10 Facts That Will Shock You About Racial Injustice in Canada

Although Ontario and Nova Scotia were the only two provinces in Canada to operate segregated school systems, separating the education of Black and white children and young adults, other provinces didn’t exactly “play nice.” According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, it was common practice for white residents to protest, deny and discourage Black parents from sending their children to school. Ontario closed its last segregated school in 1965. Almost 20 years later, the last school in Nova Scotia closed in 1983 — that's less than 40 years ago.

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The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is definitely a recognizable Canadian icon. The origin of the RCMP, reports Canadian historians to Global News, was to help the building of a coast-to-coast railway... by clearing the plains of Indigenous people. Sir John A. McDonald got the idea from the British, who created the Royal Irish Constabulary to keep the Irish under control.

It was February 1942 when about 12,000 Japanese Canadians were removed from their homes and confined to remote areas of British Columbia. After the war, they were stripped of their property and many were pressured into mass deportation. “Internment” is the detainment of alien enemies, but 77 per cent of these people were citizens and residents of Canada, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia. Canada officially apologized in 1988.

That’s when statute “Act to Prevent the Employment of female labour in Certain Capacities,” was created. And when two Chinese men were not allowed to hire white women for their businesses, the Law and History Review reports. “The trial highlighted the social discourse that white women were vulnerable and needed to be protected from non-white men. Protection was advocated by middle- and upper-class women, but resented by working-class women who risked losing good jobs.”

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The CBC investigated the fatality rates from police based on race and population between the years 2000 and 2017. “Black people in Toronto made up on average 8.3 per cent of the population during the 17-year window, but represent nearly 37 per cent of the victims,” says the report. The Guardian shares this stat: “Black residents in Canada’s largest city are 20 times more likely to be shot dead by the police than white residents.” As for the rest of Canada: “Of the 461 cases involving a fatal police encounter, the CBC could only identify 18 cases where criminal charges were laid against an officer. Of these cases, there have been two convictions. Some of the cases are still before the courts.”

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About 250,000 Canadians have marijuana-related records, but only 44 Canadians were pardoned, reported Global News back in September 2019. Who has the delay affected? A 2017 Toronto Star report has that insight, at least in Toronto: “Black people with no history of criminal convictions have been three times more likely to be arrested by Toronto police for possession of small amounts of marijuana than white people with similar backgrounds.”

Take a guess. What would be a record number, that’s made the Globe and Mail, and other media, take notice? It was 13% of the seats were occupied by minorities. And it moved to 17 in the last election, reports ipolitics.ca. One thing is clear: There is room to keep moving that dial.

Before the National Observer reported the following stats, the researchers suspected that court data may suggest First Nations likely lost more land disputes than won, but the numbers did surprise them. “They found corporations succeeded in 76 per cent of injunctions filed against First Nations, while First Nations were denied in 81 per cent of injunctions against corporations. Similarly, First Nations were denied in 82 per cent of injunctions filed against the government.”

That is a tough question to answer, but some are pointing to gaps in the education system. Teachers feel less confident and intimidated in teaching Indigenous history, according to a study reported by the Globe and Mail. “Contemporary texts from the period tell at length of the swashbuckling heroes of colonial conquest, but say little of the people they colonized and enslaved,” reports the CBC, in the article Canada's slavery secret: The whitewashing of 200 years of enslavement. And Canadian museums showcase more European art than Indigenous art. It wasn't until the 1960's that Canadian museums featured Indigenous art, reports the International Journal of Canadian Studies. There is no shortage of contemporary Indigenous art with more than 3,000 living artists, reports Canada’s Council for the Arts.

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Very few Canadians — five per cent — say that racialized Canadians never experience discrimination, according to a December 2019 study from Environics Institute. Of course, this was conducted before the June protests for the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and Ahmaud Arbery and many others. It also reports that Canadians generally feel that “racialized people will be treated with the same respect as others in their lifetime, versus 26 percent who are pessimistic. Such optimism is evident across all racial groups, and strongest among younger Canadians.” However, the reality is that there is still much work to be done.

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