Rabble

Robin Browne is no stranger to fighting institutional racial bias. He’s been doing so inside workplaces, city council chambers, committee meetings, and courtrooms for years.

His latest chapter in this fight came earlier this summer in a defamation case he brought against co-founders of the Federation of Black Canadians (FBC) in 2020. 

The FBC co-founders counter-sued Browne also for defamation, but Browne felt that he had case law, and the truth, on his side. However, he felt his chances of succeeding were undermined from the start when he found out who his judge was.

As stated, Browne is no stranger to fighting bias and racism in the courtroom. In 2020, Browne was involved in an incident where a 10yr-old Black boy was racially harassed by two white boys, one of whom allegedly assaulted him.

Browne made several public statements in support of the Black boy and his family and found himself named in a counter defamation suit by the parents of the white child who allegedly assaulted the Black child.

When Browne’s small-claims proceeding with the Federation of Black Canadians began, he discovered that the judge in that case, Deputy Judge Ian R. Stauffer was listed as the lead lawyer in the other case, representing the parents of the other white boy.

Browne was immediately concerned about this judge’s ability to remain unbiased against him in this current case.

“I was like, whoa this guy can’t be the judge on my trial and be the lawyer in that other case,” said Browne in an interview with rabble.ca.

Reasonable apprehension of bias

Browne emailed the court to alert them to the potential conflict of interest and was stunned to learn that the court forwarded his concern with the judge to rule on his own potential conflict. The judge replied that he was comfortable presiding over the case as he said he had no personal involvement in the case as it was handled entirely by his associate and that he understood that the file had been concluded with respect to his office’s involvement. 

The trial in Browne’s defamation case, set for three days in April 2024, stretched into five days ending on August 19, 2024. On that day, Browne presented a formal motion for the judge to remove himself from the case, which the judge again declined to do. Browne’s motion argued the legal concept that the judge’s role in both cases could create a reasonable apprehension of bias on the part of the judge, in the mind of a “reasonable person”.

In declining to remove himself from the case, the judge again said it was his firm that was involved in the previous case rather than him personally and that it was his understanding that the matter involving the client his firm was representing had been resolved. However, Browne would find out that neither was true when he read the judge’s ruling – finding against Browne and awarding each defendant the maximum small claims award of $35,000 each, plus $16,000 in combined expenses.

Despite claiming he had no involvement in the case in both his February email to Browne and his verbal reply to Browne’s August 19 motion, in his decision, the judge said, “In open Court I told Browne quite clearly that I had had no involvement in that case, other than an initial discussion with the Defendant parents of the white child, the child who had not caused the alleged injury to the minor Black Plaintiff. After the initial interview, the file had been assigned to a junior lawyer at TSLLP.” (TSLLP is the judge’s law firm Tierny Stauffer LLP.) And regarding his claim that the file had been completed, the clients TSLLP was representing actually settled their matter one week after the judge emailed Browne.

The judge also said this in his decision:

“In the current Motion before me, I placed myself in the position of a reasonable person who was given the facts as described above. Would that person see a reasonable apprehension of bias on my part? That is, could I proceed to render Judgment in the various cases involving Mr. Browne, with any concern as to fairness in my adjudication process? All of the parties in the present set of cases before me are Black. The witnesses were all Black. The question of any bias by me, based on race, is not an issue.”

“What was really telling when I was presenting the motion is that he was interrupting me as he often did and asking ‘are you accusing me of actual bias?’” Browne explained.

“I had said already twice, I’m not arguing actual bias. I’m arguing reasonable apprehension of bias,” Browne went on to explain.

In legal terms, a judge should recuse himself if a reasonable person could have a reasonable apprehension of bias given the possible conflict of interest. That is, is there any doubt the judge could render an impartial judgment in Browne’s case.

“The question wasn’t one of racial bias on the judge’s part in my defamation case. The issue was if a reasonable person could have a reasonable apprehension of bias given the conflict of interest caused by the judge’s involvement in both cases,” said Browne, adding, “This whole concept of the reasonable person clearly is being interpreted as a reasonable white person”.

A perfect storm of judicial racial bias

Browne said there are several systemic issues which contribute to judicial racial bias. The first is the deeply held belief in the legal profession in the impartiality of judges, even regarding cases involving race, despite most judges being white. Second, is judges’ resistance to accept anti-racism training as they see such training as indoctrination by outside forces. Third, there’s no race-based data on judges’ rulings. Furthermore, unlike lawyers, judges aren’t bound by their professional rules of conduct to actively perform conflict checks to avoid presiding over trials where conflicts exist with the parties involved.

The Principles of Judicial Office for Judges of the Ontario Court of Justice simply says judges must “avoid any conflict of interest, or the appearance of any conflict of interest, in the performance of their judicial duties.” The Principles list no requirement for judges to tell the parties involved whether they’ve done a conflict check, OR the result.

According to Browne, the judge’s decision is a symptom of all these issues. 

Also, Browne could not find one instance on CanLii, the website that posts Canadian court deicsions, in this judge’s 20-year plus career of him handling a case that involved racial issues.

“All he appeared to hear was me calling him racist when I had never said that,” said Browne.

Another issue is that there appears to be a double standard regarding claims of bias made against white and Black judges. The Superior Court of Justice’s list of Often Cited Cases in Divisional Court includes only one case regarding an accusation of reasonable bias – against a Black judge.

Browne plans to appeal the decision but has concerns that the decisions of even more senior appeals court judges may be tainted by their racial biases for the reasons outlined above. Browne also has concerns about fairness when he and other community groups head to trial in their small claims suit against the Ottawa Police Service Board in May 2025.

Browne is also concerned about how this case could impact another essential element to the effectiveness of the justice system: the public’s faith in it.

“Why should people, especially Black people, have faith in a justice system that is so blatantly unfair,” Browne said. 

Browne said this is why it’s so important for the Government of Canada to fully implement the recommendations of Canada’s Black Justice Strategy that aims to transform Canada’s justice system from “one that punishes the poorest and most marginalized members of our society, and that carries a history of racism and oppression, to one that is fair and equitable and free from discrimination; in other words, a justice system that is truly just.”

While the judge ruled against him in this case, Browne does not see this as a loss, but rather another victory in his campaign to expose anti-Black bias in Canada’s institutions.

“I get a chance now to expose this and publicize this very powerful anecdote which will support the call to mandate the collection of race-based data on judicial decisions,” said Browne.
Editor’s note: Robin Browne is a volunteer host of rabble’s webinar series Off the Hill.

The post The ongoing battle against racial bias in the justice system appeared first on rabble.ca.

Chrystia Freeland – one time journalist, and comrade-in-arms with Justin Trudeau since she entered Parliament in 2013 – quit the Prime Minister’s government in the most damaging and dramatic way possible on Monday, December 16.

On the day she was to deliver the government’s Fall Economic Statement, Freeland posted a resignation letter on social media. 

In it, she eviscerated the Prime Minister for failing to take seriously incoming U.S. president Donald Trump’s threat of 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods. (See the full text of the letter at the end of the article).

Freeland revealed in her letter that she and the PM had been at odds for weeks. She wrote that, contrary to Trudeau, she wanted to keep Canada’s “fiscal powder dry”.

By that, Freeland meant avoiding costly new initiatives which would add to Canada’s annual deficits and accumulated national debt. She pointedly added that the country cannot afford “political gimmicks” at this time. 

The outgoing finance minister didn’t specify what those gimmicks are. But it was clear she was referring to the HST holiday, which was a key part of the fall statement she had been scheduled to deliver on Monday afternoon. 

We can safely assume Freeland is not a big fan of the $250 payout to working Canadians Trudeau has championed either. 

That plan faltered because the New Democrats would not support it. They wanted the $250 to go to both working and non-working Canadians, including the disabled and the elderly.

Demotion, not policy, prompted Freeland to quit

It is interesting to note that as late as Friday December 13, Freeland was willing to soldier on, despite her profound misgivings about the policies she was about to propose in the Fall Statement. 

The straw that broke the camel’s back was a Zoom call with the prime minster on Friday, during which Trudeau told Freeland he planned to remove her from the finance job, and give her another, less powerful position in cabinet.

That was too much for Freeland. She said as much in her resignation letter: 

“To be effective, a Minister must speak on behalf of the Prime Minister and with his full confidence. In making your decision, you made clear that I no longer credibly enjoy that confidence and possess the authority that comes with it.”

On Monday, Trudeau hastily asked Dominic Leblanc, the current public safety minister, to add the finance portfolio to his duties. Trudeau’s old friend agreed, though he did not verbally deliver the Fall Economic Statement in the House of Commons, as finance ministers normally do. 

Liberal House Leader Karina Gould simply tabled the document without fanfare, late Monday afternoon.

Gould also took most of the questions during Monday’s question period.

The 37-year-old Liberal House Leader has been something of a loyal fixer for Justin Trudeau since he gave her the task of killing the electoral reform process back in February of 2017. 

For those interested in electoral reform, Gould’s evasive answers on the day she assumed the role of (soon-to-be-abolished) minister of democratic institutions still leave a bitter taste.

She kept brushing aside reporters’ questions, saying she had to “get briefed up” on the reform process.

(It seems that when political parties lose the script, they can also lose contact with standard English. Less than a day after Freeland’s resignation, Liberal Party president Kathryn McGarry shared an email on fundraising with donors, starting with the words: “…look at this update Crystal sent to Bonnie and I this morning”.)

Conservatives and Bloc want election; NDP not so sure

Monday’s question period provided a golden opportunity for opposition leaders to do some theatrical political grandstanding.

At one point during the proceedings, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre rose in his place to pose a question, he said, for the minister of finance. 

“Who are you?” he asked, to uproarious laughter from his side of the House.

There was, at that time, about a quarter past two in the afternoon, no minister of finance for Canada.

Poilievre, naturally, called for an immediate election, a call which the Bloc Québécois echoed.

The NDP had a slightly more nuanced position, which engendered skeptical, raised eyebrows on the part of Ottawa’s commentariat.

New Democratic leader Jagmeet Singh said unequivocally it was now time for Justin Trudeau to resign and allow someone else to take the helm of the Liberal Party and the government. 

But when pressed as to whether New Democrats would thus vote non-confidence in the Liberal government, if given the chance, Singh’s only response was: “All options are on the table.”

Journalists and analysts were almost universally scornful of that seemingly evasive answer. One said Singh was engaging in “political malpractice”.

Commentators were quick to note that according to all public opinion polls the party which has benefited most from the Liberals’ sinking popularity is the Conservative party. 

Polls do not show New Democrats to have suffered by association with the Liberals, with whom, until recently, they had a governing (confidence and supply) agreement. But the NDP has not gained much either. It is stuck at about 20 per cent in most polls.

New Democrats might be encouraged by one Ipsos poll, published a few days ago, which showed a gain of four points for their party over the previous Ipsos poll.  

Those figures have only evanescent significance, however. More to the point, the four-point gain only puts the New Democrats where most other polls already had them.

By Monday evening, the NDP’s House Leader, Peter Julian, had clarified Singh’s statement about “all options.”

Julian told CBC’s Power and Politics host David Cochrane that if Trudeau does not announce his departure, the NDP will vote non-confidence in the government – if and when a motion to that effect comes before the House. 

Parliament is now on a nearly six-week break, and the parliamentary calendar does not allow for a non-confidence vote until, at the earliest, late February, 2025.

Poilievre much worse than bumbling Trudeau

NDPers have to be painfully aware that as maladroit and confused as Trudeau and his government now seem, a slash-and-burn, climate-change-denying, public-broadcasting-destroying Poilievre government would be infinitely worse.

As well, NDP strategists and politicians know a good many of their current and, more important, potential voters live in utter terror of a Poilievre-led government, especially with Trump running the show south of the border. 

New Democrats hope the Liberals can hang on to power long enough for the political horse-race numbers to shift. 

Ideally, for New Democrats, more anti-Liberal sentiment will move their way, while, with a new leader, some erstwhile Liberals supporters, who now favour Poilievre, return to the fold. 

That would make for something like the three-way race we had at the outset of the 2015 campaign. 

There is, in fact, a lot not to like about the alternative Poilievre offers. 

For instance, Canadians, overall, do not favour de-funding the CBC. Nor are most Canadians sympathetic with the view that climate change is not a real and pressing challenge.

Singh and his New Democratic colleagues will have to work harder, from here on in, to provide a coherent and progressive option for Canadians who want a change in government, but who are not willing to support a shift to the radical right.

Is the NDP up to the challenge? 

Here is Chrystia Freeland’s letter of resignation:

Dear Prime Minister,

It has been the honour of my life to serve in government, working for Canada and Canadians. We have accomplished a lot together.

On Friday, you told me you no longer want me to serve as your Finance Minister and offered me another position in the Cabinet.

Upon reflection, I have concluded that the only honest and viable path is for me to resign from the Cabinet.

To be effective, a Minister must speak on behalf of the Prime Minister and with his full confidence. In making your decision, you made clear that I no longer credibly enjoy that confidence and possess the authority that comes with it.

For the past number of weeks, you and I have found ourselves at odds about the best path forward for Canada.

Our country today faces a grave challenge. The incoming administration in the United States is pursuing a policy of aggressive economic nationalism, including a threat of 25 per cent tariffs.

We need to take that threat extremely seriously. That means keeping our fiscal powder dry today, so we have the reserves we may need for a coming tariff war. That means eschewing costly political gimmicks, which we can ill afford and which make Canadians doubt that we recognize the gravity of the moment.

That means pushing back against ‘America First’ economic nationalism with a determined effort to fight for capital and investment and the jobs they bring. That means working in good faith and humility with the Premiers of the provinces and territories of our great and diverse country, and building a true Team Canada response.

I know Canadians would recognize and respect such an approach. They know when we are working for them, and they equally know when we are focused on ourselves. 

Inevitably, our time in government will come to an end. But how we deal with the threat our country currently faces will define us for a generation, and perhaps longer. Canada will win if we are strong, smart, and united.

It is this conviction which has driven my strenuous efforts this fall to manage our spending in ways that will give us the flexibility we will need to meet the serious challenges presented by the United States.

I will always be grateful for the chance to have served in government and I will always be proud of our government’s work for Canada and Canadians.

I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues as a Liberal Member of Parliament, and I am committed to running again for my seat in Toronto in the next federal election.

With gratitude,

The Honourable Chrystia Freeland, P.C., M.P.

The post Freeland’s departure challenges NDP to offer a progressive alternative to the Liberals appeared first on rabble.ca.

Canada Post workers have been on strike for five weeks. On Tuesday morning, legal strike action ended after a decision from the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) which said operations were to resume. 

On Friday, labour minister Steve MacKinnon asked CIRB to investigate whether the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) and Canada Post were likely to reach a deal before the end of 2024. The Board found an agreement before the end of the year was unlikely and ordered postal workers back on the job. 

Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) said forcing postal workers back on the job is a “stark” reminder of the government’s willingness to interfere with workers’ rights. 

“Undermining collective bargaining undermines democracy itself,” Bruske said in a statement. 

This is the fourth time Section 107 of the labour code was used to end work stoppages this year. Under section 107, the labour minister “may refer any question to the [Canada Labour] board or direct the board to do such things as the minister deems necessary.”

In late June, then labour minister Seamus O’Regan directed the CIRB to impose binding arbitration on mechanics at Westjet who were set to strike. O’Regan said he “averted” a strike by doing this. CIRB did impose binding arbitration but WestJet mechanics were still allowed to strike. 

The first time section 107 was used to bring striking workers off the picket line was in August when the government directed the CIRB to impose binding arbitration on locked rail workers and ensure the resumption of services.

Since then, section 107 has been used to force striking port workers and now postal workers back on the job. 

“Such repeated interference not only infringes on these fundamental rights but also sets a dangerous precedent, signaling to employers that they can rely on the government to side with them instead of respecting the collective bargaining process,” Bruske said. “We demand an end to the abuse of Section 107 by the government, and clear guardrails to curtail the uses of this section at the whim of politicians.” 

Postal workers were upset by the order back to work. Jan Simpson, president of CUPW said the labour board has stripped the right to strike from postal workers.

“We understand that members want to hold the line until the last minute to show our disgust with what is currently happening,” Simpson said in a statement. “ In our opinion, we have the right to question the Employer to ensure that the Employer’s access to the facilities is justified and is required to prepare for the resumption of the operations. Our obligation would be limited to allowing them access for that purpose only.” 

Simpson said legal strike action may have ended, but the fight goes on. She said the union is still considering all options to achieve negotiated collective agreements.

Bruske said the CLC stands in solidarity with postal workers.With a federal election approaching, Bruske called on the government to “consult with unions and workers about the misuse of Section 107 and commit to respecting workers’ rights.” 

“Government interventions that undermine collective bargaining rights only further tip the scales against working people,” she said. “The only path to lasting stability and fairness is mutual respect and good-faith negotiations—nothing less. We demand better for all workers across this country.” 

The post Forcing postal workers back to work misuse of labour code says Canadian Labour Congress appeared first on rabble.ca.

Rachel Notley, Alberta’s first NDP premier and the woman who in 2015 broke the Progressive Conservative party’s seemingly unshakable grip on power in this province, has announced her full departure from politics. 

In a social media post this morning, Notley stated her intention to write the Speaker of the Alberta Legislature and resign her position as MLA for Edmonton-Strathcona effective December 30.

Beyond that, the statement – which you can read for yourself here – was mostly political boilerplate typical of retirement commentaries published by politicians leaving the field honourably after a long period of service, nearly 17 years as an MLA and a decade as party leader in Notley’s case. 

The announcement didn’t come as a surprise. Notley made history by leading the NDP to an unexpected majority government on May 5, 2015, but saw her party go down to defeat at the hands of the United Conservative Party in the next two general elections in 2019 and 2023. 

On January 16 this year, after a disappointing loss in the May 2023 election, she announced her intention to quit as leader as soon as a new one was chosen. On June 22, former Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi was named as her replacement after a crushing 86-per-cent victory in the party’s leadership race. 

Ms. Notley immediately retreated to the party’s back benches, but everyone in political Alberta understood that change was only temporary. She was replaced as Opposition leader in the Legislature by MLA Christina Gray until Nenshi could take up a seat in the House, which up to now he has appeared to be in no hurry to do. 

So yesterday’s statement came as an expected coda, not terribly dramatic, immediately replaced by media speculation about whether Mr. Nenshi would run in her soon-to-be-vacant central Edmonton riding – which is pretty much the safest electoral district for the NDP in Alberta. 

Notley included in her announcement a statement that “Naheed Nenshi’s selection represents a tremendous opportunity for all Albertans seeking practical solutions to the affordability crisis, along with a genuine commitment to fixing our health care so that all Albertans can get the support they need no matter where they live or how much they earn.”

Was this a hint that she thinks Nenshi should run in Edmonton-Strathcona, or merely a gracious wave of farewell to the new leader? It’s not entirely clear. 

If Nenshi does run in Edmonton-Strathcona, he might be expected to be challenged by other prominent Alberta NDPers who have had their eyes on the riding since it became obvious it would be looking for a new MLA soon. 

But if the party declares that he will be the candidate and there will be no nomination contest, as has been rumoured in the past few days, the new leader may need to pour oil on what could turn out to be troubled waters. 

Perhaps a pledge to run in Calgary in the next election would be enough. Regardless, if Nenshi becomes the NDP’s candidate in Edmonton-Strathcona, he will need one of his characteristically disarming remarks to respond to the obvious irony of a former mayor of Calgary running to represent a central Edmonton riding. 

Whoever runs to replace Notley as Edmonton-Strathcona MLA could have some organizational work to do as well. Notley was so popular within the riding that the party didn’t have to organize within its boundaries. That might still be so, or it might not. It would probably be best to assume nothing and not take that chance. 

Premier Danielle Smith is required to call a by-election within six months of Notley’s resignation. 

There’s not much she could do within that time frame to be a bad sport. Still, the UCP has shown a willingness to play games with the timing of by by-elections before – refusing to call one in Calgary-Elbow in 2022 at the same time Smith was seeking a safe rural seat, and timing next Wednesday’s Lethbridge-West by-election to take place when University of Lethbridge students are expected to be out of town.

The post Rachel Notley, Alberta’s first NDP premier will announces she will quit as MLA appeared first on rabble.ca.

A note from rabble.ca board member, Mary Unan:

Dear rabble readers, 

We’re in week four of our winter fundraising campaign, and we want to thank everyone who has pitched in so far! 

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Animal shelters across the country are still dealing with the aftermath of ‘pandemic pets’ – animals that were purchased during the pandemic.

Shelters have experienced an increase in surrenders since the pandemic, and the animals that are being surrendered often suffer from behavioural and health issues, explained Barbara Cartwright, CEO of Humane Canada, Canada’s national federation of Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCAs) and humane societies. 

This means that animals are staying in shelters longer before being adopted.  

“Since the pandemic, shelters are experiencing a flood of surrenders,” Cartwright said in an interview with rabble.ca. “The specific things we’re seeing post pandemic is that the top drivers of surrender are health and behavior issues.”

Cartwright said this is often linked to puppy mills, which many people unintentionally purchased from during the pandemic as mills posed as ethical breeders or shelters.  

“Irresponsible breeding typically affects their health and welfare, and, as you can imagine, their genetics,” Cartwright said. “And then having health and behavior issues is tied directly to the increasing cost of vet care.”

The cost of vet care is another common reason people surrender their animals, Cartwright said.  

Dogs staying in shelters longer

Municipal animal shelters in Toronto have also been facing an increase in surrenders post pandemic, specifically of large dogs with behavioral issues, said Sue Shearstone, manager of animal services shelter operations at the City of Toronto.  

“The trend lately, it’s been large dogs for sure, and that’s been our focus,” she said in an interview with rabble.ca. “A lot of people were staying home, working remote, and during the COVID period, they weren’t able to get the animals out for proper socialization.”

This lack of early socialization resulted in behavioural issues, explained Shearstone. For some pandemic pet owners, this only became noticeable once lockdowns ended and people returned to their normal routines. 

“We saw a lot of animals coming in that weren’t used to being out in the environment,” Shearstone said. “They have issues with reactivity towards other dogs or towards people because they weren’t out there getting socialized.”

The City of Toronto Animal Services is now running programs to try to encourage more people to adopt big dogs, as their time spent in shelters is typically longer than smaller dogs and cats.  

At Humane Canada, Cartwright said they’re also seeing more dogs requiring longer shelter stays and resources to get them ready for adoption. This has left many shelters at or over capacity.

“It can take weeks or months to get them ready for adoption,” Cartwright explained. “Then we don’t have space to bring in more animals. So, we’re at a critical point in sheltering in Canada right now.”

Trying to keep pets in the home

The decision to surrender a pet is almost always a last resort, said both Cartwright and Shearstone.  

“Canadians love their animals,” said Cartwright. “And so, if they’re making that decision, most times it’s because they don’t feel like they have another option.”

Cartwright explained that Humane Canada works on providing support to lower income families who are considering surrendering their animals to try and help keep pets in the home.

“One of the things Humane Canada and our members have been working on is creating more and more pet food banks,” she said. “Making sure that human food banks also have a pet food component or a cat litter component.”

Shearstone said this is also a goal at municipal shelters in Toronto. 

“The focus is on – how do we help you keep your pet?” she said. “We do a lot of proactive work to try and keep the pets with their owners because we know how important the animal human bond is.”

City of Toronto shelters help provide pet food and other resources for a period if someone is struggling financially. They also help connect owners to behaviorists and trainers if they’re having difficulty managing behavioural issues.  

“People don’t have to feel alone,” Shearstone said. “Reach out to your municipality, see if there’s resources out there that you could access.”

How to ethically gift a pet

Many shelters experience an increase in adoptions over the holiday period from people who want to gift an animal. But Cartwright said that adoptions need to be done carefully in order to maximize success. 

“I think the first thing is to think about it not as gifting an animal, but rather adding to your family,” Cartwright emphasised. “Around the holidays, there’s a lot of high energy. And so, that’s a challenging environment to bring a new family member into.”

Cartwright suggested gifting a coupon or voucher for a local shelter on Christmas – and not the physical pet. 

“Say, you know, ‘me and the kids are going to go, and we’re going to go to the Humane Society, and we’re going to find that perfect pet for us,’” she said. “You can still get the excitement, and you can put a cat bed, cat toys, and cat food under the tree.”

Shearstone said holiday celebrations can be overwhelming for animals, so people should consider their household’s activity levels before deciding when to bring an animal home. 

“When animals come out of a shelter, they really need to go through a time out period, where they can just learn their new environment,” she said. “So, if you’re having a busy holiday season in your home, that might not be ideal for a dog who’s just trying to decompress.”

But Cartwright said the most important thing people can do to help animals in shelters is to adopt, and not purchase.

“Given the shelter crisis that we’re in right now, we need everybody adopting,” she said. “There’s lots and lots of animals waiting for homes.”

The post Animal shelters continue to grapple with post pandemic surrenders appeared first on rabble.ca.

The Justin Trudeau government has re-discovered the North. 

Last week, on December 6, Global Affairs minister Melanie Joly unveiled Canada’s new Arctic Foreign Policy. 

Perhaps surprisingly, the new policy’s focus is not on the Arctic’s climate-change-challenged environment. Nor is it about the people who have lived in the North for millennia. 

No, this policy is rather almost exclusively about what it calls the “strategic importance” of the Arctic for “the defence of North America”. 

The Global Affairs document identifies Russia and China as the main threats. And the Arctic Policy says the Canadian response to Russian and Chinese military and economic ambitions in the Canadian North will be to engage in “deeper collaboration” with our “greatest ally” – you guessed it – the United States.

Meanwhile, far from Canada’s North, in tropical Mar-a-Lago, Florida, the soon-to-be president of that greatest ally continues to threaten Canada with 25 per cent tariffs on everything we export to his country. 

When Canadian leaders point out the unjustified, crippling economic harm his tariffs would inflict on a friendly neighbour, the president-elect has a glib response. He says Canada could save itself from economic grief by becoming a fully-fledged possession of the U.S., the 51st state.

At first, it was a joke. But in subsequent iterations that 51st state suggestion has taken on a more and more ominous and insistent tone. 

We have to wonder if, deep down, Trump might be hankering for a big legacy project to cap his unlikely political career. Annexing Canada – with all of our oil, lumber, diamonds, gold and other minerals, and, never forget, fresh water – might just fill the bill. 

Such a suggestion remains, for now, wild speculation. And even when it comes to the more mundane matter of tariffs, we can’t be sure what Trump will actually do once he has to make real world choices, and not just social media posts.

He might be chary to act too hastily to create trade barriers, given the negative impact punitive tariffs on Canadian goods would have on his own country’s economy.

The environmentally fragile North Slope

But Trump will, without a shred of a doubt, happily poke Canada’s eye with a sharp stick in one area of looming cross-border conflict: the North Slope that straddles the northern parts of Alaska and the Yukon and the extreme western Northwest Territories (NWT).

Trump has promised many times to “drill-baby-drill” starting on day one of his presidency. He has even said he would assume the powers of a dictator to make that happen.

When Joe Biden became president in 2021, he promised there would be “no more subsidies for the fossil fuel industry” and “no more drilling on federal lands or offshore.”

He did not keep that promise to its fullest extent. On a number of occasions, Biden bowed to political pressure to allow the expansion of (already widespread) drilling offshore, especially in the environmentally vulnerable Gulf of Mexico. 

But Trump and most Republicans object to even the most modest and reasonable restrictions on fossil fuel exploitation.

That’s where the North Slope in the Western Arctic comes into the picture. 

This is a vast, and rich – but fragile – region, where scores of rivers flow into the Beaufort Sea, creating an irreplaceable habitat for hundreds of bird, fish and land species. 

Most notable among the latter are the Porcupine Caribou herd. While it fluctuates in size, as recently as 2018 the Porcupine herd numbered in excess of 230,000 animals.

The Porcupine herd’s range is enormous. These caribou – a wild version of the familiar reindeer – can migrate over 2,400 kilometres from their calving grounds in Alaska to feeding territories in the Yukon and NWT.

The Gwich’in people also straddle the Alaska-Canada border. They live in communities such as Tetlit Zheh, NWT (formerly Fort McPherson) and Old Crow, Yukon, and Arctic Village, Circle and Fort Yukon in Alaska.

The Gwich’in have developed a sustainable relationship with the caribou and other wild species of this North Slope region over multiple centuries, a relationship which persists to this day.

Decades ago, in recognition of the unique environmental importance of the North Slope, both Canada and the United States decided to set it aside and protect it from any sort of industrial development.

In the U.S., the protected area is known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). In Canada, that area is covered by two national parks and one special conservation area. 

ANWR covers over 78,000 square kilometres The three protected areas in Canada cover over 23,000 square kilometres.

On both sides of the Canada-Alaska border, these protective regimes have meant no oil and gas exploration, and no pipelines crossing any part of the territory.

Trump allowed drilling in his first term; Biden cancelled the leases

In recent times, in the U.S., however, politicians and industry lobbyists have been trying to weaken these longstanding Arctic environmental protections. 

They say their country simply cannot do without the vast reserves of oil and gas that lie beneath the lands where Gwich’in hunters still harvest caribou and, under the Beaufort Sea, where other hunters still harvest seals and whales.

Indigenous communities, environmental groups, and friendly politicians in the U.S. Congress, and some environmentally aware elements of the U.S. business community, have succeeded, in significant measure, in stymying these efforts.

During his first term, Donald Trump was bound and determined to hand out leases for oil and gas drilling on the North Slope, and he almost succeeded. 

The resistance of some parts of the U.S. federal bureaucracy, and of some surprising allies in the financial sector on Wall Street, slowed down Trump’s efforts. But just before he left office, in January 2021, his officials did give a handful of companies drilling leases in ANWR.

Joe Biden cancelled those leases not long after taking office – although, later in his term, Biden caved into political pressure to allow petroleum industry activity in a region with a less protected status just west of ANWR, the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.

Biden defended that decision by pledging ANWR’s protections would remain sacrosanct as long as he had any say in the matter.

Now, we can all be sure the minute he is back in the oval office, Donald Trump will be proceeding to revive drilling and exploration in the fragile Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, just over the border with Canada.

Environmentalists and a small and politically weak handful of Indigenous communities will object. They will not succeed.

Canada might even raise its voice, though few in Canada will see the threat to a caribou herd and other wild species, and to the still-enduring way of life of a few thousand Indigenous people in a remote part of the country, to be anywhere near as urgent as the threat of 25 per cent tariffs on everything we sell to the U.S.

Neither the Canadian government nor Canadian public opinion in general will take much notice of the fact that the U.S. will be messing with the environment of a region that is artificially divided by a straight-line border on the map.

Hundreds of thousands of caribou who cross that line each year have no way of knowing it’s there. 

The North Slope is an environmental zone we share with our Americans neighours. Now, they seem to be ready to permanently despoil it in the interests of one highly polluting industry. 

Sadly, that fact is not likely to carry much weight in the halls of power in Ottawa or the provinces. 

For Trump, it will be an easy win, with virtually no downside. 

But the oil drilling on the North Slope will just be the beginning. We will all have to worry about what comes next.

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Members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers are on strike not only for themselves but to protect the jobs of many more workers. An interview with the president of the Canadian Labour Congress, Bea Bruske. The LabourStart report about union events. And singing: ‘She’s a Rebel Girl.’

RadioLabour is the international labour movement’s radio service. It reports on labour union events around the world with a focus on unions in the developing world. It partners with rabble to provide coverage of news of interest to Canadian workers.

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Last week, our Jack Layton Journalism for Change fellow Eleanor Wand shared a piece on rabble.ca which examined the Ontario government’s decision to move forward with plans to close 10 of its 19 supervised consumption and treatment sites, despite a report from the auditor general criticizing the decision for lack of planning and consultation.

In the piece, she explained that experts and advocates argue that the decision to close these sites – which have been shown to reduce harm and save lives – will worsen the opioid crisis and increase public health and safety risks.

Today, Wand sits down with Dr. Alexander Caudarella, the CEO from the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) and family physician, to talk about the benefits and misconceptions of supervised consumption sites and how whole communities must work together to discover what feels safe for all.

About our guest

Dr. Alexander Caudarella is a bilingual family physician with specialty training in substance use health issues. As a leader and clinician, he brings years of collaborative substance use healthcare experience to CCSA from his work across the country. Previously, Alexander served as the medical director of substance use services (SUS) at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, and lead SUS physician with Inner City Health Associates. In his work as a researcher and clinician he frequently advised public health officials on issues related to substance use health.

As one of the key leaders of the Toronto Opioid Overdose Action Network, Alexander coordinated the implementation of in-hospital substance use components and developed a regional system to access rapid expert support. He has served as a substance use consultant and clinician for the Government of Nunavut. For more than a decade, Alexander worked on Indigenous-lead programs in Canada and abroad aimed at building capacity, decreasing stigma and building local workforces.

He joined CCSA as Chief Executive Officer in August 2022. Through CCSA’s work with national and international partners, Alexander wants people in Canada to understand the scope of substance use health and the solutions they can put in place in their communities. He passionately believes that collaboration across sectors is essential in improving the health and well-being of people who use drugs and alcohol.

If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca. 

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The five largest asset managers in the world are falling short of expected Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) commitments, according to a new report by the Global Unions’ Committee on Workers’ Capital (CWC). These five asset managers – BlackRock, Vanguard, Fidelity Investments, State Street Global Advisors, and J.P. Morgan Asset Management – are all U.S. based.

Four of these five asset managers are among the top 40 money managers in Canada, according to the bi-annual report by the Canadian Institutional Investment Network. BlackRock is the second largest money manager in Canada, holding roughly $147.4 billion in Canadian Pension Assets in 2023. Fidelity is the sixth largest money manager in Canada and held about $37.3 billion in pension assets. 

In 2022, the CWC established baseline expectations it has for asset managers on fundamental labour rights. Asset managers are expected to engage with the corporations in which they have invested to ensure the elimination of forced or compulsory labour, the abolition of child labour, a safe and healthy working environment, the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation, and freedom of association, and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining.

The world’s top five asset managers showed less than 22 per cent alignment with the CWC view for 2024 shareholder resolutions promoting freedom of association and collective bargaining. In contrast, top asset managers based outside of the U.S. showed a 71 per cent alignment with the CWC views. 

Given these numbers, the CWC is calling on workers to contact their client relationship manager and to the head of ESGstewardship at their asset managers, and ask that they review the report and respond to the key findings.

ESG policies within a company can be greatly influenced by large asset managers, according to the CWC, because these managers are often the largest shareholders within a company. As such, asset managers have the capacity to vote for better labour practices or more concern for the environment. 

However, some asset companies do not make their level of commitment to ESG issues publicly available. While BlackRock, Canada’s second largest money manager, discloses the names of all the companies they engage with on an annual or quarterly basis, Fidelity Investments does not. 

Capitalists against ESG commitments often employ the argument that companies belong to the shareholders, not the community. A report by the American Institute for Economic Research criticized ESG advocates because they bring too many “conflicting” goals under one umbrella.   They say ESG criteria are often vague and difficult to measure. This has been particularly true with attempts to create financially “superior” ESG index funds.

The CWC argues that since pension assets are largely made up of payments from workers’ the management of these assets should reflect workers’ interests. As well, freedom of association and freedom to form trade unions are rights everyone is entitled to under the UN’s International Bill of Human Rights. 

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During the recent British Columbia election campaign, Conservative Party Leader John Rustad vowed to bring back plastic straws, cutlery and bags. It’s an all-too-common political talking point.

Imagine knowing the world is choked with plastic pollution and getting overwrought because you can’t figure out how to drink liquid with a cardboard or reusable straw, or no straw at all!

Plastic is polluting land, water and air, killing birds and aquatic life and causing human health problems. We create about 52 million tonnes of plastic pollution every year (not including what’s recycled or sent to landfills and incinerators). Total production is about 460 million tonnes annually. If we continue at current rates, that will triple by 2050 and outweigh all the fish in the sea.

Because plastic is a fossil fuel byproduct, researchers also estimate that by 2050, the plastics industry will consume 20 per cent of total oil production and 15 per cent of the world’s annual carbon budget.

It’s so ubiquitous that microplastics are now in breast milk and human tissues, including brains, hearts and testicles. Plastic particles have been found in the remotest parts of the planet, and from ocean depths to mountaintops. Massive plastic waste patches swirl in ocean gyres. We’re plasticizing the biosphere and ourselves.

About 40 per cent of all plastic produced is disposable, single-use. If you don’t think plastic straws, cutlery and bags are a problem (a small but easily resolvable one), remember these items are rarely recycled and end up in the environment — in waterways, the ocean, land and air. Plastic never biodegrades; it just keeps breaking down into smaller particles. It can then enter everything from marine life to people’s bodies. Recycling is only a small part of the solution; it’s also critical to drastically reduce plastic production and use.

It’s why, after two years of talks, the international community met last month in Busan, South Korea, for what were supposed to be the fifth and final negotiations on an “international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment.”

Thanks to the 220 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists (outnumbering national and scientific delegations) and governments of oil-producing nations including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia who attended, the talks failed. References to Indigenous and human rights were scrubbed from the final draft text and fossil fuel industry lobbyists blocked attempts to limit production.

Follow-up talks are scheduled for 2025, but industry and its government supporters aren’t budging. Producing plastic is another massive fossil fuel industry profit-generator as the world transitions away from polluting, climate-altering oil, gas and coal.

Oil companies have long lied about the impacts of burning their fuels. They also lie about the plastic they produce. The treaty talks were no exception. This fossil fuel byproduct creates greenhouse gas emissions and pollution throughout its long life cycle.

California’s government has even launched a lawsuit against oil giant ExxonMobil for its “decades-long campaign of deception” that’s making the global plastic pollution crisis worse.

“For decades, ExxonMobil has been deceiving the public to convince us that plastic recycling could solve the plastic waste and pollution crisis when they clearly knew this wasn’t possible,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said. “ExxonMobil lied to further its record-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardizing our health.”

Plastic is convenient because it’s lightweight, durable, inexpensive, easily shaped and coloured and can be used to store many materials, from water to chemicals. But we’ve managed without it for most of human history. The most commonly used plastic products have only been around for about 75 years, and North American grocery stores didn’t start offering plastic bags until the late 1970s — and we now have better alternatives.

One study found circular economy principles could help resolve the issue by eliminating all problematic and unnecessary plastic items, innovating to ensure plastics are reusable, recyclable or compostable and circulating all plastic items to keep them in the economy and out of the environment.

Letting the fossil fuel industry control all aspects of our economies and lives for the sake of its obscene profits is suicidal. Plastic pollution is unnecessary and must be halted now.

We can all cut down on plastic use in our own lives, but real change must come from the top.

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with David Suzuki Foundation Senior Writer and Editor Ian Hanington.

Learn more at davidsuzuki.org.

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Busted by the Alberta local of the electrical workers’ union and a couple of federal NDP Members of Parliament, the United Conservative Party Government has put its plan to recruit new temporary workers by poaching temporary workers from Dubai on ice. 

On Friday, under a picture of Premier Danielle Smith walking with a guy in a white thobe during COP28 climate conference last December in Dubai, the CBC revealed that “Alberta is looking to lure workers from the United Arab Emirates as part of a 2025 international recruitment mission.”

Monday, though, the CBC reported beneath the same photo that “the Alberta government has decided to cancel a foreign worker recruiting trip to the United Arab Emirates.”

The reversal was noted as quietly as possible Sunday night in the form of a statement sent to some media from the office of Alberta Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Muhammad Yaseen. It was not posted yesterday on the government’s website. 

According to the CBC’s account, Yaseen “said the ministry was made aware of the potential recruitment mission earlier this week, but that after reviewing the mission’s purpose, he has decided not to pursue it.”

It’s difficult to believe this came as that much of a surprise to the minister. Consider the timing of the leak last week of documents to the media by Local 424 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represents workers in Alberta, and the letter on the same topic sent to the federal employment minister by the two NDP MPs. 

The document from the IBEW showed that an employee of Yaseen’s ministry had written to Alberta companies encouraging their participation in the mission. You can trust this former civil servant that this is not something civil servants would have decided to do on their own. 

The document showed the government planned to support the scheme, which would have enabled construction companies to bring in low-wage TFWs to compete for jobs with Alberta construction workers. Edmonton’s unemployment rate hit 9 per cent in September, by the way.

“Bringing foreign workers to an economy suffering elevated levels of unemployment poses a serious threat of driving down wages,” said Edmonton Strathcona MP Heather MacPherson and Timmins James Bay MP Charlie Angus in their letter to Ginette Petitpas Taylor. “Alberta is already suffering from the lowest minimum wage in the country.”

Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan said in a news release that “there is no doubt in my mind that the UCP would have proceeded with this recruitment trip if we hadn’t raised the alarm.”

“The reality is that there are still many employers, especially in the construction sector and low-wage service sector, who continue to view the TFW program as a first choice for recruiting workers, rather than a last resort,” he added. “It’s also clear to us that the UCP spends more time thinking about the interests and preferences of those employers than thinking about the negative impacts that the use of TFWs has on wages and jobs for ordinary working Albertans.”

Well, yeah! McGowan advised keeping an eye on the UCP to see they don’t do it again, which seems fair, if unlikely to be foolproof. 

The social media photo used in both CBC reports also features a scruffy Rob Anderson, then the director of the premier’s office and now her chief of staff, in the background, doing a passable impression of a bodyguard.

A note on peaceful protest in Alberta

The University of Alberta would very much like it if we would just forget about its embarrassing decision last spring to call in the Edmonton cops to kick ass and take names at the “extremely peaceful” encampment set up to protest the destruction of Gaza, which continues unabated. 

To that end, a statement published Thursday by U of A Board Chair Kate Chisholm notes that the third-party review by a former Court of King’s Bench justice of the decision found no laws were broken. Such a finding always comes as a relief in official Alberta. 

Chisholm went on to assure her readers that on the U of A’s campus “peaceful and respectful protesters will always be welcome to exercise their rights to free speech between 5 a.m. and 11 p.m.”

This is a relief. Thank goodness the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees our right to free expression between 5 a.m. and 11 p.m., between 5:30 a.m. and 11:30 p.m. in Newfoundland.

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I was a very young street nurse when I first heard about Sam Ash. Every Thursday night my Street Health colleagues, and I ran a nursing clinic at 30 St. Lawrence, a barebones men’s shelter run by Dixon Hall that was doing harm reduction before it became a thing. The staff were caring and welcoming and devised a practice where if someone was drinking they could still enter the shelter, and staff would hold their bottle until the morning when the person exited.

The shelter was in a building that was essentially a hollowed out old warehouse. There was one area in the shelter that stood out. The lower part of a concrete wall was covered in paintings, drawings really. They were done by Sam Ash, an Ojibway man who stayed at the shelter. Sam had lost his hearing at a young age and over the years I would see Sam at various drop-ins and shelters, his hands flying in sign language and bright eyes communicating a message or question. He was funny and very popular. I later learned more about his paintings, widely attributed to be in the Woodlands style influenced by Norval Morisseau. After Sam died, a “Lives Lived” column by Danielle Koyama in the Globe and Mail described his artistic accomplishments.

Koyama, a front-line worker and long-time friend of Sam’s wrote that he once donated a painting to the Toronto Reference Library saying he wanted it where “it can be viewed by the public for free.”

So that brings me to my story.

In 2009 I purchased one of Sam Ash’s paintings to give as a token of deep appreciation to the Atkinson Charitable Foundation for their support of my work over many years. The foundation had also been a supporter of the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee that I had co-founded and had appointed me as one of their Economic Justice Fellows, a position I held for close to six years. That appointment allowed me to work locally and nationally on issues related to homelessness and housing.

I was liberated by the constraints of the health centre I had been working at, something that doesn’t often happen to nurses who are often constrained to purely clinical work. Not only did I give speeches and work with communities across the country, tour local shelter and housing projects but I made several films on family homelessness with filmmaker Laura Sky. I wrote my first book Dying for a Home, an oral history of activists who were homeless, and kick-started work on the need for palliative care for people who are unhoused.

The Atkinson Foundation, then led by the renowned and admired Charles Pascal who was known to have the best ‘rolodex’ in the city, was a renowned hub for thinkers, dreamers and activists of all kinds who regularly caucused and worked on homelessness, progressive economics, Indigenous rights, fair work, childcare, healthcare, food security and more. Unique to the foundation was its animation of the issues by dynamic staff who themselves were dreamers and activists with sound policy experience.

The Sam Ash painting I bought is titled “Sit And Be Quiet At Good Day” but it has a subtitle “Wait for our friend to come and join us.” I thought not only was the title appropriate, but I was pleased that so many visitors to the foundation would experience it. It depicts two loons amidst magical colours of yellow, blue and green.

Sam died in 2021, and Koyama wrote in the Globe and Mail: “His death is a great loss, but his art and his memory remain. Sam has paintings at the Royal Ontario Museum, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, the Government of Ontario Art Collection, the Thunder Bay Art Gallery and the Canadian Museum of History, the Heritage Center at Red Cloud School in South Dakota and the Dennos Museum Center in Michigan.”

Add the Atkinson Foundation to this list? Sadly, no.

I’m still not quite over my disappointment on visiting the foundation in 2022 and not seeing “Sit and Be Quiet At Good Day” on the walls. The saga of the missing Winston Churchill “Roaring Lion” portrait by Yousuf Karsh, stolen from the Chateau Laurier but now recovered, stirred memories of my disappointment.

I only discovered the painting’s absence when I stopped by the new Atkinson headquarters to drop off copies of my latest book Displacement City which I had co-edited with Greg Cook. The foundation had been a supporter of its publication, in part because dozens of homeless people had contributed to both writing and art in the book. Foundations like Atkinson have been and continue to be at the heart of social justice struggles in our city.

It’s important to note that the foundation I visited that day is a refreshed entity. The offices themselves had moved from the old Toronto Star building to another waterfront high-rise. There is new staff, a new board. To my surprise, no one was aware of the Sam Ash painting.

Puzzled and worried, I contacted former staff and board members. Not a single person could tell me for sure what had happened to the painting.

Where the painting went to remains a mystery. Is it in storage? Was it sold? Was it given away? Is it in a place where as Sam would have wished “it can be viewed by the public for free?”  Perhaps more importantly, how can such an important work by an Indigenous artist vanish into thin air?

As Greg Iven of the Thunder Bay Centre of the Deaf has said, “Even though we can’t see Sam, we can see him every day through his art.”

I can think of a few places this painting could “sit and be quiet at good day”: The Rekai Centre, a long-term care centre where Sam lived until he died. The Good Shepherd Ministries shelter, or perhaps the Thunder Bay Art Gallery that is clearly taking good care and respecting Sam’s art. They hosted a show of his work titled Sam Ash: People of the Eyes, accessible for the deaf, deafened and hard of hearing.

It will be a good day, and perhaps a lesson learned when this mystery can be solved.

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The way workplaces handle of anti-Palestinian racism indicates a grim future for equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI), said Amy Blanding, the Northern Health Authority’s former equity director. 

In October, Blanding filed a wrongful dismissal lawsuit against her former employer. During a dress rehearsal for a community concert, Blanding played her song “Sun Birds” about the ongoing violence in Gaza. She also donned a watermelon shirt. 

Blanding said community members contacted her employer and expressed concern about her ability to work with minorities. She was told by the Northern Health Authority (NHA) to post a pre-written apology for her actions. Blanding said she asked for time to reflect on whether she wanted to post the apology but was told this counted as a refusal and she was removed from her role. 

As a worker in charge of the NHA’s EDI portfolio, Blanding said her case is one of many which signal employers’ unreadiness to fulfill EDI promises when it comes to combating anti-Palestinian racism. 

LISTEN: The future of diversity, equity, and inclusion in Canada

The International Court of Justice found expressed concern about the situation in Gaza at the start of this year and ordered Israel to prevent acts of genocide in the region. Amnesty International released a report last week saying Israel’s violence in Gaza met the legal threshold for the crime of genocide. 

Pro-Palestinian voices silenced

The sheer weight of lives lost in Gaza has galvanized many, but voices speaking out in support of Palestine have been met with heavy repression. Other workers who have been disciplined for expressing solidarity with Palestinians include, former uOttawa medical resident Dr. Yipeng Ge, former member of the Ontario NDP Sarah Jama and Toronto teacher Cassandra Della Mora. 

Anti-Palestinian racism is a a form of anti-Arab racism that silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives, according to a report by the Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, Independent Jewish Voices Canada, and Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council. 

Data from statistics Canada also shows police-reported anti-Muslim hate crimes have increased by 94 per cent between 2022 and 2023. 

“If organizations are actually committed and truly want to eradicate these barriers to equity and to identify what intersecting systems of oppression look like in their organization, they have to be prepared to be very uncomfortable,” Blanding said. 

She said doing the difficult work to prompt diversity has not truly happened. She said she has seen many institutions adopt a “diversity calendar” where Black History Month and pride week are celebrated but there has been a lack of initiative to dig into policies. 

Equity, which seeks to create justice by considering and confronting systems that benefit some groups and harm others, is what Blanding said needs to be put in place to create true diversity and inclusion at work.

“Equity is the one piece that actually needs to be focused on in organizations to ensure fairness that will allow folks to feel like they are safe to be hired into an organization,” Blanding said. 

The NHA said it could not comment on the Blanding case but the response it filed in the BC civil courts indicates the organization was concerned about alienating certain members of the community. The response states that Blandings actions could have made people feel “ostracized or unwelcome and potentially hesitant to access health care.” 

The civil case has yet to be settled. 

The letter sent to the NHA after Blanding’s dress rehearsal alleges anti-semitism. Blanding maintains that this is unfair. 

“This is just another example of how folks are getting away with absurdities and distracting us from the actual problem,” Blanding said. “I’ve been working in equity work for a very long time now, so I’m not regularly surprised by how oppression and power rears its heads. In this instance, it really did take me aback.” 

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, expressed concern about the government recognizing anti-Palestinian racism as an issue. They wrote that Jewish identity and voices could be silenced.

In the CJPME’s report on anti-Palestinian racism, the authors wrote that “insisting Judaism/Jewishness means uncritical support for the policies and actions of a state that is widely and justifiably condemned for serious human rights violations is itself antisemitic, erases non-zionist Jewish identities and histories.” 

Blanding said while the cases of anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and islamophobic practices in the workplace are concerning, she believe there is still hope for Canada’s workplaces to put in place genuine EDI measures. 

“The optimist in me likes to think the outcry against this anti-Palestinian racism, anti-Muslim racism, anti-Arab racism is going to push organizations, the public sector, to actually shift practice,” she said.

The post Anti-Palestinian sentiments are holding back EDI efforts in workplaces appeared first on rabble.ca.

In our final episode of the Courage My Friends podcast series, season seven, we are joined by author, professor and director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group at the University of Manitoba, Dr. Radhika Desai, and author, professor and Chair of International Relations and Political Science at St. Thomas University, Dr. Shaun Narine.

We discuss the shifting balance of power in global politics, BRICS, de-dollarization, the rise of Asia and the Global South, the challenges it poses to the rules-based international order of the Global North and Canada’s place within an inevitably multipolar world.

Speaking on the growth of multipolarity, Desai says:

“Lenin argued that imperialism, by which he meant the stage capitalism had arrived at in the early 20th century, was the highest stage of capitalism … Beyond it, there was not much capitalism had to give to humanity… After 40 years of neoliberalism … it is quite obvious that it is suffering from senility … low growth rates, low investment rates, low innovation rates … It is far from fulfilling the needs of humanity … it is far from keeping the West powerful. Part of the emergence of multipolarity … is the decline in the vigor of Western capitalist economies.”

Reflecting on Canada as a middle power in a multipolar world, Narine says:

“I think in a world where multipolarity is mattering more and more and more … simply being an American vassal state, which is what I’d argue we largely are right now … doesn’t encourage anybody to look at Canada as an independent actor … I think the first step for us to be a Middle Power means to demonstrate that we’re actually capable of independent thinking and independent policy and capable of articulating interests that aren’t being dictated by the American embassy in Ottawa.”

About today’s guests:

Radhika Desai is professor of Political Studies and director of Geopolitical Economy Research Group at the University of Manitoba, convenor of the International Manifesto Group and past president of the Society for Socialist Studies. Her wide-ranging work covers party politics, political and geopolitical economy, political and economic theory, nationalism, fascism, British, US and Indian politics. Geopolitical economy, the approach to the international relations of the capitalist world she proposed in her 2013 work, Geopolitical Economy, combines Marx’s analysis of capitalism with those of ‘late development’ and the developmental state as the key to explaining the dynamic of international relations of the modern capitalist world. Currently, she is working on several books including ‘Hindutva and the Political Economy of Indian Capitalism’ and ‘Marx as a Monetary Theorist’. Her numerous articles have appeared in Capital and Class, Economic and Political Weekly,  International Critical Thought, New Left Review, Third World Quarterly, World Review of Political Economy and other journals and in edited collections on parties, political economy, culture and nationalism. She is regularly invited as a speaker and to conferences around the world.

Shaun Narine is a professor of International Relations and Political Science at St. Thomas University in Fredericton. His research focuses on institutionalism in the Asia Pacific. He has written two books on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and published on issues related to ASEAN as well as Canadian foreign policy, Canada’s relations with China, and US foreign policy. He was a Killam Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2000-2002) at the University of British Columbia and has been a Visiting Fellow at the East-West Center (2000) and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies-Yusof Ishak Institute (2017 and 2021) in Singapore.

Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute or here.

Image: Radhika Desai, Shaun Narine  / Used with permission.

Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased.

Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy)

Courage My Friends podcast organizing committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu.

Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca.

Host: Resh Budhu.

The post BRICS, de-dollarization and Canada in a multipolar world appeared first on rabble.ca.

Dear rabble readers, 

On Tuesday last week, rabble.ca launched our winter fundraising campaign. We’re so grateful to everyone who has already chosen to support us this December. 

In our message to our audience last week, we mentioned the idea of “media democracy.” Today, I wanted to break down exactly what that means for rabble.ca and how you fit into it. 

What is media democracy? 

Media democracy refers to the idea that media, particularly journalism, should serve the public interest, promote democratic values, and be accessible to everyone. It emphasizes the role of the media in providing readers with the information they need to make informed decisions, participate in civic life, and hold those in power accountable.

In a media democracy, diverse voices and viewpoints are represented. In a media democracy, news is seen as a tool for promoting transparency, social justice, and public engagement.

Sound familiar? 

If you’re a reader of rabble.ca, it should! 

Media democracy is the foundation on which rabble was created. We continue to champion that value in our work today. 

We believe in accessible news 

Our commitment to the idea of free and accessible news is why we’ve never operated behind a paywall or subscription fee; it would only limit access to our news and views from readers who rely on us across the country, accelerating the digital divide we see happening in corporate media. 

News is becoming less and less accessible in Canada. 

It’s been about a year and a half and Meta still refuses to operate within the constructs of Bill C-18. With Canadian news banned on Facebook and Instagram – and with more and more people leaving Twitter/X since the takeover of Elon Musk – rabble.ca and all other news media in Canada have needed to renegotiate our place on social media and find new ways of reaching our audience. 

When news is restricted – whether behind a paywall or all-out ban across social media – Canadians suffer. People are left without the full picture of the top stories happening around them and are at risk of falling prey to misinformation and adopting harmful ideas about communities and viewpoints they are not yet familiar with. 

Together, with your help, we are going to make sure that doesn’t happen at rabble.

Media democracy means supporting indie media

If you believe in media democracy, support indie media like rabble.ca. 

Being an independent, not-for-profit news organization, rabble’s focus is on serving the public interest — not our bottom line. This means we’re able to hold powerful institutions, governments and corporations accountable without fear of backlash or financial pressure. Corporate media, however, must often avoid critical reporting on major advertisers and stakeholders, leading to compromised journalism.

As part of rabble’s mandate of “news for the rest of us,” we’re proud to share the stories from diverse voices which are often ignored and underrepresented by corporate media. 

And finally, while corporate media often leans into sensationalism and rage-bait, rabble.ca is dedicated to focusing our attention on uncovering corruption, injustice, and systemic issues – and crucially, how to overcome it all. 

With the support from you and forward-thinking organizations who believe that the media can do better, we can continue amplifying the stories and voices that Canadians need to hear. 

Become a rabble rouser today during our winter fundraiser and support us in our mission to strengthen media democracy in Canada. 

With your support, it can be done! 

Nick Seebruch, editor
On behalf of the entire rabble team

The post What is media democracy? (And why you should support rabble this winter) appeared first on rabble.ca.

In Montreal author Jacob Wren’s new novel, Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim, the protagonist is an earnestly neurotic and well-meaning writer from a First World country who travels to a fragile utopian liberated zone that is being bombed by his government. Some of his narrative is an account of what he experienced among the revolutionary activists he met there, especially the women fighters and organizers, and some is a pained reflection on whether it is legitimate for him to be among these militants. Is he a genuine ally, or an opportunistic tourist gathering up material for his next book? What are the responsibilities of a sympathetic visitor among a beleaguered population that suffers beneath bombs he indirectly funds through his taxes?

The American muckraker Lincoln Steffens famously said after visiting Russia during their revolution that “I have seen the future and it works.” Wren’s protagonist might represent an update on that assertion for the post-modern political pilgrim. – “I have seen the future and it is a disrupted, self-conscious narrative with an unreliable narrator who is more interested in his own inner life, such as it is, than in the revolution he came to support.”

The fictional liberated zone is largely based, according to the author, on Rojava, the three semi-independent  Kurdish cantons of North Syria, and the political thought of Kurdish insurgent Abdullah Ocalan with other elements drawn from experiences of the Spanish revolution of the 1930s, the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and the Argentinian Neighborhood Assembly Movement of 2001-03. An explicit pro feminist commitment and focus on local autonomous organizing drawn from these historic models is reflected in life in the “thin strip of land” portrayed in Wren’s novel.

The protagonist spends time among the revolutionaries, sits in on committee meetings and popular assemblies, donates his never very competent labor to work projects in the liberated zone. He learns to shoot, although never very well, and is captured by the enemy on his first armed patrol. Held and tortured by the enemies of the revolution, the protagonist experiences all the Kafkaesque horrors of this period through the dulling lens of his depression. He returns home and tries to turn his experiences into literature, the book we are currently reading.

Wren’s protagonist is not the first visitor from safer, more privileged parts of the world to visit revolutions in progress, and to wrestle, with varying degrees of success, with the ethical puzzles that permeate this strange, somewhat difficult but in the end important work of fiction. Lord Byron and other Romantics travelled to the Greek revolution in the 1820s  and American Transcendentalist author Margaret Fuller reported sympathetically  on revolutionary struggles in Rome in 1849.

Lincoln Steffens was not the only America based radical who travelled to support the Russian revolution. Louise Bryant and John Reed also visited Russia during the revolution there and reported rapturously from the front lines. Emma Goldman, the great anarchist thinker and activist, was a  pro-Bolshevik visitor at first, but realized sooner and  more clearly than many other Western fans the profound flaws in democratic process that marred the Russian revolution and  later turned the phrase “really existing socialism” into a bitter joke.

Later, Canadian icon Norman Bethune lent his medical skills to the Spanish Republic when it was attacked by fascists in the 1930s and later provided similarly useful help to Mao’s forces during the Chinese revolution. I am not aware of any of these earlier political pilgrims agonizing about personal authenticity or legitimacy in the way Wren’s protagonist does.

Still later, many Western sympathizers travelled to observe and participate in the Cuban revolution or to support the Sandinistas in Nicaragua or the Zapatistas in Mexico. A notable figure among these pilgrims was American feminist/ poet/activist Margaret Randall, who lived and worked in Cuba and Nicaragua for years and has written extensively about those experiences, including several books that critique these revolutions for their failure to fully integrate feminists perspectives, including Cuban Women Now: Interview with Cuban Women (1974), Sandino’s Daughters: Testimonies of Nicaraguan Women in Struggle (1981), Sandino’s Daughters Revisited: Feminism in Nicaragua (1994), and Gathering Rage: The Failure of 20th Century Revolutions to Develop a Feminist Agenda (1992). Randall may well be the figure among the crowds of political pilgrims the West has sent to foreign revolutions who has most successfully managed the inherent ethical dilemmas of the political pilgrim, the problems that so vex Wren’s unhappy protagonist.

None of this is to dismiss the real if modest literary success of Wren’s odd little novel. It is difficult to portray depression and torpor in ways that do not depress and immobilize the reader, and in large measure Wren pulls off that difficult task, while incorporating some of the currently popular themes of auto fiction. He is unlikely to find a large audience with this book, but some readers will find it fascinating, and use it as an invitation to tough reflection about their own political and literary work. Worth a look and some thoughtful examination.

For the Kurds from whom some inspiration for this novel was taken, they are once again facing adversity, but also opportunity, as the oppressive regime of Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad has begun disintegrating in recent weeks.

The post Ally or tourist? Jacob Wren tackles the ambiguities of solidarity appeared first on rabble.ca.

It doesn’t seem like that long ago United Conservative Party (UCP) cabinet ministers, MLAs and political aides were getting in to all kinds of hot water for their holiday travel.

Who can forget Tracy Allard, booted from her job as municipal affairs minister for her mid-pandemic Hawaiian holiday? Or the controversies in 2021 stirred up by vacation jet-setters Tanya Fir (Vegas), Jeremy Nixon (Hawaii), Pat Rehn (Mexico), Jason Stephan (Arizona), and Tany Yao (Mexico)?

Well, that was then and this is now. Different premier, too. 

These days, of course, COVID-19 may still be around, but if anyone’s paying attention it’s not evident, and UCP MLAs are travelling all over the place. 

One thing has changed, though – we the people, as they say south of the 49th Parallel, are picking up the tab for these junkets. 

According to a news release Friday, Justice Minister Mickey Amery and Technology and Innovation Minister Nate Glubish were scheduled to jet off on Saturday to the United Arab Emirates for a week “promoting Alberta as an AI hub.” 

Well that sounds important, although just what any of the goings on in the dusty desert city of Dubai, home to the world’s tallest building, have to do with the administration of justice in Alberta remains an interesting question. 

The answer proffered by Amery in the press release was not particularly convincing: “This mission will provide us with an excellent opportunity to gain insights about advancements in artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure, and to explore how these innovations might be applied to our own work in the Alberta justice system.”

Hmmm. Facial recognition software, anyone? The UCP’s pro-convoy base should just love that! 

The week-long junket will see Glubish address the Global AI Show on Friday the 13th, according to the presser, although the details of the engagement were left a little fuzzy by the author of the statement. Amery and Glubish will be accompanied by four staffers. 

The UCP must have been impressed with the quality of the accommodations in Dubai a year ago during the COP28 United Nations climate change conference. According to the CBC on Friday, yet another Alberta delegation will be heading to Dubai early in the New Year to “attract skilled workers who live temporarily in the UAE.”

That sounds strange for a government that can’t stop assailing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for Ottawa’s immigration policies. It’s almost as if one day we’re closed and the next day we’re wide open. Depends on who’s doing the asking, I guess. 

Meanwhile, according to another release on Friday, a couple more “Alberta MLAs will participate in year-end tours that will play an important role in cementing ties they have been building with partners in the U.S. this past year, while setting the stage for even greater cooperation heading into 2025.”

Cypress-Medicine Hat UCP MLA Justin Wright will be off to Colorado Springs, Colo., tomorrow, to take part in the Council of State Governments Western Legislative Academy in Colorado Springs, “for training and consensus building.” 

The five-day event, according to the news release, is a “premier multi-day legislative leadership training program.” But not in the Canadian sense of that word, obviously. 

The Big Brains of the UCP may have missed it that we have a different system of government, even here in Wild Rose Country, although perhaps for not much longer if the next president of the United States gets his way. 

Why the United States would accept Canada as a huge state – the biggest state! bigger than Texas, even! where almost everyone outside Alberta and Saskatchewan would vote for the Democratic Party presidential candidate – is not clear when Washington pulls the strings of our federal government anyway. But no one ever said Donald Trump was a deep thinker. 

But I digress. That Westminster Parliamentary system thing is probably why Alberta is only an associate member of the CSG. 

Meanwhile, the release continued, Airdrie-East MLA Angela Pitt will fly to Austin, Texas, from December 12 to 14 to attend the National Conference of State Legislatures’ Leaders’ Symposium. 

The December 12-14 trip should be a useful learning opportunity for Pitt, who not so long ago publicly mused about how Alberta should become a fully autonomous province like South Tyrol, the German-speaking Italian province that didn’t get rolled into the German Reich along with next-door Austria in 1938 because the leaders of Germany and Italy at the time were somewhat simpatico, ideologically speaking. 

While she’s in the Texas capital, Pitt might ask what happened in 1861 when several U.S. states entertained similar ideas about autonomy. 

That said, I’m sure Pitt will be welcomed warmly – Texans and Canadians seem quite simpatico too, possibly because they both live in places that were once countries independent of the United States. 

She will be surprised to learn, though, that Austin is more liberal than Edmonton. This may explain its branding: “Keep Austin Weird.”

Meanwhile, don’t try to ask Premier Danielle Smith about this. Along with four flunkies from her office, she’s already at the Western Governors’ Association’s winter meeting in Las Vegas.

With the holiday season almost upon us, it’s starting to feel as if the UCP is running a travel agency, not a government!

The post AB conservative politicians fly around while taxpayers pick up the bill appeared first on rabble.ca.

During this fall’s eventful session of the Alberta Legislature, the United Conservative Party (UCP) attacked the rights of some vulnerable Albertans to medical treatment, undermined the right of all citizens to public information, made it easier to keep citizens from exercising their right to use public land, and even tried to make it illegal for law-abiding citizens to obey federal laws. 

Then they marked the end of the session yesterday by publishing a news release on the government website stating that “Alberta’s government was laser-focused on the protection and promotion of Albertans’ rights and freedoms, a theme that united all 13 pieces of legislation passed this session.”

This kind of inversion of the truth is characteristic of many UCP statements. Nevertheless, it must be said that even the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s famous fictional account a dystopian future would have stopped using the term “laser-focused” by now, surely the stalest lame metaphor in this province’s public discourse. 

Denying the right of a few citizens to medical treatment was part of a trio of laws designed to victimize a tiny minority of trans people to satisfy the base MAGA urges of the UCP’s woke-obsessed base. 

The Education Amendment Act, 2024, the Health Statutes Amendment Act and the Fairness and Safety in Sport Act each include measures based on the anti-woke hysteria used so effectively by the Republican party south of the Medicine Line.

The first bill will force students under 16 to get their parents’ permission if they want to change their names or pronouns at school; the second will prohibit physicians from treating young people under 16 seeking transgender treatment with puberty blockers and hormone therapies, even if their parents give permission; and the third will ban transgender athletes from competing in leagues not designated as co-ed in the name of protecting women’s sports.

None of this is necessary or addresses a real problem, and in some cases it will result in cruelty. But it will win votes for the UCP in certain quarters. 

Premier Smith, who used to shed crocodile tears about the plight of transgender young people, has suggested she might use the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ “notwithstanding clause” if the provisions are overturned by the courts in the inevitable legal challenges. 

The Access to Information Act will redefine cabinet confidentiality to include messages between ministers and political staffers, and among political staff, to shield the government from public disclosure of public information. 

The new exemptions will prevent disclosure of any document created by or for the premier, any other ministers, or the Treasury Board, including emails. Well, at least this save government political aides from the inconvenience of using vaguely named Gmail accounts to avoid Freedom of Information requests, as is common practice now. 

The All-Season Resorts Act, which Government House Leader Joseph Schow bragged about in that Orwellian press release will allow the government to exempt any developer from normal environmental regulations to build exclusive resorts that will never welcome ordinary Albertans. Professional Biologist Lorne Fitch will have more to say about this in this space this weekend.

Schow was also the sponsor of the Fairness and Safety in Sport Act, which will have negligible impact on either farness or safety in sport, but provides the party base with a convenient whipping child. Well, the UCP certainly isn’t about to try, as at least one prominent U.S. conservative politician has done in such circumstances, “to err on the side of kindness, mercy and compassion.” 

As for trying to keep law-abiding citizens from obeying federal laws, the UCP left that up to a fatuous Sovereignty Act motion passed by the Legislature that appears principally to be intended to hide the amount of carbon that energy companies operating in Alberta pump into the planet’s atmosphere. This will pretty well put paid to the notion of “ethical oil” from Alberta, but one suspects we’re well beyond that sort of pretence by now anyway. 

The UCP position is that since the Canadian Constitution gives provinces jurisdiction over natural resources, Alberta’s Government can therefore order fossil fuel companies operating here not to obey the laws passed by Parliament. As was noted earlier in this space, one doesn’t need to be a constitutional expert to suspect that this is not going to fly if it ever gets to court.

But then that doesn’t really matter because the immediate goal of such grandstanding is to attack Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a Liberal. This is the same reason Ms. Smith and the UCP will never contribute to any “Team Canada” effort to save Canadians in other provinces from U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s plan to impose heavy sanctions on U.S. allies who don’t dance to his tune. 

In other news, the UCP was willing, however, to agree to take $162 million from Ottawa to fund three extremely expensive drugs for rare diseases affecting a small number of patients who might otherwise face bills of $100,000 or more a year for treatment.

Credit where credit is due, this deal was part of the National Strategy for Drugs for Rare Diseases, through which the federal government has budgeted up to $1.4 billion over three years for bilateral agreements with provinces and territories. 

The post AB gov’t attacks the rights of citizens on several fronts during fall legislative session appeared first on rabble.ca.

On a crisp fall evening in early 2022, Svens Telemaque, a Montréal native and dedicated community worker, began his shift as an Uber driver. As he navigated city streets adorned with trees shedding leaves in hues of crimson and deep orange, Svens settled into his routine.

Approaching Boisbriand on the city’s North Shore, his rear-view mirror suddenly lit up with flashing red and blue lights from an approaching police car. Pulling over to let it pass, a wave of fear and anxiety struck him as he realized that the officers were stopping for him.

“They pulled me over, flashed a light in my face, demanded my license, and told me that ‘we’ve had a lot of stolen vehicles around here. Is this one yours?’ The cop then noticed my client in the back and without another word, jumped into his car and drove off,” he said. 

Svenss experience is all too familiar for young Black men in Quebec. Racism within law enforcement has long been entrenched, with Montreal police Commander Patrice Vilcéus referring to it in his resignation letter as a “cancer eating away at the organization.” A stark contrast to Premier François Legault’s persistent denials.

In late October, the Quebec Court of Appeal reaffirmed the existence of race-based discrimination by upholding a 2022 Superior Court decision. That ruling struck down a law that violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including protections against arbitrary detention and the right to equality, allowing racial profiling by police through a legal loophole.

Under Section 636 of the Quebec Highway Safety Code, police officers could stop any vehicle without cause. This led to Joseph Christopher Luamba, a young Black Montréaler, being stopped nearly a dozen times, none of which resulted in a ticket or arrest.

With support from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), the Commission on Human and Youth Rights, and the Canadian Association of Black Lawyers, Luamba launched a legal challenge against the Quebec Attorney General. The CCLA argued that random police stops violated the Charter’s protections against arbitrary detention and equality, creating an environment for racial profiling.

Following his decision in 2022, Justice Michel Yergeau ruled that the random stops facilitated racial profiling, going on to say that “racial profiling does exist. It manifests itself in particular with Black drivers of motor vehicles.”

Lex Gill, a lawyer representing the CCLA, described the judgment by the Court of Appeal as a huge win for equality rights in Canada.

“It’s a landmark decision, the court of appeals judgment charts a new course for equality rights in Canada, and in a sense this is the first time that a police power has been invalidated on the basis that it facilitates discrimination and that’s huge,” said Gill. 

“Systemic racism is a profound issue in Quebec much like anyplace else in North America and this driving stop power is just one manifestation of this sort of discrimination,” she said. “These stops are so notorious that in academic literature in Canada it is called the driving while Black’ power, it’s literally seen as a law used for racial profiling”.

Gill also went on to describe what the unprecedented decision to uphold the Court’s original ruling says about the system of policing in Quebec:

“This decision shows us that policing institutions in Quebec are in drastic need of profound structural change, but on the other hand we can see that the courts can recognize that they have the power to do something about these injustices and that is a sign of a healthy, functional judicial system.”

Whilst a huge win for equality rights, the ruling is damning evidence of both systemic racism in Quebec as well as François Legault’s continued denial of its existence. 

Legault’s apparent blindness to the problem has seen a steep rise in race-driven hatred in Quebec in recent years. However, the Premier continues to describe the issue of systemic racism as being related only “with the Black people in the United States”.

In September this led to the Red Coalition – an anti-racism lobby group, to call on the Quebec government to urgently create legislation to help stop the rise in racial injustices and hate crimes across the province and provide a legal framework to combat systemic discrimination.

“I would say to Premier Legault that we just had a six-week trial with uncontested evidence where the courts have concluded that police are targeting black and racialized people,” said Gill.

Despite Legault’s repeated refusal of systemic racism’s existence in Quebec, as per a 2021 study, 66 per cent of residents believe that the term is an accurate description of the form of discrimination and prejudice that takes in the province.

“If you need any more proof as to how prevalent racism is within the policing system then I suggest you go check out a provincial system and see who’s waiting to have their case heard and being denied bail, go down to the criminal court and tell me how many white people are hanging out there because there’s none except for the lawyers,” Gill said.

Frédéric Bérard is constitutional lawyer and Doctor of Law at Université de Montréal (UdM). He is also a political and legal commentator for the Journal Métro, Cogeco, and Radio-Canada.

“Either the Legault government is stupid enough to believe that systemic racism doesn’t exist in Quebec, or they know that it does but they are pretending that it doesn’t to please racists like Matthew Bock-Côté and a certain element in his electoral basis,” he said. “Even the police boss says that some of his cops are practising racist policies.”

Following the Court of Appeal’s decision, the Quebec government has six months to implement the required amendments to the Highway Safety Code. However, it still has the option to appeal the ruling and take the case to the Supreme Court.

 “The Legault government is claiming that this ruling will make the police’s job more difficult but this is total bullshit because if you’re a cop and someone is violating the rule of law, you can arrest them without question,” said Bérard.

“Nobody is saying that Quebec is a racist place or that the Quebecois are racist people, however, it has now been proved that there is some systemic racism in certain areas so if we live under the rule of law then the Legault government has no choice but to respect the ruling of the court.”

While the Quebec Court of Appeal’s decision could signify a watershed moment for equality rights in Canada, many in racialized communities who have borne the brunt of systemic discrimination remain cautiously optimistic about its impact.

For victims of this abuse of power like Svens, the ruling offers hope that it could mark the beginning of the end of an era of hate and discrimination.

“This is not going to eliminate the problem because a lot of police have stereotypical, biased, racist views, and that’s not going to change because of this court ruling,” he said.

“There needs to be less funding for the police and more funding for community organizations that run programs to help youth. If the cops have time to stop Black people on their way to work, then they’re not stopping crime. To me racial profiling is a perfect indicator of resources being wasted by an overfunded organization,” Svens added.

The post When will Quebec’s premier acknowledge systemic racism in the justice system? appeared first on rabble.ca.