2022 was another busy year that saw the Hub work on issues related to education, health, business, municipal politics, addressing anti-Black racism nationally, climate change, Black federal public servants, police/criminal justice and more!
Education – As a member of the Ottawa Carleton District School Board’s Valuing Voices Technical Advisory Group, the Hub continued to help the Board develop the best ways to share the identity-based data it collected in 2019. The data covers suspensions, sense of belonging at school and Grade 10 credit accumulation among other things. The data is a key tool for advocating for change so it’s crucial to make it as accessible and easy to use as possible for the public. One of the focuses this year was to figure out the schedule for refreshing the data on a regular basis.
The Hub also presented at the May Board meeting where trustees unanimously defeated a motion to reinstate the School Resource Officer program. The Board had ended the SRO program in 2021 after it did a human rights-based evaluation that found the program had been harmful to Black, Indigenous and LGBTQ+ students.
A Hub representative was part of the Loran Scholarship assessment team. The $100,000 Loran Scholarship was founded in 1988 as the first national undergraduate award based on a mix of academic achievement, extracurricular activity and leadership potential. However, no one the Hub spoke with had heard about it and we noticed there weren’t many Black faces among the pictures of past Loran scholars. Being part of the assessment team, which we will continue doing, allows us to help get more Black students to possibly get scholarships.
Health – The Hub was a member of the Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership’s Health and Wellbeing Sector Table. The group met regularly during the COVID-19 pandemic to share data on Black communities aimed at overcoming barriers to getting more Black folks vaccinated.
We also presented our Non-Police Mental Health Crisis Response for the City of Ottawa report to the Guiding Council on Mental Health and Addictions. The Ottawa Police Service created the Guiding Council in January 2021. It was moved under the City after public outcry about the police leading the initiative. The Council’s stated mandate is “to establish a strategy to support an enhanced or new Mental Health and Addiction crisis response system that will improve the outcomes for those experiencing crises related to mental health and substance use in the City of Ottawa.” However, its terms of reference say it’s working towards a system that will still include police “when the crisis is linked to criminal activity…”.
People called for a different system partly because of the police-involved deaths of Abdirahman Abdi and Greg Ritchie. People called the police on Abdi because he was allegedly touching women in a coffee shop and on Greg Ritchie, an Indigenous man, because they said they saw a man with a knife – that turned out to be a ceremonial tomahawk. As touching women and carrying knives are both criminal activities, both men would likely end up just as dead under the “new” system the Guiding Council is working to create. The Council’s terms of reference say nothing about shifting money now spent on mental health response from the OPS to other organizations once the OPS stops doing it. The Hub presented our detailed plan for a system that involves no police and will shift money saved to social services that address the root causes of criminal activity.
We also attended the excellent Mental Health of Black Communities conference hosted by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Black Health and the Vulnerability, Trauma, Resilience & Culture Research Laboratory (V-TRaC), led by Dr. Jude Mary Cénat.
Business – Ever since cannabis was legalized the Hub has been saying Black folks should get into the business that’s now dominated by white men. With this in mind, the Hub attended Health Canada’s 2022 Cannabis Licensing – Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Forum focussed on diversifying the industry. Afterwards, we connected with Michael and Ashley Athill, brother/sister owners/founders of HRVSTR Cannabis. We spoke about how the Hub could find a place in the industry with our skill set. Right now we’re working on a business model that would have us work to help people clear their criminal pot records and get into the business. They would then give the Hub a cut of their profits.
The Hub also attended the launch of, and a two-day conference on, the Black Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub to learn about the latest data on Black business – and connect with some of the key folks producing it.
Municipal politics – The Hub participated in Ottawa’s Oct. 24 election by attending debates and asking candidates questions focused on Black community interests and helping organize a school trustee meet and greet. We created a document with information on candidates’ position on key issues of concern to Black Ottawa residents, canvassed door-to-door and had a rep as a panelist on Rogers TV Ottawa’s election night panel.
Federal government – The Hub led the push for the Government of Canada to appoint a Black Equity Commissioner similar to the permanent Special Envoy on antisemitism and new Special Representative on Islamophobia it announced in its 2022 Budget. Beyond the obvious reason of simple equity, there are other reasons for appointing a Black Equity Commissioner. Firstly, with a little under two years left in the U.N. Decade for People of African Descent, which runs from 2015-2024, the Commissioner will help ensure addressing anti-Black racism remains a federal focus after the Decade ends. Secondly, with Statistics Canada reporting that Black Canadians faced the most hate crimes in Canada in 2020 and other data showing Black Canadians continue to be disproportionately negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, lack of affordable housing, under-employment and other social determinants of health the Commissioner is more essential than any moment in recent history to safeguard and expand substantive equality rights for Black people. In December, the Hub called for the Black Equity Commissioner at the Black Parliamentary Caucus pre-budget consultation in Ottawa, got an opinion piece published in the Ottawa Citizen and reached out nationally to get support for the commissioner from Black groups.
Climate change – The Hub spoke in September at the Ottawa chapter of the global Climate Strike in Ottawa the theme of which was “Together for Climate Justice”. The Hub pointed out how the reports from the international Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, and mainstream press reports about climate change say climate change started with, and continues to be caused by, “human activity” and how “we” must all come together to fix it. These reports make it sound like all humans contributed equally to starting climate change and are all contributing equally to making it worse. In fact, the climate crisis has its origins in the actions of a select group of humans responsible for the genocide of Indigenous people, the enslavement of African people, colonialism and capitalism. That select group of humans forced millions of enslaved Africans to work – sometimes literally to death – on mono-culture plantations that destroyed the soil. That same group drove the Industrial Revolution that was literally launched, and fuelled, by the violently coerced labour of enslaved Africans and created capitalism which, in its global excesses, values profits above people and the planet and has led us to the climate crisis we have today.
Policing/criminal justice – The Hub continued its efforts to push for City Council and the Ottawa Police Services Board to reimagine public safety in Ottawa. We issued a news release and did several media interviews about the resignation of former Ottawa police chief Peter Sloly in the midst of the “Freedom Convoy”. We questioned the racist, angry Black man narrative leaked by OPS sources accusing Sloly of bullying and volatile behaviour that compromised the force’s ability to cope with the truck protest. We also presented regularly at Ottawa Police Services Board meetings calling for them to move money from the police to social services that actually make us all safer like housing and mental health. Just like journalist Desmond Cole had taken over a Toronto Police Services Board meeting in 2017 to demand the Toronto Police delete the data they collected from carding Black Torontonians, we took over the November 30 Ottawa Police Services Board meeting and refused to leave until they answered questions related to accountability of the Ottawa Police Service. Shortly after, we attended the OPS’ 7th Annual Human Rights Learning Forum and asked questions related to the issues we raised when we took over the OPSB meeting. Finally, we filed several complaints against the OPSB and OPS leadership with the Ontario Civilian Police Commission and the Office of the Independent Police Review Director for actions that helped the police but harmed public safety.
International – The Hub provided input to the Canadian delegation attending the first meeting of the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent in Dec. 5-7 in Geneva. The Forum will be an advisory body to the UN Human Rights Council, in line with the program of activities for the implementation of the UN International Decade for People of African Descent, which runs from 2015 to 2024.
In addition to all this, we supported local initiatives including:
- Attending the Oct. 7 candlelight vigil for Anthony Aust marking the 2nd anniversary of his death following an Ottawa police raid on his 12th floor apartment
- Joining graduating Black students on their symbolic Walk of Excellence from Lisgar High School to the University of Ottawa
- Attending the federal Black Class Action’s press conference with Amnesty International where they announced they were filing a complaint with the United Nations regarding the status of Blacks in Canada.
- Attending the Brotherhood Coalition’s Let’s Talk Black Men’s Mental Health BBQ
- Attending the 3rd National Black Canadians Summit in Halifax
- Having a Hub table at the 2nd HorizonFest community group gathering hosted by our partner group Horizon Ottawa.
- Meeting with the heads of Queen’s University Black Studies program to discuss how Blackademics and Blacktivists can work together
- Attending the inauguration of Awad Ibrahim as the first Air Canada Chair on Anti-Racism
- Working with the international Can’t Buy My Silence campaign against the misuse of non-disclosure agreements to hide human rights abuses
- Being a member of the Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa’s Race and Faith Based Advisory Committee addressing the over representation of Black youth in care
- Hub coordinator Robin Browne co-hosting rabble.ca’s monthly Off the Hill political panel
- Supporting Jaku Konbit’s mentorship program by mentoring a Black youth and attending program meetings.
- Speaking to university and high school social justice classes
It was a busy year and we look forward to continuing the work in 2023!