Protests and a Violent Arrest Reveal Canada’s Racial Cracks
The racial turmoil that has gripped the U.S. is causing Canada to publicly confront its own shortcomings in the treatment of minority groups by police and other authorities.
Against the backdrop of protests across North America over the death of George Floyd, Canada’s longest-standing racial fault line — the treatment of its indigenous people — burst into view as a video surfaced of the violent arrest of a prominent First Nations leader.
The footage showed Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers tackling and punching Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam in Fort McMurray, Alberta, in March during a dispute about expired license plates. Adam can be seen bleeding from the face as he is led away by officers. He was charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer. His lawyer is now seeking to have the charges stayed on the basis that his rights were violated because of his race.
RCMP dashcam video shows officer tackling, punching Chief Allan Adam during arrest | CBC News
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said an investigation of the incident by Alberta authorities must be open and transparent and acknowledged that many black and indigenous Canadians don’t feel safe around police. He said he raised the issue during a weekly call with the country’s premiers and that he’ll look at changes to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.
“Systemic racism is an issue right across the country, in all our institutions, including in all our police forces, including in the RCMP,” Trudeau said.
Troubled History
The video of the Adam arrest followed a week in which thousands of Canadians in cities across the country marched to show their solidarity with U.S. protesters. The footage also served to underscore that Canada is far from immune to the racial strife of its neighbor to the south — and has its own problems in policing.
In a mirror of the issues that have driven American protesters into the streets, a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. investigation in 2018 found that black and indigenous people are disproportionately the victims of fatal encounters with police. Immigration and religious differences have also been a source of conflict. Quebec faced a backlash over a policy that restricted traditional Muslim face coverings. Last year, famous hockey announcer Don Cherry was fired over comments about immigrants that many called racist.
But perhaps no racial issue in Canada is as painful as its troubled history of mistreating indigenous groups. Last year, a federal investigation found that the country had “staggering rates” of violence against indigenous women and girls, due to “persistent and deliberate” rights violations and abuses.
The issue of indigenous control of their traditional territories — a common flashpoint in negotiations over resource projects like logging, oil development and pipelines — exploded into a series of protests that blocked railways earlier this year, following the arrest of some First Nations protesters in British Columbia.
“This systemic discrimination and racism has been here for hundreds of years,” said Lorraine Whitman, president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada. “It has to be addressed, and it has to be addressed now.”
Whitman gives poor grades to Canada’s efforts to rectify these problems. Even the government of Trudeau, who has a global image as a “woke” leader and who made reconciliation with native peoples a key plank of his 2015 campaign, has failed to take sufficient action, she said. Some conservatives mocked Trudeau’s efforts by calling him the ‘Apologizer-in-Chief.’
Race Data
There are signs some government bodies are making changes as a result of the recent protests — including a couple of longstanding policies that made it difficult to properly analyze racial injustice.
The Ontario agency that probes police incidents and misconduct, known as the Special Investigations Unit, said this week it will begin collecting race-based data. The unit previously collected only the ages and genders of people involved in incidents that led to serious injury, death or sexual assault.
The country’s national statistics agency also said it will begin gathering labor force data by race with its July report, bringing it in line with its U.S. counterpart, which has long done so. Statistics Canada’s monthly labor force survey currently doesn’t track employment conditions by visible-minority status, making it difficult to ascertain how economic disruptions such as Covid-19 are affecting black Canadians and other groups. The survey does include data on immigrants and indigenous Canadians.
“We know that there are unfairnesses in our systems,” Trudeau said earlier this week. “It’s just really hard to change, and what it takes is a recognition and a desire to make these changes. That’s exactly what we need to start doing as a country.”
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