Canada is the best country in the world, however, hate and discrimination still affect our communities. The roots of racial discrimination were founded with the inception of Confederation of Canada in the form of residential schools. The indigenous children were forcefully admitted in these schools against the consent of their parents. These were government sponsored religious schools under the churches. Thousands of children suffered physical and sexual abuse in these schools. More than six thousand children died and many of these children’s bodies were never returned to their families. Mr. John A Macdonald, the first prime minister was the founder of these schools.
Indigenous and racialized communities still experience hate and discrimination in our country. Systemic racism and discrimination can affect the way people are offered interviews for jobs, hired or promoted, the level of public service they receive, or how they interact with institutions like schools, hospital, law enforcement and courtrooms. Racism diminishes the humanity of marginalized people. Racial communities and Indigenous peoples face discrimination and racism in their daily lives even when dealing with governmental institutions.
In Canada today, racialized people are less likely to find an employment suitable for their qualification. Immigrants and racialized communities are the targets of divisive rhetoric; therefore, we cannot stand by and allow racism to divide our communities. “Diversity is our strength” is only a talk if we do not take practical actions to counter racism.
Centrist Party of Canada will always stand against hate in all its forms and work to end systemic injustice, racism, and discrimination. Centrist Party will develop policies where government treats every resident of Canada with respect and dignity irrespective of their background, or skin color.
Awareness of history of racism
We will develop educational programs to promote awareness of the historical roots of racism since the inception of confederation.
Educational policy
To continue this important work, we will work with provincial governments to develop educational policy starting from elementary school level about roots of racism, its impact on society and how to eliminate it.
Anti-racism task force
We will develop an Anti-Racism Task Force to eliminate systemic discrimination from all institutions and segments of society. We will make sure there is no space in our schools, universities, law enforcement, hospitals, and other institutions for anti-minority, anti-Indigenous, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, and other forms of hate. We will support community-led initiatives to combat racism; and empower communities to draw on their lived experiences to build a more accepting and equal country.
Hate speech
Hate speech causes emotional trauma, divides our nation and leads to violence. We will develop effective legislation to combat hate speech and hate crimes. Haters use the gray area of hate speech and freedom of speech to express their bigotry. We will support legislation so that no one can use freedom of speech for expressing hate and bigotry.
White supremacy
We believe the word “white Supremacy” should not be used to refer to a small group of extremists. This points towards people of certain skin color and paints all of them with one brush, which is not fair at all. We will consult experts to develop policy of countering such extremist mentality.
Online and social media hate speech
Online hate is on the rise and racist and extremist views are increasingly inescapable on the online channels. Hate crimes spiked to an all-time high in Canada in 2017, with an increasing number of incidents targeting Muslim, Jewish, and Black Canadians. Our government will develop program to counter online hate and work with social media platforms for removing hateful and extremist content.
Cancelling of Quebec Secularism Law (Quebec Bill 21)
We will have open discussions with Quebec government to cancel this discriminatory legislation against Canadian citizens, as this is openly against the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We will seek legal action or any other means in the capacity of federal government to cancel this law in case of failure of dialogue with Quebec government.
Police and law enforcement services.
Police and law enforcement forces do the most important work of keeping us safe and therefore maintaining a high level of trust between these forces and Canadians is crucial thing. We will bring reforms to police practices to respect the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to maintain trust of between law enforcement and Canadians. The Centrist government will work with provinces and municipalities to develop teams of healthcare professionals to first responders call for mental health issues. Carding, or street checks, do not respect the Charter rights and damage the trust between the police and communities. The Centrist government will ban carding by federal law enforcement
Judicial reforms
Judicial reforms will be important part of work of our government to eliminate systemic racism. We will develop a program to end the overrepresentation of Indigenous peoples, racial communities, and Black Canadians in the federal prison population. We will be moving forward to better integrating Gladue principles in legal and court proceedings in collaboration with Indigenous communities. We will support judicial discretion in sentencing, developing culturally appropriate bails, restorative and community justice programs. We will collaborate with organizations representing minorities to address the biases and consult those with expertise in field of criminal justice. We will invest in improving the quality and amount of data collection used by Statistics Canada regarding hate crimes in Canada, to help create effective and evidence-based policies to counteract these crimes.
Employment and Labor laws
Employment discrimination based on race is an unfortunate reality. A Canadian born university graduate from racialized community earns, on average 87.4 cents for every dollar earned by a white graduate. This gap is even more pronounced for racialized women. Our government will develop policies to address this disparity. We will support enforcing stronger labour laws to promote diverse and equitable hiring opportunities within the federal public service. We will develop policies to have jobs and training for underrepresented communities and groups.