Commentary
With the daily news cycle abuzz with the U.S.–Canada tariff war, 51st state threats, and seismic geopolitical realignments, it’s no wonder that the rollout of Ottawa’s latest program centred on the ideology of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is receiving little coverage. But Canadians should be paying attention, because “Canada’s Black Justice Strategy” represents an unprecedented entrenchment of DEI principles across our public institutions.
Canada’s Black Justice Strategy is the federal government’s “formal response to anti-Black racism and systemic discrimination” and “seeks to address the disproportionate representation of Black Canadians in the criminal justice system.” In Prime Minister Trudeau’s mandate letter to the justice minister in 2021, he called for the creation of a “Black Canadians Justice Strategy.”
To collect input on the strategy, the Department of Justice “entered into contracts with 12 Black-led community-based organizations,” which conducted “consultations and engagement activities with Black communities.”
In June 2024, these community consultations resulted in the publication of a report with 114 recommendations. One of the report’s guiding principles was “Afrocentrism,” which it defined as placing “Black people and communities at the center of policy-making and strategy development.” The recommendations include reducing the rate of black and indigenous people who are incarcerated by 50 percent, removing all mandatory minimum penalties in Canada’s Criminal Code, and establishing a “federal department or agency responsible for championing and coordinating efforts to advance the interests of Black people.”
This report is not purely theoretical—its principles are being reflected in federal government policy. In December 2024, the Fall Economic Statement proposed that $77.9 million be spent to launch Canada’s Black Justice Strategy. This included dedicated funding for “Black-specific court worker services,” “culturally sensitive rehabilitation during incarceration,” and the RCMP’s Anti-Racism Unit.
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Some of the money was earmarked to help the Department of Justice “expand the use of Impact of Race and Culture Assessments.” These assessments, known as IRCAs, “inform sentencing judges of the disadvantages and systemic racism faced by Black and other racialized Canadians and may recommend alternatives to incarceration.”
The Fall Economic Statement proposed an additional $189 million over five years for the Black Entrepreneurship Program, a government program open to “Black-led business organizations.” Another $36 million was proposed for the Supporting Black Canadian Communities Initiative, which “empowers Black-led, Black-serving, and Black-focused community organizations to promote inclusiveness.”
How are economic and community programs open to only one race related to the promotion of “black justice”? The Fall Economic Statement explains that the proposed investments in the Black Entrepreneurship Program “directly respond to Pillar 1” of the June 2024 community consultation report. The pillar referred to is the report’s first pillar of black justice: “social determinants of justice.” The idea behind this pillar is that negative socioeconomic factors like poverty or unstable housing increase the likelihood that an individual will commit crime.
Last month, the government released an even more detailed “Implementation Plan,” which Justice Minister Arif Virani describes as “a 10-year commitment toward the necessary, on-the-ground transformative change to reduce the overrepresentation of Black people in the criminal justice system.”
Just as with the initial June 2024 report and the December 2024 Fall Economic Statement, the Implementation Plan is chock full of government initiatives intended to “combat anti-Black racism and systemic discrimination in the criminal justice system.” The plan includes words like “Afrophobia,” which it defines as “a term used to describe racism that targets people of African descent.”
The plan explains that $1.8 million will be earmarked for the Canada School of Public Service to “develop anti-Black racism education and training for the federal public service.” It goes on to describe Ottawa’s commitment to collect “disaggregated race-based data” to “increase understanding of disparities in treatment and outcomes based on race and help design better interventions to reduce overrepresentation.”
Canada’s Black Justice Strategy has managed to combine all of the tenets of social justice, DEI, and critical race theory into a single government strategy: taxpayer-funded entrepreneurship programs only open to applicants of one race, the collection of race-based data by the government, black-specific court worker services, an anti-racism unit in the RCMP, and the provision of “culturally sensitive” rehabilitation for prisoners.
Is this the path we want to go down as a society? Canadians must think hard about the implications for social cohesion and national unity of making race the supreme factor in government policy, and replacing colourblind public institutions with a collection of boutique programs for various minority groups.
Importantly, who does this strategy really help? The Black Justice Strategy patronizes the vast majority of black Canadians who do not commit crime, by lumping them together with a minority criminal element. Coddling criminals might serve the fringe ideological principles of some activists, but it won’t help law-abiding Canadians—of any colour.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
