Canada Has Long Had Laws Against ‘Systemic Racism,’ Study Says

Canada's provincial and territorial flags flutter in the breeze in downtown Ottawa on June 28, 2024. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

It was back in 1913 that Prince Edward Island passed the first bill in Canada to prohibit discrimination, says a new study by the Aristotle Foundation public policy think tank.

The bill said treatment for tuberculosis victims must be administered without regard for “class, creed or nationality.”

The study traces the evolution of provincial and federal laws over more than a century, telling a story of Canada’s efforts to prohibit discrimination.

Mark Milke, president and founder of the Aristotle Foundation, says the think tank decided to undertake the study partly to educate that “prejudice” and “actual institutional racism” are two different concepts and shouldn’t be conflated.

“Institutional racism is when an institution, such as a ‘white’ hospital in San Francisco 100 years ago would not allow Chinese Americans, or when universities once limited Jewish or black entrants,” Milke told The Epoch Times.

“But that discrimination has long been outlawed, in some cases—in Ontario for example—since the 1950s. Canadians should know that.”

He adds that another motivation for the study was to point out that the modern “so-called ‘anti-racism’ movement is not that.”

“It is instead about trying to address past wrongs with new, additional wrongs. That is anti-individual and illiberal,” he said.

Historic Bills

Besides the 1913 bill in P.E.I., the second bill to contain anti-discrimination provisions as outlined in the study was British Columbia’s Unemployment Relief Act of 1932. It stipulated that all who qualified to receive unemployment benefits should be able to do so, regardless of political affiliation, race, or religion.

Manitoba’s anti-libel legislation of 1934 included a prohibition of libel against a race or creed. In 1944, Ontario banned discriminatory signs and symbols.

Saskatchewan’s 1947 Bill of Rights prohibited discrimination on various grounds. New Brunswick in 1956 prohibited discrimination based on race or religion, and Nova Scotia passed similar legislation in 1959.

The first federal legislation regarding discrimination came in 1953, the study said. It was the Fair Employment Practices Act, which stated: “No employer shall refuse to employ … or otherwise discriminate against any person in regard to employment or any term or condition of employment because of his race, national origin, colour, or religion.”

The 1960 Canadian Bill of Rights Act was a precursor to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms enacted in 1982.

The former codified equality before the law, but only applied to relations between governments and Canadians. The latter extended to discrimination between private individuals and entities. All provinces had already introduced human rights legislation before the charter, the study said.

“The situations in which discrimination was originally prohibited were limited to such areas as employment, accommodation, and the provision of goods and services. In more recent decades, the contexts are pretty much limitless,” it said.

Anyone who has been discriminated against has legal recourse and, in this sense, “systemic racism” does not exist, the authors said.

The only form of discrimination permitted by Canadian law is discrimination that “has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups,” as stated in section 15(2) of the Charter, the study said. This allows, for example, an employer to consider race when hiring in the practice of what’s called “employment equity” or “affirmative action.”