OCASI welcomes Canada’s unprecedented and positive new special measures for Ukrainian refugees annouced by Sean Fraser, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship on March 3, 2022, and calls for them to be made a permanent and consistent response to humanitarian crises in other countries that haven’t received as much attention globally.
March 2022 / Toronto
“When someone shows you who they are believe them”. This quote, often attributed to celebrated and well-loved African-American poet and author, Maya Angelou, appeared time and again on my various social media platforms as primarily Black, Asian and Arab people found themselves gaslighted, contradicted and called out, for raising concerns about the treatment of Black and racialized people, primarily international students attempting to flee the devastating war in Ukraine.
August 2021 / Toronto
OCASI made a written submission to the Standing Committee on Finance for pre-budget consultations on the 2022 Federal Budget.
OCASI made the following recommendations:
February 2022 / Toronto
Afro-futurism/African-Canadian Liberation/Black histories/ month- all contested and complex concepts. Not surprising given our people’s four hundred plus year presence on these Indigenous lands colonized and settled by the colonizers. Our place in the meta-narratives of what we now call Canada, diminished when not completely erased. Still. 2022.
Toronto / January 26, 2022
OCASI made a verbal presentation on January 19, 2022 to the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs for its Ontario 2022 Pre-Budget consultations, and made a written submission.
Almost two years into the health pandemic we have ample evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly increased long-standing structural and societal inequalities. Indigenous, Black and racialized communities – including immigrants and refugees - were put at higher risk of exposure to the virus and were at higher risk of contracting the infection.
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