Article Archives - Page 15 of 36 - Institute for Canadian Citizenship

For the last six months many Canadians have struggled through the effects of widespread shutdowns and isolation at home. Our most marginalized citizens — including BIPOC, new immigrants, and low-income Canadians — have been especially hard hit.

We spoke with the 26th governor general of Canada and ICC co-founder, The Rt. Hon. Adrienne Clarkson, to discuss the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on Canadians, as well as the rise of discrimination and misinformation in the wake of the pandemic.

As a former refugee, Madame Clarkson offers her perspective on why Canada needs to reaffirm its commitment to immigration and refugee needs even during the pandemic.

Sejla Rizvic: Since the pandemic began, many long-standing social issues have come to the fore. What is your perspective on some of the discrimination that’s arisen since the pandemic, particularly against Asian Canadians and the recent Black Lives Matter protests?
Adrienne Clarkson: I think what the Black Lives Matter protests are telling us is that we can’t keep saying, “Okay, let’s try to make things nice, little by little.” We really have to buckle down and say there is systemic racism — not that every single police person or every single person in authority in a certain place is a racist, but that the system, which they represent, was based on a racist model: that white people are better than anybody else. That’s systemic racism, the colonial system in which we all live in, and that has to end now.

I was a young person at the time of the civil rights movements in the 1960s. It’s now about 60 years later and it has not unfolded as it should have. We have to take some really drastic action. And that’s where my point of view has perhaps changed in that I now feel that we must take very direct action to get a quota of Black people onto boards of organizations and into structural management. We can’t wait anymore. The inequality is too great and the human suffering is too great.

In terms of anti-Asian sentiment, I think it’s most unfortunate that people think that Chinese people are to blame for COVID-19. Of course it’s a result of total ignorance, bigotry, and hatred — especially seen south of the border, spewed from the highest office in the land. And that is disgusting, reprehensible, and totally unjustified. I read the stories about people of Chinese descent in Vancouver, where there is a very sizable and visible community, who are Canadian and who are being discriminated against. Asian Canadians are actually being attacked or spat upon. It’s absolutely dreadful.

As a former CBC journalist, what’s your take on the alarming trend of misinformation we’ve seen surrounding COVID-19? Is it comparable to anything that you saw during your time as a journalist?
No, and I’d say that is because of social media. Now anybody can get online and say whatever they want. And when you have the leader of the nation next to you spreading the misinformation himself — saying nonsensical and frightening things, even lying that COVID-19 is just going to go away — then it’s not hard to understand why the misinformation spreads so fast. Misinformation has just multiplied: it goes on social media and people end up listening to things that have no basis in facts.

Another issue that we’ve talked about in our series is the impact that the pandemic has had on refugees and new immigrants to Canada. I know that you’re a refugee yourself, and actually, so am I — my family came here from Bosnia in 1995. Global refugee resettlement was paused during COVID-19, but there is still an ongoing refugee crisis. What responsibility do you think governments have to not forget about refugees during this time?
I think this is the time to really be thinking about refugees and about taking in more people. I’m very, very adamant about that. I read recently that immigration will be down by at least 30 per cent this year because of COVID-19. That’s terrifying because we need immigrants, we need refugees.

We know from all the statistics that after 2030 we will have no growth in our population except by immigration. We are not having enough children in order to do the things we need to do to keep up our pensions, to keep our universal health care, and so we need immigrants. We need people who came here, like you 25 years ago, probably little, with your parents. Right?

I’m self interested, perhaps, because I was a refugee and I was taken in. It’s not without difficulties — nothing was gold-paved for us in any way, shape, or form. But Canada is a country where if you wanted to live your life, bring up your children, and you had lost everything somewhere else, you can do that. And if we can’t do that because there’s a pandemic, this is a real problem. I think we have to then make up for it as soon as possible after we come out of lockdown.

This series is being sent out to ICC’s network of new and recent immigrants to Canada. Obviously, this is a very strange and difficult time to be arriving in the country. What kind of message do you have to give new immigrants?
Well, if you’re just arriving now, this is not the way we always are [laughs]. We would be welcoming you with smiles — you can’t see a smile through a mask — we would be trying to help you.

Some people who arrive are sponsored by a social group, a church group, or a synagogue group or whatever, and my own parish church has always adopted a family. It takes about six or seven families to look after one family that comes because they have a lot of needs when they first arrive because they have to set up an apartment, the children have to go to school. We can do little things, too, like getting them skates to go to the skate rink. All of these are personal citizen touches which we have always done so well in Canada.

The world is a terrifying place and people are thrown out of their homes for no reason, but Canada gives people another chance. I always say that immigration, even without very much, is a chance to be transformed; you’re not going to be the same person that you were even if you had stayed in your own country. Canada is a place for second chances and I think that’s what all of us who have been refugees or immigrants feel about Canada, even if we don’t say it in so many words, that this is a place that gave us the ability to become something else and even more than what we could have been had we stayed in the country where we were born.

I’m interested in looking to the future now and asking what the world might look like in 20 if we’ve handled this crisis in the right way. What lessons should we be implementing now to make that possible in 20 years?
I wish I had that foresight. I’ve always been wrong in anything I predicted would happen [laughs]. What I want to do is to continue to defend refugees and to take in as many as we possibly can, welcoming immigrants and refugees throughout the country, not just in large centers.

We must welcome the people who are coming now, the way we did or the way our grandparents came — starting with nothing but only their hopes — coming to a country that has a great parliamentary structure, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to move anywhere, anti-hate laws. We need people from all over the world because we can transform them into Canadians.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Physical limitations have accelerated the shift to digital formats, and yet, developing ties with local communities seems more important than ever. As the arts and culture sector continues to focus on these two areas, we look to trailblazers like Indigitization for inspiration.

Indigitization is a program that helps build capacity to digitize and sustain Indigenous knowledge, within Indigenous communities. It is a collaborative initiative between BC Indigenous groups, and academic partners including the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC).

Indigitization began in 2012, and over the past eight years, the multidisciplinary team has developed culturally appropriate access protocols and policies, championed accessible toolkits, and created a community-responsive digitization grant for BC First Nations community knowledge. Indigitization incorporates feedback to continuously adapt its work and approaches participants as partners, convened in 2016 at the Indigitization Futures Forum.

We spoke to Gerry Lawson about this unique model, cultural heritage, culturally appropriate information practices, and sustainable community development.

Let’s begin with some context. Could you tell us why Indigitization was created, and what needs or gaps it responded to?

When the pilot program started, there was very little digitization being done in First Nations organizations, even though there was tremendous need for it. Some community organizations were doing digitization, but it was difficult for them to know if they were meeting digitization best practices. Community organizations hold large and small collections of precious cultural heritage recordings on nearly every format possible. Almost universally there was a feeling in communities that these recordings are too precious to trust to an outside organization. But at the time, there was little guidance on digitization practices and insufficient funding for digitization in general.

Funding that was available to memory institutions often was not available or appropriate for First Nations community collections. These funds required adherence to onerous practices, or providing full and open access to digitized content. Virtually no community-based Indigenous knowledge collection can ethically be made completely openly accessible. On top of western intellectual property concerns, Indigenous knowledge is subject to cultural access protocols, which are unique to each culture. In many ways these protocols had not been implemented in the digital realm.

Additionally, most of the best practices guidelines for audio digitization were written in jargon-heavy language and many were out of date in terms of minimum equipment specifications. Quite simply the equipment specified wasn’t available, the documents were unreadable by anybody other than subject experts, and the “best practices” couldn’t scale into “actual practices”. Community collections managers were paralyzed by both a lack of funding and any clear guidance on how to move forward.

How did Indigitization address these issues?

With the Indigitization pilot project in 2012, we developed an audio-cassette digitization kit that is largely self-contained and is extremely easy to assemble. Accompanying this kit is a (mostly) jargon-free manual designed to help a small organization plan their digitization project and conduct the step by step processes of condition assessments and digitization for preservation. The Irving K Barber Learning Centre (IKBLC), who funded the original pilot project, courageously re-invested in the project to turn the toolkit resources into an ongoing grant program.

We have been able to create a funding process that doesn’t require the First Nations organization to make any recordings publicly accessible. We do ask that communities use their digitized collections as a basis to develop policies for culturally appropriate access. The grant also provides technical training and ongoing support for the duration of their projects. We have been able to modify the grant parameters from cycle to cycle, continually improving it to meet the needs of technical capacity building for these community organizations.

Could you describe what is unique about this program?

I think that our program is unique because of the people who have worked on it. It may look like an academic initiative because of its origins at UBC, but it actually has grassroots beginnings.

We have a core team who stay focused on the changing needs of Indigenous communities. This has allowed for the inclusion of other individuals and organizations to grow the program without losing momentum towards our original goals.

People who have led the development process of our guides, and the program leadership, have had experience working directly for community organizations. The first Indigitization Project Coordinator, Mimi Lam, who assembled many of the guides, got much of her experience at the Union of BC Indian Chiefs. This is where I myself developed many of my digitization practices. Sarah Dupont (Metis) who became the program coordinator after Mimi, used her experience working with community practitioners to develop most of the grant parameters and in-person protocols for our training workshops. Sarah also paid attention to feedback to continually innovate and make the grant process better each round. Erica Hernandez-Read of the UNBC Archives has brought deep relationships with northern communities and helped to develop many new relationships. Lisa Nathan of the UBC iSchool brought her ability to work ethically with students to the project. We have recently welcomed Kayla Lar-son, who has taken over for Sarah as the Program Coordinator. Sarah continues to manage many aspects of the Indigitization Program from her new position as Head of the Xwi7xwa Library at UBC. Many students have contributed real and lasting work to the program, thanks in large part to lessons from early grant funded student involvement.

Cultural heritage is so broad: how do communities determine what they want to digitize?

Cultural heritage is very broad, and even more so for First Nations organizations. There are very few recordings that don’t hold some content related to language, culture and history. Even something as seemingly mundane as recordings of band council meetings will contain prayers, songs and stories.

Some community organizations, such as language programs or schools, also hold very specific collections. This might include recordings of language gatherings, interviews with elders, or structured lessons. Overall, communities have varied collections with structured oral history projects, traditional use study recordings, recordings by linguists or other academics, potlatch recordings or family knowledge recordings. This is exactly the reason why Indigitization targets cultural heritage recordings, rather than “language recordings” or some other more restrictive term.

All of these recordings are important, and we want to allow each community to decide what their priorities are. Communities are all at different stages of addressing the very difficult challenges of language, culture and governance reclamation. Each community addresses these challenges according to local strategies and priorities that will best impact long-term community health. For this reason, communities are in the best position to decide which content in their collections is the highest priority for digitization.

How did you reach communities early on, and how do these relationships evolve as you collaborate through Indigitization?

For the first rounds of Indigitization funding we mostly relied on word of mouth through established relationships and networks. Since there really wasn’t any resource similar to Indigitization when we started, there were many Indigenous organizations who had been looking for this kind of assistance and were ready to start. As the program continued to mature, we reached out through other streams, such as paid advertising through Indigenous technical networks and a radio station in northern BC. Social media is also becoming an increasingly important avenue to connect with our community partners.

We have had many grant recipients, who we like to refer to as partners, receive funding to gain capacities in new areas, or train new people. We have also supported some of these organizations through assistance with other grant applications or letter of support. There are very few organizations that we have worked with that we do not stay in contact with, at least periodically.

In 2016 we organized the Indigitization Futures Forum. A symposium where 23 of our previous community partners joined many of our information management colleagues to talk about successes and gaps of cultural heritage digitization within Indigenous communities. The discussions and feedback from this event have helped us to plan for the future of the Indigitization Program.

How do you bring ethical and cultural appropriate practices into your work? Was this a goal from the onset?

This was absolutely the goal from the start. The ability to implement culturally appropriate practices came from the personal experience of the project team while working directly for or with Indigenous community organizations. Our Indigenous team members also bring a great deal of understanding to the project from very personal perspectives on mechanisms of cultural trauma and loss.

Real culturally appropriate information practices are created by the local community practitioners. I am mostly just omitting the culturally-inappropriate practices from our guides, which have typically dominated the digitization discourse and practice. Things like onerous requirements for funding eligibility, open access requirements, and adherence to western intellectual ownership concepts which do not acknowledge Indigenous rights to access and control of their own cultural heritage.

As a program, we observe many practices and protocols in our communications, and our training workshops that help to build and deepen relationships with communities, as well as to make our community partners feel more welcome and ready to learn while visiting our colonial-academic setting.

Sarah Dupont, our Program Manager through most of our existence, has been the person who fought for, and integrated, most of these practices. Things like having local Indigenous community representatives welcome our participants and participate in knowledge sharing while they discuss their specific projects. Having Indigenous caterers bring the food for most of our shared meals. There are many more examples as this is a core consideration when planning our gatherings.

There is digitization of content on the one hand, and information management of digital heritage as it grows. What is your vision for access to and use of these materials?

Information management is a very expansive field. At the start of our project, we really thought Information management is a very expansive field. At the start of our project, we were helping to address a focused, but critical, part of a larger problem. Digitization has a specific window of success. We will only be able to access equipment to play these formats for a short while longer, and the physical media itself suffers different problems as it ages.

We are currently developing guides to help with other common formats, like VHS, Betamax and open reel audio. These formats are significantly more complicated to digitize than audio-cassette. We are developing more resources to help with basic collections management processes. This is the start of addressing that broader issue of information management. We also have to consider what the scope of our own program should be. We don’t need to solve every problem and many problems are better suited to be addressed by other organizations or teams.

What are some strategies to keep these archives in circulation?

One very important, emerging content management system (CMS) is Mukurtu. Mukurtu is an open-source CMS that focuses on empowering Indigenous communities to manage and share their cultural heritage in appropriate ways. It was originally developed with an Aboriginal community in Australia to manage access using their local protocols, and has since grown to accommodate customization for any Indigenous local protocols. It is far from a perfect system but is a definite trailblazer in helping to scaffold many community organizations into a more structured information management practice. Michael Wynne, a member of the Mukurtu team, sits on our steering committee to better align our shared efforts.

Do you see Indigitization working with other sectors in addition to academia, or with any particular field?

Indigitization began as a multidisciplinary, cross-sectoral project and has always been open to collaboration, where the fit is good. It is a core quality of most of our team members that we challenge the practices that we have been taught. Such collaborations can take the form of structural partnerships, where a new institution becomes a part of the Indigitization team; it can exist as temporary project partnerships where we join with another group to develop new resources or reach new audiences; or it can be an informal relationship where we help each other meet goals without any greater commitments.

The Archives at UNBC has long been a partner, as has the Sustainable Heritage Network based in Washington State University. We have emerging relationships with the First Peoples Cultural Council and with colleagues at Mount Royal University. As we grow and need additional capacities in terms of educational tools, information management systems support and in providing greater reach for our resources, we will likely partner with organizations that have similar goals and are positioned to take on some of these challenges.

Meet Canoo member Angelina Paras.

Angelina chose to move to Canada because “it’s a country that’s both historically relevant yet still nascent in terms of economic and social potential. I feel like there is much for me and my children to learn from and contribute to this country that I chose.”

“What I love most about Canada is its rich ethnic diversity, coupled with an amazing citizenry that has embraced people from all corners of the world. It’s what enticed me to live and raise my children here. In fact, Canada adopts multiculturalism as a national policy. I have felt this from the get go, as minorities’ representation in the workforce and in education is encouraged, added to a plethora of support services for newcomers like me.”

“My favourite place in Canada is my new home and community, because it is symbolic of our immigration journey. But if I had the chance to revisit a place, it would be postcard-pretty Banff in Alberta, because our trip to this picturesque town for our landmark wedding anniversary will always be memorable.”

“I typically visit Canoo venues with my husband and my children, and my mother-in-law who lives in Toronto but stays with us in Winnipeg for a few months each year. The best place I’ve visited using Canoo was the Canadian Human Rights Museum (CMHR). I have visited the CMHR several times in the past, but they always have something new to offer. In July of 2019, I used my Canoo app to see the Mandela exhibit with my friend, who was visiting from Minnesota. That state has its own share of amazing museums, but I was proud to show her around the world’s first museum dedicated to human rights, and we were both fortunate to view the Mandela exhibit which was ongoing at the time. She is an educator, while I work for the Manitoba Legislature, which means we not only have to be curious for personal curiosity’s sake but we need to be updated on all matters political! The effort that goes into curating and researching for these exhibits is remarkable, and as a Winnipeger, I am fortunate to have easy access to this excellent edifice.

“Although I work for both the city and provincial governments, have been summoned for jury duty, volunteered at countless events and voted twice since we arrived, active citizenship can be many other things. It can be as simple as welcoming new citizens to the community or watching a game at your kids’ school. It can be sharing a personal traditional recipe or lending a hand to a neighbour in need. When you keep a mindset of trying to give more than what you take from the society you live in, that, to me, is what active citizenship is all about.

“Inclusion to me doesn’t just mean “tolerance,” which I feel gives it a sense of “putting up with”. Inclusion is a deliberate welcoming of others’ culture — stepping back and having an open mind;to give recognition and genuinely have appreciation for the added value that others can give.

“Cultural places serve as living dioramas, giving us a glimpse of other people’s ways of life. Awareness opens the path to inclusion because people would come to realize that there is a greater society in which they live, and that the languages, abodes, food, beliefs, music, attires, traditions and customs in that greater society are legion. If anything, cultural places are kaleidoscopes of this remarkably diverse world we live in.

“Canoo has opened the doors of not-to-be-missed places to newcomers like me. Through Canoo and others’ generosity, our family has been able to take an introductory peek into museums and national parks, which we would definitely visit again in the future.”

*Some quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

Canoo gives new Canadian families access to 1400+ arts, culture spaces and parks across Canada. While Canoo is free to use, it’s not free to operate. As a charity, we rely on donations to help keep Canoo available and free for new Canadian citizens. With your generous support, we can help thousands of new Canadians and their family belong. Give the gift of Canoo! Become a monthly donor today.

While millions of Canadians remained indoors during COVID-19 shutdowns, our public spaces and how we use them began to subtly shift. In order to meet new physical distancing rules, we’ve also altered nearly everything about how we move through the city, how we work, and how we spend our leisure time. But this moment of restructuring could also be an opportunity, and by pushing these changes just a little bit further we could use COVID-19 as the catalyst to make our public spaces healthier and more inclusive long into the future.

Public transportation was one of the first public spaces to see a sharp decline in use during the pandemic as millions of Canadians stayed home and forwent their typical daily commute to instead work from home. Ridership on Toronto’s TTC was down a staggering 80 per cent in April, although it’s expected to rise to 50 per cent of normal numbers by October. To combat the risks of crowding, city governments will need to invest in their transit systems by adding more terminals, altering seating arrangements, and making other adjustments. To push these changes even further cities could begin providing free fare to all riders — something that an estimated 100 cities in the world have already done — to ensure that transportation is accessible to lower-income riders and to incentivize transit use over car ownership, curbing greenhouse gas emissions and making our cities healthier and safer.

At the same time that some spaces have been seeing declines in use, others have been seeing significant boosts. A Park People survey of over 1,600 Canadians found that 55 per cent of respondents said that their park use had increased during COVID-19 and 82 per cent said that parks had become important to their mental health. Bike lanes have been expanded in cities across Canada in an effort to reduce crowding on public transit and reduce potential congestion on roads as well. Increased usage of greenspaces and more cyclists on the road are both examples of positive shifts in lifestyle that improve the physical and mental health of residents; and with the right policies, these changes could stick.

The 2020 Declaration for Resilience in Canadian Cities, written by urban planner Jennifer Keesmaat, argues that COVID-19 and it’s recovery period represents “a window to act” and implement changes in Canada that could “kickstart our journey toward more accessible, equitable, sustainable, and resilient cities.” The plan takes a holistic view at how cities function, looking to ensure that the most vulnerable — who have been hardest hit by the pandemic — are being well-served by city planning.

People with disabilities, those who are immunocompromised, and the elderly are too often overlooked when it comes to thoughtful city design, which means that countless Canadians are excluded from participating in society because their needs are not being accommodated. With an increasingly aging population (by 2036 seniors are projected to comprise about 25 per cent of the Canadian population) we’ll need to consider how people who have different abilities and needs can be best served by public services, infrastructure, and policies.

People with disabilities have been advocating for many of the methods that have now become much more widespread during the pandemic, including telecommuting and flexible schedules. Before COVID-19, employers were slow to make accessibility a priority, but because of the pandemic, we’re seeing just how possible these changes are.

At the same time that we’re advocating for changes like these, we also need to stay attuned to the complex ways that policies fit together and who they impact. Jay Pitter, an urbanist and placemaker, has urged us not to overlook those living in “forgotten densities” like homeless shelters, senior care homes, or public housing — all of whom are struggling during the pandemic due to inadequate and unsafe infrastructure that puts them in close proximity to other people. As calls for physical distancing increase and density is seen as a risk to disease prevention, it’s important to consider the needs of the many Canadians who, through a variety of circumstances, are not able to inhabit their living spaces or local communities safely.

“Instead of being fearful of increased anti-density bias,” writes Pitter in an April article for Azure magazine, “we need to apply what we know toward a good urban density framework. This framework should be evidence-based and overlap with social determinants of health, such as food security, race, gender and poverty, while being anchored in a strong equity-based placemaking paradigm.” Not only that, but policymakers need to consult meaningfully with both experts and community members in order to make these changes, Pitter states. “Fully undertaking this scope of work is not possible during a pandemic. But we can certainly advance the process instead of diminishing the suffering of those experiencing density-related health challenges,” she writes.

Despite the limitations we’re currently experiencing, there are still plenty of reasons for optimism. Changes that once seemed impossible before the pandemic are already beginning now, and by applying the knowledge we have and truly listening to the needs of the most marginalized, we could take advantage of the momentum created so far and transform our cities, green areas, and workplaces so they are more inclusive for all.

Canada’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been far from perfect, but we have a few factors working in our benefit: strong public services like universal health-care coverage, a social safety net in the form of CERB payments, and comparatively less politicization of mask-wearing and physical distancing mandates than our southern neighbours. But the social services that have protected Canadians during COVID-19 are not guaranteed, and public sector funds are continually under threat, like in the case of health-care and education funding. Moving forward, Canadians will have to consider how funding priorities will need to change so that we remain prepared for unexpected crises — even after the pandemic is over.

Cuts to health care have loomed large in some provinces in recent years, including in Ontario and Alberta. In 2019, the Ontario government released a plan that included cuts to health-care spending and privatization efforts that advocates said would increase crowding in hospitals and reduce the ability to adequately care for patients. The cuts came after several decades of stagnation in the province’s health-care sector; Ontario had 30,000 hospital beds in 2019 — the same number it has had since 1999, despite the fact the population has since grown by 27 per cent.

Cuts to public education have also been seen. With widespread misinformation circulating about the virus over the past six months, the critical thinking skills, media literacy, and science education that children learn in school is more important than ever and should not be overlooked. Despite this, education budgets were recently slashed in Alberta, part of a larger attack on the public sector in the province. The cuts will result in an estimated 1,400 fewer full-time teaching positions, while schools in the province are being told to dip into their savings to pay for any COVID-19-related costs.

Investing in the resources of most value to us — like health-care services that are agile enough to respond to major public health crises, education campaigns that can help fight against misinformation, and universal basic income to ensure that Canadians are not living in poverty regardless of their employment status — are just a few of the steps Canada can take to prepare for the post-pandemic future.

Conversely, funding for other services that do not serve the goals of health, safety, and equality should be reconsidered. Calls from supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement to re-allocate police department funding to other public services, such as social workers, mental-health response teams, and drug counselling services, are one such example. In many cities in Canada, police departments are often the most expensive line item on city budgets despite a long history of police violence against racialized Canadians, especially Black and Indigenous people. Moving these funds to other services that are more beneficial to the community as a whole is one move in the right direction.

If some scientific predictions are right, the COVID-19 pandemic could be just the first example of similar crises in coming years. Anthony Fauci and David Morens, two leading voices on COVID-19 at the the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the U.S., recently published an article in the journal Cell describing how the novel coronavirus could be the start of a new age of pandemics caused by environmental degradation and globalization. “We remain at risk for the foreseeable future. COVID-19 is among the most vivid wake-up calls in over a century,” they write. “It should force us to begin to think in earnest and collectively about living in more thoughtful and creative harmony with nature, even as we plan for nature’s inevitable, and always unexpected, surprises.”

Many Canadians have gained new perspectives over the course of the pandemic, having come together at protests and witnessing the interconnectedness of a variety of socially damaging policies and practices like police violence, discrimination, misinformation, and health-care inequality. Canada’s post-pandemic reality should reflect these new insights, starting with our funding priorities.

COVID-19 has brought to light some of the glaring inequalities present in Canada when it comes to accessing health care. Disparities in social determinants of health like housing, food, education, and income levels stand in the way of achieving a truly equal health-care system, and racialized Canadians — especially those who are Black or Indigenous — are among the most affected by these inequities.

But even when BIPOC Canadians are able to access the care they need, they face yet another hurdle: ingrained racism within the health-care system linked to a history of colonization that significantly impacts the diagnosis, treatment, and quality of care that they receive.

For example, there was a series of incidents in British Columbia — first reported in June — in which doctors and nurses played a “game” to guess the blood alcohol level of Indigenous patients who visited the emergency room, prompting an investigation and condemnation from Indigenous groups. The game was referred to as “The Price is Right” among staff, with participants trying to guess the exact blood alcohol level of patients.

Another example is the 2008 death of Brian Sinclair, an Indigenous man who arrived in a Winnipeg emergency room and was ignored by staff for 34 hours until he eventually died of a bladder infection. Staff at the hospital stated that they had assumed Sinclair was intoxicated and “sleeping it off” in the waiting room. In 2017, a group of doctors and academics released a report which concluded that the cause of Sinclair’s death was the racism he experienced as an Indigenous man.

These are just two of the many instances of anti-Indigenous racism baked into our health system that prevent Indigenous people from accessing equitable health care. And because of this, some Indigenous patients may hesitate to enter medical spaces at all; a 2015 Wellesley Institute report found that racism in the health-care system “is so pervasive that people strategize around anticipated racism before visiting the emergency department or, in some cases, avoid care altogether.”

One way of addressing the issue of ingrained racism in health care is to increase the diversity of the medical profession itself, especially for Black and Indigenous doctors. Medical schools have been slow to prioritize diversity, but in 2019 Canada’s 17 medical schools implemented a plan to boost recruitment of Indigenous students in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action.

Black Canadians also report experiencing racism in the health-care system, and have historically not seen themselves reflected among the doctors who provide them with care. But there are signs of change: the University of Toronto reported that the highest number of Black students ever were admitted to the school’s Faculty of Medicine MD program for the school’s upcoming Fall 2020 semester.

“It’s important to have more Black doctors because we’ve not been at the table in the same numbers. We’re not represented in health care or leadership in the same proportions as we’re represented in society, largely due to the complex social impacts of systemic anti-Black racism,” said Onye Nnorom, a family doctor and the Black Health Theme lead for the U of T Faculty of Medicine, in a recent interview. But more progress needs to be made: the number of Black doctors in Ontario would need to double to become proportionate to the province’s Black population, Nnorom said.

According to the Black Physicians of Canada, diversity in the medical profession also has the effect of better serving Black populations since “Black patients are more likely to feel comfortable with Black doctors and more likely to adhere to certain preventive measures delivered by Black doctors.” Black doctors are also more likely to work in Black communities, where rates of certain chronic diseases tend to be higher and barriers to care are greater.

At the same time, Black and Indigenous doctors can face obstacles that other doctors do not, including bias and prejudice in the workplace, lack of mentorship opportunities, and barriers to advancement — all of which can make their path to practising medicine more difficult.

Addressing the issue of racism within the health-care system will require a multi-pronged and comprehensive approach. Other solutions could include improving race-based data collection, allowing doctors with foreign medical training to gain licensing in Canada, and educating those working in medical fields about the complex history of colonization in Canada. For a truly equitable future even beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada will need to embrace these changes and commit to anti-racism practices in health care at every level.

The Institute for Canadian Citizenship and Embassy of Canada in Mexico partnered on the third of a three-part Mexico-Canada Dialogue series, discussing how both Mexico and Canada share a rich and challenging history shaped by colonization. We discussed how the legacy of colonialism is both broad-ranging and deeply entrenched: from classism and economic inequality to racism and tokenism.

It’s long been clear that these systems must be uprooted. The project is a large one, but can start with each of us as individuals, and how we relate to the people around us.

Featuring
Introductions: Ambassador Graeme C. Clark
Remarks by: The Rt. Hon. Adrienne Clarkson
Moderator: Juana Inés Dehesa
Speakers: Kamal Al-Solaylee (Canada), El Jones (Canada), Judith Bautista Pérez (Mexico)

Key Takeaways

Colonialism, and more specifically the exploitation of land and people, has created inequalities on both a global and national scale. Many accept that this is clearly apparent in the “colonial era” of North America, in the overt subjugation of Indigenous peoples of North America, the extraction of resources, and the slave trade, but this exploitation did not end in the 19th, or 20th centuries. It continues to be prevalent in our daily lives today.

Over the last 100 years, building upon inequalities of the past, exploitation of land and people continues to be apparent in differential political status, resource extraction, and labour dynamics. Indigenous Peoples, Black folks, and immigrants have all faced barriers to political participation. This includes the explicit denial of the right to vote, among a variety of means to prevent control over land and resources. Time and again, in Canada and Mexico, we see Indigenous peoples fighting to prevent resource extraction occuring on their lands, or impacting their lands, without their consent. They also all continue to be disproportionately represented in, and unfairly compensated, for menial, front-line work (as explored in Kamal Al-Solaylee’s book Brown), and have borne the risk, the pain, and the death that comes from this work in the era of COVID-19.

Racial hierarchies are a construction, and this construction is an essential component of exploitation. The fluidity of racial hierarchies demonstrates their constructed nature. This fluidity is apparent both in how a single individual’s race and associated hierarchical position is interpreted differently in different locales, and in how entire classes of people, such as the Irish in 19th century America, have seen their racial and hierarchical position shift over time. The construction of this hierarchy, the dehumanization, and de-valuation of certain groups of people, which continues to be drilled into us from a young age, has always been an essential component to exploitation, implicitly justifying unfair and unequal outcomes including slavery, indentured labour, political exclusion, land appropriation, and the exportation of the most severe environmental consequences of rampant capitalism: pollution and global warming.

In both Canada and Mexico, too many subscribe to myths that racism and racially based exploitation are things of the past, thus causing ignorance of, and inaction on these issues. In Canada, many look at our official multiculturalism policy, compare us to the United States, and conclude that racism is not a big issue here. In Mexico, there is the notion that because of the prevalence of the Mestizo population (people of mixed ancestry; usually a mix of European and Indigenous), that racism is non-existent. In both countries, a supposed capitalist meritocracy (ignoring historical oppression), and tokenistic political appointments of Black, brown, and Indigenous peoples also serve to assuage, while failing to realize racial justice in a genuine sense.

What we seek is justice. To realize this, we have to confront how colonialism and racism continue to infect our modern societies, and then take action to abolish them. We must recognize the inherent dignity and value of all people, and the ways in which internalized colonialism has allowed us to accept, and/or benefit from, inequality and exploitation for too long. We must obliterate racial hierarchies from our own minds, before we can create lasting justice in our politics, our policing, and our economies.

With the long, tumultuous first summer of the pandemic coming to an end, back-to-school season will soon begin across the country. So far, the federal government’s guidelines for safe reopening have been relatively broad, and the measures being taken by schools have varied drastically between provinces. Saskatchewan, for example, will not require masks in schools, while high-risk areas of Ontario will require masks for students in grades 4 to 12 and only allow secondary students to attend classes for half the week.

The differences between provinces make sense given the varying severity of outbreaks across the country, but Canada’s strategy overall has failed to address the threat that the virus presents. By not seeming to take into account the existing risks faced by children and the communities they live in, the plan could potentially jeopardize public health and exacerbate existing inequalities.

Contrary to some of the misinformation that has appeared online, children and young people are not immune to COVID-19. In Canada, more than 10,000 people aged 19 and under have been diagnosed with the disease, and over 145 have been hospitalized. So far, one young person (their exact age has not been made public) has died.

As we’ve seen throughout the pandemic, systemic racism has had a significant effect on who is impacted by COVID-19 — namely BIPOC and other racialized communities. Now we also know that the same disparities exist among children. A study of 1,000 participants in Washington, DC, found that the rates of infection of Black and Hispanic children were several times higher than those of white children — 30 per cent for Black children, 46.4 per cent for Hispanic children, and only 7.3 per cent for white children.

Though the number of severe cases seen in Canadian children has been relatively low, it’s also important to remember that those we’ve seen so far have been made manageable by lockdown measures and early school closures. How those numbers may change once schools reopen is unclear, but early data from the United States and other countries has not been encouraging.

In the U.S. (where some districts began classes in August) there have already been a number of COVID-19 cases in schools, forcing thousands of students and staff to quarantine after potentially being exposed to the virus. The true number of cases is still unknown, mainly because some states are not actually tracking aggregate cases of COVID-19 in their schools, and no national tally of school outbreaks currently exists.

Not only are children able to catch the virus, they could also spread it to their families at home and potentially create clusters of transmission. A study based in South Korea found that children between the ages of 10 and 19 were just as likely to transmit the virus as adults. That means that even if the risk of severe illness is low among young people, they could still put the adults in their lives at risk of contracting a severe case of COVID-19.

Teachers and other underpaid and underprotected education workers are also made vulnerable by schools reopening — and some are speaking out about their fear and frustration with the government’s current lack of planning. As one Quebec teacher told CTV: “A lot of us are afraid to admit how scared we really are…We’re supposed to put on a brave face and make them [students] feel safe. But in kind of our own moments, when we’re talking amongst ourselves, the truth is, yeah, it’s scary getting out there.”

At the same time, moving entirely to remote learning could have significant negative effects on marginalized students who already experience education inequality. Lower-income families may not be able to afford the technology or internet access necessary to facilitate remote learning, and it could be more difficult for some families to provide a quiet, distraction-free environment due to a lack of space at home. If children are made to attend school online, parents who cannot afford childcare are forced to juggle those responsibilities while also trying to work.

In some places — mostly wealthy, white enclaves in the U.S. — “learning pods,” which involve families bringing their kids together in small groups for private in-person instruction, have cropped up. But lower-income families and BIPOC have so far been left out of the conversation.

Economic inequality is already a significant factor when it comes to education inequality in this country. A 2018 UNICEF report found that, in Canada, “parental affluence accounts for about half the disparities in educational achievement in high school.” Evidence shows that children from lower-income families are at a persistent disadvantage when they enter school, whereas children from higher-income families have access to more resources which directly translates into higher educational attainment.

“Income inequality creates a ‘private investment gap’ in childhood, with wealthier and better-educated parents better able to provide resources and environments that support children’s development through the school years,” the report states. “For instance, more food security, safer homes and neighbourhoods, support for children with disabilities and richer opportunities to play and learn in and outside school.” During COVID-19, it’s clear how these inequalities could become even worse, forcing lower-income children and those from marginalized communities to fall increasingly further behind their wealthier peers.

There’s no easy solution to this problem, with governments trying to balance the health and safety risks of in-school instruction with the education inequalities involved with moving to remote learning. But without addressing fundamental inequalities related to income, race, and immigration status, the disparities in COVID-19 infections will continue and the long-term effects on the health and education of young people could be significant.

Meet Canoo member Amjad Baig. Amjad moved to Canada because he believes it is a country where “there is unlimited opportunity and potential where your dreams can become reality.”

“Canada is a truly multicultural country with a rich ethnic diversity,” he says, “You feel welcomed and belonging here. The gorgeous scenery views of the untouched and natural environment are breathtaking and next to none I have seen so far.”

Amjad lives in Toronto, but his favourite place in Canada is on the West Coast. “Even though I stay in Toronto, two hours north of Vancouver by road lies our favorite place – Whistler,” he says, “The natural beauty, unique mountain lifestyle and stunning scenery is the best escape like nowhere else. Finding yourself in the mountains, breathing in the wild air you just get swept up by the unique energy. There are always some adventures that can inspire and challenge you anytime of the year in Whistler.”

During his time as a Canoo member in 2019, Amjad visited Casa Loma with his family, one of his favourite cultural venues in Toronto. “We went to Casa Loma on the 25th of August, 2019. It was our family day out,” he says, “We saw some of the most amazing things like the Great Hall, The Library, The Estate Gardens, The Round Room, Sir Henry Pellatt’s Suite, Lady Pellatt’s Suite, The Windsor Room, The Pellatt Board Room, Queen’s Own Rifle Museum, the stables and finally the Automotive Museum. The experience was as if you traveled back in time, at times we would stand and just imagine what life would have been during those times, such an amazing history. Our favorite was a secret storage area beside the fireplace.”

Amjad believes that cultural venues like Casa Loma can help build more inclusive societies: “Coming from various cultural places and background help to understand others better, learn through connections making it a better resilient, stronger and socially inclusive community.”

“Canoo is so very thoughtful and such a beautiful gesture to give every new citizen to experience and learn a little more about the land, food, culture, nature and connect with people,” says Amjad, “ Canoo celebrates the experience of being truly Canadian, not just to celebrate a new citizen’s journey from landing to becoming a citizen but recognizing & rewarding the hustle and the contribution during that period. Visiting the parks and Casa Loma was simply beautiful. Thank you Canoo for the memorable experience!”