Under the Code, every person has the right to be free from racial discrimination and harassment in the social areas of employment, services, goods, facilities, housing accommodation, contracts and membership in trade and vocational associations. You should not be treated differently because of your race or other related grounds, such as your ancestry, ethnicity, religion or place of origin.
Canada, its provinces and territories have strong human rights laws and systems in place to address discrimination. At the same time, we also have a legacy of racism – particularly towards Indigenous persons, but to other groups as well including African, Chinese, Japanese, South Asian, Jewish and Muslim Canadians – a legacy that profoundly permeates our systems and structures to this day, affecting the lives of not only racialized persons, but also all people in Canada.
Relevant policies:
Letters to the Editor, The Thompson Citizen - Congratulations for making the very tough decision to close your newspaper’s Facebook page. Media across the country are grappling with the shocking increase in online hatred directed at Aboriginal Peoples.
September 15, 2017 - Dear Chair El-Chantiry and Chief Bordeleau, Today, I am writing to request an update on the OPS’s response to the Traffic Stop Race Data Collection Project (TSRDCP) report dated October 2016. In particular, please let us know by reply letter what steps the OPS has undertaken to combat racial profiling since the TSRDCP report was released, including any further analysis that the OPS has undertaken at an operational level, specific changes to OPS’ policies and procedures, and any internal or external analysis of the data collected since the TSRDCP report was released.
August 15, 2017 - Dear Minister Naqvi, Directors McNeilly and Loparco, and Chair Lamoureux: We, the undersigned, urge the Government of Ontario, the Special Investigations Unit (“SIU”), the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (“OIPRD”), and the Ontario Civilian Police Commission (“OCPC”), to immediately and transparently implement recommendations made by the Honourable Justice Michael Tulloch in his Report of the Independent Police Oversight Review submitted to the Ministry of the Attorney General in March 2017.
2005 - Racial discrimination can result from individual behaviour as well as because of the unintended and often unconscious consequences of a discriminatory system. This is known as systemic discrimination. Systemic discrimination can be described as patterns of behaviour, policies or practices that are part of the structures of an organization, and which create or perpetuate disadvantage for racialized persons.
2005 - The Ontario Human Rights Code (the “Code”) permits the collection and analysis of data based on race and other grounds, provided that the data is collected for purposes consistent with the Code, such as to monitor discrimination, identify and remove systemic barriers, address historical disadvantage and promote substantive equality.
December 2003 - In order to bridge the divide between those who deny the existence of racial profiling on the one hand, and the communities who have long held that they are targets of racial profiling on the other, the Commission plans to
December 2003 - The Commission’s racial profiling inquiry initiative was undertaken in response to community concerns about the impact of profiling on members of their respective communities. The inquiry’s main objectives were to give individuals who had been subjected to profiling an opportunity to share those experiences and to show its effects on their families and communities. In doing so, the Commission hoped to raise public awareness of the harmful effects and the social costs of racial profiling.
December 2003 - In reviewing the material received during its inquiry, the following eight themes emerged.
