Colour of Poverty - Colour of Change ( July 11, 2016 ) - The Government of Ontario has committed to creating an Anti-Racism Directorate (ARD). It is now engaging in a series of community dialogues with the public to provide feedback on the ARD’s mandate, and identify priority areas of the directorate’s work, to apply an anti-racism perspective to all government policies, practices, programs and services.
Colour of Poverty - Colour of Change has long been calling for the Ontario Government to establish the Anti-Racism Directorate in order to both address the growing racial inequities in the province and to bring about needed racial justice in Ontario, particularly in such areas as employment, poverty and income security, housing, education, health, child welfare, policing and the justice system and the quality of life for racialized communities – both First Peoples and peoples of colour – more generally.
We are calling on all of our community partners to attend the public community meetings – hosted by Michael Coteau, Minister of Anti-Racism – to be held over the next several months to help ensure the ARD that is being set up is truly effective in addressing racism, is accountable to racialized communities and most importantly is sustainable in the longer term.
To that end, we would ask all of our community partners to call on the Government to adopt the following 11 recommendations:
- Develop a public Anti-Racism Strategy to guide the work of the Directorate
- Review and revise the Anti-Racism Strategy at least once every five years
- The Anti-Racism Strategy must contain specific, objective and measurable targets aimed at addressing systemic racism in the province
- The Government must consult with racialized communities and community groups on the development, review and revision of the Anti-Racism Strategy
- The Anti-Racism Strategy must recognize the differential impact of racism as experienced by different racialized communities, and must contain specific goals and consultation plans with respect to Indigenous and Black communities
- The Government must pass legislation to buttress and support the work of the ARD
- The ARD must issue policies and directives to all provincial ministries, offices, agencies, boards, commissions and corporations on how to address systemic racism and require all of them to set targets with measurable goals and specific timetables
- The ARD must make it mandatory for all ministries, offices, agencies, boards, commissions and corporations to collect ethno-racially disaggregated data, and to conduct regular audits to report on whether their targets are being met
- As and where possible and appropriate funding to all ministries, offices, agencies, boards, commissions and corporations must be tied to meeting the targets and reporting requirements as set out by the ARD
- Performance measurements of all deputy ministers must contain an evaluation of the ministries’ achievement of the targets and reporting requirements as set out by the ARD
- The Minister must report annually to the legislature on the progress of the Strategy
Click here for this text in PDF format
Click here for draft legislation for the Anti-Racism Directorate proposed by COP - COC
Click here for Anti-Racism Directorate public meetings dates and locations