44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 8, 2022 10:00AM
- Dec/8/22 6:55:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague across the way for his wonderful speech here tonight. Tonight I rise in the House in support of his motion. Its necessity became obvious over the past three years. The COVID pandemic divided Canadians in many ways, but one of the most despicable divisions that arose was the increase in anti-Asian racism. It shocked almost everyone I knew, but it clearly built. It was a gut reaction to blaming one of Canada's greatest-contributing communities for a worldwide pandemic. Such is the work of small minds.
Racism is the prejudice, discrimination or antagonism by an individual, community or institution against a person or a people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized. To our shock, we watched the stupidity manifest itself. In case there was any doubt, we saw it on videos.
In March 2020 we watched an Asian man in his 90s, a man with dementia, pushed to the floor as he was pushed out the door of a store. Everybody I know saw their own grandfather in that assault.
In May 2020 we saw a video of an 84-year-old Asian woman being intentionally tripped while she was walking with a walker. A person went out of their way and snuck in behind her to trip her. It was devastating to watch.
I spoke up. My community came to me and said, “Greg, this is happening. Will you please speak up for us?” I joined with one of the local Asian leaders. We spoke about Calgarians, because things were happening in Calgary as well. We need to make sure that we are not confusing anything that is happening on the world stage with Canada's own ethnic communities. This was something that was a despicable response, but it got worse.
It got worse in July 2020. A Calgary man on a bike path drove by a woman who was on a skateboard, spit on her and uttered a racial slur. It is on video. It was one of the most despicable things we have seen on video in Calgary. We recognize the spot in Calgary, so we cannot say it is somebody else. It is in our communities, and it manifests itself very badly.
Police reported that anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 11% across the country between 2019 and 2020. However, in the Lower Mainland and in Vancouver, anti-Asian hate crimes increased by an outrageous 878%. In case we need to look deep into the mirror, Canada's rate of anti-Asian hate crimes, per capita, is double that reported in the United States. We wear this.
There is no community more solidly ensconced in the Canadian mosaic than the East Asian community. My generation is one that grew up with the East Asian community. We shared hockey teams, baseball teams and music lessons. We ate at each other's homes. We celebrated each other's festivals.
Waves of immigrants who have arrived in Canada since the first East Asian community came here are equally part of our mosaic, so it is with dismay that we watched the racial antagonism emerge.
Let me say that Canada is still a warm country for immigrants, particularly those who are fleeing parts of East Asia, where they feel they have less freedom and opportunity than we offer here in Canada. We are a great country, and we are blessed to have these wonderful new Canadians.
Let us reflect on the 17,000 Chinese labourers who came to Canada to build the western section of the transcontinental railway. Due to unsafe working conditions, more than 4,000 of those men tragically lost their lives. That is almost a quarter of them.
Not only were the Chinese railway workers forced to complete the most dangerous tasks, but often their families were never notified of their deaths, nor did these families receive compensation for the death of their family member.
These stalwart railroad workers were compensated less than half what other railroad workers were paid. Chinese workers were paid $1 a day and had to pay for all their food and gear. To add insult to this injustice, the Chinese community was degraded in newspapers, as it was blamed for taking jobs away from Canadians of European descent. It is ironic that Canada's first grand public enterprise in uniting a nation from the Atlantic to the Pacific was so divisive in the manner it treated those who came from Atlantic shores in preference to those who came from Pacific shores.
In Prime Minister Stephen Harper's national apology for this injustice, issued in 2006, he stated:
For over six decades, these malicious measures aimed solely at the Chinese were implemented with deliberation by the Canadian state. This was a grave injustice and one we are morally obligated to acknowledge.
An apology can never replace the pain and sorrow of the rail workers and their families. However, I am hopeful this apology lands and addresses some of our history.
This summer in June, I also went to speak about the railway workers monument in Calgary, the “Wall of Names”, honoured by the Calgary Kaiping Association, at Sien Lok Park. The monument had been vandalized, so this is not over. This did not end with COVID. It is extremely disappointing and reminds us all that we have to make sure that we continue. This monument was one where they erased the names of all the Chinese immigrants who had come to Canada in those years. We recognize that happened before 1923, because the act more or less excluded East Asian immigrants after that period.
It is a shame. It is something that needs to be righted. It continues to exhibit itself on the streets of my very open, dynamic, multicultural city and yet, somehow, there are still voices that say, “These people are different.” Well, they are not. These people are part of our mosaic. These people belong with us. These people are Canadians.
This motion is one we back 100%, and I am honoured to be able to speak to it in this House of Commons.
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- Dec/8/22 7:27:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address Motion No. 63, which calls upon our government to condemn anti-Asian hate and all forms of racism and racial discrimination. The motion seeks to address the troubling rise in anti-Asian racism and hate that this country has seen over the last several years. I thank my hon. colleague, the member of Parliament for Scarborough North, for bringing forward this motion and for raising these issues.
Our government condemns all forms of racism and is committed to supporting all communities in Canada that experience the harmful effects of hate and racism, including people of Asian descent. Asian communities in Canada are a diverse group with varying histories, ethnicities, cultures and religions. According to the 2021 census, people of Asian descent make up 17% of Canada's population.
Asian Heritage Month has been celebrated in Canada since the 1990s. In December 2001, the Senate of Canada adopted a motion proposed by Senator Vivienne Poy to officially designate May as Asian Heritage Month in Canada. In May 2002, the Government of Canada signed an official declaration to announce May as Asian Heritage Month. This spring we marked the 20th anniversary of Asian Heritage Month, and the theme this year was continuing a legacy of greatness. This theme emphasized the rich, diverse and historic paths that have laid the foundation for Asian communities in Canada to flourish.
During Asian Heritage Month and the rest of the year, we celebrate the diversity, history, culture and contribution of people of Asian ancestry in Canada. In a society governed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Canadian Multiculturalism Act and the Canadian Human Rights Act, anti-Asian hatred and racism have absolutely no place in Canada. Hatred and racism pose a direct threat to the foundation of our democratic institutions, to the security of our communities and to our nationwide efforts to combat the pandemic and the myriad other challenges we are currently and collectively facing.
While most Canadians are committed to equality and justice, racism and discrimination remain a significant problem, as we saw both during and following the surge of the COVID-19 crisis. During this time, we saw a significant increase in anti-Asian sentiment and hate. When we talk about anti-Asian racism, we are referring to historical and ongoing discrimination, negative stereotyping and injustice experienced by people of Asian descent based on others' assumptions about their ethnicity and nationality.
Through the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885, a head tax was imposed on every Chinese person seeking entry into Canada, marking a period of legislated anti-Chinese racism. On June 22, 2006, the Government of Canada apologized in the House of Commons to Canadians of Chinese heritage who paid the head tax, their families and the Chinese community across Canada.
Shortly after Japan's entry into the Second World War on December 7, 1941, Canadians of Japanese heritage were forcibly removed from Canada's west coast. In September 1988, the Government of Canada formally apologized in the House of Commons and offered compensation for the wrongful incarceration, seizure of property and disenfranchisement of Canadians of Japanese heritage during the Second World War.
On April 4, 1914, the Komagata Maru sailed from Hong Kong to Shanghai and the Japanese ports of Moji and Yokohama, finally arriving in Vancouver, British Columbia in May 1914. Its passengers, mostly Sikhs from Punjab, India, who were all British subjects, challenged the continuous regulation of Canada's Immigration Act, which had been put in place in part to limit immigration from non-European countries. In May 2016, the government made a formal apology in the House of Commons to the victims and their relatives for the Komagata Maru incident. The government recognizes this historical wrong and recognizes the need to continue to combat racism and discrimination in our country.
Unfortunately, issues of biases, stereotyping, racism and discrimination have only become more pronounced, with a surge of anti-Asian hate during the pandemic. For many Canadians, this is a daily lived reality. For example, according to the 2021 Canadian legal problems survey, the Chinese population was 10 times more likely to report being a victim of ethnic or racial discrimination than non-racialized people. Police-reported data supported this claim. In the first year of the pandemic, we saw a 37% rise in police-reported hate crimes, including an 80% increase of crimes motivated by hatred of race or ethnicity. There was also a disturbing 301% increase in hate crimes against the East Asian population.
We know that racism is a problem in Canada and we are taking action. In 2019, Canada launched its three-year anti-racism strategy. As part of that, we have invested close to $100 million in a whole-of-government approach to address racism and discrimination.
Early in the pandemic, when it became clear that certain social groups were being unequally impacted, the federal anti-racism secretariat of Canadian Heritage and Women and Gender Equality Canada co-founded the equity-seeking communities COVID-19 task force. This brought together 25 federal departments and agencies to guide our government in addressing the inequities generated by the pandemic. In May 2021, the federal anti-racism secretariat worked with Asian community leaders from across the country to co-create an official definition of anti-Asian racism, which has been integrated into Canada's anti-racism strategy.
Our government is working with all of its partners collaboratively, with many federal departments; with provincial, territorial and municipal governments; and with communities across the country to address racism and hate against Asians. This includes funding for the digital citizen initiative designed to counter online disinformation, analyze the origin and spread of online disinformation, and build the capacity for communities to respond. In the past, funding went to projects designed to understand the origins and the spread of racist ideas or online disinformation targeting specific communities.
Budget 2021 also provided $11 million over two years, starting in 2021-22, to expand the impact of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. This includes scaling up efforts to empower racialized Canadians and to help communities combat racism in all of its forms. This investment, in part, enables the foundation to facilitate initiatives like the establishment of a national coalition to support Asian Canadian communities and to create a fund to support all racialized communities directly impacted by increasing acts of racism during the pandemic.
This work is far from finished. In budget 2022, our government announced an investment of $85 million over four years for Canada's new anti-racism strategy. In addition, as announced in budget 2022, our government is also developing the first-ever Canada action plan on combatting hate, and this spring we carried out 21 engagement sessions with communities and partner organizations.
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