There is a lot of work left to be done to combat racism in Canada.
That’s the message former Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario James Bartleman told a crowd of more than 400 people at Diversity Thunder Bay’s sixth annual celebration breakfast for the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination at the Valhalla Inn Friday.
“We have a lot to be grateful for in Canada in terms of the fight against racial discrimination,” said Bartleman, the event’s keynote speaker. “We live in a multicultural society. It’s probably the country that has been able to welcome people from all around the world with the greatest facility.”
However, a recent national survey showed that millions of Canadians wouldn’t want to live beside, marry or work with someone from another ethnicity.
“That should be a wakeup call to us,” said Bartleman.
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The United Nations report on human rights in Canada also sheds a light on the “deplorable treatment of native people in Canada,’ added Bartleman, citing examples like the unequal education funding for First Nations students compared to off-reserve students and the 600 missing or murdered Aboriginal women in Canada.
Bartleman also said he’s looking specifically at the impact of the residential school system on family structure, how it destroyed the Aboriginal family structure over 100 years.
“The residential school system was perhaps the longest institutionalized discrimination against an entire ethnic group in the country going on for over 100 years,” he said. “Nobody did anything to stop it until the end of the 20th century.”
The impact can be seen just by the number of First Nation youth – 300 since 1987 – that have committed suicide, he added.
“This has been a national disgrace for all Canadians,” said Bartleman.
Since 9/11, Muslim and Arab-Canadians are also at the top of the hate list for Canadians, he added.
The key to fighting this issue is by educating children, who will then educate their parents.
More attention needs to be put on battling racism in schools and there also needs to be more literature on the topic to sensitize people to the human cost of discrimination, said Bartleman.
The first anti-racism breakfast in Thunder Bay saw 150 people attend. This year there 425.
Diversity Thunder Bay chairman Walid Chahal said that’s a sign the message is getting out to the community.
“I think we’ve come a long way on this,” he said. “I remember more than 10 years ago now there was quite a lot of denial of the existence or racism.”
Chahal attributes awareness on the subject of racism to the improvements the city has seen.
“People maybe with the help of groups like us are helping some members to rethink their prejudice or discrimination on this whole issue. If we work together, I think we can keep moving in the right direction and this is an example of that,” he said.
