Canadian Heritage committee  I think education does play a role in that, and a large portion of the old action plan around racism focused on education, so there's a piece there. Naming and taking a stand is critical. For us, naming things such as Islamophobia and anti-black racism and issues in the indigenous community, which we have been doing more of, is a critical piece, as well as not shying away from naming what people perceive as being somewhat difficult things to talk about, because the reality is that those things are happening to people.

Canadian Heritage committee  It would be fundamentally fruitful. Currently the funding structure at Canadian Heritage allows for programs where communities reach out to other communities, if I'm getting it right. The reality is we're not there at the point where communities are okay within themselves to start reaching out and building bridges with other communities.

Canadian Heritage committee  The pillars have been teased out. I would direct you to look directly at the strategies so you can see what the targeted measures and priorities are within each pillar. The advisory committees have been critical, one, in that there's one overarching advisory, but more importantly because for each pillar the recommendation from those committees was that you not speak to us; you should actually be creating community-based advisories for each pillar, and this larger group shouldn't be the one advising you.

Canadian Heritage committee  I would agree with everything you said. A strategy that just sets out recommendations is probably going to sit on the bench like the CAPAR did. The reality is that recommendations have to be set. Targets or measures have to be set, and timelines have to be set. As those timelines come, those measures must be taken.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think this committee has probably heard the term intersectionality over and over, so I think sometimes when I sit in rooms and say intersectionality people are like, “Okay, intersectionality.” The truth is that, when you work with clients, you see that they identify as so many different things and so many intersections of identity.

Canadian Heritage committee  I spoke about a race equity framework. It echoes what is already going on at the federal level with the gender plus framework. One overarching way of looking at this issue is that if you applied a race equity framework to any federal programming, you would be able to start to identify some of the indicators of systemic racism.

Canadian Heritage committee  We do. We serve the province, so we have a head office in Toronto and we have seven satellite offices, most of them spread between Hamilton and Durham. We also work with clients from London, Windsor, and Ottawa.

Canadian Heritage committee  Absolutely.

Canadian Heritage committee  We do. We have a system whereby we can input intakes by issues. As people raise issues, they can be input into the system. My own review was based on pulling information out of our system.

Canadian Heritage committee  We've done a lot of legal education work within our own communities on their relationships with the police. I'll be very frank and say that the communities we work with have not yet been receptive to having that type of conversation. We are still working on a framework of building trust, to be honest, and we're not there yet.

Canadian Heritage committee  There is still a real fear of engaging with the police. One of the things I didn't mention is that a lot of the people who are reporting are not in status in immigration. We have these categories of very marginalized clients who, for other reasons, will not engage in that system but are facing these issues.

Canadian Heritage committee  I would take the position that you do a review of what is going on currently in Ontario. There are probably ways to improve, but the framework that's being created for the collection of data is very comprehensive. One critical piece involves the idea of disaggregated data. A lot of discussion has gone on around what that means.

Canadian Heritage committee  It was a government representative.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think one of the critical things they've done a tremendous amount of work on is the collection of disaggregated data. One of the greatest strengths of the program was their commitment to the collection of that data throughout the province. They spent a lot of time developing the framework for how that would happen.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think it's an interesting start and a good approach. I think the recommendations in the previous sessions are really critical, that a lot around employment equity requires a unified approach from the federal and provincial levels. We're just not there. A strong leadership and a strong voice from the federal government calling on provincial counterparts to implement that employment equity approach is really critical.