A troubling pattern

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Twenty years ago, during a live television fundraiser for victims of Hurricane Katrina, Kanye West delivered a sentence that instantly became part of the political lexicon in the United States:

“George Bush doesn’t care about Black people.”

The statement was highly controversial. Many dismissed it as inflammatory. Others understood it as a powerful expression of a deeper frustration: the feeling that Black communities were being treated as an afterthought in decisions that profoundly affected their lives.

Today, I find myself in a Kanye West moment, tempted to say the same about Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Does he really care about Black people in Canada? I ask this question not because of anything the prime minister has said, but because of the many things his government has done.

In recent months, a troubling pattern has emerged. On issue after issue that directly affects Black Canadians, the federal government has either excluded Black voices from decision-making or failed to demonstrate meaningful leadership. Whether the issue is racism and hate, artificial intelligence, or international recognition of the historical injustices suffered by people of African descent, Black Canadians seem to appear only as an afterthought.

Exclusion from a council on inclusion

The most troubling example is the recently established federal Advisory Council on Rights, Equality and Inclusion. The Council was created to advise the federal government on some of the most important issues facing Canadian society: racism, discrimination, hate, equality, inclusion, and social cohesion. These are not abstract concepts for Black Canadians. They are lived realities.

Indeed, if there is any community that should have a meaningful voice on a national body devoted to combating racism and promoting equality, it is the Black community. 

Black Canadians continue to experience disproportionately high levels of race-based hate crimes, discrimination, and exclusion. Governments, academics, and civil society organizations have spent decades documenting the persistence of anti-Black racism in virtually every major institution in Canadian society – from policing and criminal justice to employment, housing, education, health care, and immigration.

Yet when the Advisory Council's membership was announced, there was not a single Black representative. The omission was difficult to understand.

According to Statistics Canada, Black Canadians are the most frequent victims of race- and ethnicity-motivated hate crimes in Canada. While Black people constitute only 4.3 per cent of Canada’s population, they accounted for approximately 37 per cent of all police-reported race- or ethnicity-motivated hate crimes in 2024 (873 of the 2,377 reported incidents). No other racial group experienced more.

One would therefore expect a federal body tasked with advising the government on rights, equality, inclusion, and hate to include Black voices as a matter of course. Instead, the community most affected by race-based hate crimes was excluded altogether. 

The missing recognition of anti-Black racism

The problem extends beyond representation. Equally concerning is what the Council’s mandate does not say. Despite overwhelming evidence documenting anti-Black racism in Canada, its mandate does not explicitly identify anti-Black racism as a priority area for attention. This omission matters.

Anti-Black racism is not simply one form of discrimination among many. It is one of the most extensively studied and documented manifestations of racism in Canada. 

Governments at every level have acknowledged its existence. Federal departments have developed anti-Black racism strategies. Parliamentary committees have produced reports on it. Academic researchers – including myself – have spent years documenting its evolving manifestations, including its reproduction through emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence.

Yet when the federal government established its premier advisory body on rights, equality, and inclusion, anti-Black racism was nowhere to be found in its stated mandate. 

How does a government create a council to combat racism without explicitly recognizing one of the country’s most persistent and well-documented forms of racism? 

Abstention from the UN resolution on slavery

Earlier this year, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution A/80/L.48, declaring the trafficking of enslaved Africans and the racialized chattel enslavement of Africans the gravest crime against humanity. The resolution recognized the continuing legacy of slavery and its enduring consequences for people of African descent around the world. While 123 countries voted in favour, Canada did not. It abstained.

To be clear, Canada was not among the three countries that voted against the resolution. But neither was it among the overwhelming majority of countries that supported it. The decision to abstain on a resolution recognizing one of history’s greatest crimes against people of African descent raises difficult questions about Canada’s commitment to confronting the historical and contemporary realities of anti-Black racism.

A familiar pattern

There was also the federal government’s AI Strategy Task Force. Despite overwhelming evidence that Black communities are among those most adversely affected by AI harms – including racial bias in facial recognition, predictive policing, hiring algorithms, credit-scoring systems, health-care technologies, and immigration tools – the Task Force was initially launched without any identifiable Black representation.

Black Canadians found themselves outside the room. Viewed individually, each of these decisions might be dismissed as an oversight. Viewed together, they reveal a troubling pattern:

A council on rights, equality and inclusion without Black representation. 

A mandate on racism that does not explicitly mention anti-Black racism. 

A United Nations resolution on the enduring legacy of slavery from which Canada abstains.

An AI Task Force created without Black representation despite extensive evidence of AI’s disproportionate harms to Black communities.

Actions speak louder than words

The issue is not whether Prime Minister Carney harbours ill will toward Black Canadians. I strongly do not believe he does. The issue is that governments reveal what they truly care about through their decisions.

The government has responded by suggesting that the composition of the Advisory Council remains a work in progress and that additional members may be appointed in the future. But that response raises its own troubling questions.

It suggests that a government can establish a council on racism without Black representation. It suggests that a government can create a council on equality without explicitly recognizing anti-Black racism. It suggests that Black Canadians can be consulted later, represented later, and considered later. Later is not good enough.

Black Canadians are not peripheral stakeholders in conversations about racism, equality, inclusion, or technological governance. We are among the communities most directly affected by these issues. Our voices do not belong outside the room waiting to be consulted after decisions have already been made. They belong at the table from the beginning.

Conclusion

Twenty years after Kanye West’s (in)famous statement, Canada faces a different but equally important question. Not just whether our leaders care about Black people, but whether they are prepared to demonstrate that care through meaningful inclusion, representation, and action. 

So far, the evidence is not convincing.