Last year there was a report written, “Alberta Anti-Racism Advisory Council Recommendations” and I thought it was well done. I’m not sure how well some of their recommendations are being pursued. For example. One of them is to establish an Ombudsperson office with staff to investigate all complaints about policing in Alberta in an independent, transparent and timely manner. This body will have punitive powers and ensure compliance with recommended actions.
I did a Google search for the office. If I found the right information, it says the Ombudsman cannot investigate:
Decisions made by the Federal government
Members of the Legislative Assembly
Federal or municipal police forces
Decisions made by universities or schools
Decisions made by the courts
Private businesses or private matters
Does this mean the advisory council recommendations are an exercise in futility? Is this a good question? Or does it mean something has been accomplished, but we don’t know about it? I’d like to find out.
The Mayor of Edmonton, Amarjeet Sohi, called for a strategy to address racism in Edmonton moments after being sworn in as the city’s first South Asian mayor. I’d like to know what has been accomplished. It is hard to find a recent hate crime story in the news. Just what are they doing to address this issue?
If the Ombudsman can’t investigate the police, who is?
One story that really bothers me is the one about an “Indigenous teenager in Edmonton, Alberta, who has spent nearly a year without a chunk of his skull after a local police officer allegedly kicked him in the head “football-style.” The lad was handcuffed, lying on the ground, and wasn’t offering any resistance when Const. Ben Todd attacked him. Apparently, Todd wasn’t even suspended for the incident.
What’s happening with this?
Minorities all over North America are scared of the police. In the United States, it’s even worse.
A group I belong to is challenging members to set up their “Citizening” and take an active role in making Alberta into the province it needs to be… for everyone.
I would like to take an active role in helping to reduce racism, discrimination, and work towards assisting with other social issues. But, I can’t do it myself.
If you would like to join me, I’ve set up a Google Group, where discussions on how to move forward on this issue, can be addressed, and develop action plans for various levels of engagement. If we can put together a good-sized group, perhaps we can help draw more attention to racism in Alberta, and encourage local officials to stay on track.
There’s a homepage for the group, that gives a basic overview of how it can work, with a preview of the group, so you can see how it’s setup. You can join it here.
It’s easy to ignore one voice. One-hundred or more voices isn’t so easy to dismiss. Maybe, just maybe, we can get something done.
Colten Boushie’s family fought for accountability after the racist actions of the RCMP as they investigated the death of her son who was shot and killed by a local farmer. Here she holds up his photo during the 2018 trial. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Liam Richards
Years of research and community reporting have shown how Black, Indigenous and racialized people experience violence by police or over-policing. But research also shows a chronic under-policing as well. To be clear, this is not an article about the need for more policing. It is an article that outlines the different, and very damaging, ways in which racialized policing can play out.
Over-policing includes things like racially motivated street checks. Under-policing refers to a tempered response when seeking police assistance; this includes police investigations into the deaths of racialized community members. Both under-policing and over-policing can have deadly outcomes.
Boushie was a 22-year-old Indigenous man from Red Pheasant Cree Nation, located one hour west of Saskatoon, Sask. In 2016, Boushie was shot and killed at close-range by Gerald Stanley, a white farmer. In 2018, Stanley was acquitted of second-degree murder by an all-white jury. Stanley’s lawyer argued it was a “freak accident” and said the shooting was accidental. It was, and continues to be, a polarizing case.
I write this article from a position of privilege. I am a middle-class woman, raised as a settler. My work focuses on racialized outcomes in the justice system. Since I have not lost family members to police violence, I can look at racialized policing with the privilege of distance. I live on Treaty 4 Territory. I am writing this article with the permission of Boushie’s family.
The context: Settler colonialism
The recent federal watchdog reports offer insights into the bureaucratic practices of police accountability which often serves to mute settler violence.
“Settler colonialism is not eventful; it is enduring, it has its own structure and logic and refusal as well, operating like a grammar and posture that sits through time. It is a politics deeply cognizant of its own production, of the never-ending nature of inequity and the need to stay the course.”
The Boushie family have been calling for justice and demanding accountability from the RCMP for five years. The family’s concerns resulted in the two recent reports by the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission.
Reports on the RCMP
The reports deliver a blow-by-blow description of racialized policing and systemic racism in action. Media releases by the RCMP at the time of the killing placed an emphasis on property offences versus the death of Boushie, which served to imply the victim was a thief and further fuelled racial tensions in the area.
When the police went to Boushie’s mother’s home to notify her that her son had been killed, officers surrounded her home and invaded it, treating it as a threat. They executed an illegal search. And sniffed her breath to see if she had been drinking.
When Gerald Stanley’s son called the police to report a shooting, it was clear that Stanley had shot Boushie. This was the scene of a homicide and yet the scene was left exposed for more than a day. A rainstorm washed away blood and evidence that can never be retrieved.
This is the state of police accountability in Canada.
The histories of policing reveal origins in slave patrols and agencies to control Indigenous Peoples. Given the actions by RCMP during the Boushie investigation, and these broader historical contexts, it is important to ask: is police accountability truly possible in a settler state?
Debbie Baptiste holds up a photo of her son Colten Boushie after a day of meetings on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa on Feb. 13, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
As streets continue to erupt in protest over police violence, hashtags fill social media and news cycles through the latest tragedy, each death is lived and relived by families. This is how police violence moves through the public imaginary — largely in cycles that rotate images of violence and resistance. In the wake are families who have lost a loved one.
Aamjiwnaang First Nation is surrounded by ‘Chemical Valley,’ a large complex of petrochemical plants, located near Sarnia, Ont. (Jon Lin Photography/flickr) CC BY-NC
Bill C-230, a private member’s bill that aims to address environmental racism, has passed second reading in a 182-153 vote, and is now under discussion with the environment parliamentary committee before it returns to the House of Commons. If the bill is passed, Canada would become one of the first countries in the world to require the government to develop a national strategy to tackle environmental racism.
As law professors with expertise in matters relating to both the environment and social justice, we argue that this move is necessary both for reasons of justice and also to fulfil Canada’s human rights obligations.
What’s in the proposed bill
Nova Scotia MP Lenore Zann introduced Bill C-230 to compel the minister of the environment to create a national strategy to redress environmental racism within two years.
This strategy would include making efforts to identify, document and monitor environmental racism, creating processes to increase the participation of Indigenous, racialized and other affected communities in environmental policy-making, providing redress for harm due to environmental injustice and ensuring access to clean air and water.
The case for a law like this is stronger than ever. Other jurisdictions are currently seeking to address environmental racism, and the federal government is taking action to tackle climate change and other environmental issues. But most importantly, unjust environmental burdens continue to be placed on racialized communities in Canada.
Trailer for ‘There’s Something in the Water,’ a film about environmental racism in Nova Scotia, based on the book by Ingrid Waldron.
When Baskut Tuncak, the U.N. special rapporteur on toxic chemicals, visited Canada in 2019, he found that Indigenous people are disproportionately affected by toxic exposures. In a statement, he wrote that he had “observed a pervasive trend of inaction by the Canadian government” in addressing the health threats of toxic exposures and their cumulative effects.
Canada, unlike the U.S., lacks data on environmental racism. Bill C-230 would require the federal government to:
“Collect information and statistics relating to the location of environmental hazards … examine the link between race, socioeconomic status and environmental risk … [and] collect information and statistics relating to negative health outcomes in communities that have been affected by environmental racism.”
Historic Africville is a notable case. Africville, a Black community in Halifax, became the site of a railway, a slaughterhouse and an open-pit dump. The city then relocated residents, under the auspices of neighbourhood improvement, and acquired the valuable shoreline. Black communities in Nova Scotia continue to resist proposals to locate environmentally hazardous facilities near their communities.
A man fishes next to a refinery south of Sarnia, Ont., in 2007. CP PHOTO/Dave Chidley
As climate change and its impacts become more significant, it’s important to pay attention to who it affects most. In its recent decision on climate pricing, the Supreme Court of Canada declared that climate change is “an existential challenge” that has the potential to cause “irreversible harm [that] would be felt across the country and would be borne disproportionately by vulnerable communities and regions.”
Recent efforts at reconciliation with First Nations, Inuit and Métis people and the Black Lives Matter movement have demonstrated the continuing salience of — and urgent need for — anti-racist and decolonial strategies. The fight against systemic environmental racism is a key element of this.
Climate bills with a strong focus on environmental justice are also moving through legislatures in New York and Massachusetts. Canada could follow suit by linking its proposed Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act (Bill C-12) with environmental justice and Bill C-230.
The net-zero bill is stronger than Bill C-230 because it would legally bind the feds to achieving the net-zero target by 2050. It also requires five-year targets with mandatory plans and progress reports, and an independent review of the results by the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, so that changes in government will not derail the goal. Adding an explicit commitment to environmental justice and plans to achieve it would enhance Canada’s net-zero bill.
In addition, proposed changes to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act include adding a right to a healthy environment, a commitment to uphold the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the obligation to consider vulnerable populations and the cumulative effects of harmful substances.
A new precedent
The Biden administration’s plan sets a much more ambitious goal than Bill C-230. However, Bill C-230 is the perfect opportunity for Canada to set a national precedent with this demonstrable commitment to environmental justice and addressing the legacy of environmental racism.
Laws and rights, on their own, can be toothless if they do not come with binding duties, explicit standards and adequate enforcement. The government, civil society and citizens will need to be active and vigilant to redress and prevent environmental racism. The law will also need to be backed up with adequate resources and transparency to ensure that the national strategy is participatory, adequately resourced and leads to continual renewal and improvement.
Although Bill C-230 would merely be a first step in a larger process, it is an important one in the right direction that can act as a catalyst for more transformative change, particularly if it is linked with other current policy ambitions, such as the net-zero carbon emissions bill and the proposed amendments to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
The Speech from the Throne opens every new session of Parliament. The Speech introduced the government’s direction and goals, and outlines how it will work to achieve them. One of them was standing up for Canadian values, including progress on reconciliation, gender equality, and systemic racism.
The Council of Canadians understand the direct link between austerity, racist violence and the erosion of democratic processes. The U.S. is bearing the fruit of decades of cruelty — breaking up unions, cutting public services and siphoning public resources and wealth into the hands of the very elite. These policies, also present in Canada, inevitably deepen racial divisions because our systems already marginalize Black, Indigenous and people of colour. Combined with explicit scapegoating, this creates fertile ground to justify political power for white leaders while targeting state and communal violence toward racialized peoples. We respond to threats against democracy.
It’s a daily reality for many Black, Indigenous and People of Colour in Canada. In the wake of public outrage about the systemic racism and disproportionate police violence experienced by Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC), a new report presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council documents troubling findings of environmental racism and injustice in Canada.
So far, the Trudeau government has declined to recognize this right, despite more than 100 MPs from all parties pledging their support and Liberal Party of Canada members voting for it to be a policy priority. While the federal government has committed to “modernizing” CEPA, there is no guarantee that this right will be recognized.
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Internal Alberta Agriculture documents show the UCP government and health officials prioritized the continued operation of the Cargill meat-packing plant over worker safety even as infection rates skyrocketed, a union group and an academic expert say.
The Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) obtained hundreds of pages of documents through freedom of information. CBC News also obtained an audio recording of an April 18, 2020 town hall meeting between government officials and Cargill workers.
The documents include correspondence involving senior health officials, including chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw, and emails from Agriculture Minister Devin Dreeshen’s office, which critics say advanced a narrative that minimized the risk of infection within the Cargill plant.
“If you look at this evidence in its totality, it is clear that keeping the plant open is more important than worker safety,” said Sean Tucker, a University of Regina professor of occupational health and safety, who reviewed the documents.
The UN report’s first recommendation is to recognize the right to a healthy environment. This was recommended by the House of Commons environment committee in 2017 as part of a suite of measures to strengthen the outdated Canadian Environmental Protection Act. This right is recognized in more than 150 countries and has proven to produce better environmental outcomes.
So far, the Trudeau government has declined to recognize this right, despite more than 100 MPs from all parties pledging their support and Liberal Party of Canada members voting for it to be a policy priority. While the federal government has committed to “modernizing” CEPA, there is no guarantee that this right will be recognized.
The report also recommends implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which includes the recognition of Indigenous legal systems and free, prior and informed consent for resource projects on Indigenous land. We call on Trudeau to act swiftly to introduce UNDRIP legislation, as committed to in the recent speech from the throne and during the 2015 election.
Finally, Liberal MP Lenore Zann has put forward Bill C-230, which calls for the development of a strategy to redress environmental racism. It is expected to proceed to second reading in early December. This bill could serve to establish an environmental justice framework, as recommended in the UN report, and stimulate solutions to environmental racism across Canada. However, as a private member’s bill, it faces an uphill battle and needs support.
Last year there was a report written, “Alberta Anti-Racism Advisory Council Recommendations” and I thought it was well done. I’m not sure how well some of their recommendations are being pursued. For example. One of them is to establish an Ombudsperson office with staff to investigate all complaints about policing in Alberta in an independent, transparent and timely manner. This body will have punitive powers and ensure compliance with recommended actions.
