Canada is a place of beauty, beautiful lakes, parks and animals: but that’s on the outside and you can’t judge beauty from the outside. So if we dig a bit deeper, we can see that Canada actually has problems, especially with racism, homophobia and sexism. Until these problems are fixed, Canada is not as beautiful as we like to think.
Canada has a big problem with treating their Indigenous Peoples poorly. There is so much colonial oppression towards these groups.
There’s many events in history that show how indigenous people have been oppressed and marginalized in our society and they continue to be oppressed and marginalized in society today. This includes lack of education, inadequate housing, a 25 per cent income gap, higher death rate among children due to unintentional injuries, and so much more.
Not only does Canada deal with Indigenous race issues, we also deal with systemic racism and it’s a big issue in Canada.
Premier Justin Trudeau said in June of 2020,
“Systemic racism exists subtly in every corner of the country.”
Trudeau recognizes that Canada has this problem, which is a good step to fixing this issue.
“Systemic racism is an issue right across the country, in all our institutions, including in all our police forces, including in the RCMP,”
“It is recognizing that the systems we have built over the past generations have not always treated people of racialized backgrounds, of Indigenous backgrounds fairly through the very construction of the systems that exist.”
However, Premier Doug Ford has a different opinion,
“Thank God we’re different than the United States and we don’t have the systemic, deep roots they’ve had for years,” Ford then followed this statement by comparing The U.S and Canada to “Night and day” in June 2020.
Yet, Ford went on to change his opinion,
“Of course there’s systemic racism in Ontario, there’s systemic racism across this country,”
Now that systemic racism has been recognized by our leaders, what are they working to do to potentially eliminate systemic racism?
The government said it is allocating $1.5 million to organizations that support black families and youth. Although this is a step in the right direction and noticing Canada has a problem with systemic racism, it’s still not enough.
Looking at some of many of Canada’s inequalities, gender inequality still exists. The wage gap is currently at 81 cents to a mans dollar, the violence towards women is at a high. Every 1 in 2 women will experience gender based violence. That is an extremely high rate, that could be your mom, your sister or your daughter. This statistic is genuinely scary.
Canada has a lot to work to do, we’re far from a perfect country, but we have leaders who are working everyday to improve Ontario/Canada. Even so, it’s up to us as a community to help change statistics like that.
