‘Stunning’ results in study of black Canadians
The divide between black Canadians and the country’s criminal justice system runs particularly deep and wide, according to the results of Canada’s first Black Canadian National Survey.
A report released this week by York University’s Institute for Social Research reveals that 90 percent of black Canadians believe racism in the criminal justice system is a serious problem. In that belief, they are closely followed by the country’s indigenous population, at 82 percent.
The research also outlines the extent of black Canadians’ deep mistrust of the country’s police forces.
In the 12 months leading up to the survey, more than one in five Black Canadians (22 percent) reported being wrongfully stopped by police – an experience less than half as common among other racial or ethnic groups. For example, only five percent of white Canadians reported unfair stops.
The survey figures suggested this seems to be happening more in the country’s coastal provinces than anywhere else. In Atlantic Canada, 40 percent of black men reported being unfairly stopped by police in the past 12 months. In BC, that figure was 41 percent. By comparison, the rates in Ontario and Quebec were 30 and 31 percent, respectively.
Lorne Foster, York University research chair in Black Canadian Studies and Human Rights and one of the study’s co-authors, calls those numbers “stunning.”
“It kind of makes me gasp when I think about the fact that 22 percent of randomly collected black respondents across the country suggest they had unfair encounters with police,” he says.
While many people view police racial profiling and racial discrimination against blacks as a problem in major cities, he says data from the Atlantic provinces and British Columbia — where the percentage of blacks reporting unfair police stops is nearly 20 percent. points higher than the national average – casts doubt on that notion.
“There is the usual theory in the police force that all our police departments are good. (And) if anything is wrong, it’s just a few bad apples and there are a few bad apples in every good barrel,” he says. “That argument has been around for a long time – that police forces are essentially and fundamentally fair and unbiased.
“These data belie that.”
The RCMP did not respond to requests for comment on the survey results.
Under former Commissioner Brenda Lucki, the Mounties finally recognized the ongoing problems of systemic racism and discrimination. Lucki’s Vision 150 program was designed to transform the RCMP over the course of five to seven years, in part by addressing those discrimination issues — issues that have led the national police to pay out some $2.4 billion since 2018 or may face damages in multiple class action lawsuits.
Part of that program was a three-hour online course, United Against Racism, launched in November 2021. It was determined by the RCMP as mandatory for all employees to complete by September 2022.
On January 1, 2023, only 51.6 percent had completed the course. When that data is filtered to include only RCMP members — regular officers and special agents — the figure drops slightly to 51 percent.
The data is the result of a hybrid survey (with three different ways to collect responses) of nearly 7,000 Canadians, the majority – 5,697 – chosen at random from across the country.
However, Foster is quick to point out that the data from this study doesn’t really allow researchers to pinpoint racial profiling.
“But it does suggest that because the numbers are so different for black communities, there could be problems there. And that needs to be looked at.”
He compares it to a patient getting an X-ray and doctors seeing a shadow in the lungs. There is definitely something abnormal there, but more testing will be needed to find out exactly what it is.
The survey results also show that black Canadians see their workplace as an epicenter of racial discrimination, says Foster.
Seventy-five percent of black Canadians said they have experienced workplace racism and believe it is a problem. Another 47 percent believe they have been treated unfairly by an employer in relation to hiring, salary or promotion in the 12 months prior to the survey.
Seventy percent of other non-whites also see workplace racism as a serious problem. In contrast, 56 percent of white Canadians do not see workplace racism as a problem or consider it an afterthought.
The survey results – which also include black Canadians’ views on racism in health care, childcare and social services – go a long way to highlighting the importance of collecting specific data based on race.
“Race data has not been collected in any consistent and correct way in this country. Not by Stats Canada, by anyone,” says Foster.
However, that is just beginning to change, starting with Ontario, with Nova Scotia following closely behind. Foster has been involved with both county governments to help them learn how to collect that data.
In Ontario, he says, all police departments are required to collect race data on the use of violence incidents and some police departments – including Toronto – also collect race data on strip surveys. In Nova Scotia, both the Department of Health and the Department of Justice have committed to collecting data based on race.
Aside from the surprising numbers in the study, Foster says, it’s a model for the rest of the nation’s police forces and government departments to examine and improve their operations through the lens of race-based data collected.
“The point of this kind of research is it really maps out these kinds of structural vulnerabilities in these public sector settings, and it points to the quality of life gaps,” he says.
“We are a mixed society that has never been studied along racial lines. And this is the first salvo in there. And I hope there are many, many more to come.”
