The Government of Canada knows that systemic racism is multifaceted and layered and to combat it in all of its forms, it requires a coordinated, multi-sectoral, and multidisciplinary whole-of-society approach. To that end, we kick-started a series of sectoral town halls beginning in September of 2020. They explored the state of systemic racism in different sectors, identify opportunities to enhance intra-sector collaboration against discrimination, and find ways to foster greater coordination between sectors. The aim is to come together, pool resources, and boost cooperation to stamp out racism across Canada.
To date, the Federal Secretariat has engaged the labour, academic, housing, human rights, legal, philanthropic, health, public and business sectors. It also continues to engage communities directly affected by racism on specific issues related to COVID-19 and an equitable post-pandemic recovery.
Learn more about our past town halls:
- The Workplace under Scrutiny in Town Hall with the Labour Sector, October 8, 2020
- Systemic Racism in Housing the Focus of a Virtual Town Hall, October 15, 2020
- Systemic Racism in Academia the Subject of Town Hall, November 19, 2020
- Business Leaders Tackle Systemic Racism in Corporate Canada, November 26, 2020
- Systemic Racism in the Legal Sector, March 5, 2021
- Anti-Racism within the Healthcare Sector a Virtual Town Hall, March 16th, 2021
- Systemic Racism in the Federal Public Service the Focus of a Town Hall, April 16th, 2021
Our Spotlight Corner
For each edition of the newsletter, the Federal Secretariat profiles individuals who are having a transformative impact in communities across the country. For this edition, we decided to do a return on Asian Heritage Month by highlighting the achievements of people who continue to shape efforts to combat many forms of racism and discrimination across Canada and abroad.
Avvy Go
Avvy Go is the Clinic Director of the Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, and a steering committee member of Colour of Poverty Colour of Change. Avvy has worked tirelessly to promote racial equity through her legal work and community advocacy for decades. Over the last year, working in partnership with the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice, Avvy has been in the forefront to combat the rising tide of anti-Asian racism by educating the public about historical and contemporary forms of racism in Canada and by pushing for strong government actions for systemic change. In 1988, Avvy Go was the Acting Executive Director of the Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC) and President of the Toronto Chapter of the CCNC in 1989. She was deeply involved in the Redress Campaign for the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act. By 1992, Avvy Go was appointed the Executive Director of the Metro Toronto Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic. Avvy Go was elected as a Bencher of Law Society of Upper Canada in 2001, 2006, and again in 2013. Concerned by increased racialized and feminization of poverty, Avvy Go co-founded in 2007 the Colour of Poverty Campaign (COPC) which sought to address the increasing racialization of poverty. And very recently, on August 9, she was appointed as a Judge to the Federal Court.
Fo Niemi
Mr. Fo Niemi is the co-founder and, executive director of the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR), a small non-profit civil rights organization based in Montreal. He is fluently bilingual and multicultural, and a graduate in social work from McGill University. Mr. Niemi has held numerous part-time positions in the last two decades, including the Chair of the Montreal Urban Community Transit Corporation’s Complaints Examination Committee (1987-1990) and the Quebec Human Rights Commission (1991-2003). During his term at the human rights commission, he chaired the Commission’s public hearings in 1993 on discrimination and violence against gays and lesbians. Other professional and volunteer activities including advisory roles within public and non-profit agencies such as the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Quebec Treasury Board. He has also served as Chairman of the Board of AIDS Community Care Montreal (1996-1997) and the Court Challenges Program of Canada (1997); as member of the board of directors of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation (1996-1998) and the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (2001-2005) and as member of the Canadian Bar Association’s Committee on Racial Equality in the Legal Profession (2003-2004); the Advisory Committee to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada (2005), the City of Montreal Task Force on Democracy (2003-2006), the Quebec Government’s Task Force on Racial Profiling (2003-2006) and a committee of the Quebec Community Groups Network on the English-speaking community of Montreal (2009-2010). He is the recipient of the Quebec Justice Award in 1995, the Queen’s Commemorative Silver Jubilee Medal in 2002 (from Dr. Irwin Cotler, MP) and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012 (from Senator Joan Fraser).
Teresa Woo Paw
Teresa Woo Paw is a tireless advocate for diversity, social inclusion and active civic participation. She is known for her ability to bring diverse people together to join efforts, break new grounds and create bigger impacts in society. She is the first Canadian woman of Asian descent elected to the Calgary Board of Education (1995-2000), the Alberta Legislature and Cabinet Minister in Alberta (2008-2015). Teresa founded and built eight non-profit entities over a span of 40 plus years. Teresa was appointed Chair of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation by the Governor in Council in 2018 and is also Chair of ACCT Foundation; Founding member of the ACT2EndRacism National Network; Chair of Asian Heritage Foundation; Board member of Calgary Arts Foundation; and Advisory Committee members of City of Calgary’s Tomorrow’s Chinatown and Lougheed House. Teresa is recipient of numerous awards including the Chinese Canadian Legend (2016), YWCA Women of Distinction Award (1998), Immigrants of Distinction Award (1998) and Queen Elizabeth’s 60th Jubilee Award (2012).
Kevin Huang
Recognizing the growing gap in engaging Chinese-Canadian youth on environmental, social, and political issues, Kevin Huang co-founded Hua Foundation with the goal of increasing community participation through youth empowerment opportunities. He is now the Executive Director of Hua Foundation, and his work has ranged from scaling culturally sensitive consumer-based conservation strategies through a project called Shark Truth, advancing municipal food policy to address inclusion and racial equity, to providing supports for youth from ethnocultural communities to reclaim their cultural identity on their own terms. Kevin organizes in Vancouver’s Chinatown and serves on committees with Vancity Credit Union, Vancouver Foundation, the City of Vancouver, and the Province of British Columbia. Most recently, he has been spending his time directing community based COVID-19 response projects that address language and cultural gaps. Kevin Huang oversees Hua Foundation’s external relationships with youth, policy makers, community organizations, and institutions.
Tackling Anti-Asian Racism
The Federal Anti-Racism Secretariat is pursuing its efforts to combat anti-Asian racism across Canada. Over the course of 2020, it worked with the Digital Citizenship Initiative at Canadian Heritage, which supports grassroots Asian community organizations combating anti-Asian racism. Several organizations received funding to lead innovative and wide-reaching campaigns to tackle systemic, institutional and individual forms of racism against people of Asian descent across the country. Through the Digital Citizen Contribution Program (DCCP)-Emergency Support Fund for Cultural, Heritage and Sport Organizations (ESF), the following projects were supported.
Asian Environmental Association-Hua Foundation ($64,660)
The Hua Foundation’s ‘Combating COVID-19 disinformation in Vancouver’s Chinese and Vietnamese language communities’ project aimed to combat disinformation around COVID-19 in Chinese and Vietnamese language communities. The project focused on ensuring that accurate, timely, and credible information was made available in Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Vietnamese, and Tagalog. Hua foundation established a coalition of ethnocultural organizations to ensure cultural and language nuances were taken into consideration for all aspects of this knowledge mobilization project. It set up a grassroots network of community members to capture and share disinformation that they were coming across. The project team then conducted research and produced knowledge to counter the disinformation. The project resulted in: the distribution of 700 posters and 4,200+ pamphlets that included health information and how to identify disinformation, website traffic of over 12,000 page visits, dissemination of knowledge/information through their project partners to 2,000+ individuals who otherwise might not have access to credible information and the tools to counter disinformation that they hear and belief, and distribution partnerships with 13 language community groups.
Learn more about the C19 Response Coalition.
ACCT Foundation ($309,000)
ACCT Foundation’s ‘Mobilizing community capacity and community research to address the collateral damage of COVID-19 pandemic – Anti-Asian Racism’ project is addressing both individual and community impacts of misinformation and racism, and ultimately seeking community based and systemic solutions to address these challenges. ACCT Foundation implemented an avenue for citizens to report and share racist incidences by text message or online on the ACT2endracism website. The project has resulted in the development and convening of the ACT2endracism (Asian Canadians Together to end racism) network, a coalition of concerned citizens and 40+ community groups from across Canada. Early results of this project include the convening of four large network meetings with over 200 people participating from British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. A public awareness campaign titled “Speak Up! ACT2enddracism.ca” was held to raise awareness about reporting and speak up about racism. The national campaign distributed over 2,500 physical masks and over 40,000 impressions (shared using a virtual filter on social media), 1,200 posters on anti-racism concepts, 10,142 brochures on responding to racism, 11,225 bookmarks promoting the reporting line. In honor of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, ACCT Foundation held six webinars on human rights and employment rights in first languages (Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese, Tagalog, English) for over 200 attendees. Also, 2 webinars were held to engage parents and young children and also youth on the topic or racism over 100 families attended these events.
Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR) ($68,100)
CRARR’s ‘COVID-19: Say No to Discrimination: Civic Information and Mobilization Initiative enables citizens and communities to critically process and react to misleading, biased and hateful or harmful information. CRARR provides bilingual accessible, updated and correct information to targeted segments of the population considered vulnerable during and after the COVID-19 pandemic related to the public health emergency, discrimination, hate and other threats to basic rights and freedoms. CRARR’s information and materials are accessible both official languages and sign language, and in ethnic languages where resources permit, including Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), Vietnamese, Arabic, Farsi, Hindi, and Inuktitut. Through the Canadian Center for Research-Action on Race Relation website, individuals are able to find more information on how CRARR can provide support and resources to those who confidentially report a discrimination incident. In January 2021, CRARR launched its “Voices of the Victims” video series on its YouTube channel and Facebook page, which documents the experiences of Asian Canadians in Montreal who have fallen victim to anti-Asian racism and violence as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic (CSALC) ($301,904)
CSALC’s ‘Empowering, Engaging and Equipping Canadians to Combat Anti-Asian Racism through Online Resources and Media’ project is conducting a study on the use of online resources and social media to empower, equip and engage Canadians in combatting anti-Asian disinformation, threats, racism and discrimination. CSALC implemented a multi-lingual website for reporting racism incidents called Fight COVID-19 Racism, which includes an ongoing multimedia timeline of anti-Asian incidents during the pandemic and an incidents map showing geographical data across Canada. 1,150 incidents have been reported up to the end of February 2021. This tool also provides resource list: mental health, income support, legal support and other information. CSALC launched the “Stop the Spread of Racism” social media campaign in which 65 high profile Canadian celebrities, politicians, social media influencers, business leaders, supporters and partners participated. The “Stop the Spread of Racism” message reached well over 600,000 users around the world. In April 2020, CSALC conducted a phone poll of 1,300 individuals in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. Results, showing there is a pervasive stereotype and racist perception that Chinese/Asian Canadians were responsible for the COVID virus, were extensively covered by Canadian and international media. As a result, by October 2020, CSALC updated the resources on the Chinese Canadian National Council – For Social Justice website to launch #FaceRace that provides online resources on the historical and current context of anti-Asian racism in Canada, accounts of allies and evidence of anti-Asian racist incidents.
The Federal Secretariat will continue to engage directly with Asian community organizations and leaders to ensure a whole of government approach so that the Government of Canada continues to tackle systemic anti-Asian racism in its programs, services, legislation and policies.
Article From: Canada.ca
