism. I’m honoured to be doing this on the traditional unceded territories of the Algonquin Nation.
The Parliamentary Black Caucus issued a powerfully important statement last week which outline concrete actions it is asking government to undertake. Unfortunately, when Senator Mégie asked for permission for that statement to be tabled in the Senate last week, although clearly supported by the strong voices of the majority of our colleagues, permission was denied. I know many of us found that refusal to be both disappointing and disrespectful.
Our colleagues in the Senate Indigenous working group have come out in support of their Senate colleagues of African descent — Senators Bernard, Mégie, Moodie, Ravalia and Jaffer — who have been working hard as members of the Parliamentary Black Caucus and have come forward with this important motion. This effort to create a special committee, combined with the powerful emergency debate last week and the Committee of the Whole on racism planned for later this week are concrete actions our colleagues have spearheaded to guide and direct us to more actions leading to the results we all want to see.
So why do I and why should we all support this motion to strike this special committee to conduct a review of systemic racism in Canada, and identify priorities and recommendations for government action to combat anti-Indigenous racism, anti-black racism and systemic racism?
The first and obvious reason is that our colleagues with lived experience and expertise are asking us to. We should demonstrate our trust in them and we should follow their lead, just as we should follow the lead of their peers in the broader Canadian society.
Honourable colleagues, three years ago this month, having just completed some really tough cancer treatments, I was attending a Living Beyond Cancer session. Boy, that was a different time. One of the wise resource people at the session was a chaplain named David Maginley. He gave us two challenges. The first one was to make sure we were living the life we had worked so hard to have. And the second, which is the relevant point for this discussion, was to not waste the crisis.
Honourable colleagues, the crises caused by colonialism, discrimination, exploitation and the related racism have been with us for centuries. In fact, our mainstream society has been benefiting from these crises. Our country was built on these crises.
We have the Indian Act; land dispossession of the original peoples of this territory; disenfranchisement; we have thousands of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. We have the impacts of residential schools. We had racially segregated schools. We moved African Nova Scotians around with no respect for their tenancy rights. We relocated Inuit people to unfamiliar lands and left them to die. We have Indigenous people and Canadians of African descent populating our prisons in disproportionately high numbers. We have them targeted by police and some even killed or have died during wellness checks.
We have a whole variety of uneven social and economic outcomes for Indigenous people and Canadians of African descent. We had crises in Canada long before George Floyd was murdered by the Minneapolis Police and before Chantel Moore, Rodney Levi and Regis Korchinski-Paquet lost their lives and the recent mass Black Lives Matter protests brought millions of people out in their communities across Canada, in the U.S. and around the world.
But this current crisis intersecting with the public health crisis brought on by COVID-19 is a moment we should not waste. Our colleagues calling for the establishment of the Senate special committee on racism are telling us that the time is now. These recent crises have brought about a tipping point in collective consciousness, and we need to act before this moment is squandered.
In her Speech from the Throne opening this Forty-third Parliament, Governor General Julie Payette said:
. . . whether we are from here or chose to come and live here, we share the same desire. We wish to live freely and in peace and harmony. This quest is a bedrock of our nation and informs almost everything we do.
Your role in the democratic process is a privilege and a responsibility.
. . . we serve every single Canadian. Canadians of all genders, faiths, languages, customs or skin colours.
If we put our brains and smarts and altruistic capabilities together, we can do a lot of good. We can help improve the lives of people in our communities, diminish the gaps and inequities here and elsewhere . . . .
Colleagues, as senators, we have a responsibility to ensure that all people in Canada have opportunities to share in both shaping our country and enjoying the bounty that many of us take for granted. In order to achieve this, we must understand once and for all and find effective ways to fulfill the promise implicit in the statements black lives matter, Indigenous lives matter. We must listen. We must follow. We must insist on action, and we must hold ourselves and others accountable.
Senator Lankin and others have pointed out the abundance of excellent studies and reports that exist that are overflowing with well-formulated recommendations, calls to action, calls to justice, which have still not been brought into action. These will be central resources for the Senate special committee.
Our colleague Senator Mary Jane McCallum advised us in her letter dated June 18 that, “It is change, real change that we need. I do not feel that the racism faced by Indigenous peoples and the racism faced by the black community should be considered under one catch-all umbrella. Approaching racism with a pan-minority approach will only cause further pain.”
By the same token, it will be important to differentiate within each group as well. We know that from the Indigenous Languages Act we passed last year. While it was a positive step forward, it did not recognize the highly differentiated reality of the Inuit and their Inuktut language.
We know that the realities of African Nova Scotians living in the three historic rural settlements in my part of Nova Scotia live vastly different lives from the realities of the largely black immigrant populations of Montreal or Toronto. We must differentiate.
Ibram Kendi, Guggenheim fellow and founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University and author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, turns this conversation on the origins of racism and its remedies on their heads. He says:
Education, love and exemplary black people will not deliver America from racism. Racist ideas grow out of discriminatory policies, not the other way around.
Well, not everyone will agree with Mr. Kendi. I believe it isn’t either/or. Our colleague Senator Murray Sinclair, former Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, has been quoted as saying, “Education has gotten us into this mess, and education will get us out.”
However, Ibram Kendi goes on to say:
The goal is to identify inequalities, identify the policies that create and maintain those inequalities and propose correctives . . . .
He mentions six areas for those: criminal justice, education, economics, health, environment and politics. Kendi’s book makes the case that the actual foundation of racism is not ignorance and hate but rather self-interest, particularly economic, political and cultural. While Ibram Kendi is largely speaking about the foundations of anti-black racism in the U.S., there are certainly some relevant comparisons in Canada worthy of examining.
On a related point but with a rather different twist, let’s consider the story of a river. Picture the river, folks. Picture yourself standing on the edge of the Ottawa River out behind our old historic chamber on Parliament Hill. All of a sudden, a flailing, drowning child goes floating by. Without thinking, you jump in the river, pull the child to shore, and before you can recover, another child is in distress and comes floating by and you dive in and rescue her. Another child comes floating by and another and another. Eventually, hopefully, a wise person will ask, “Who keeps chucking these kids in the river?” And they will head upstream to find out.
This is a simple illustration employed by the Upstream institute for a healthy society, which recently joined forces with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. In the case of Canada, we need to ask ourselves whose babies are drowning in the river. They’re not my little pink-and-white middle-class ones. Why are those babies there and in such large numbers? Finally, what are we doing about it?
As we strike this special Senate committee on systemic racism, let’s make sure we don’t continue to suffer from what the institute calls downstream thinking. Rather, let’s help the mainstream look upstream. While we can’t ignore the downstream where we find far too many of our fellow racialized Canadians, let’s ask the committee to look at what urgent, smart policies and investments — remember Senator Omidvar made the important point about following the money — can be put in place upstream.
Honourable colleagues, as we allow ourselves to start to look past this pandemic lockdown period, our Prime Minister, other societal leaders and many Canadians are talking about building back better, building back greener and building back fairer.
Racism, with its many deadly manifestations in our society, is a national shame and can no longer be tolerated if we truly want to build Canada back better and fairer. Black Canadians, Indigenous peoples and other racialized Canadians are telling us they are tired of the status quo. They are tired of carrying the burden. They have had enough. Haven’t we as parliamentarians all had enough too?
Striking the Special Senate Committee on Systemic Racism with a robust mandate and populated with our capable colleagues is an important action I hope we can all get behind.
Moses Coady, the namesake of the institute I used to work at once said, “In a democracy people don’t sit in the economic and social bleachers; they all play the game.”
Honourable colleagues, let’s support the motion of Senator Lankin and Senator Bernard. Let’s make sure that once and for all we have everyone engaged in our democracy and benefiting fairly from it, no matter what colour their skin is or who their ancestors were. Let’s exercise our privilege and responsibility. Let’s not let more drowning babies continue to float downstream. Honourable senators, let’s not waste this crisis. Colleagues, let’s do the right thing. Thank you. Welalioq.
