>> Elder Bob Goulais: As indigenous people we're guided by our Spirit, we're guided by the Spirit world and our great kind Spirit that we call [Name?] the Spirit guides us all of the things we need to provide for our lives, to provide for our families and to work together in a good way. So it’s really, you know, I know, challenging and burdensome to our Spirit when faced by racism, faced by those negative things. It is a numbing and gnawing grief that we feel when we see our brothers and sisters, such as ourselves, torn down as a result of that racism. And we need the support and reinforcement of all of us to be able to combat that racism, in particular those that are suffering the racism the most. Thinking, you know, Indigenous brothers and sisters in the north and cities, the Black community, because Black lives do matter, it is an important thing that we need to support in each other in what we do. I want to reinforce the importance of going back to our teachings of humanity, those teachings given to us in time of creation. It is said that at the time of creation the Creator created four races of people to live on this Earth, those four races are the grandfathers of all of us. There is the original yellow man, the modern, who is the ancestor of modern day Asian people. The modern day red one or the red standing one, that’s the ancestor of us modern day Indigenous people. There is the black standing one, the modern, ancestor of modern day Black people and of course the white standing one, the ancestor of many modern day Caucasian European people. At that time not only were we put on this Earth in a very beautiful and gentle way, we were put on this Earth with a set of instructions. A set of instructions that told us two things, that we have to look after all those things that can't look after themselves. To speak for all those things that can't speak for themselves, including when we witness acts of racism, when we see those injustices happening in our communities, it is important we speak up and do that. The other teaching given to us is to use the intellect given to us, good thoughts and good part of our lives where we can actually make practise decisions and practical common sense approaches to dealing with our issues. We were also given seven grandfather teachings. These seven teachings including love, is to know peace, respect is to honour all of creation with the, with respect. And humility is to know that we are just a small tiny piece of creation itself. Those other teachings, bravery, honesty, wisdom and truth were given to us to reinforce those instructions and those are how we should relate to one another, whether we are Indigenous or non-Indigenous, whether it is your particular race, background, creed or ethnicity, that these are our teachings of humanity. We need to go back to those things. What’s the challenge of us going back to those? Well, we are too much in our head. We need to get out of our head and into our heart to start realizing there are better ways to deal with one another, better ways to do those things. I want to offer a prayer in my language, the Ojibway with a language. Asking the Spirit to provide us with this place where we can have a progressive and sensible and respectful dialogue using those good feelings, setting that stage and setting those good feelings.

We don't need to succumb to anger or frustration. We need to be very straight forward, need to be strong with each other, we need to reinforce that, but do that in a respectful and good way. We are all advocates for change. We all know what’s right. We are here for a particular purpose; we all want to be part of that solution. So I want to offer a song and a prayer in the language that asks the Spirit, whether you call the Spirit Alah or Jesus or however you see that Spirit that, great Creator, we want to ask the Spirit to look after us and be with us in this good way. (speaking language other than English) We ask the Spirit to be with us today, to look after one another, to take care of all of those at home. That we work together to find a solution and solutions that will go to combat this racism that we face and we support each other in a good way and that we have a good evening.

(drum beat) I wish you all a good evening and a good meeting. Thank you. [Applause]

>> Paulette: Thank you so much Bob, for that blessing, thank you for starting our evening right, getting us in the right frame of mind. Getting us focused on what we're here to discuss this evening and I just want to acknowledge you as you have welcomed us on this land, knowing that it’s an important welcome and it is something that we appreciate and always want to do as we gather. My name is Paulette Senior and I'm your moderator for the evening and I am just thanking you to have you all here. I know and I suspect there are better places that you could be this evening. Am I right? Right. I paid him to say that. But I suspect that there are many things that we could be doing this evening, maybe not anything better, but other things that we could be doing. So we're not here for an ordinary evening or an ordinary chat, we're here for an extraordinary conversation to talk about an important issue in our community. And so I am really looking forward to the kind of dialogue that we're going to be having that if we say so, will make a difference not just for today but for generations to come. I'm very pleased to join you here in Hamilton for this conversation and this is one of several conversations that the Province has organized across our beautiful region. And that the Minister, who you will meet in a moment, has been attending and listening and gathering feedback in terms of what the people of this Province have to say about the issue of addressing racism, about also in terms of what the Directorate itself can be doing. So as I said, it is one of several meetings in Ontario and across the Province to hear from you, the public, about the key systemic issues and what the priorities are. So as I moderate this conversation there will be a number of things that we will be talking about, but before I do I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome Minister Coteau and he is the Minister Responsible for Anti-Racism and for Children and Youth Services. So please join me in welcoming him. [Applause]

>>Minister Coteau: Thank you very much Paulette, I want to join Paulette, I want to give thanks and recognition to our Indigenous past here in the Province of Ontario and say thank you. Just want to recognise a couple people in the crowd joining us is Andrea, leader of the NDP. [Applause] And I do want to say that when the word went out we were going to hear consultations she picked up the phone and gave me a call and was really enthusiastic about bringing it here to Hamilton, thank you very much and Paul Miller, my good friend from the legislature. Thanks for being here. And of course Matthew Green and Councillor, I want to thank you for your work, I know our office is being connecting to yours for help, so I just want to say thank you, you were able to join me earlier today as we went to the Mosque for a conversation. Thank you for being here today. The conversation is a very important conversation for Ontarians. This is the second in several conversations we're going to be having across the Province to talk about racism. And there is no question in my mind that racism, systemic racism, Islamophobia, Anti-Black racism, racism against indigenous communities, all of the forms of racism that we face as a society, as Ontarians, there is no question in my mind that not only does it strike a very core within the people, it can be a vicious and devastating thing. I believe it holds our Province back from the greatness it can achieve. There is no question in my mind, the Province of Ontario is a wonderful, great place to live. When we see, when we see some groups not doing as well as other groups; unemployment rates of some communities double those of other communities, when we see academic success and suspensions and expulsion rates, you know, huge differences between different communities. When we see these types of things there’s no question in my mind that racism is the major factor for these types of discrepancies. I was looking over some statistics recently, youth employment rate is roughly 14%. The rate is nearly double that for racialized communities including 21 and a half% for Aboriginal youth and 29.9% for Immigrant youth and almost 30% for African Canadian youth. When you think about young people and you think about, you know, that 12 year old, that 13 year old, I have a 10 year old daughter so I see this every single day, the thing in their eyes that have them believe they can actually go out there and make a difference in the world. They can be anything they want to be it if they work hard, if they put their mind to it they can accomplish anything they want. Then something happens, you know, 15, 16, 17, the world starts to reveal itself. You know, it could be a simple, a simple comment by someone, it could be an experience in school with a teacher, it could be a police officer treating someone unfairly. When these types of things happen something slowly gets taken away from that child, that young person, and when it happens more and more and more there starts to become a bit of animosity towards the Society as a whole. The hope, that aspiration, those dreams start to get crushed a bit. And that’s really a sad thing because we want young people to grow up in this world where they feel as though they really do have opportunity and it is a truthful opportunity. But it is not happening. So we need to have a conversation as, I'm glad to see a lot of young people here today. But I'm also happy to see people from all across the age spectrum, you know, we need to have a conversation today around what we can do as a society, to build a better Ontario. You know, I can remember, you know, being 17 years old and I was, that summer I was going to summer school taking two courses and working full time. I got off work, school around 5 and went to work and finished around 12/1 o'clock in the morning, then went back home, did the same thing over and over and over again. I was feeling good about myself because I was accomplishing something and I remember, I remember going home one night and as I was crossing the street, you know someone shouted out, you know, get off the road and you can imagine what the rest was, the rest was like. It’s funny, when racism hits you like that, you kind of internalize it, you kind of own it yourself, you feel bad. Now in retrospect I think why am I feeling bad about what someone said to me, that’s not necessarily, you know, you know it’s not necessarily something that should affect me that way, but that’s the way racism works. It is a very, very powerful thing, been used for many hundreds of years to separate people, to keep people down and we have an oasis here called Ontario, where I believe, if we can work hard and we can change the way we do things and provide those opportunities and remove those barriers, we can make this even a better place than what it is today. So I just want to say thank you so much for being here, for being part of this conversation and I'm looking so forward to hearing your comments. The Anti-Racism Directorate is going to, we believe the mandate at this point is to collect good data, to mandate agencies, organizations, extensions of government to collect data, to hold them accountable. We want to be able to do an awareness and educational campaign across the Province about the ill effects of racism. We want to be able to bring people together to create a permanent forum where information can be shared amongst one another and provide a race-based lens to government. So I think there is a lot of opportunity in front of us and I want to work with everyone in this room to help build a better Ontario. So when my daughter is, is thinking about becoming a doctor or a teacher, an artist, whatever she decides to become, that there is nothing in place that’s going to be able to hold her back. I know that’s a big dream and it’s, you know, it is a lot of hope, but I really believe that we can build an Ontario where everyone is provided with that opportunity. So thank you for being here and now I'm going to introduce Sam and Casper who I believe are going to go up. We're going to right, are we going to, Sam Erry is the Assistant Deputy Minister, I'm assuming, or are you taking over -- I'm going to introduce up here. Again thank you very much for your time, I appreciate you being here. Sam? [Applause]

>>Sam: I don't have his height so going to have to lower this. Good evening, it is a privilege to be here this evening with you. So thanks for spending the time. I'm just going to take a few minutes to talk to you about the Directorate, where we are and where we want to be at you know, in a more mature state. Okay. I put this slide up because it is really important to note that, you know, the core objective of the Directorate will be to focus on systemic racism. And systemic racism, it is endemic, been entrenched over the years and it is really about solving the problem upstream. If you solve the problem upstream then you can avoid all the pain, anguish and all the Band-Aids and cost we have to put mid-stream and downstream. If you relieve that, that valve it will help us think about and achieve equity which is where we want to be at the end of the day. When we have racial equity we reduce all the costs of doing business, reduce all the pain and the suffering that Ontarians and citizens feel and have felt over time. And the key point here is that to address systemic racism, yes government has a very important role in terms of setting policy and working on legislation programming, but also it is an all of society kind of approach. Businesses have a role to play in this, communities have a role to play in this. The Directorate is and will be a strong instrument for social change, but really it is going to take the collective effort of all of us in the community and business and in government to drive that social change. Now, you know, the issue of systemic racism is nothing new, you know, we have had lots of reports in the past where people have opined on this issue, studied it very deeply and you see some of the references there, The Commission on Systemic Racism in the Criminal Justice System, Stephen Lewis opined on this in the 90s and provided very strong recommendations, Roots of Youth Violence Report and the work done with the previous Anti-Racism Secretariat about 20 years ago. More recently of course we have, you know, the painful but open and honest work that was done through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission relative to our Indigenous community. It is pretty clear, the punch line here from all these reports, you really need to focus on systemic racism. Now in addition to this, the Minister had early meetings with core anti-racism organizations and we have been able to get again, confirmation in real-time in terms of the focus on, on systemic issues. So the Directorates mandate, at the end of the day, what we really want to do is of course decrease or eliminate systemic racism in institutions that are governed or regulated by the Ontario government. These are agencies, boards, all those where government has, has outreach to, increase awareness and understanding of systemic racism. You would be very surprised. I know most of you are passionate about this issue and are probably very well informed, but in the general population, you know, most people when you talk to them about racism it is really about the one-on-one and the overt racism they see. Very few people respectfully have an understanding of what is systemic racism. We're going to work hard, I'll talk in a few minutes about that, how we are going to do that. Promoting fair laws? and policies that lead to racial equity. This is critical, collaborating with the community. I think the strength of the Directorate, very sincere and inclusive with anti-racism experts so we can help collectively drive the depended. In terms of the focus, sort of four core areas, maybe I should have said this at the outset, I would characterize our current stage as a foundational stage. It is very, very important, the Minister referenced this as well, we do good hard core foundational research. That’s what the first pillar is all about. Is to do research so we can have an evidence-based conversation about what we're doing. As most of you know, the Human Rights Commission opined and said it is okay to collect this race-based data. We want to get that ball rolling, if you are going to look at systemic issues you need data on sector by sector so we can look at underlining causes, why are we having disproportionate representation of Black youth, the conversation shouldn't start at the point in which these kids start at the door, back that up, why do people end up there in the first place. There will be a very, very strong focus on policy, research and evaluation. There are some jurisdictions in the US, some very progressive municipalities, the City of Seattle, Portland, King County, fortunately for us have done some really great work in terms of trying to achieve racial equity. They have a lot of solid anti-racism frameworks and tools we can import from those jurisdictions and bring them into the organization and socialize people to those frameworks. Because the thing is, we don't have these competencies in most of our organizations, anti-racism, we have diversity competencies, we have inclusion, we have multiculturalism, anti-racism competencies are very specific in each competency. So we will be looking to some of those progressive jurisdictions to bring that. So one of the things we will be looking at in addition to those tools is putting together a Province-wide disaggregated race framework so we can share the frameworks within government departments and agencies, so when they are collecting the data everyone is collecting apples to apples and oranges to oranges, not getting that is not congruent or data that is polluted, if I can use that word. Not going to give us the right outcome. So that’s a big chunk of work. Second chunk is public education and awareness. So we're going to conduct some market research and really again use an evidence-based approach to public education awareness. As you know, social media will play a heavy part in this. So engaging, you know, young people, engaging frankly all generations in this conversation will be important so we can figure out what are the right ways to get, get the message out and get this information out. Community collaboration and, you know, I think the Directorate is going to live and die on this, very inclusive engagement with those who are specialists in this area will be critical. As we develop our products it will be really important to bring people into the tent and have them look at those frameworks and those strategies so that at the end of the day when we do roll it out, it is going to resonate and work. That will be a critical part of our work. Last and not least, this is something we have been hearing in the early days as well, it is really important, if you are going to do core foundational work, there is some game plan for longevity, not a start and stop exercise. You continue to amass that research and that analysis that you need so that as we move along we start solving problems and challenges. There is a sense of continuity and stability. We're building these competencies inside the organization so that at least on a going forward basis and proactively we can be sure any unintentional consequences are not unintentionally put into place as we develop our policies. So that’s a quick overview for you. There is something in the plaque card that was handed out to you as you came in, and also you can visit the website. We have engaged in a fairly extensive recruitment process as well, very transparent about that. The main reason is we need hard core anti-racism competencies as we start building the organization and get to the objectives we need. That’s to keep it short, that’s probably short for me, thank you very much. [Applause]

>>Paulette: Thank you Sam, thank you Minister for the opening comments and setting the evening for us to begin our engagement. So for those of you who arrived before we started the evening, you're welcome into this conversation this evening, my name is Paulette Senior and I’ll be moderating the conversation this evening. So we are here to hear from you. This is, to say to the government, to each other, but also in terms, specifically in terms of the Anti-Racism Directorate, but what should be the focus of the Directorate as it addresses anti-racism in our community, in government and in business and in the whole of our society. So this evening has been divided into three aspects. We have already gone through two of them, so we have Minister Coteau, who spoke to you with some opening comments. We also heard from Sam Erry who is the ADM, he talked to you about the structure that they're hoping to create and have in place for the Directorate and the mandate and the key priorities for that. And now we're going to be turning to you for that open discussion portion of the evening and it really is about ensuring that we can get the kind of feedback that will make a difference in terms of the focus of the, how the resources for the Directorate become focused. So Sam already talked about what some of those areas were, if you were engaged with his conversation. But before we go there what I would like to do is just set up what our, how we're going to engage with each other this evening, what are some of the rules that we want to follow and what are some of the housekeeping items. So on your way in you would have probably seen, if not already that, there are washrooms that are just out to the right. So please make sure that you use that at your leisure. We know that this meeting is being live-streamed and recorded and it may be publicly made available. So your comments will be kept, in joining the meeting you understand you are consenting to this, we have French and American Sign Language translation, provided over here to my left. And we also have some light refreshments that are located outside in the lounge area. So please partake again at your leisure. So in the interest of hearing from all of you, we hope to hear from as many of you as possible, we're going to ask you limit your comments, keeping in mind we want as many people as possible to have an opportunity to the microphone, up here on the stage. We're going to give you a two minute warning and we're going to give you that warning in terms of the time, it is not necessary to shut you up as it is to guide you to wrap up the comments. I will help you in that process. If you are not able to, or do not want to actually come to the stage there are comment cards. [speaker off mic] That I'm also happy to have. More important divided into the areas we want to hear your comments. If you don't have any raise your hand, we have some wonderful youth ambassadors who will be able to deliver them to you. Okay. The four areas are, this is to make sure we have the foundational approach to the, to the comments for the directorate. So the first is, policy research and evaluation. The second, public education and awareness. The third is collaboration with community and fourth, sustainable governance. Those are the four areas that we want to guide your comments and your conversation. We know this topic is not an academic topic for many people. Racism is something that is felt, that it can alter someone’s projection in life. Even though it can carry on for generations and it can leave a legacy that we don't want in society. So please use these areas as a guide in terms of your comments and I will ensure that if you have something important to say, that’s not necessarily part of those organized in these nice four areas, you will say them. Okay, are you with me? Okay, good. Are you with me Hamilton? Okay, all right, good. Nice to hear you. Okay so focus your responses as much possible to the questions and the questions are here. The questions will be up here for you to see because what we want to hear from you about, focus on these key areas and we want to respect your time and everyone else’s time by asking you to keep your comments as brief as possible, I know some of you who have brought ten pages that you want to read, I'm asking you to have your opening and get to the conclusion. Okay. If you don't get a chance to speak again, the forms are here. And for those of you who are watching online, this is also available to you in terms of the sending your comments and the e-mail for that is antiracism@ontario.ca, I'll repeat it later on if you need that again. Without further ado, I welcome you. Let me explain how this is going to go. The youth ambassadors are here at the side. I ask that you just come down to the side and you will be escorted up to the, up to the front. Oh that is so good, not everybody loves a stage, right. Not everybody wants to be on the stage, one mic will be down, if you want to do that, do that. Let’s flex the evening a little bit. A lot has gone into the planning for this evening. The staff are really excited to see how it unfolds and we want to make sure they don't leave empty-handed. Okay. So I welcome you to, I welcome the first brave person who wants to make a comment; the youth ambassadors are here. Yes, listen this is exciting and it is an opportunity and serious topic, it is an open conversation and discussion. We know why we are here, we could be somewhere else and that somewhere else unfortunately could be watching Trump do his stuff. [Laughter] Right. But instead you chose to be here because this is a much more enlightening, almost anything is more enlightening, but important conversation to be having, right. It is important we are hearing from you, we know many of you are here because you are interested in this topic. I don't want to keep hearing my own voice, I'm tired of it. So please come to the microphone and let’s hear from you. I thought I saw someone coming, she even has a book in her hand. Okay, okay, all right. So please welcome, please say your name, organization where you are from, there is a microphone right here to make it easy for you. Sometimes these are not that good to come up the stairs, you know what I mean, okay, thank you.

>>Audience Member: Thanks (speaking French) Good evening, I'm speaking on behalf of African Canadian Congress in Hamilton here a group filled with African-Canadian communities empower and engaged. Opportunity to realize full potential regardless of religion, gender, identity, expression, language, ability, sexual orientation, age and social status. We would like to, thank the government for launching the Ontario Anti-Racism Directorate, a long overdue request from the Black community. We support the -- our group is concerned about continued anti-Black racism in the community. The out look at crime consistently shows the black community -- in our city. It was 1992 after the young stream Fresco, Black youth took to the street to protest police treatment that Stephen Lewis wrote the following in his report on the state of anti-Black racism in the Province and I quote ''what we are dealing with at root is anti-Black racism, while it is already true, every minority community expresses the indignities of systematic discrimination in south Ontario it is the Black community which is the focus. It is the Black youth that is unemployed in excessive numbers. It is the Black schools, students in same Black, dropout, it is our community with large components of [speaker off mic] VLDL Net Engagement and disadvantage where it is most apparent. It is Black employees, professionals and non-professional on [speaker off mic]up ward slam shut. Now in terms of funding, we the African Canadian Action Congress recommend that adequate funding be allocated to the Directorate, to ensure enough resources to carry out. Here we are referring to funding similar to the Ontario Directorate and the office of the affairs. Systematic racism, area of education, policing, employment, the legal justice system warrant immediate actions. Education, we need to, training for all teachers in training. [Applause] We need to have Black history embedded in the school’s curriculum. [Applause] Placing issues of racial profiling, recruitment, more monitoring across the Province. In the Ontario public school this continues to be a concern. The Directorate has to work closely with the Ontario Public Service to set targets for achieving equality in employment, retention and promotions. Need for employment, equality, legislation must be explored once again. The legal system must stop the disproportionate incarceration of Black and Aboriginal community youths. The Directorate as part of the community should look closely with communities across Ontario to drive change in local communities. The Directorate should provide resources and support to community groups to launch local campaign to end racism. [Applause] The Directorate ought to engage youth in driving anti-racism across the Province. The Directorate ought to establish a fair benchmarking by which outcomes can be measured. I'm glad you mention about the statistics you would like to request, which is great. Strong monetary mechanism to ensure it is addressing systematically in policies, programs and services. The Directorate ought to create a watchdog across Ministries to ensure racism [speaker off mic] is wiped out. The Directorate should ensure and present an annual report to the community and others, on their achievements. The Directorate ought to have anti-racism expertise, that the French department can draw on in order to address systematic racism. The Directorate again, ought to be responsible for research, analysis, and policy on data collection and expertise [speaker off mic] -- I'm going to finish quickly.

>> This is the longest two minutes, isn't it? I'm not even rushing you, we're listening intently.

>>Audience Member: The Directorate should, the Directorate ought to have the power, Aboriginal power and responsibility to initiate programs with the power of legislation. The Directorate should be empowered to implement actionable solutions to ensure the activities are minimized. It is important that the Directorate -- in the absence of anti-racism group in the local area, they should setup Aboriginal in look-out communities to provide input in their work, the Directorate could, this is in relation to be eccentric, we want everywhere covered. [Applause] And last and not least, the Directorate ought to be ready to -- before the next Provincial election. [Applause]

>>Moderator: Can I just say how thorough that is and wouldn't it be great if you could e-mail all of that to, to that e-mail address I mentioned which is anti-racism@ontario.ca, I think they would love to have, am I right? That’s rich in terms of the information that you shared and, and the group that you represent. So thank you very much and that’s an excellent opening. And I'm not seeing others at the mic, but I'm assuming you have things to say, so please go ahead.

>>Audience Member: Hello my name is, I'm here as an individual. I first want to definitely thank the organization for the Directorate for opening this opportunity. One of the things that I am concerned about is that we're talking about a very complex sickness or cancer within our society and I feel that we have done it without identifying it. What I would like to do is just mention the three things that I have read about racism in terms of what it is. So to start with, racism is psychological. It is physical, it is social, and it is the social location that determines the conditions under which, under which one lives their current life and their future life. And I just feel that I would like to encourage not only the Directorate but everyone within this room to do their own research in terms of understanding what racism is. And more than that I think that there are many faces of colour here that probably already have that information, but I feel there is one group that does not have it and that is typical and not totally inclusive, but it is typical, I find that in my experience it has been typical that of year old Canadians to not have and understand the information about racism. And I feel this would be helpful for the people who really do need to also be included in this conversation. The other short thing I want to say is that in your graphic about systematic racism, government was included, the community was included, business was included, I'm very sad that education was not in that graphic. How do we learn about, about racism unless there is a huge and mighty effort toward education at all levels in terms, starting with the family, starting with the youth in the educational institutions working with and making sure that corporations have mandate to discuss and understand what racism is and how it works among their employees. Thank you. [Applause]

>>Moderator: Thank you. So as I wait for the next speaker I just want to point out that graphic is about the various aspects of society such as community and business, corporations and government who are accountable for addressing this. But if you look at on the public education awareness, that’s where the educational piece is supposed to take place. So again it’s, it is difficult to see all of that up front but I agree perhaps there is a way to make that more clear in terms of the important role of education. Yes sir?

>>Audience Member: Good evening, I'm speaking on behalf of the community coalition against racism, which has been in existence for 27 years and which time we have taken on systemic racism and policing, housing, health, education, Governance and employment.

>>Audience Member: It is not about writing briefs about systemic racism in Ontario. [Applause] Thank you. Many excellent pieces of research already referred to by the previous speakers have been done over the last three decades, proving conclusively that systemic racism effects every facet of our justice system, it exists in our schools, colours who gets and who doesn't get the best jobs in Ontario. What we need the Anti-Racism Directorate to do is come up with original conclusions with teeth that fights anti-racism and recommends them to the Provincial Government. One fight we have taken on, you asked for areas of concern, we have three. One fight is against systemic racism and policing. Specifically [Applause] against racial profiling and carding. You are probably aware that the Hamilton Police Services, by its own racial statistics, which it kept from us for years and claimed it never even collected, admitted last year disproportionately Black Hamiltonians were three or four times more often and Aboriginal one-and-a-half times as often as white Hamiltonians. You are well aware the Ontario Minister of public safety has proclaimed new regulations that are supposed to prevent carding and racial profiling, however the African Canadian legal clinic in Toronto has shown many loop-holes into these regulations. We will see next year if new regulations respect our Charter right to be free from arbitrary stops and searches. In the meantime you may ask why there isn't a single white face among the members of the Hamilton police board [Applause] civilian oversight body for policing in Hamilton. They were not picked for expertise in policing, few if any of them have ever had any expertise or training in it. You may wonder why Hamilton Police Services finally hired its first Black police officer in 1975 after the delegations from the Black community came to Hamilton town council about 100 years earlier and asked them to hire a Black police officer. That officer is just retiring, just retired last year. But in the meantime, not one single Black officer or officer of colour has been promoted to senior management. And has personally visited every single police chief who has taken office in the last 20 years to ask why there hasn't been such a promotion. Everyone promised to do something about that and not one of them has. And I think that’s shameful. There is also a colour bar there is also a colour bar that we have in other areas of employment. I'll get to that in a moment. We think that it won't be easy to deal with systemic racism and policing, but we have some ideas. We think that your Anti-Racism Directorate could at least recommend that racial statistics and policing be made available in every municipality. That some persons of colour in each municipality be paid annually to monitor police performance according to these statistics and consult with police, city and Provincial, you can make multiracial be mandated in exactly the same way that multiracial hiring was mandated 20 years ago. You could ask the Province to completely revamp the selection process for the Police Service Boards and the training of members of the Police Service Boards across the Province. We think the whole philosophy of policing in Ontario in fact should be changed. What we have now is something called community policing which is really intelligence gathering about the members of the public. And the broken windows philosophy, we think that’s also out of date. What we really believe in is something that’s now called anti oppression policing, an approach that recognizes the racist and colonial history of this Province and seeks to use policing to reverse historic inequalities. The second area of concern has to do with changes in Governance. Until Matt Green was elected to Hamilton City Council a couple years ago, it was ruled exclusively by white people for 170 years. There is still to my knowledge never been a city counsellor of Aboriginal origin, I'm sure this is repeated again and again over this, went to Hamilton city council with a novel idea for Canada, that is to temporary create special council seats exclusively for people of colour and Aboriginals. It was completely ignored by the city council, in fact it has been used wildly across the world, in India, Malaysia and Iran, we ask you to consider this idea to bring the city council tables more people of colour and Aboriginal origin. I will be glad to hand over documents for special presentation after this speech. The third area and final area of concern has to do with systemic discrimination and hiring and employment. Colour bar, as I said, exists and has existed for a very long time in the prestigious field of fire fighting in Hamilton, despite efforts .Having visited four incoming fire chiefs in the last 15 years, nothing has been done. Those barriers still exist, there are virtually no black firefighters. The late Charles Roach, a famous human rights advocate in Ontario who himself was a leader in the community once told me discrimination and hiring against persons of colour was far worse and more reaching than police brutality. Why? Because a Black man might be beaten and injured unjustly by police, while the damage, was not usually permanent and it was against one single individual. However, when you deny whole groups of Black men and woman and persons of colour in general, access to descent jobs and respectful professions, they, their whole families and whole classes of people of colour are deprived of the standard of living that allows them and their children to participate fully in and derive the benefits of society. In this Province you just have to look around to see most professions, most of the trades, teachers and high schools and elementary schools, the top jobs in business do not go to people of colour. At the end of term of office in the early 1990s, they only employed equity legislation. If memory serves me right, legislation requires enterprises with more than a certain number of employees to conduct surveys of workforces, set hiring targets and to report annually. Did not set legislative quotas for hiring, it was more or less voluntary, but helped promise to make significant improvements in the hiring of racialized minorities in this Province. But that was too much even for the conservative government (Mike Harris) and employment equity legislation was among the first pieces of the New Democrat Party’s legislation to be repealed by him. So in order to deal with systemic discrimination of hiring in this Province, we ask you the Anti-Racism Directorate to recommend to revise employment recommendation and to give it teeth, such that persons of colour can finally get past the colour bar that blocks their chances to be hired in every area of decent employment in the Province of Ontario. In conclusion, I'd like to repeat again that we hope the Anti-Racism Directorate can make a dent in the worst excesses of systemic racism that manifest themselves in this Province. But please don't come back to Hamilton in five years armed with new studies and research showing how pervasive discrimination is in Ontario [Applause] we already have enough studies, anecdotal knowledge and research. Please come back with novel, imaginative solutions to remedy the problem, solutions that have teeth to make significant changes. Thank you for your attention. [Applause]

>>Moderator: Thank you. I love the preparedness of Hamiltonians who come with statements and can actually get, have the beginning, middle and conclusion reinforced. So thank you very much for that. And thank you for invoking the name of Charles Roach who is someone who [Applause] has trained many of us in the work of anti-racism, he had an impact on countless people. Next person at the mic. There seems to be a preference for this mic, but that one is also available.

>>Audience Member: Before I begin I want to recognise and pay respect to the long history and contributions of our First Nations communities here in Canada. [Applause] I will keep my comments short?. The reality is that Canada internationally has always been seen as a country of inclusivity. Has always been seen as a leader when it comes to issues surrounding ethnicity and race. Now if we start looking at some of the statistics of this, hate crimes, and we start seeing some of the divisions within our communities, maybe that opinion and that perception might change. I'm honoured to be, to join the many community leaders, residents and partners today for this important discussion on eliminating systemic race in our Province. We need to lead the charge in terms of all forms of bigotry, whether xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism or any form of racism. The reality is I'm proud to say I live in Ontario and our Ontario government is coming to say let’s try to do something. Ontario can be the leader in Canada, we can help Canada be that leader internationally. I'm here representing two organizations NCNN, my comments will be broken up into three quick parts.

>>Moderator: Mind saying what those letters are.

>>Audience Member: I will, first is background of the organizations I'm a part of, number two is brief background lay of the land of Hamilton, what’s specific to Hamilton and some ideas of how we are going to go forward as a community. As a background NCCN National Council of Canadian Muslims, is an independent non-partisan non-profit organization dedicated to protecting human rights and civil liberties of Canadian Muslims across the country. The North American Spiritual Revival is a social justice not-for-profit organization who has worked with partners throughout the country including public safety Canada to bring greater understanding of Canadian society to the Muslim communities throughout the country. It is an organization that believes that the marriage between community service and youth empowerment is the bedrock for a strong and sustainable society in the future. Over the summer NCCN has held six press conferences across the country. We launched a new project called the Charter for Inclusive Communities. The Charter for Inclusive Communities confirms the dignity of every person calls for effort to counter prejudice and hate and develop programs and policies specific to the reduction and elimination of Islamophobia in all of its forms. Over a hundred individuals and institutions have signed on to this Charter, including police forces, community organizations, and politicians. We're seeing a number of hate related incidents throughout Ontario and Canada. Islamophobia tells Canadians that they are not welcome. These Canada Muslims, it tells them they are not welcome and they don't belong in these communities. We must also remember that there is intersexuality which is at play as well. A Muslim in Ontario may be targeted for their beliefs, their skin colour, their ethnicity or any other identifiable characteristic or maybe all of them at once. Locally here in Hamilton there are a few things I think are very important. I'm sure that we all know about what happened a few days after 9 11 some individuals that wanted to go and attack, because there were patrons leaving that mosque they fled and went to a local Hindu, thinking that was the mosque, they burned it down. Hamilton used to be the 4th most popular destination for newcomers to this country. It isn't anymore. Part of that reason is because Hamilton ranks second in the country in hate crimes. This is something that needs to end. I think on one hand it is a positive that individuals in this community are strong enough to come forward and report these crimes, a negative of course is the frequency of these crimes. As was mentioned previously, members of African Caribbean and First Nations communities have been disproportionately targeted when it comes to the issue of carding in this city. September 15th of this year, couple days ago, there was an arson attack on the anniversary of the day that the Hindu [samage sic] was burned down. Has anybody heard of the Soldiers of Oden? If well they are here in this city, they are here in this city and they want to so-called “clean up our cities”, they want to take the streets back. It is a bigoted organization. The irony of course is that they are from Norway. They themselves are immigrants. Where do we see ourselves, where can we move forward? I think if we want, we did a program with Niagara police recently, a youth program and these young kids did a great job. It was about reporting hate crimes and setting up programs so that we could be educated a little bit, about what a hate crime is. They set up a website end hate.ca. The NCCN inclusive charter I mentioned previously, you can read about that at NCCN.ca, as a community we need to push our politicians, to support the resolutions, to look past, you know, look into a task force examining the routes of Islamophobia and bigotry in Canada. As a community we can attend open houses, religious centres, community centres so we can get to know one another as well. In the month of October it is known as Islamic history month, there will be some, some mosques that are going to hold some open houses and we invite everyone in the community to come to these mosques and come and get to know your neighbours. The Gandhi Peace Festival, all of us should go to this event. It is a phenomenal event where like-minded progressive Hamiltonians come out and we get to share and discuss matters related to peace in our city. As a community we must stand with our politicians who are trying to get it right. We need to stand with politicians who are trying to make Canada a more inclusive society. We welcome the efforts, like officially declaring October a national Islamic History Month. We welcome the efforts of federal, federal petition, E41 is one which calls on Canadians to condemn all forms of Islamophobia and we welcome the government of Ontario pledge to stand up for the rights and dignity of everyone in order to promote an inclusive and specifically, sorry, inclusive just respectful communities in Ontario. And specifically developing a cross-government approach to combat racism, including but not limited to indigenous racism, anti-Black racism and Islamophobia as outlined in the mandate letter provided to Minister Coteau last week. We look forward to working with the government of Ontario and community leaders on these issues. One of the questions was, in ten years from now, what does success, what does success look like for this, for this Directorate? As I was sitting here and listening to some of the amazing speeches that have already been given, I think if we as a society ten years ago move away from tokenism to true inclusivity [Applause] that will be a sign of success. A quote from former US President from Bill Clinton, almost 20 years ago. Think about how it implies today, that tear nations apart, Canada stands as a model of how people of different cultures can live and work together in peace, prosperity, and mutual respect. Let’s move forward together in achieving this standard, other countries throughout the world view Canada to be. Thank you very much.

>>Paulette: Thank you. [Applause] So before we go to our next speaker I would like to get some sort of an indication of how many people know that they want to say something this evening. So if you could just raise your hand I want to see in the room, okay. So it is important that so we have quite a few people who would like to say something, that’s great. So please keep that in mind as you speak, the speeches are wonderful and clarifying and informative and so that’s great, I encourage you to send them to the e-mail address anti-racism@ontario.ca, also keep in mind that there are a number of people who want to speak. I'm not rushing you. Hamilton seems to have a different time line for two minutes, I'm okay with that. [Laughter] I'm good with that, because I want to hear what you have to say. Just keep that in mind. Okay. Next speaker please.

>>Audience Member: Thank you,. I have three comments, one comment related specifically to one of the questions. My first comment relates to question one. I live in Hamilton and with Bedrock being in the picture to take of US, one of the things I'm hoping that would come out is the theme of the Directorate is any government assistance or support for businesses, such as Bedrock should include a condition of diverse hiring, including hiring for equality seeking groups and racialized groups. So that’s one. [Applause] My second comment has to do with question three. Which is public education and awareness. At a systemic level. Quite aware that Bill-132, an amendment to the Health and Safety Act is going to be coming into effect very soon and Bill 132 deals with harassment, sexual harassment and violence in the workplace. For me doing the work I do, one of the things quite missing is um racial and religious harassment. Because statistically while I deal with a lot of sexual harassment specifically now with gender, identity and gender expression, it is not lost on me. That statistically a huge part of harassment and discrimination and violence in the workplace specifically still deals with racialized, with racial and religious harassment and so through instrument such as Bill 132, one of the things I think the Directorate could do is with instruments such as Bill-132, include something that might come up in the future as harassment, racial and religious harassment, sexual harassment and violence in the workplace. This is actually doable because it has already been done through the instrument of Bill-132. My final comment is about questions three and four. A friend of mine can, earlier went to the microphone and said enough of the experts. I'm quite happy with experts, but it is what kind of experts. The experts I'm speaking about are experts in limited experience. So for [Applause] any, I would suggest to the directorate that for any working committees with a standing ad hock known in the future, that in addition to academics and experts in the field who can get peer review articles published that the directorate include experts [speaker off mic] experience and recruit these experts across racialized socio-economic and demographic groups. Thank you. [Applause]

>>Paulette: Thank you so much. Okay. Next microphone and those folks who extended their arms, if it you could start lining up, just so we get a sense of how I need to be monitoring time. Okay. Yes?

>>Audience Member: Thank you. Also the Fifth point here is what we are looking forward to next years I have been to many of these consultations in my life. Little bit of critical lesson, way back at the time of the Ontario anti-racism came into existence as well. Many of these issues were discussed. I participated at many of the workshops, public consultation for workshops and systemic anti-racism and things like that were discussed. I am sure summaries of the public consultation is still sitting in some office in the government. And assistant [speaker off mic] at that time and had many, many meetings with her, but at that time, so other than going into the issue of number one, which is policy and evaluation, I will give you a case study. The case study, an actual thing which has been happening, from the last 40 years -- and that community. Systemic racism came into place in 1970 when a person was not hired -- and here [speaker off mic] been living here in this Province, this city since that time and he was not hired or fired for some period of time, because he was getting, working in the Hamilton. Since then there have been many, many cases in which have suffered by the employment opportunities or opportunities otherwise simply because -- now that is absolutely nothing new with which we can, this Minister at any critical party, we were not telling them going into the meetings with [speaker off mic] for example who was at that time. And restored afterwards, which we are going to have in place. It is exactly the same thing. [Applause] But the only thing is that none of the government, or the liberal have done anything to address this elimination. That is a fact of life that people need to know. That is a fact of life young people to know that yes we are going to spend X number of dollars again, with consultation, we are going to have reports and now these things were not there in 1970s, just given -- [speaker off mic] and filling out those forms and now we have these fancy things to look at. [Laughter] But that’s all. [Applause] That is the bottom line. Another lesson of history, when it comes to the community, 1970s, early 1980s, the system was such or the people working with enrolment were such that didn't know, who, where how they come from if or so forth, this is what they meant when they were asking these questions. At that time explain to them who we are, what we are and so on and so forth. Okay. Things have changed as far as the competition of the government is concerned or some of the civil, the issues remain the same. Now let me say even this, we were so hopeful that when in some of the key portfolios, which [speaker off mic] communities we see non-white there is. Minister black himself. But satisfied refuse to meet us to discuss our issues. That’s Ontario government simply has not entertained us to come and have an open dialogue.

>> Hold for a second sorry to interrupt you. I have never refused a meeting with you in my life.

>>Audience Member: Let me finish this, to my surprise, we were told by the various Ministers that our issues are being discussed at the highest level in the Ontario government, but we access information got 7000 pages, paid $2000 to get it, and these issues are never discussed at the level, it is there, not my typing. I just got it from the Ministry. So how we are going to address discrimination? When we the community only but a month ago, consulted in the house, this minute three tree was clapping and so was his focus and his Minister of finance [speaker off mic] was telling everybody and it is in the recording, hey don't clap that much, cool down. So we are being insulted by our government and we are [speaker off mic] systematic discrimination, racism people in the government itself. [Applause] that’s what it is. Not even a single law of this Province has been amended or newly introduced in this house, in this legislator to accommodate us. If [speaker off mic] government in any place, if we go to ABC Logistics, if that company says I cannot go into their premises, I will stay outside in the rain. Facts. [speaker off mic] I am not. These are the effects of life in Ontario in the last 40 years, that have us concerned. What do we do for discrimination, down a year, 40 years ago where we are today. Refuse to meet us, Minister refuse to meet us so this is if you ask us from the sector just [speaker off mic] redoing the same exercise and nothing coming out of it. As far as we are concerned. I hope these are some food for thought, some people. I will ask Minister, to you, you are a black man yourself. Look after us. Look after --

>> Let me respond now, let me respond.

>>Audience Member: Discuss with us, find resolution and implement them otherwise it is just a waste of everybody’s tax payer’s money as far as we are concerned.

>> Let me respond --

>>Paulette: Thank you.

>>Audience Member: Yes, go ahead. [Applause]

>> Thank you very much, the first thing to address is nothing has changed since 1970 you can look at the old notes, I wasn't born in 1970 I wasn't part of that conversation, number one. Number two, if I took exactly what was mandated to me and what we think is the best approach without any form of consultation the Province of Ontario you know what the first thing people would say to me? You didn't do any public consultations, I would be challenged on that piece. We have an idea of what we wanted to do, we have told you what our plan is, we can go ahead with that plan without consultation, but I can guarantee you every single person in this Province will come back and say you need to consult the public before you go forward with a plan to, to take on anti-racism here in the Province of Ontario. This is what we, people expect us to do and this is what we're doing. Irregardless to me not meeting you, I met your group a couple of times. What you want to talk to me about when I met you before is about transportation and you wanted to talk about the removal of helmets. Minister of transportation issue and I still met you as a Minister who wasn't responsible for that file. Now very sympathetic to your cause, had the discussion with you, sat down at least twice to talk to you about that issue, but it is the Minister of Transportation who has to deal with that issue. It is a transportation issue, I've only been appointed into this role as Minister of anti-racism for a few months, if you want to talk to me on that sense, I never turn my back from anyone in any community in the Province of Ontario, if you want to meet me send me an invitation --

>>Audience Member: I don't want to take more time but if you are in Minister of Racism or anti-racism or if responsibility to deal with all the issues related to all the minorities, so that they are equally treated in the Province. Right now they are not, as far as we are concerned. Okay. [Applause] Please I will say, I will [speaker off mic] write to you again, things for us. Rewrite to various Ministers for three months, we don't even get a call back. Everybody knows what the effects of life are. So I will say we will write it to you again, you open the doors to us for Minister, for the government, transportation should -- [speaker off mic] health, doesn't matter, bring all of them. They are there like we go to [speaker off mic] every three months or six months or whatever, they are there having their lunch, why can't they meet us and discuss our issues. Simply refuse to meet. Thank you. Absolutely refuse to meet.

>>Paulette: Thank you so much.

>>Audience Member: Thank you very much for your time.

>>Paulette: Thank you. Before our next speaker goes, don't forget if you want to speak please go to the mic so I can see how many people there are left. So thank you for that. So we scheduled tonight’s meeting to upwards of 10 pm, we know some of you are not committed to being here until 10 pm, am I right? Okay. So it is now 8:25, 24, so keep that in mind as you are speaking. And we want as many of you to speak as possible, as many of you as possible are here. So keep that in mind so we can get through as many people as possible, okay, thank you.

>>Audience Member: Hi, thank you for these consultations. I would just like to briefly go off what was an interesting conversation that we just witnessed here.

>>Paulette: And your name?

>>Audience Member: Absolutely, Mr. Coteau was not there in the 1970s and I think issue here is partly a problem, at least from what I'm sensing, partly a systematic problem as opposed to an individual problem. How is it that despite having had all these meetings, regularly, the information from the 1970s, 80s, 90s not informing anti-racism initiatives of today. [Applause] So I think the frustration is not so much level the individual but how can we make sure, how can we make sure that there is accountability held at the level of the people in power. So I think this is a piece that wasn't really mentioned, accountability is very, very important. We have to be able to come back tomorrow, in a year, two years ago and not only just collect that on how we are doing better or worse, but also hold people accountable firmly accountable, there is three strikes and you are out when it comes to very petty things police implement in our communities. I want to see politicians, three strikes and you are out or at least something to that effect. Something that has to be very firm. So that’s the first, accountability at the level of systems. Clear regulation when it comes to how we are going to punish people for not upholding anti-racism initiatives. Other thing I want to mention, election is only once every some years, doesn't really work that much. Because organ graduations need help and often it is policies that help organizations justify how they're going to spend their resources, what type of orientation they are going to have, what type of values are going to implement in their workplace and so on and so forth. So it will be good to see anti-racism act at the level of the Province and the level of the federal government. That very specifically stipulates such things as education, how does anti-racism look into education, in the labour market, in the social services and so on and so forth. Unfortunately like the secretary I'm a little bit scared that the directorate will, is contingent upon or is overly dependent upon the type of political party in place. So what happens when the liberal government goes in conservative comes, you fold? And do we go back on the street and say we need a directorate or Secretariat, so how can we systematically make sure that the Anti-Racism Directorate is not overly dependent whims of politicians, theoretically that means you can only challenge a state so much. A lot of us here are antiracist, a lot of us here do social justice, we know the places we work in are part of the limitations we have to address. The type of anti-racism you are going to do unfortunately is not going to be systematically deep enough to address issues of state power, for example environmental racism. Like how we see pipelines in indigenous communities, that’s racism. And we have a mode of economy, capitalism mode of economy [Applause] that allows that to happen. How will we address that? How can you stay separate enough to be able to critique the people you are working with or working for? A lot of people mentioned here that there aren't enough youth or there are but that the directorate would love to work with more youth and I would say Black Lives Matter. [Applause] Right there. There is definitely more groups of course, but that’s the first groups to go, first groups to go to, it is a student-led, youth led movement. Black Lives Matter. And I say that also not in terms of finding a pool of youth to work with, but also to make sure you don't just pick and choose who you work with and only work with people that make you feel comfortable. [Applause] If you only work with people that cooperate with a state of anti-racism than it is going to be very limiting and you are still going to get a lot of backlash. So be open to working with the likes of us a little bit more radical but have other forms of, of ideas on how to address these issues, it is I think it is best way to make this more broader and more deep. Finally funding, where did you get your funding from, who pays you? How are you going to make sure that if that person doesn't want to fund you anymore that you still have money to carry on your work. The person who pays you controls type of work you do, we definitely need more funding for the directorate. But where else besides the state can you get your funding so you are not just super dependent on it if that’s possible. Yeah so those are my suggestions in terms of the systematic things. But especially Indigenous communities are dealing with not, you know, a lot of people in the Black community yes there is material racism but especially psychological we don't live on reserves and they are experiencing a horrible, horrible, horrible forms of material racism and [Applause] Pipeline oils and all these industries really need to be held accountable. Corporations need to be held accountable. The powers that be, I think a lot of people, Bernie Sander, had somewhat anticapitalist types of politics that hold the tiny minority that have way more than we ever have accountable, corporations, multinational corporations need to be held accountable to the communities they work in and they need to pay more taxes because it just doesn't make sense, CEO will be making three hundred million and just fired people from Wal-Mart, it just doesn't make sense. So being mindful that theory that is being applied through Anti-Racism Directorate is one that is unfortunately in coordination with state capitalism and finding a way to make sure that you are not in with that type of racism or else racism will continue despite that we try to work against racism.

>>Paulette: Thank you, thank you. [Applause] So I'm going to go to you next, I know you were standing before this lady here.

>>Audience Member: Actually I have somebody right here.

>>Paulette: Okay, go ahead please.

>>Audience Member: Hi I come as an individual but also a member of the Hamilton Immigration and Refugee Advisory Committee. And really important information, however it’s not our government our government plays a role. But when it comes to the end of the day in the rainbow it just begin at home. It begins with each individual towards each other, trying to get to know each other. That was mentioned earlier this evening, how many of us are going to go and celebrate if there is an event, no matter what nationality it may be and it could be like say hosted at Jackson Square, how many, even this evening I look and I think gee this is sad because Hamilton Ontario is a big city, but so many empty seats. A lot of it is because we have lost trust. I mean there is carding and where is even the police officers, is there one representative from our police department in Hamilton? Okay great, then we have Mr. Matthew, he is a big asset, no are our city council counsellor, I think back and think of Martin Luther king, how much have we moved forward. Is it all just about talks, not all of us, but isn't it easy to blame the government rather than ourselves and say hey, you know, someone mentioned hosting multicultural events in churches. You know, how can we as a community interconnect with each other in a social way to get to know each other? Thank you.

>>Paulette: Thank you. [Applause] So let’s go to this gentlemen here and then we will go to this mic.

>>Audience Member: Thanks we have been trying to take turns over here, thank you. I'm here also as an individual, but I'm an individual who was involved with the anti-racism Secretariat a number of years ago --

>> >>Audience Member: When I first went out with anti-racism Secretariat I had a lot of optimism in my 20s, I had hoped that answering some of these questions in a political forum and a public meeting might bring about more change. Certainly some things have changed but as the parent of a black child, not nearly enough has changed in terms of racism and I guess my concerns are that we look beyond Secretariats and directorates and start to begin to understand these issues need to be addressed at all levels of government. I'm really disappointed we have another silo that’s doing this, rather than have this work spread throughout all of the Ministries be and throughout government itself.

>>Moderator: Are you making that a recommendation?

>>Audience Member: Okay, I will then Paulette, yes, I like to make a recommendation that we stop setting up silos where we are dependent on the funding of good will et cetera, Mike Harris knocked us down with horses and gloves the day he took office. Those involved with fair tax commission and others of those kinds of things um, you know, have been back in the streets there after trying to re-establish something we had 30, 40 years ago. I think in terms of ten years from now that’s what it would look like to me. That we would no longer have a need for this, people understand anti-racism, anti-oppression, all forms of oppression need to be addressed by all levels of the government. Beyond that I think we need to very specifically look at education. I trained in the University of York’s anti-racism program. I'm one of the very few teachers that come out of that program and I cannot get work in our public schools. But I teach elsewhere as a consequence and what I do know is that my daughter has been introduced, yet again, to Kill a Mockingbird in grade 6, 7 and 8 and at home we read [Name?] and Tony Morrison, getting tired of it, just saying. I think there could be a few black authors that could be part of our curriculum. [Applause] And the one thing that hasn't been mentioned here all night is media in the arts. As a performing artist I think it is crucial that our government again, across all levels, the government elections, the programs, the propaganda, doesn't represent who we are as a community. Our arts do not represent who we are as communities and I think that has to be a very specific focus of the directorate as well. Because with the arts and with representation that looks to representing people with pride, with understanding, with nuance and with 3-dimensions we move beyond these kinds of stereotyped and racialized or racist impressions of each other and to that end I think artists of colour need to be funded more directly, we need to see more activity in our communities around artistic creation and those artistic groups need to work in conjunction with our educators to bring about a better sense of who we are as a community, what our histories are and what our future can be like working together.

>>Moderator: Thank you very much. So I know that the youth ambassadors are doing a great job making sure I know who is next. So who is next here? Yes? Okay. Thank you.

>>Audience Member: I'm here to speak um pertaining to native people. One of the words that we have heard tonight is immigration. And um our people have experienced immigration, I think since 1492. [Laughter] I think very specifically systemic racism, for native people is a forerunner in to very significant documents and history. One is a [speaker off mic] other one is Indian Act is Magna Carta lots of things said but very specifically about property and justice for property for the individual. Native people were words to the crowd. So you were a child. And the current status I think of the Indian Act remains as is. I think the systemic racism manifests itself, the schools, violence to woman as we have experienced. One of the horrific experiences to me as far as just blatant racism was a progress inflammation made in New Brunswick back in the 1700s by Corn Wallace, I think in the parameters of this review have got to go beyond the Provincial boarders and they have to include and have to be done in concert with the federal government, thanks very much. [Applause]

>>Moderator: Thank you. And who is next here? Yes? Thanks for your patience.

>>Audience Member: No problem, I have experienced two extremes, the first one I was in a workplace and I brought a resume for a person who asked me can you give this resume to the right person. The question I was countered with, what colour is he? He was black and needless to say he didn't get the job. The other end of the spectrum is encountering an activist who claims that they are fighting a war against white males. So needless to say we can't win the cause or we can't forward the cause that we're trying to with either extreme, because you can't convince somebody who is working on an extreme. Where we can win is with the people that is in this room and there are white people in this room. So I just want to say when you are working on your cause remember that white is still a colour and that there are Somalians out there and that calling them ignorant or calling them racist or what have you doesn't actually advance your cause. What it does is alienates allies. It alienated me, okay. So that’s my experience. The other thing I wanted to say is 500 empty seats in this room, if we are fighting any kind of war, what we are fighting is apathy, we have to find a way to communicate importance of this cause and get people who would actually come to come. So fighting stereotypes in the news and entertainment. I'm not making excuses for white racists at all, or for any coloured racist, because race, racism can fall within colours as well as whites versus everybody else. But what the government could do is all your statistics that you are gathering, all the reality that you are gathering maybe you could use that to counter the disinformation we received from the news and from the entertainment industry. I think a lot of phobias and a lot of fears are coming from the things that we're seeing on television and reading in the news and to some extent I can't blame people from being afraid. All the Latino people were shot down in Florida, being shot is a fearful thing and so then if that’s all you see day after day, then of course you are going to be fearful. I hope, I probably just insulted a lot of people here, I probably made a lot of enemies, I'm sorry, just want to, you know racism at one end, racism at the other and there are some rationale people in the middle who are trying to do good.

>>Moderator: Thank you for your comments, thank you. [Applause]

>>Moderator: Yes, you are next.

>>Audience Member: Hi [Applause]>>Moderator: You have some friends.

>>Audience Member: I'm speaking not just for myself but many young people that ran up to me and said could you say this. I'm just recognizing that public consultation such as this, I feel like I have been to a religious institution or something, but these types of venues really don't work for young people who don't feel listened to already. [Applause] I'm just above the federal definition of youth so I, I'm speaking as an adult ally, even standing in this line and being asked to move aside, shaking in my boots is a little nerve wracking, thank you for listening. I'm going to tell a story and go into recommendations, I hope two minutes of time is adequate.

>>Moderator: It is Hamilton time, go ahead.

>>Audience Member: As a youth by youth centre we started out with very little funding because the dissolved system of taking care of issues such as racism is left to community institutions. Now what happens when you are youth, you are racialized, you are in a position of little power, how do you get the resources to actually organize and create change? Through our doors we have seen countless numbers of youth who end up expelled and one of the things that we would like to see is race-based database on school expulsions. Now this is connected so these same youth who are expelled without reason, many of who are newcomers to Canada, even inadequate pay for work and told don't come back or I'll call the police, they end up in jail anyways, in fact some young people we have been supporting in jail, say it is okay my whole class is in here, I know everyone here from STM, we are all in holding here together. So there is connections. And so I would ask that in targeting which systems or institutions in Ontario, Ontario government should address, it is a systemic approach so you need to have Ministries in conversation just as wearing a hard helmet on your head is both a transportation and a culture issue, so is a school expulsion and a young racialized child in jail and educational as well as Ministry of correctional services issue. Okay. [Applause] So integration. Secondly, we close the schools down. The schools that these young people are being expelled from, the school in Hamilton that has the highest ethnic cultural diversity is being closed. It is being -- with little to no public consultation. Because elected officials represent a ward so big that it encompasses both people who are living in the most marginalized?? naturalized income bracket and the people in 1% of Hamilton, wards 1 and 2, one counsellor made a decision representing the diverse forces of all of these people. When you have systems run my municipal boards such as police services or the current system of municipally run education, you need to have a way in which that is accountable to the Ministry of education. So any decisions that are made, you need to make funding tied to performance outcomes. Specifically tied to antiracist objectives. [Applause] So I'm going to talk a little bit about one issue, so the roots of youth violent report and honourable Alvin investigated problem, this issue of young people, experiencing youth violence, often portrayed in the media Black on Black violence or irrational state of young people killing each other, we understand from Provincial reports that youth violence is related directly to things such as social exclusion and racism. So these things have a direct impact on our children’s health and directly correlate to racism and violence that exists. However, the City of Hamilton in investigating recent states of youth violence employed experts to say youth violence is not increasing in Hamilton. Now when residents of a recent shooting in the north end of Hamilton had people from the city come, they did not realize this was the second time in the same neighbourhood that youth violence had occurred. So the Hamilton Police Services were unable to investigate this so-called state of youth violence, because there were not able to understand race-based data. They were not able to understand the patterns. So I suggest these, not only that data be used to create research, it be used to inform the lens and antiracist lens to be applied across all Ministries, boards, agencies, directorates, et cetera. So as a youth centre we have been funded by the Youth Opportunities Fund which is a great Provincial investment in giving young people the direct tools to be able to tackle the issues we face. However, to do so we have become bureaucrats so we have to be able to not only demonstrate that we're holding the programs that we are, but auditing are being conducted for things such as showing photos the event actually happened with the name on the date with the artist facilitator that we have paid. I'm having to become an expert bureaucrat, documenting everything, instead of doing good antiracist community building work. Our Indigenous brothers and sisters at the meeting also raised this issue: saying the way the evaluation and reporting is done must be sensitive to not only Indigenous ways of knowing, but to the local context and capacities of people who have lived experience and who are experts in this. So evaluation must, itself, be flexible and reflect the standards and knowledge of the people who are creating it. [Applause] lastly, I don't know if we can speak to the mandate, I believe it is already set out, I say words like increase awareness should be changed to inform. Words like promote should be converted to enforce or ensure. So when things have teeth they have words that don't just seem like nice suggestions. They have words that actually require action a young person asked me to say, we have been in many conferences, in order to have actions we need to have continuous work, instead of fighting change accept it. Thank you. [Applause]

>>Moderator: Thank you. One youth voice, thank you. Yes?

>>Audience Member: I'm a graduate of Master, graduate of [speaker off mic]. I didn't get here when you started, another commitment. I don't think I missed much. About 60 years not much progress has been made. We still see the same consultations being made and I want on the record that this is not a formal consultation on my part because I am not going to be limited to two minutes. Furthermore that if you really want to start looking at issues, start reading the Royal commission on Aboriginal People, which is collecting dust somewhere. The Wash Report by justice, probably collecting dust on a shelf somewhere. One of the recommendations of the report was the establishment of the Aboriginal Ministry. It was a setup and taken down within a few years. Right now there are so many recommendations from Justice Sinclair’s report on schools. To more or less say that you got two minutes to sum up the millions of dollars of work that went into those previous reports is insulting. Thank you. [Applause]

>>Moderator: Thank you, yes. Hi.

>>Audience Member: So I'm here representing myself as a racialized black woman. I wanted to sort of just answer those five questions, but in reverse. So success would be not having another community consultation, to ask racialized groups to tell their stories yet again. This is a historical problem that Ontario and many people in Ontario know exists. It’s been researched to death and talked to death. How long must we talk about the same issues with very little change? If I'm envisioning ten years from now, this room is full of white individuals, if I'm envisioning ten years from now maybe if we are not going to move you are going to implement racism 101, 102, 103, 104, so that I can have educations with my grandchildren of how to navigate racism in Ontario you need to stop consulting on the issue and implement laws and legislation to hold institutions accountable for not following the law. We know why racism exist, why do I have to keep proving it. You need to talk critically about whiteness, you need to talk critically about white privilege. You need to talk critically about white supremacy. You need to examine cognitive on behalf of white people. Not having to understand, not having to experience and not having to share in the impacts of racism. You need to speak about anti-colonialism within institutions. You need to hold the private sector as well as this public sector accountable. And you need to seek this through anti-oppressive practise which examines power and privilege. You need to start with the Ontario public sector to exemplify and model what you are trying to preach. You need to ensure that our schools exhibit anti-racism, anti-oppression. You need to ensure that our hospitals are making sure that we are thriving and surviving. You need to ensure that the police and the criminal justice systems are talking about their own white privilege, so our children, our children’s children and their children’s children are no longer the targets of racial profiling. And no longer the targets of keeping up institutional systemic racism and keeping the institutions thriving and alive at the cost of the lives of our children. It is very important that you use data to do that, but how many more lives, how much more data do you need to see that racism is alive and well? You need to do something once and for all. How much more do we have to go through for anyone to listen? Thank you. [Applause]

>>Moderator: Thank you. So it’s now three minutes to nine and I just want to get a sense of how many more people are waiting to speak. By show of hands. Or standing? Okay, great. Thank you. Go ahead.

>>Audience Member: Hi, how are you? And my opinion about my experiences in the states versus Canada, it’s vastly different. Here in Canada I have nothing but good experiences all the time. I was always welcome, I consider that people are very friendly, very open and whatever I want to talk about racism people said well that doesn't exist here in Canada, we're an open society, we're more acceptance and we're basically not the United States. Anyways, I, I used to believe that that’s the reality in Canada, everybody is really more open and there is no racism anymore. Anyways I came here 15 years ago, I moved to Alberta and worked in the oil industry, over there, there is so many people from different country, from different cultures that everybody seems to get along well when the economy was good. So then the economy collapsed, well not collapsed, for me, so I'm back here in Hamilton and for last three months I've been trying to look for a decent job and every time I go and apply for a job I get different answers like I said one thing about living in Canada is that everybody is very polite. But I just went to Jock son Square and applied to a company and they said to me, we prefer to hire people who [speaker off mic] that’s what I was told. Just that hard to communicate because we are all from the same part of the, of the world so I, I thanked them, I didn't get the job. Then I went looking for construction and they pretty much, always ask me are you, are you Muslim, are you native, I said no I'm Mexican and whoa you don't look Mexican. So everybody talk about, where are you from, I'm from -- wonderful place, what are you doing here in Canada, so cold compared with Mexico. Then I notice that conversation goes towards away from employment into how cool it is to live in, compared to Mexico. I go to different places and like I said everybody is real polite but I don't seem to get the jobs. As soon as we get to the part of where you from. Are you from this culture, are you from this religion. That’s when the conversation turns away and that’s when I feel like I'm start losing the opportunity to get a job. So question number 5, ten years into the future I wish I'll be optimistic, like I was 15 years ago when I first came. I don't, I think the country, because of the economy maybe the country is moving in the opposite direction. Maybe people don't want to share anymore, maybe people are more welcoming. I hope I make the right decision when I move here.

>>Moderator: Thank you, thanks for telling your story. [Applause] Yes?

>>Audience Member: Mic? Try to get --

>>Audience Member:?

>>Moderator: Not tonight. [Laughter]

>>Audience Member: Not tonight. That is where we need to start. I think the institution is a system, there was an article in Hamilton a few weeks back about the first experience, it is the pronunciation of the name of the child called by the teacher when they say what is your name, how do you pronounce that? So I think the first we should be introducing today is the teacher should never ask the student about how to pronounce their name in public in the classroom. They should do that prior to seeing the child by calling their parents. [Applause] And ask the parents how do you, how do you want me to pronounce the name of your child? And do their homework before coming to the classroom and say how do you pronounce that or do you want me to call you, instead of Nebille I call you Bill. Then that child will go home and say to his mom, you know what I don't like Nebille anymore, I will go with Bill, my teacher is okay with that, I'm okay with that too. That is the first institution to address our schooling system. And this is so serious, that is the first dose of putting somebody down by not being able to pronounce their name right. Second thing is our Human Resources, second institution to address, is our publicly funded positions. Governing jobs, health care and you name it. These are being paid salaries like tax payers, they must be [speaker off mic] place for people who are not white to guarantee not the job, but grant the interview. So if I work for the city of Hamilton and obviously it was my last day you can guess what religion I am, obviously I'm black and obviously African. It was my accent you can also guess I'm an Immigrant. But we need to have Human Resources for any publicly funded agency to grant a specific percentage of [speaker off mic] being short-listed to be for people who are minorities. How do we recognize they are by having that on the application? You feel online it has to identify. Do you belong to any of these groups. Just like in the US, not to step back actually it is a step forward. It must interview, belong to -- I think grant a chance for them to get the job they are looking for. If that doesn't work then it has to be proportional. Then we must have what somebody said here before, one councillor is not white or 10% of teachers to be from visible minorities. It has to be that way because I'm not expecting the other side will give, what they of privilege. I have to take it. The last point I want to make, it just came through the presentations, somebody belong to Muslim council of Canada or something -- an organization, I don't know if he is here. Thank you.

>>Moderator: Thank you. [Applause] So it seems I have two more speakers, am I correct? Because you know I've been asking. [Laughter] All right. So three more speakers. Great, thank you. You are next.

>>Moderator: You are next.

>>Audience Member: Thank you I am a poet, story teller, speaker with passages, a platform for a newcomer speakers, born in Zimbabwe, had experiences of racism from the time I was born and in the United States and in Canada. But for a very long time I didn't want to look at it as racism. I wanted to see it as something else. Because I didn't want to deal with that. I just want to talk about myself, maybe to consider your problems to be bigger than those, those around you, I just want to talk about myself for a little bit I have received a call from a friend many years ago, received a call from a friend who is in panic because she had gotten a letter in the mailbox from the KKK they just wanted to know they don't believe people in colour and white people should live in the same building, I told her to call the police and she later told me the police said that the KKK just wanted to intimidate her, but it was okay. I was threatened with death for telling a, that permanent residence came with conditions because sponsored, violence, domestic violence in the family and has been said, comes and tells you that I'm going to kill you. Now no race was mentioned but I wonder if things might have been different if I had been of a different colour. When that happened, I'm not going to get into that, I received an e-mail from a man who is a very nice guy. His family came to Canada in the 1800s and he just wanted me to know that the true immigrants who report for Ireland, Scotland and England, said spoke for thousands of others, the title of that e-mail, I think I still have it, is get out. He mentioned all kinds of names for people Pakistan, people from Africa, people from, he said to me years ago, when we saw a Black man walking down the street, get out and be so excited to see someone different now there is just so many of you out there, we don't know what to do with you. I've been to more schools talking about being inclusive and talking about the dissimilar between white kids, African kids, Aboriginal kids and their needs than anybody else I know in the Niagara region. What I notice is children are more susceptive no difference between us or among us, our skin colours are slightly different. All our needs are the same. One other thing within that the schools that had more problems with issues like name calling and racism and bullying, when I suggested coming in there to just talk about these things, no race, nothing, I got more resistance from those schools than the schools that were more accepting. I have experienced a situation where in my office is the person in my office, in my satellite office, when a client walked in they didn't want to talk to me because or they didn't really say the natural response to me was to look towards a person who was lighter skinned. Now I don't complain about that because I have learned how to deal with that, because one of the main things I have going for me is my confidence. Because I grew up in a place at that time in a place where my teacher looked like me, where my, where the pilot looked like me, where my counsellor looked like me, where with the person selling vegetables looked like me, where the doctor looked like me and so on and so forth, that built confidence for me. Unfortunately that country was lacking in many other things, so I ended up in Canada. I'm about to finish, I kicked a Black man out of my office for racially abusing a white co-worker. I don't tolerate that. Someone said to me, do you know how difficult it is to find a job with a name, last name like frankly I never thought of that before, these are things sometimes we take for granted. If you have a privilege going for you, it is very, very difficult to think about some of these things and tonight I just want to encourage everybody. Step out of your comfort zone, step out of what is defying you, step out of the constructs that you grew up with and for one moment look at life from somebody else’s perspective. Thank you.

>>Moderator: Thank you. [Applause] So I have two more. Please go ahead.

>>Audience Member: Good evening Ontario come here from British Columbia, fell into the practise of holistic health after 17 years of dedicating my career and my community activism to the questions on this screen. 17 years. And in that time from dealing with very overt racist violent acts of having an elder in my community killed as an initiation process for a young white man to enter the Heritage front which is a white supremacist organization in Canada. While he was caring for the grounds of our, our community place of spiritual practise and healing. That comes after years of dealing with you know, I acknowledge my life is going to, I acknowledge my role as a settler in this country. I fell into healing work because I thought those questions could be tackled by holding organizations accountable, by getting involved in political action, by being part of these kinds of consultations and really dedicating myself with integrity to the process. And I think a whole lot of optimism too that perhaps things would change in that 17 years. So fast-forward to last week where a Muslim masque attempted to be fire bombed five blocks away from where I live here in Hamilton. Folks that have misconceptions and entrenched privilege and systemic bias in own existence will use violence to try to instill fear in communities. As a government and as systems we have to knock on those doors to have crimes be seen not just as hate crimes but as, as it is terrorism. [Applause] Come with intentional to instil fear in the communities they have attacked. We are doing a tremendous disservice when we tackle terrorism as a government only focused externally from our country into the world around us recreating and further instilling the kind of bias that allows these kinds of violent actions to take place in our communities. So I'm not going to address any of those questions except for 4-D which is how should the government work with racialized communities? Period. I can't speak for the Indigenous community, I'm not going to go there, not going to communicate around engaging. There has been plenty of work done to answer these questions in the last 17 years. But what I'm here to stand for is healing. The trauma that people live through on a day-to-day basis, whether or not we have experienced direct first-hand violence due to racism or the repeated on slot of daily interactions and impact of dealing with systemic racism, folks are traumatized. For generations in this country. And very little is being done by our government to support the healing process that is being led by these communities, by our communities. That honours our tradition, honours our capacity to share and learn from each other. Honours our elders and honours a process that allows generations to follow, to pick up the torch around healing, so that our communities can thrive here on this land. So I feel that the government has some work to do on figuring out how to increase access to healing services and initiatives that are offered through community design and community led practices that honour who we are as a people, that honour our traditions, that honour our elders and our healers. The public health system denies all of the work that we do as having any evidence-based impact on the healing of people living with chronic diseases as a result of the trauma that they're living with every day. That’s it. Thank you so much. [Applause]

>>Moderator: Thank you. I believe we have two more?

>>Audience Member: Hello. . I'm here for different hats, , I'm an -- [speaker off mic] community in Toronto-based and I moved it here, have to help us as Somalia community. I will tell you right now individual and I'm standing on my own feet to tell you my story of the first one. The systemic in this government. Last year I lost my son, last August, violently, racism he want to do something different his life. He left in Hamilton to have a better life and he went Vancouver to have a better life. While he left his work and he is doing the work and time for evening time and he wants to talk with a white woman, the guy he came behind him and he knocked down to his head. My son, he fall down and he injured his head and he was con unconscious he never wake up. After nine days he passed away. Because he was talking to a white woman. And the man who hit him is a white man, after a year still I didn't have an answer. I ask everybody, you know, whatever I found help and I said I wanted somebody to hear me, my pain. It’s not only me, it is a lot of Somalia, a lot of black moms. They hurt and they lost for their love one. And we don't know where to go. And we are like a chicken headless and we go around like merry-go-round. Last year one of the community in Toronto I went to him, I said I need help. And he says what do you want it, I said I need justice. And he says what is wrong with you? You know, I know it is your son, he pass, same like other. I said maybe mine is different. Because it is my son. You know what they called my son? John Doe. He have his driver license in his pocket and he have a social insurance in his pocket and $2 and two cigarette lighters. They put on the back, they put on his name and date of birth, and the hospital staff they told me they said oh he is a newcomer, when did he come to Canada? And I ask specifically I said even though if he come to Canada did he have a right to have afford these medications? And they said we need where we can charge for the hospital money. For the government, educated people is not like you have a diploma, I'm a doctor, I'm a social worker, that’s not the issue. Where is educational system for anti-racism, where is the justice, not only me it is like another some of the women in Hamilton and their children, they were killed in Hamilton. Young man say Black Lives Matter, but it matter because he is a human being. [Applause] Thank you. But all I'm asking you Sir, change for this system the federal itself, educate them and make a law, because anti-racism, it is unknown. You cannot feel when it is going to hit you and you don't know where it is going to hit you. So it needs to -- law. It says this is when you are going for this step, you break the law and you go to jail. So I don't want it to play the words like oh systemically the word is perfectly or not or whatever it is. But it is our children in Hamiltonian, especially newcomers, they don't have a place. They don't have a voice. That’s one our sister they said it, is the best schools is closing down. And that was two buildings in Hamilton. One in the jail and that’s the one in the school. And they close the school where our kids, especially newcomers, they go to the jail. Please I'm asking you again change these systemically and political words and some moms like me to understand and to have a voice or exactly our words to be heard. I don't want it like my son, he born in Ottawa, he passed away in Vancouver and they said to me he is not in database in Canada. Systemically it is wrong. If the social insurance doesn't help, driver license doesn't help, why we have it? Thank you very much Sir. [Applause]

>>Moderator: And our final speaker, thank you very much.

>>Audience Member:

>>Moderator: Our final speaker. Okay. You were here when I asked about speakers? Okay.

>>Audience Member: Hi. Yeah it’s good, thanks. Thanks for sharing. I also want to share experience of survival of systemic racism and that’s my single mother. My strong single mother. My mother and I were forced to leave Zimbabwe in grade 9, left at refugees, but don't let her know that I called her by her first name. She went from being an HR manager entrepreneur to coming to Canada and having to clean and having to do personal support work: she worked nights and our relationship wasn't the same. And my mom was stolen from me, wasn't able to do the parenting she was doing and was doing a good job of. The first-year passed, she was still doing that type of work. The second year passed now over a decade. It is past a decade and he she is still doing same type of work. She went back to school, got new credentials, that are Canadian, but still not good enough for some reason. Maybe it is her accent. Maybe they like my accent because I lost my Zimbabwe accent, right. My beautiful black Queen have to do this type of work, she has really strong skills to do better. So what’s a good reason there is no equivalence of work and educational experience? This is a cycle of systemic oppression that when we don't have the means to not only survive we can't like live properly. So here in Hamilton, we talked about Hamilton, the destination for immigrants, now it is not. One of the reasons is that there is hardly any affordable housing. And it is because of this, that’s hurting our community and breaking down the communities like the Black communities, the Muslim communities that have lived here for so long and now they are being told their rent is going up every single year. Trying to be driven out by renters and they are saying rather have these Toronto hipsters and yuppies come over and take over Hamilton. What’s a good reason there is no equivalence for work experience and education between immigration, immigrants. Is this our first and third-world mentality, really a couple years ago MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the admissions Dean resigned because she lied about her credentials. She had worked there for 28 years, so it is not about oh people from Africa may buy their University or college degree Clerkship or anything like that, because it happens here. Canada has problems, they need to always audit these new educational institutions because it does happen here in Canada too. People do buy their education from that piece of paper with no coursework involved. It is not about first and third-world mentality. Work experience is work experience. Education is education and the systemic oppression needs to stop. A person is a person is a person a man is a man. A woman is a pillar of our community. [Applause] My mom didn't get the opportunities to shatter glass ceilings -- this mental violence turns into physical violence. I think if [speaker off mic] the Aboriginal woman although there is an inquiry it is all about documents and not enough action. I just want to thank people like, my mentors. Thanks. [Applause]

>>Moderator: Thank you. I'm actually going to hold our last speaker to actually two minutes. So starting now and I will be timing you.

>>Audience Member: Okay. I was asked to speak as a youth and since I came I was like, why should I speak? What’s the point of me speaking, you know, they are going to cover all the basis and they are going to leave, you know, people with suits, smiling faces, going to all these meetings and nothing will change. I looked over here and I was surprised there isn't a lot, yeah I know, right now we are wrapping up, but even when I came in I imagined it would be packed because when I came to Canada nine years ago, I was told it is a big happy family and this is what I was told and I believed in it. But that’s not the case. When you look at this mandate of yours policy research and evaluation, first one. Why do you still need to do it, we know, you just do all the research you want in the word at the end of the, you know, what needs to happen. Keep doing research, good for you. Do your evaluations, good for you, great. Let’s just keep doing all over again and you know what’s going to happen. So why we're just like lying at each other and we're saying oh this is what we need to do. Well put your words in action, implement something for God sake, for once. The second one is public education and awareness. Public education, I went through High School here and no one told me that there is something called, you know, First Nations. I was like oh -- you mean the red Indians, you know that I thought this was coming from Jordan, this is what I learned about these people, this is what I knew about these people. Me going on exchange program I realize well oh wow, well they fail me, this education system fail me and --

>>Moderator: Time. wrap up now please.

>>Audience Member: I think I'll try, these people don't want to -- if you --

>>Moderator: I request that you wrap-up.

>>Audience Member: Okay, I'll try my best, thank you. Collaboration with communities, but it’s tough, you know. It’s really tough so I seriously like God I think my problem with it is if you want to engage youth, you have to start by trying to harder, because you are not trying harder. Okay that’s how I would wrap it.

>>Moderator: Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. [Applause]

>>Audience Member: Thank you.

>>Moderator: So we have come to the end of our evening, I want to thank you so much for taking the time out of your lives to many of you once again to share and to share from your lives and from your experiences and for those who are representing organizations to, I know you have done some work to come together to create some statements which are important and part of this process, so that’s very much appreciated. Those of us who have been around a long time in this work, we know that we have been down this road before and it is frustrating, I think many share that frustration. There were comments made around importance of interknowledge and lack of sharing of that knowledge, except that we know the research is there, many of you alluded to that. We also know that whether talking about Indigenous racism anti-Black racism, other kinds of racism and racism in terms of employment, racism in terms of education, racism in terms of upward mobility, we know that it exists and we also know the research has been done. So many of you spoke extraordinarily eloquently to that and passionately to that. We heard many recommendations and in fact I would say that similar to the missing Indigenous woman and the report that was done on the plight of the Indigenous people, those are really calls to actions more than recommendations. I think that’s what many people are saying, Minister, there needs to be action and that is coming through loudly and clearly from many people who spoke this evening. We also heard comments about the importance of looking at disaggregated data. I don't think there is anyone in the room that doesn't think that is important, but we heard passionately about how that data needs to be used and that perhaps we need to turn it around a little bit and look at the practices of exclusion as opposed to normal way that we use the data. So I think we heard that as well. We heard about the importance of accountability, not just accountability in terms of those that commit racism and racist acts but accountability in terms of those of us who are responsible for implementing recommendations. So we also heard that we need to be accountable for the many reports and calls to actions and recommendations that have come out of that and the fact that multiples of millions have been spent on the reports. So the tax dollars that we have been paying have been spent on the reports but we have yet to see the fruits of that. We also heard about and several people spoke to the importance of looking at the possibility of having legislation or an act around working on anti-racism and what needs to happen in terms of that. So I will emphasize that was said about three times by three different speakers. We heard about environmental racism and the importance of looking at that as well. We heard, I think a couple people talk about the importance of youth movements such as the Black Lives Matter movement. And we've heard the importance of having ensuring that we have an intersectional, someone said integrated but really intersectional approach to addressing racism that is not just about segmenting and having people go here or there, but looking at how the different work that and impact of racism that also the different Ministries that are responsive for different things, how they need to work together and have an intersectional approach. So we heard a lot, I won't go over everything. But we have recorded the comments you made this evening. One of the things that I think resonated with me was that someone made a comment about the importance of seeing hate crimes as it is -- terrorism, the word terrorism is really around only particular types of people that do particular types of things. So we're hearing about the impact of that, we also heard about looking at the trauma of racism and the importance of healing. Perhaps that’s a good place to end in terms of looking at what needs to happen around the healing due to the trauma of racism that many people experience. At this stage I think what I would like to do is call on the Minister to make some comments to wrap up our time together and to also reiterate some of the importance of the work that needs to be done going forward. Minister Coteau.

>>Minister Coteau: Well thank you very much, I just want to thank the volunteers that were here tonight helping. Our youth ambassadors for being here, thank you very much. [Applause] I want to thank our facilitator for the great job she did this evening, thank you Paulette. [Applause] I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say thank you very much for being here. I know this conversation could be frustrating and I heard from many people tonight that we have had this conversation for many, many years. I just want to take a minute to tell you a little bit of a story. When I was a trustee at the Toronto District School Board I brought forward a motion to start to collect race-based data we had public consultations on this issue. We heard from the community groups. It was, you know, 500 or 600 people showing up, had a couple consultations throughout the city and the exact same point came forward. We have been down this road before, we have done this before, it is a waste of time, you know, you should be doing it right away and that conversation took place because there is a lot of frustration out there because people have been working on these issues for many, many years. A year after that we got the first series of data that came forward and it showed us a whole new perspective on what was happening in the City of when it came to academic performance, suspension rates, expulsion rates, things like that. We took that information and applied it back to, we put a lens in the system and started changing policy. You know, perfect example was the learning opportunity index, it ranked schools by most needy schools to the least needy schools when it comes to resources. And overnight those schools numbers changed. Schools that were number three, jumped to 350, schools that were 200 jumped to number 5, we saw transformation in how extra resources were put out there for new people. We started to monitor suspension and expulsion rates. We know over the last decade the expulsion rates had drastically dropped. There have been challenges the Toronto School Board has taken on. It has a transparent way of monitoring issues and really putting that lens into policy making. So I know I heard comments that, you know, policy evaluation research, what does that mean? Well it does mean a lot. It means a lot because it is public accountability. It shows us exactly what is h

>> Elder Bob Goulais: As indigenous people we're guided by our Spirit, we're guided by the Spirit world and our great kind Spirit that we call [Name?] the Spirit guides us all of the things we need to provide for our lives, to provide for our families and to work together in a good way. So it’s really, you know, I know, challenging and burdensome to our Spirit when faced by racism, faced by those negative things. It is a numbing and gnawing grief that we feel when we see our brothers and sisters, such as ourselves, torn down as a result of that racism. And we need the support and reinforcement of all of us to be able to combat that racism, in particular those that are suffering the racism the most. Thinking, you know, Indigenous brothers and sisters in the north and cities, the Black community, because Black lives do matter, it is an important thing that we need to support in each other in what we do. I want to reinforce the importance of going back to our teachings of humanity, those teachings given to us in time of creation. It is said that at the time of creation the Creator created four races of people to live on this Earth, those four races are the grandfathers of all of us. There is the original yellow man, the modern, who is the ancestor of modern day Asian people. The modern day red one or the red standing one, that’s the ancestor of us modern day Indigenous people. There is the black standing one, the modern, ancestor of modern day Black people and of course the white standing one, the ancestor of many modern day Caucasian European people. At that time not only were we put on this Earth in a very beautiful and gentle way, we were put on this Earth with a set of instructions. A set of instructions that told us two things, that we have to look after all those things that can't look after themselves. To speak for all those things that can't speak for themselves, including when we witness acts of racism, when we see those injustices happening in our communities, it is important we speak up and do that. The other teaching given to us is to use the intellect given to us, good thoughts and good part of our lives where we can actually make practise decisions and practical common sense approaches to dealing with our issues. We were also given seven grandfather teachings. These seven teachings including love, is to know peace, respect is to honour all of creation with the, with respect. And humility is to know that we are just a small tiny piece of creation itself. Those other teachings, bravery, honesty, wisdom and truth were given to us to reinforce those instructions and those are how we should relate to one another, whether we are Indigenous or non-Indigenous, whether it is your particular race, background, creed or ethnicity, that these are our teachings of humanity. We need to go back to those things. What’s the challenge of us going back to those? Well, we are too much in our head. We need to get out of our head and into our heart to start realizing there are better ways to deal with one another, better ways to do those things. I want to offer a prayer in my language, the Ojibway with a language. Asking the Spirit to provide us with this place where we can have a progressive and sensible and respectful dialogue using those good feelings, setting that stage and setting those good feelings.

We don't need to succumb to anger or frustration. We need to be very straight forward, need to be strong with each other, we need to reinforce that, but do that in a respectful and good way. We are all advocates for change. We all know what’s right. We are here for a particular purpose; we all want to be part of that solution. So I want to offer a song and a prayer in the language that asks the Spirit, whether you call the Spirit Alah or Jesus or however you see that Spirit that, great Creator, we want to ask the Spirit to look after us and be with us in this good way. (speaking language other than English) We ask the Spirit to be with us today, to look after one another, to take care of all of those at home. That we work together to find a solution and solutions that will go to combat this racism that we face and we support each other in a good way and that we have a good evening.

(drum beat) I wish you all a good evening and a good meeting. Thank you. [Applause]

>> Paulette: Thank you so much Bob, for that blessing, thank you for starting our evening right, getting us in the right frame of mind. Getting us focused on what we're here to discuss this evening and I just want to acknowledge you as you have welcomed us on this land, knowing that it’s an important welcome and it is something that we appreciate and always want to do as we gather. My name is Paulette Senior and I'm your moderator for the evening and I am just thanking you to have you all here. I know and I suspect there are better places that you could be this evening. Am I right? Right. I paid him to say that. But I suspect that there are many things that we could be doing this evening, maybe not anything better, but other things that we could be doing. So we're not here for an ordinary evening or an ordinary chat, we're here for an extraordinary conversation to talk about an important issue in our community. And so I am really looking forward to the kind of dialogue that we're going to be having that if we say so, will make a difference not just for today but for generations to come. I'm very pleased to join you here in Hamilton for this conversation and this is one of several conversations that the Province has organized across our beautiful region. And that the Minister, who you will meet in a moment, has been attending and listening and gathering feedback in terms of what the people of this Province have to say about the issue of addressing racism, about also in terms of what the Directorate itself can be doing. So as I said, it is one of several meetings in Ontario and across the Province to hear from you, the public, about the key systemic issues and what the priorities are. So as I moderate this conversation there will be a number of things that we will be talking about, but before I do I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome Minister Coteau and he is the Minister Responsible for Anti-Racism and for Children and Youth Services. So please join me in welcoming him. [Applause]

>>Minister Coteau: Thank you very much Paulette, I want to join Paulette, I want to give thanks and recognition to our Indigenous past here in the Province of Ontario and say thank you. Just want to recognise a couple people in the crowd joining us is Andrea, leader of the NDP. [Applause] And I do want to say that when the word went out we were going to hear consultations she picked up the phone and gave me a call and was really enthusiastic about bringing it here to Hamilton, thank you very much and Paul Miller, my good friend from the legislature. Thanks for being here. And of course Matthew Green and Councillor, I want to thank you for your work, I know our office is being connecting to yours for help, so I just want to say thank you, you were able to join me earlier today as we went to the Mosque for a conversation. Thank you for being here today. The conversation is a very important conversation for Ontarians. This is the second in several conversations we're going to be having across the Province to talk about racism. And there is no question in my mind that racism, systemic racism, Islamophobia, Anti-Black racism, racism against indigenous communities, all of the forms of racism that we face as a society, as Ontarians, there is no question in my mind that not only does it strike a very core within the people, it can be a vicious and devastating thing. I believe it holds our Province back from the greatness it can achieve. There is no question in my mind, the Province of Ontario is a wonderful, great place to live. When we see, when we see some groups not doing as well as other groups; unemployment rates of some communities double those of other communities, when we see academic success and suspensions and expulsion rates, you know, huge differences between different communities. When we see these types of things there’s no question in my mind that racism is the major factor for these types of discrepancies. I was looking over some statistics recently, youth employment rate is roughly 14%. The rate is nearly double that for racialized communities including 21 and a half% for Aboriginal youth and 29.9% for Immigrant youth and almost 30% for African Canadian youth. When you think about young people and you think about, you know, that 12 year old, that 13 year old, I have a 10 year old daughter so I see this every single day, the thing in their eyes that have them believe they can actually go out there and make a difference in the world. They can be anything they want to be it if they work hard, if they put their mind to it they can accomplish anything they want. Then something happens, you know, 15, 16, 17, the world starts to reveal itself. You know, it could be a simple, a simple comment by someone, it could be an experience in school with a teacher, it could be a police officer treating someone unfairly. When these types of things happen something slowly gets taken away from that child, that young person, and when it happens more and more and more there starts to become a bit of animosity towards the Society as a whole. The hope, that aspiration, those dreams start to get crushed a bit. And that’s really a sad thing because we want young people to grow up in this world where they feel as though they really do have opportunity and it is a truthful opportunity. But it is not happening. So we need to have a conversation as, I'm glad to see a lot of young people here today. But I'm also happy to see people from all across the age spectrum, you know, we need to have a conversation today around what we can do as a society, to build a better Ontario. You know, I can remember, you know, being 17 years old and I was, that summer I was going to summer school taking two courses and working full time. I got off work, school around 5 and went to work and finished around 12/1 o'clock in the morning, then went back home, did the same thing over and over and over again. I was feeling good about myself because I was accomplishing something and I remember, I remember going home one night and as I was crossing the street, you know someone shouted out, you know, get off the road and you can imagine what the rest was, the rest was like. It’s funny, when racism hits you like that, you kind of internalize it, you kind of own it yourself, you feel bad. Now in retrospect I think why am I feeling bad about what someone said to me, that’s not necessarily, you know, you know it’s not necessarily something that should affect me that way, but that’s the way racism works. It is a very, very powerful thing, been used for many hundreds of years to separate people, to keep people down and we have an oasis here called Ontario, where I believe, if we can work hard and we can change the way we do things and provide those opportunities and remove those barriers, we can make this even a better place than what it is today. So I just want to say thank you so much for being here, for being part of this conversation and I'm looking so forward to hearing your comments. The Anti-Racism Directorate is going to, we believe the mandate at this point is to collect good data, to mandate agencies, organizations, extensions of government to collect data, to hold them accountable. We want to be able to do an awareness and educational campaign across the Province about the ill effects of racism. We want to be able to bring people together to create a permanent forum where information can be shared amongst one another and provide a race-based lens to government. So I think there is a lot of opportunity in front of us and I want to work with everyone in this room to help build a better Ontario. So when my daughter is, is thinking about becoming a doctor or a teacher, an artist, whatever she decides to become, that there is nothing in place that’s going to be able to hold her back. I know that’s a big dream and it’s, you know, it is a lot of hope, but I really believe that we can build an Ontario where everyone is provided with that opportunity. So thank you for being here and now I'm going to introduce Sam and Casper who I believe are going to go up. We're going to right, are we going to, Sam Erry is the Assistant Deputy Minister, I'm assuming, or are you taking over -- I'm going to introduce up here. Again thank you very much for your time, I appreciate you being here. Sam? [Applause]

>>Sam: I don't have his height so going to have to lower this. Good evening, it is a privilege to be here this evening with you. So thanks for spending the time. I'm just going to take a few minutes to talk to you about the Directorate, where we are and where we want to be at you know, in a more mature state. Okay. I put this slide up because it is really important to note that, you know, the core objective of the Directorate will be to focus on systemic racism. And systemic racism, it is endemic, been entrenched over the years and it is really about solving the problem upstream. If you solve the problem upstream then you can avoid all the pain, anguish and all the Band-Aids and cost we have to put mid-stream and downstream. If you relieve that, that valve it will help us think about and achieve equity which is where we want to be at the end of the day. When we have racial equity we reduce all the costs of doing business, reduce all the pain and the suffering that Ontarians and citizens feel and have felt over time. And the key point here is that to address systemic racism, yes government has a very important role in terms of setting policy and working on legislation programming, but also it is an all of society kind of approach. Businesses have a role to play in this, communities have a role to play in this. The Directorate is and will be a strong instrument for social change, but really it is going to take the collective effort of all of us in the community and business and in government to drive that social change. Now, you know, the issue of systemic racism is nothing new, you know, we have had lots of reports in the past where people have opined on this issue, studied it very deeply and you see some of the references there, The Commission on Systemic Racism in the Criminal Justice System, Stephen Lewis opined on this in the 90s and provided very strong recommendations, Roots of Youth Violence Report and the work done with the previous Anti-Racism Secretariat about 20 years ago. More recently of course we have, you know, the painful but open and honest work that was done through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission relative to our Indigenous community. It is pretty clear, the punch line here from all these reports, you really need to focus on systemic racism. Now in addition to this, the Minister had early meetings with core anti-racism organizations and we have been able to get again, confirmation in real-time in terms of the focus on, on systemic issues. So the Directorates mandate, at the end of the day, what we really want to do is of course decrease or eliminate systemic racism in institutions that are governed or regulated by the Ontario government. These are agencies, boards, all those where government has, has outreach to, increase awareness and understanding of systemic racism. You would be very surprised. I know most of you are passionate about this issue and are probably very well informed, but in the general population, you know, most people when you talk to them about racism it is really about the one-on-one and the overt racism they see. Very few people respectfully have an understanding of what is systemic racism. We're going to work hard, I'll talk in a few minutes about that, how we are going to do that. Promoting fair laws? and policies that lead to racial equity. This is critical, collaborating with the community. I think the strength of the Directorate, very sincere and inclusive with anti-racism experts so we can help collectively drive the depended. In terms of the focus, sort of four core areas, maybe I should have said this at the outset, I would characterize our current stage as a foundational stage. It is very, very important, the Minister referenced this as well, we do good hard core foundational research. That’s what the first pillar is all about. Is to do research so we can have an evidence-based conversation about what we're doing. As most of you know, the Human Rights Commission opined and said it is okay to collect this race-based data. We want to get that ball rolling, if you are going to look at systemic issues you need data on sector by sector so we can look at underlining causes, why are we having disproportionate representation of Black youth, the conversation shouldn't start at the point in which these kids start at the door, back that up, why do people end up there in the first place. There will be a very, very strong focus on policy, research and evaluation. There are some jurisdictions in the US, some very progressive municipalities, the City of Seattle, Portland, King County, fortunately for us have done some really great work in terms of trying to achieve racial equity. They have a lot of solid anti-racism frameworks and tools we can import from those jurisdictions and bring them into the organization and socialize people to those frameworks. Because the thing is, we don't have these competencies in most of our organizations, anti-racism, we have diversity competencies, we have inclusion, we have multiculturalism, anti-racism competencies are very specific in each competency. So we will be looking to some of those progressive jurisdictions to bring that. So one of the things we will be looking at in addition to those tools is putting together a Province-wide disaggregated race framework so we can share the frameworks within government departments and agencies, so when they are collecting the data everyone is collecting apples to apples and oranges to oranges, not getting that is not congruent or data that is polluted, if I can use that word. Not going to give us the right outcome. So that’s a big chunk of work. Second chunk is public education and awareness. So we're going to conduct some market research and really again use an evidence-based approach to public education awareness. As you know, social media will play a heavy part in this. So engaging, you know, young people, engaging frankly all generations in this conversation will be important so we can figure out what are the right ways to get, get the message out and get this information out. Community collaboration and, you know, I think the Directorate is going to live and die on this, very inclusive engagement with those who are specialists in this area will be critical. As we develop our products it will be really important to bring people into the tent and have them look at those frameworks and those strategies so that at the end of the day when we do roll it out, it is going to resonate and work. That will be a critical part of our work. Last and not least, this is something we have been hearing in the early days as well, it is really important, if you are going to do core foundational work, there is some game plan for longevity, not a start and stop exercise. You continue to amass that research and that analysis that you need so that as we move along we start solving problems and challenges. There is a sense of continuity and stability. We're building these competencies inside the organization so that at least on a going forward basis and proactively we can be sure any unintentional consequences are not unintentionally put into place as we develop our policies. So that’s a quick overview for you. There is something in the plaque card that was handed out to you as you came in, and also you can visit the website. We have engaged in a fairly extensive recruitment process as well, very transparent about that. The main reason is we need hard core anti-racism competencies as we start building the organization and get to the objectives we need. That’s to keep it short, that’s probably short for me, thank you very much. [Applause]

>>Paulette: Thank you Sam, thank you Minister for the opening comments and setting the evening for us to begin our engagement. So for those of you who arrived before we started the evening, you're welcome into this conversation this evening, my name is Paulette Senior and I’ll be moderating the conversation this evening. So we are here to hear from you. This is, to say to the government, to each other, but also in terms, specifically in terms of the Anti-Racism Directorate, but what should be the focus of the Directorate as it addresses anti-racism in our community, in government and in business and in the whole of our society. So this evening has been divided into three aspects. We have already gone through two of them, so we have Minister Coteau, who spoke to you with some opening comments. We also heard from Sam Erry who is the ADM, he talked to you about the structure that they're hoping to create and have in place for the Directorate and the mandate and the key priorities for that. And now we're going to be turning to you for that open discussion portion of the evening and it really is about ensuring that we can get the kind of feedback that will make a difference in terms of the focus of the, how the resources for the Directorate become focused. So Sam already talked about what some of those areas were, if you were engaged with his conversation. But before we go there what I would like to do is just set up what our, how we're going to engage with each other this evening, what are some of the rules that we want to follow and what are some of the housekeeping items. So on your way in you would have probably seen, if not already that, there are washrooms that are just out to the right. So please make sure that you use that at your leisure. We know that this meeting is being live-streamed and recorded and it may be publicly made available. So your comments will be kept, in joining the meeting you understand you are consenting to this, we have French and American Sign Language translation, provided over here to my left. And we also have some light refreshments that are located outside in the lounge area. So please partake again at your leisure. So in the interest of hearing from all of you, we hope to hear from as many of you as possible, we're going to ask you limit your comments, keeping in mind we want as many people as possible to have an opportunity to the microphone, up here on the stage. We're going to give you a two minute warning and we're going to give you that warning in terms of the time, it is not necessary to shut you up as it is to guide you to wrap up the comments. I will help you in that process. If you are not able to, or do not want to actually come to the stage there are comment cards. [speaker off mic] That I'm also happy to have. More important divided into the areas we want to hear your comments. If you don't have any raise your hand, we have some wonderful youth ambassadors who will be able to deliver them to you. Okay. The four areas are, this is to make sure we have the foundational approach to the, to the comments for the directorate. So the first is, policy research and evaluation. The second, public education and awareness. The third is collaboration with community and fourth, sustainable governance. Those are the four areas that we want to guide your comments and your conversation. We know this topic is not an academic topic for many people. Racism is something that is felt, that it can alter someone’s projection in life. Even though it can carry on for generations and it can leave a legacy that we don't want in society. So please use these areas as a guide in terms of your comments and I will ensure that if you have something important to say, that’s not necessarily part of those organized in these nice four areas, you will say them. Okay, are you with me? Okay, good. Are you with me Hamilton? Okay, all right, good. Nice to hear you. Okay so focus your responses as much possible to the questions and the questions are here. The questions will be up here for you to see because what we want to hear from you about, focus on these key areas and we want to respect your time and everyone else’s time by asking you to keep your comments as brief as possible, I know some of you who have brought ten pages that you want to read, I'm asking you to have your opening and get to the conclusion. Okay. If you don't get a chance to speak again, the forms are here. And for those of you who are watching online, this is also available to you in terms of the sending your comments and the e-mail for that is antiracism@ontario.ca, I'll repeat it later on if you need that again. Without further ado, I welcome you. Let me explain how this is going to go. The youth ambassadors are here at the side. I ask that you just come down to the side and you will be escorted up to the, up to the front. Oh that is so good, not everybody loves a stage, right. Not everybody wants to be on the stage, one mic will be down, if you want to do that, do that. Let’s flex the evening a little bit. A lot has gone into the planning for this evening. The staff are really excited to see how it unfolds and we want to make sure they don't leave empty-handed. Okay. So I welcome you to, I welcome the first brave person who wants to make a comment; the youth ambassadors are here. Yes, listen this is exciting and it is an opportunity and serious topic, it is an open conversation and discussion. We know why we are here, we could be somewhere else and that somewhere else unfortunately could be watching Trump do his stuff. [Laughter] Right. But instead you chose to be here because this is a much more enlightening, almost anything is more enlightening, but important conversation to be having, right. It is important we are hearing from you, we know many of you are here because you are interested in this topic. I don't want to keep hearing my own voice, I'm tired of it. So please come to the microphone and let’s hear from you. I thought I saw someone coming, she even has a book in her hand. Okay, okay, all right. So please welcome, please say your name, organization where you are from, there is a microphone right here to make it easy for you. Sometimes these are not that good to come up the stairs, you know what I mean, okay, thank you.

>>Audience Member: Thanks (speaking French) Good evening, I'm speaking on behalf of African Canadian Congress in Hamilton here a group filled with African-Canadian communities empower and engaged. Opportunity to realize full potential regardless of religion, gender, identity, expression, language, ability, sexual orientation, age and social status. We would like to, thank the government for launching the Ontario Anti-Racism Directorate, a long overdue request from the Black community. We support the -- our group is concerned about continued anti-Black racism in the community. The out look at crime consistently shows the black community -- in our city. It was 1992 after the young stream Fresco, Black youth took to the street to protest police treatment that Stephen Lewis wrote the following in his report on the state of anti-Black racism in the Province and I quote ''what we are dealing with at root is anti-Black racism, while it is already true, every minority community expresses the indignities of systematic discrimination in south Ontario it is the Black community which is the focus. It is the Black youth that is unemployed in excessive numbers. It is the Black schools, students in same Black, dropout, it is our community with large components of [speaker off mic] VLDL Net Engagement and disadvantage where it is most apparent. It is Black employees, professionals and non-professional on [speaker off mic]up ward slam shut. Now in terms of funding, we the African Canadian Action Congress recommend that adequate funding be allocated to the Directorate, to ensure enough resources to carry out. Here we are referring to funding similar to the Ontario Directorate and the office of the affairs. Systematic racism, area of education, policing, employment, the legal justice system warrant immediate actions. Education, we need to, training for all teachers in training. [Applause] We need to have Black history embedded in the school’s curriculum. [Applause] Placing issues of racial profiling, recruitment, more monitoring across the Province. In the Ontario public school this continues to be a concern. The Directorate has to work closely with the Ontario Public Service to set target of achieving equality in employment, retention and promotions. Need for employment, equality, legislation must be explored once again. The legal system must stop the disproportionate incarceration of Black and Aboriginal community youths. The Directorate as part of the community should look closely with communities across Ontario to drive change in local communities. The Directorate should provide resources and support to community groups to launch local campaign to end racism. [Applause] The Directorate ought to engage youth in driving anti-racism across the Province. The Directorate ought to establish a fair benchmarking by which outcomes can be measured. I'm glad you mention about the statistics you would like to request, which is great. Strong monetary mechanism to ensure it is addressing systematically in policies, programs and services. The Directorate ought to create a watchdog across Ministries to ensure racism [speaker off mic] is wiped out. The Directorate should ensure and present an annual report to the community and others, on their achievements. The Directorate ought to have anti-racism expertise, that the French department can draw on in order to address systematic racism. The Directorate again, ought to be responsible for research, analysis, and policy on data collection and expertise [speaker off mic] -- I'm going to finish quickly.

>> This is the longest two minutes, isn't it? I'm not even rushing you, we're listening intently.

>>Audience Member: The Directorate should, the Directorate ought to have the power, Aboriginal power and responsibility to initiate programs with the power of legislation. The Directorate should be empowered to implement actionable solutions to ensure the activities are minimized. It is important that the Directorate -- in the absence of anti-racism group in the local area, they should setup Aboriginal in look-out communities to provide input in their work, the Directorate could, this is in relation to be eccentric, we want everywhere covered. [Applause] And last and not least, the Directorate ought to be ready to -- before the next Provincial election. [Applause]

>>Moderator: Can I just say how thorough that is and wouldn't it be great if you could e-mail all of that to, to that e-mail address I mentioned which is anti-racism@ontario.ca, I think they would love to have, am I right? That’s rich in terms of the information that you shared and, and the group that you represent. So thank you very much and that’s an excellent opening. And I'm not seeing others at the mic, but I'm assuming you have things to say, so please go ahead.

>>Audience Member: Hello my name is, I'm here as an individual. I first want to definitely thank the organization for the Directorate for opening this opportunity. One of the things that I am concerned about is that we're talking about a very complex sickness or cancer within our society and I feel that we have done it without identifying it. What I would like to do is just mention the three things that I have read about racism in terms of what it is. So to start with, racism is psychological. It is physical, it is social, and it is the social location that determines the conditions under which, under which one lives their current life and their future life. And I just feel that I would like to encourage not only the Directorate but everyone within this room to do their own research in terms of understanding what racism is. And more than that I think that there are many faces of colour here that probably already have that information, but I feel there is one group that does not have it and that is typical and not totally inclusive, but it is typical, I find that in my experience it has been typical that of year old Canadians to not have and understand the information about racism. And I feel this would be helpful for the people who really do need to also be included in this conversation. The other short thing I want to say is that in your graphic about systematic racism, government was included, the community was included, business was included, I'm very sad that education was not in that graphic. How do we learn about, about racism unless there is a huge and mighty effort toward education at all levels in terms, starting with the family, starting with the youth in the educational institutions working with and making sure that corporations have mandate to discuss and understand what racism is and how it works among their employees. Thank you. [Applause]

>>Moderator: Thank you. So as I wait for the next speaker I just want to point out that graphic is about the various aspects of society such as community and business, corporations and government who are accountable for addressing this. But if you look at on the public education awareness, that’s where the educational piece is supposed to take place. So again it’s, it is difficult to see all of that up front but I agree perhaps there is a way to make that more clear in terms of the important role of education. Yes sir?

>>Audience Member: Good evening, I'm speaking on behalf of the community coalition against racism, which has been in existence for 27 years and which time we have taken on systemic racism and policing, housing, health, education, Governance and employment.

>>Audience Member: It is not about writing briefs about systemic racism in Ontario. [Applause] Thank you. Many excellent pieces of research already referred to by the previous speakers have been done over the last three decades, proving conclusively that systemic racism effects every facet of our justice system, it exists in our schools, colours who gets and who doesn't get the best jobs in Ontario. What we need the Anti-Racism Directorate to do is come up with original conclusions with teeth that fights anti-racism and recommends them to the Provincial Government. One fight we have taken on, you asked for areas of concern, we have three. One fight is against systemic racism and policing. Specifically [Applause] against racial profiling and carding. You are probably aware that the Hamilton Police Services, by its own racial statistics, which it kept from us for years and claimed it never even collected, admitted last year disproportionately Black Hamiltonians were three or four times more often and Aboriginal one-and-a-half times as often as white Hamiltonians. You are well aware the Ontario Minister of public safety has proclaimed new regulations that are supposed to prevent carding and racial profiling, however the African Canadian legal clinic in Toronto has shown many loop-holes into these regulations. We will see next year if new regulations respect our Charter right to be free from arbitrary stops and searches. In the meantime you may ask why there isn't a single white face among the members of the Hamilton police board [Applause] civilian oversight body for policing in Hamilton. They were not picked for expertise in policing, few if any of them have ever had any expertise or training in it. You may wonder why Hamilton Police Services finally hired its first Black police officer in 1975 after the delegations from the Black community came to Hamilton town council about 100 years earlier and asked them to hire a Black police officer. That officer is just retiring, just retired last year. But in the meantime, not one single Black officer or officer of colour has been promoted to senior management. And has personally visited every single police chief who has taken office in the last 20 years to ask why there hasn't been such a promotion. Everyone promised to do something about that and not one of them has. And I think that’s shameful. There is also a colour bar there is also a colour bar that we have in other areas of employment. I'll get to that in a moment. We think that it won't be easy to deal with systemic racism and policing, but we have some ideas. We think that your Anti-Racism Directorate could at least recommend that racial statistics and policing be made available in every municipality. That some persons of colour in each municipality be paid annually to monitor police performance according to these statistics and consult with police, city and Provincial, you can make multiracial be mandated in exactly the same way that multiracial hiring was mandated 20 years ago. You could ask the Province to completely revamp the selection process for the Police Service Boards and the training of members of the Police Service Boards across the Province. We think the whole philosophy of policing in Ontario in fact should be changed. What we have now is something called community policing which is really intelligence gathering about the members of the public. And the broken windows philosophy, we think that’s also out of date. What we really believe in is something that’s now called anti oppression policing, an approach that recognizes the racist and colonial history of this Province and seeks to use policing to reverse historic inequalities. The second area of concern has to do with changes in Governance. Until Matt Green was elected to Hamilton City Council a couple years ago, it was ruled exclusively by white people for 170 years. There is still to my knowledge never been a city counsellor of Aboriginal origin, I'm sure this is repeated again and again over this, went to Hamilton city council with a novel idea for Canada, that is to temporary create special council seats exclusively for people of colour and Aboriginals. It was completely ignored by the city council, in fact it has been used wildly across the world, in India, Malaysia and Iran, we ask you to consider this idea to bring the city council tables more people of colour and Aboriginal origin. I will be glad to hand over documents for special presentation after this speech. The third area and final area of concern has to do with systemic discrimination and hiring and employment. Colour bar, as I said, exists and has existed for a very long time in the prestigious field of fire fighting in Hamilton, despite efforts .Having visited four incoming fire chiefs in the last 15 years, nothing has been done. Those barriers still exist, there are virtually no black firefighters. The late Charles Roach, a famous human rights advocate in Ontario who himself was a leader in the community once told me discrimination and hiring against persons of colour was far worse and more reaching than police brutality. Why? Because a Black man might be beaten and injured unjustly by police, while the damage, was not usually permanent and it was against one single individual. However, when you deny whole groups of Black men and woman and persons of colour in general, access to descent jobs and respectful professions, they, their whole families and whole classes of people of colour are deprived of the standard of living that allows them and their children to participate fully in and derive the benefits of society. In this Province you just have to look around to see most professions, most of the trades, teachers and high schools and elementary schools, the top jobs in business do not go to people of colour. At the end of term of office in the early 1990s, they only employed equity legislation. If memory serves me right, legislation requires enterprises with more than a certain number of employees to conduct surveys of workforces, set hiring targets and to report annually. Did not set legislative quotas for hiring, it was more or less voluntary, but helped promise to make significant improvements in the hiring of racialized minorities in this Province. But that was too much for the conservative government (Mike Harris) and employment equity legislation was among the first pieces of the New Democrat Party’s legislation to be replaced by him. So in order to deal with systemic discrimination of hiring in this Province, we ask you the Anti-Racism Directorate to recommend to revise employment recommendation and to give it teeth, such that persons of colour can finally get past the colour bar that blocks their chances to be hired in every area of decent employment in the Province of Ontario. In conclusion, I'd like to repeat again that we hope the Anti-Racism Directorate can make a dent in the worst excesses of systemic racism that manifest themselves in this Province. But please don't come back to Hamilton in five years armed with new studies and research showing how pervasive discrimination is in Ontario [Applause] we already have enough studies, anecdotal knowledge and research. Please come back with novel, imaginative solutions to remedy the problem, solutions that have teeth to make significant changes. Thank you for your attention. [Applause]

>>Moderator: Thank you. I love the preparedness of Hamiltonians who come with statements and can actually get, have the beginning, middle and conclusion reinforced. So thank you very much for that. And thank you for invoking the name of Charles Roach who is someone who [Applause] has trained many of us in the work of anti-racism, he had an impact on countless people. Next person at the mic. There seems to be a preference for this mic, but that one is also available.

>>Audience Member: Before I begin I want to recognise and pay respect to the long history and contributions of our First Nations communities here in Canada. [Applause] I will keep my comments short?. The reality is that Canada internationally has always been seen as a country of inclusivity. Has always been seen as a leader when it comes to issues surrounding ethnicity and race. Now if we start looking at some of the statistics of this, hate crimes, and we start seeing some of the divisions within our communities, maybe that opinion and that perception might change. I'm honoured to be, to join the many community leaders, residents and partners today for this important discussion on eliminating systemic race in our Province. We need to lead the charge in terms of all forms of bigotry, whether xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism or any form of racism. The reality is I'm proud to say I live in Ontario and our Ontario government is coming to say let’s try to do something. Ontario can be the leader in Canada, we can help Canada be that leader internationally. I'm here representing two organizations NCNN, my comments will be broken up into three quick parts.

>>Moderator: Mind saying what those letters are.

>>Audience Member: I will, first is background of the organizations I'm a part of, number two is brief background lay of the land of Hamilton, what’s specific to Hamilton and some ideas of how we are going to go forward as a community. As a background NCCN National Council of Canadian Muslims, is an independent non-partisan non-profit organization dedicated to protecting human rights and civil liberties of Canadian Muslims across the country. The North American Spiritual Revival is a social justice not-for-profit organization who has worked with partners throughout the country including public safety Canada to bring greater understanding of Canadian society to the Muslim communities throughout the country. It is an organization that believes that the marriage between community service and youth empowerment is the bedrock for a strong and sustainable society in the future. Over the summer NCCN has held six press conferences across the country. We launched a new project called the Charter for Inclusive Communities. The Charter for Inclusive Communities confirms the dignity of every person calls for effort to counter prejudice and hate and develop programs and policies specific to the reduction and elimination of Islamophobia in all of its forms. Over a hundred individuals and institutions have signed on to this Charter, including police forces, community organizations, and politicians. We're seeing a number of hate related incidents throughout Ontario and Canada. Islamophobia tells Canadians that they are not welcome. These Canada Muslims, it tells them they are not welcome and they don't belong in these communities. We must also remember that there is intersexuality which is at play as well. A Muslim in Ontario may be targeted for their beliefs, their skin colour, their ethnicity or any other identifiable characteristic or maybe all of them at once. Locally here in Hamilton there are a few things I think are very important. I'm sure that we all know about what happened a few days after 9 11 some individuals that wanted to go and attack, because there were patrons leaving that mosque they fled and went to a local Hindu, thinking that was the mosque, they burned it down. Hamilton used to be the 4th most popular destination for newcomers to this country. It isn't anymore. Part of that reason is because Hamilton ranks second in the country in hate crimes. This is something that needs to end. I think on one hand it is a positive that individuals in this community are strong enough to come forward and report these crimes, a negative of course is the frequency of these crimes. As was mentioned previously, members of African Caribbean and First Nations communities have been disproportionately targeted when it comes to the issue of carding in this city. September 15th of this year, couple days ago, there was an arson attack on the anniversary of the day that the Hindu [samage sic] was burned down. Has anybody heard of the Soldiers of Oden? If well they are here in this city, they are here in this city and they want to so-called “clean up our cities”, they want to take the streets back. It is a bigoted organization. The irony of course is that they are from Norway. They themselves are immigrants. Where do we see ourselves, where can we move forward? I think if we want, we did a program with Niagara police recently, a youth program and these young kids did a great job. It was about reporting hate crimes and setting up programs so that we could be educated a little bit, about what a hate crime is. They set up a website end hate.ca. The NCCN inclusive charter I mentioned previously, you can read about that at NCCN.ca, as a community we need to push our politicians, to support the resolutions, to look past, you know, look into a task force examining the routes of Islamophobia and bigotry in Canada. As a community we can attend open houses, religious centres, community centres so we can get to know one another as well. In the month of October it is known as Islamic history month, there will be some, some mosques that are going to hold some open houses and we invite everyone in the community to come to these mosques and come and get to know your neighbours. The Gandhi Peace Festival, all of us should go to this event. It is a phenomenal event where like-minded progressive Hamiltonians come out and we get to share and discuss matters related to peace in our city. As a community we must stand with our politicians who are trying to get it right. We need to stand with politicians who are trying to make Canada a more inclusive society. We welcome the efforts, like officially declaring October a national Islamic History Month. We welcome the efforts of federal, federal petition, E41 is one which calls on Canadians to condemn all forms of Islamophobia and we welcome the government of Ontario pledge to stand up for the rights and dignity of everyone in order to promote an inclusive and specifically, sorry, inclusive just respectful communities in Ontario. And specifically developing a cross-government approach to combat racism, including but not limited to indigenous racism, anti-Black racism and Islamophobia as outlined in the mandate letter provided to Minister Coteau last week. We look forward to working with the government of Ontario and community leaders on these issues. One of the questions was, in ten years from now, what does success, what does success look like for this, for this Directorate? As I was sitting here and listening to some of the amazing speeches that have already been given, I think if we as a society ten years ago move away from tokenism to true inclusivity [Applause] that will be a sign of success. A quote from former US President from Bill Clinton, almost 20 years ago. Think about how it implies today, that tear nations apart, Canada stands as a model of how people of different cultures can live and work together in peace, prosperity, and mutual respect. Let’s move forward together in achieving this standard, other countries throughout the world view Canada to be. Thank you very much.

>>Paulette: Thank you. [Applause] So before we go to our next speaker I would like to get some sort of an indication of how many people know that they want to say something this evening. So if you could just raise your hand I want to see in the room, okay. So it is important that so we have quite a few people who would like to say something, that’s great. So please keep that in mind as you speak, the speeches are wonderful and clarifying and informative and so that’s great, I encourage you to send them to the e-mail address anti-racism@ontario.ca, also keep in mind that there are a number of people who want to speak. I'm not rushing you. Hamilton seems to have a different time line for two minutes, I'm okay with that. [Laughter] I'm good with that, because I want to hear what you have to say. Just keep that in mind. Okay. Next speaker please.

>>Audience Member: Thank you,. I have three comments, one comment related specifically to one of the questions. My first comment relates to question one. I live in Hamilton and with Bedrock being in the picture to take of US, one of the things I'm hoping that would come out is the theme of the Directorate is any government assistance or support for businesses, such as Bedrock should include a condition of diverse hiring, including hiring for equality seeking groups and racialized groups. So that’s one. [Applause] My second comment has to do with question three. Which is public education and awareness. At a systemic level. Quite aware that Bill-132, an amendment to the Health and Safety Act is going to be coming into effect very soon and Bill 132 deals with harassment, sexual harassment and violence in the workplace. For me doing the work I do, one of the things quite missing is um racial and religious harassment. Because statistically while I deal with a lot of sexual harassment specifically now with gender, identity and gender expression, it is not lost on me. That statistically a huge part of harassment and discrimination and violence in the workplace specifically still deals with racialized, with racial and religious harassment and so through instrument such as Bill 132, one of the things I think the Directorate could do is with instruments such as Bill-132, include something that might come up in the future as harassment, racial and religious harassment, sexual harassment and violence in the workplace. This is actually doable because it has already been done through the instrument of Bill-132. My final comment is about questions three and four. A friend of mine can, earlier went to the microphone and said enough of the experts. I'm quite happy with experts, but it is what kind of experts. The experts I'm speaking about are experts in limited experience. So for [Applause] any, I would suggest to the directorate that for any working committees with a standing ad hock known in the future, that in addition to academics and experts in the field who can get peer review articles published that the directorate include experts [speaker off mic] experience and recruit these experts across racialized socio-economic and demographic groups. Thank you. [Applause]

>>Paulette: Thank you so much. Okay. Next microphone and those folks who extended their arms, if it you could start lining up, just so we get a sense of how I need to be monitoring time. Okay. Yes?

>>Audience Member: Thank you. Also the Fifth point here is what we are looking forward to next years I have been to many of these consultations in my life. Little bit of critical lesson, way back at the time of the Ontario anti-racism came into existence as well. Many of these issues were discussed. I participated at many of the workshops, public consultation for workshops and systemic anti-racism and things like that were discussed. I am sure summaries of the public consultation is still sitting in some office in the government. And assistant [speaker off mic] at that time and had many, many meetings with her, but at that time, so other than going into the issue of number one, which is policy and evaluation, I will give you a case study. The case study, an actual thing which has been happening, from the last 40 years -- and that community. Systemic racism came into place in 1970 when a person was not hired -- and here [speaker off mic] been living here in this Province, this city since that time and he was not hired or fired for some period of time, because he was getting, working in the Hamilton. Since then there have been many, many cases in which have suffered by the employment opportunities or opportunities otherwise simply because -- now that is absolutely nothing new with which we can, this Minister at any critical party, we were not telling them going into the meetings with [speaker off mic] for example who was at that time. And restored afterwards, which we are going to have in place. It is exactly the same thing. [Applause] But the only thing is that none of the government, or the liberal have done anything to address this elimination. That is a fact of life that people need to know. That is a fact of life young people to know that yes we are going to spend X number of dollars again, with consultation, we are going to have reports and now these things were not there in 1970s, just given -- [speaker off mic] and filling out those forms and now we have these fancy things to look at. [Laughter] But that’s all. [Applause] That is the bottom line. Another lesson of history, when it comes to the community, 1970s, early 1980s, the system was such or the people working with enrolment were such that didn't know, who, where how they come from if or so forth, this is what they meant when they were asking these questions. At that time explain to them who we are, what we are and so on and so forth. Okay. Things have changed as far as the competition of the government is concerned or some of the civil, the issues remain the same. Now let me say even this, we were so hopeful that when in some of the key portfolios, which [speaker off mic] communities we see non-white there is. Minister black himself. But satisfied refuse to meet us to discuss our issues. That’s Ontario government simply has not entertained us to come and have an open dialogue.

>> Hold for a second sorry to interrupt you. I have never refused a meeting with you in my life.

>>Audience Member: Let me finish this, to my surprise, we were told by the various Ministers that our issues are being discussed at the highest level in the Ontario government, but we access information got 7000 pages, paid $2000 to get it, and these issues are never discussed at the level, it is there, not my typing. I just got it from the Ministry. So how we are going to address discrimination? When we the community only but a month ago, consulted in the house, this minute three tree was clapping and so was his focus and his Minister of finance [speaker off mic] was telling everybody and it is in the recording, hey don't clap that much, cool down. So we are being insulted by our government and we are [speaker off mic] systematic discrimination, racism people in the government itself. [Applause] that’s what it is. Not even a single law of this Province has been amended or newly introduced in this house, in this legislator to accommodate us. If [speaker off mic] government in any place, if we go to ABC Logistics, if that company says I cannot go into their premises, I will stay outside in the rain. Facts. [speaker off mic] I am not. These are the effects of life in Ontario in the last 40 years, that have us concerned. What do we do for discrimination, down a year, 40 years ago where we are today. Refuse to meet us, Minister refuse to meet us so this is if you ask us from the sector just [speaker off mic] redoing the same exercise and nothing coming out of it. As far as we are concerned. I hope these are some food for thought, some people. I will ask Minister, to you, you are a black man yourself. Look after us. Look after --

>> Let me respond now, let me respond.

>>Audience Member: Discuss with us, find resolution and implement them otherwise it is just a waste of everybody’s tax payer’s money as far as we are concerned.

>> Let me respond --

>>Paulette: Thank you.

>>Audience Member: Yes, go ahead. [Applause]

>> Thank you very much, the first thing to address is nothing has changed since 1970 you can look at the old notes, I wasn't born in 1970 I wasn't part of that conversation, number one. Number two, if I took exactly what was mandated to me and what we think is the best approach without any form of consultation the Province of Ontario you know what the first thing people would say to me? You didn't do any public consultations, I would be challenged on that piece. We have an idea of what we wanted to do, we have told you what our plan is, we can go ahead with that plan without consultation, but I can guarantee you every single person in this Province will come back and say you need to consult the public before you go forward with a plan to, to take on anti-racism here in the Province of Ontario. This is what we, people expect us to do and this is what we're doing. Irregardless to me not meeting you, I met your group a couple of times. What you want to talk to me about when I met you before is about transportation and you wanted to talk about the removal of helmets. Minister of transportation issue and I still met you as a Minister who wasn't responsible for that file. Now very sympathetic to your cause, had the discussion with you, sat down at least twice to talk to you about that issue, but it is the Minister of Transportation who has to deal with that issue. It is a transportation issue, I've only been appointed into this role as Minister of anti-racism for a few months, if you want to talk to me on that sense, I never turn my back from anyone in any community in the Province of Ontario, if you want to meet me send me an invitation --

>>Audience Member: I don't want to take more time but if you are in Minister of Racism or anti-racism or if responsibility to deal with all the issues related to all the minorities, so that they are equally treated in the Province. Right now they are not, as far as we are concerned. Okay. [Applause] Please I will say, I will [speaker off mic] write to you again, things for us. Rewrite to various Ministers for three months, we don't even get a call back. Everybody knows what the effects of life are. So I will say we will write it to you again, you open the doors to us for Minister, for the government, transportation should -- [speaker off mic] health, doesn't matter, bring all of them. They are there like we go to [speaker off mic] every three months or six months or whatever, they are there having their lunch, why can't they meet us and discuss our issues. Simply refuse to meet. Thank you. Absolutely refuse to meet.

>>Paulette: Thank you so much.

>>Audience Member: Thank you very much for your time.

>>Paulette: Thank you. Before our next speaker goes, don't forget if you want to speak please go to the mic so I can see how many people there are left. So thank you for that. So we scheduled tonight’s meeting to upwards of 10 pm, we know some of you are not committed to being here until 10 pm, am I right? Okay. So it is now 8:25, 24, so keep that in mind as you are speaking. And we want as many of you to speak as possible, as many of you as possible are here. So keep that in mind so we can get through as many people as possible, okay, thank you.

>>Audience Member: Hi, thank you for these consultations. I would just like to briefly go off what was an interesting conversation that we just witnessed here.

>>Paulette: And your name?

>>Audience Member: Absolutely, Mr. Coteau was not there in the 1970s and I think issue here is partly a problem, at least from what I'm sensing, partly a systematic problem as opposed to an individual problem. How is it that despite having had all these meetings, regularly, the information from the 1970s, 80s, 90s not informing anti-racism initiatives of today. [Applause] So I think the frustration is not so much level the individual but how can we make sure, how can we make sure that there is accountability held at the level of the people in power. So I think this is a piece that wasn't really mentioned, accountability is very, very important. We have to be able to come back tomorrow, in a year, two years ago and not only just collect that on how we are doing better or worse, but also hold people accountable firmly accountable, there is three strikes and you are out when it comes to very petty things police implement in our communities. I want to see politicians, three strikes and you are out or at least something to that effect. Something that has to be very firm. So that’s the first, accountability at the level of systems. Clear regulation when it comes to how we are going to punish people for not upholding anti-racism initiatives. Other thing I want to mention, election is only once every some years, doesn't really work that much. Because organ graduations need help and often it is policies that help organizations justify how they're going to spend their resources, what type of orientation they are going to have, what type of values are going to implement in their workplace and so on and so forth. So it will be good to see anti-racism act at the level of the Province and the level of the federal government. That very specifically stipulates such things as education, how does anti-racism look into education, in the labour market, in the social services and so on and so forth. Unfortunately like the secretary I'm a little bit scared that the directorate will, is contingent upon or is overly dependent upon the type of political party in place. So what happens when the liberal government goes in conservative comes, you fold? And do we go back on the street and say we need a directorate or Secretariat, so how can we systematically make sure that the Anti-Racism Directorate is not overly dependent whims of politicians, theoretically that means you can only challenge a state so much. A lot of us here are antiracist, a lot of us here do social justice, we know the places we work in are part of the limitations we have to address. The type of anti-racism you are going to do unfortunately is not going to be systematically deep enough to address issues of state power, for example environmental racism. Like how we see pipelines in indigenous communities, that’s racism. And we have a mode of economy, capitalism mode of economy [Applause] that allows that to happen. How will we address that? How can you stay separate enough to be able to critique the people you are working with or working for? A lot of people mentioned here that there aren't enough youth or there are but that the directorate would love to work with more youth and I would say Black Lives Matter. [Applause] Right there. There is definitely more groups of course, but that’s the first groups to go, first groups to go to, it is a student-led, youth led movement. Black Lives Matter. And I say that also not in terms of finding a pool of youth to work with, but also to make sure you don't just pick and choose who you work with and only work with people that make you feel comfortable. [Applause] If you only work with people that cooperate with a state of anti-racism than it is going to be very limiting and you are still going to get a lot of backlash. So be open to working with the likes of us a little bit more radical but have other forms of, of ideas on how to address these issues, it is I think it is best way to make this more broader and more deep. Finally funding, where did you get your funding from, who pays you? How are you going to make sure that if that person doesn't want to fund you anymore that you still have money to carry on your work. The person who pays you controls type of work you do, we definitely need more funding for the directorate. But where else besides the state can you get your funding so you are not just super dependent on it if that’s possible. Yeah so those are my suggestions in terms of the systematic things. But especially Indigenous communities are dealing with not, you know, a lot of people in the Black community yes there is material racism but especially psychological we don't live on reserves and they are experiencing a horrible, horrible, horrible forms of material racism and [Applause] Pipeline oils and all these industries really need to be held accountable. Corporations need to be held accountable. The powers that be, I think a lot of people, Bernie Sander, had somewhat anticapitalist types of politics that hold the tiny minority that have way more than we ever have accountable, corporations, multinational corporations need to be held accountable to the communities they work in and they need to pay more taxes because it just doesn't make sense, CEO will be making three hundred million and just fired people from Wal-Mart, it just doesn't make sense. So being mindful that theory that is being applied through Anti-Racism Directorate is one that is unfortunately in coordination with state capitalism and finding a way to make sure that you are not in with that type of racism or else racism will continue despite that we try to work against racism.

>>Paulette: Thank you, thank you. [Applause] So I'm going to go to you next, I know you were standing before this lady here.

>>Audience Member: Actually I have somebody right here.

>>Paulette: Okay, go ahead please.

>>Audience Member: Hi I come as an individual but also a member of the Hamilton Immigration and Refugee Advisory Committee. And really important information, however it’s not our government our government plays a role. But when it comes to the end of the day in the rainbow it just begin at home. It begins with each individual towards each other, trying to get to know each other. That was mentioned earlier this evening, how many of us are going to go and celebrate if there is an event, no matter what nationality it may be and it could be like say hosted at Jackson Square, how many, even this evening I look and I think gee this is sad because Hamilton Ontario is a big city, but so many empty seats. A lot of it is because we have lost trust. I mean there is carding and where is even the police officers, is there one representative from our police department in Hamilton? Okay great, then we have Mr. Matthew, he is a big asset, no are our city council counsellor, I think back and think of Martin Luther king, how much have we moved forward. Is it all just about talks, not all of us, but isn't it easy to blame the government rather than ourselves and say hey, you know, someone mentioned hosting multicultural events in churches. You know, how can we as a community interconnect with each other in a social way to get to know each other? Thank you.

>>Paulette: Thank you. [Applause] So let’s go to this gentlemen here and then we will go to this mic.

>>Audience Member: Thanks we have been trying to take turns over here, thank you. I'm here also as an individual, but I'm an individual who was involved with the anti-racism Secretariat a number of years ago --

>> >>Audience Member: When I first went out with anti-racism Secretariat I had a lot of optimism in my 20s, I had hoped that answering some of these questions in a political forum and a public meeting might bring about more change. Certainly some things have changed but as the parent of a black child, not nearly enough has changed in terms of racism and I guess my concerns are that we look beyond Secretariats and directorates and start to begin to understand these issues need to be addressed at all levels of government. I'm really disappointed we have another silo that’s doing this, rather than have this work spread throughout all of the Ministries be and throughout government itself.

>>Moderator: Are you making that a recommendation?

>>Audience Member: Okay, I will then Paulette, yes, I like to make a recommendation that we stop setting up silos where we are dependent on the funding of good will et cetera, Mike Harris knocked us down with horses and gloves the day he took office. Those involved with fair tax commission and others of those kinds of things um, you know, have been back in the streets there after trying to re-establish something we had 30, 40 years ago. I think in terms of ten years from now that’s what it would look like to me. That we would no longer have a need for this, people understand anti-racism, anti-oppression, all forms of oppression need to be addressed by all levels of the government. Beyond that I think we need to very specifically look at education. I trained in the University of York’s anti-racism program. I'm one of the very few teachers that come out of that program and I cannot get work in our public schools. But I teach elsewhere as a consequence and what I do know is that my daughter has been introduced, yet again, to Kill a Mockingbird in grade 6, 7 and 8 and at home we read [Name?] and Tony Morrison, getting tired of it, just saying. I think there could be a few black authors that could be part of our curriculum. [Applause] And the one thing that hasn't been mentioned here all night is media in the arts. As a performing artist I think it is crucial that our government again, across all levels, the government elections, the programs, the propaganda, doesn't represent who we are as a community. Our arts do not represent who we are as communities and I think that has to be a very specific focus of the directorate as well. Because with the arts and with representation that looks to representing people with pride, with understanding, with nuance and with 3-dimensions we move beyond these kinds of stereotyped and racialized or racist impressions of each other and to that end I think artists of colour need to be funded more directly, we need to see more activity in our communities around artistic creation and those artistic groups need to work in conjunction with our educators to bring about a better sense of who we are as a community, what our histories are and what our future can be like working together.

>>Moderator: Thank you very much. So I know that the youth ambassadors are doing a great job making sure I know who is next. So who is next here? Yes? Okay. Thank you.

>>Audience Member: I'm here to speak um pertaining to native people. One of the words that we have heard tonight is immigration. And um our people have experienced immigration, I think since 1492. [Laughter] I think very specifically systemic racism, for native people is a forerunner in to very significant documents and history. One is a [speaker off mic] other one is Indian Act is Magna Carta lots of things said but very specifically about property and justice for property for the individual. Native people were words to the crowd. So you were a child. And the current status I think of the Indian Act remains as is. I think the systemic racism manifests itself, the schools, violence to woman as we have experienced. One of the horrific experiences to me as far as just blatant racism was a progress inflammation made in New Brunswick back in the 1700s by Corn Wallace, I think in the parameters of this review have got to go beyond the Provincial boarders and they have to include and have to be done in concert with the federal government, thanks very much. [Applause]

>>Moderator: Thank you. And who is next here? Yes? Thanks for your patience.

>>Audience Member: No problem, I have experienced two extremes, the first one I was in a workplace and I brought a resume for a person who asked me can you give this resume to the right person. The question I was countered with, what colour is he? He was black and needless to say he didn't get the job. The other end of the spectrum is encountering an activist who claims that they are fighting a war against white males. So needless to say we can't win the cause or we can't forward the cause that we're trying to with either extreme, because you can't convince somebody who is working on an extreme. Where we can win is with the people that is in this room and there are white people in this room. So I just want to say when you are working on your cause remember that white is still a colour and that there are Somalians out there and that calling them ignorant or calling them racist or what have you doesn't actually advance your cause. What it does is alienates allies. It alienated me, okay. So that’s my experience. The other thing I wanted to say is 500 empty seats in this room, if we are fighting any kind of war, what we are fighting is apathy, we have to find a way to communicate importance of this cause and get people who would actually come to come. So fighting stereotypes in the news and entertainment. I'm not making excuses for white racists at all, or for any coloured racist, because race, racism can fall within colours as well as whites versus everybody else. But what the government could do is all your statistics that you are gathering, all the reality that you are gathering maybe you could use that to counter the disinformation we received from the news and from the entertainment industry. I think a lot of phobias and a lot of fears are coming from the things that we're seeing on television and reading in the news and to some extent I can't blame people from being afraid. All the Latino people were shot down in Florida, being shot is a fearful thing and so then if that’s all you see day after day, then of course you are going to be fearful. I hope, I probably just insulted a lot of people here, I probably made a lot of enemies, I'm sorry, just want to, you know racism at one end, racism at the other and there are some rationale people in the middle who are trying to do good.

>>Moderator: Thank you for your comments, thank you. [Applause]

>>Moderator: Yes, you are next.

>>Audience Member: Hi [Applause]>>Moderator: You have some friends.

>>Audience Member: I'm speaking not just for myself but many young people that ran up to me and said could you say this. I'm just recognizing that public consultation such as this, I feel like I have been to a religious institution or something, but these types of venues really don't work for young people who don't feel listened to already. [Applause] I'm just above the federal definition of youth so I, I'm speaking as an adult ally, even standing in this line and being asked to move aside, shaking in my boots is a little nerve wracking, thank you for listening. I'm going to tell a story and go into recommendations, I hope two minutes of time is adequate.

>>Moderator: It is Hamilton time, go ahead.

>>Audience Member: As a youth by youth centre we started out with very little funding because the dissolved system of taking care of issues such as racism is left to community institutions. Now what happens when you are youth, you are racialized, you are in a position of little power, how do you get the resources to actually organize and create change? Through our doors we have seen countless numbers of youth who end up expelled and one of the things that we would like to see is race-based database on school expulsions. Now this is connected so these same youth who are expelled without reason, many of who are newcomers to Canada, even inadequate pay for work and told don't come back or I'll call the police, they end up in jail anyways, in fact some young people we have been supporting in jail, say it is okay my whole class is in here, I know everyone here from SGM, we are all in holding here together. So there is connections. And so I would ask that in targeting which systems or institutions in Ontario, Ontario government should address, it is a systemic approach so you need to have Ministries in conversation just as wearing a hard helmet on your head is both a transportation and a culture issue, so is a school expulsion and a young racialized child in jail and educational as well as Ministry of correctional services issue. Okay. [Applause] So integration. Secondly, we close the schools down. The schools that these young people are being expelled from, the school in Hamilton that has the highest ethnic cultural diversity is being closed. It is being -- with little to no public consultation. Because elected officials represent a ward so big that it encompasses both people who are living in the most marginalized?? naturalized income bracket and the people in 1% of Hamilton, wards 1 and 2, one counsellor made a decision representing the diverse forces of all of these people. When you have systems run my municipal boards such as police services or the current system of municipally run education, you need to have a way in which that is accountable to the Ministry of education. So any decisions that are made, you need to make funding tied to performance outcomes. Specifically tied to antiracist objectives. [Applause] So I'm going to talk a little bit about one issue, so the roots of youth violent report and honourable Alvin investigated problem, this issue of young people, experiencing youth violence, often portrayed in the media Black on Black violence or irrational state of young people killing each other, we understand from Provincial reports that youth violence is related directly to things such as social exclusion and racism. So these things have a direct impact on our children’s health and directly correlate to racism and violence that exists. However, the City of Hamilton in investigating recent states of youth violence employed experts to say youth violence is not increasing in Hamilton. Now when residents of a recent shooting in the north end of Hamilton had people from the city come, they did not realize this was the second time in the same neighbourhood that youth violence had occurred. So the Hamilton Police Services were unable to investigate this so-called state of youth violence, because there were not able to understand race-based data. They were not able to understand the patterns. So I suggest these, not only that data be used to create research, it be used to inform the lens and antiracist lens to be applied across all Ministries, boards, agencies, directorates, et cetera. So as a youth centre we have been funded by the Youth Opportunities Fund which is a great Provincial investment in giving young people the direct tools to be able to tackle the issues we face. However, to do so we have become bureaucrats so we have to be able to not only demonstrate that we're holding the programs that we are, but auditing are being conducted for things such as showing photos the event actually happened with the name on the date with the artist facilitator that we have paid. I'm having to become an expert bureaucrat, documenting everything, instead of doing good antiracist community building work. Our Indigenous brothers and sisters at the meeting also raised this issue: saying the way the evaluation and reporting is done must be sensitive to not only Indigenous ways of knowing, but to the local context and capacities of people who have lived experience and who are experts in this. So evaluation must, itself, be flexible and reflect the standards and knowledge of the people who are creating it. [Applause] lastly, I don't know if we can speak to the mandate, I believe it is already set out, I say words like increase awareness should be changed to inform. Words like promote should be converted to enforce or ensure. So when things have teeth they have words that don't just seem like nice suggestions. They have words that actually require action a young person asked me to say, we have been in many conferences, in order to have actions we need to have continuous work, instead of fighting change accept it. Thank you. [Applause]

>>Moderator: Thank you. One youth voice, thank you. Yes?

>>Audience Member: I'm a graduate of Master, graduate of [speaker off mic]. I didn't get here when you started, another commitment. I don't think I missed much. About 60 years not much progress has been made. We still see the same consultations being made and I want on the record that this is not a formal consultation on my part because I am not going to be limited to two minutes. Furthermore that if you really want to start looking at issues, start reading the Royal commission on Aboriginal People, which is collecting dust somewhere. The Wash Report by justice, probably collecting dust on a shelf somewhere. One of the recommendations of the report was the establishment of the Aboriginal Ministry. It was a setup and taken down within a few years. Right now there are so many recommendations from Justice Sinclair’s report on schools. To more or less say that you got two minutes to sum up the millions of dollars of work that went into those previous reports is insulting. Thank you. [Applause]

>>Moderator: Thank you, yes. Hi.

>>Audience Member: So I'm here representing myself as a racialized black woman. I wanted to sort of just answer those five questions, but in reverse. So success would be not having another community consultation, to ask racialized groups to tell their stories yet again. This is a historical problem that Ontario and many people in Ontario know exists. It’s been researched to death and talked to death. How long must we talk about the same issues with very little change? If I'm envisioning ten years from now, this room is full of white individuals, if I'm envisioning ten years from now maybe if we are not going to move you are going to implement racism 101, 102, 103, 104, so that I can have educations with my grandchildren of how to navigate racism in Ontario you need to stop consulting on the issue and implement laws and legislation to hold institutions accountable for not following the law. We know why racism exist, why do I have to keep proving it. You need to talk critically about whiteness, you need to talk critically about white privilege. You need to talk critically about white supremacy. You need to examine cognitive on behalf of white people. Not having to understand, not having to experience and not having to share in the impacts of racism. You need to speak about anti-colonialism within institutions. You need to hold the private sector as well as this public sector accountable. And you need to seek this through anti-oppressive practise which examines power and privilege. You need to start with the Ontario public sector to exemplify and model what you are trying to preach. You need to ensure that our schools exhibit anti-racism, anti-oppression. You need to ensure that our hospitals are making sure that we are thriving and surviving. You need to ensure that the police and the criminal justice systems are talking about their own white privilege, so our children, our children’s children and their children’s children are no longer the targets of racial profiling. And no longer the targets of keeping up institutional systemic racism and keeping the institutions thriving and alive at the cost of the lives of our children. It is very important that you use data to do that, but how many more lives, how much more data do you need to see that racism is alive and well? You need to do something once and for all. How much more do we have to go through for anyone to listen? Thank you. [Applause]

>>Moderator: Thank you. So it’s now three minutes to nine and I just want to get a sense of how many more people are waiting to speak. By show of hands. Or standing? Okay, great. Thank you. Go ahead.

>>Audience Member: Hi, how are you? And my opinion about my experiences in the states versus Canada, it’s vastly different. Here in Canada I have nothing but good experiences all the time. I was always welcome, I consider that people are very friendly, very open and whatever I want to talk about racism people said well that doesn't exist here in Canada, we're an open society, we're more acceptance and we're basically not the United States. Anyways, I, I used to believe that that’s the reality in Canada, everybody is really more open and there is no racism anymore. Anyways I came here 15 years ago, I moved to Alberta and worked in the oil industry, over there, there is so many people from different country, from different cultures that everybody seems to get along well when the economy was good. So then the economy collapsed, well not collapsed, for me, so I'm back here in Hamilton and for last three months I've been trying to look for a decent job and every time I go and apply for a job I get different answers like I said one thing about living in Canada is that everybody is very polite. But I just went to Jock son Square and applied to a company and they said to me, we prefer to hire people who [speaker off mic] that’s what I was told. Just that hard to communicate because we are all from the same part of the, of the world so I, I thanked them, I didn't get the job. Then I went looking for construction and they pretty much, always ask me are you, are you Muslim, are you native, I said no I'm Mexican and whoa you don't look Mexican. So everybody talk about, where are you from, I'm from -- wonderful place, what are you doing here in Canada, so cold compared with Mexico. Then I notice that conversation goes towards away from employment into how cool it is to live in, compared to Mexico. I go to different places and like I said everybody is real polite but I don't seem to get the jobs. As soon as we get to the part of where you from. Are you from this culture, are you from this religion. That’s when the conversation turns away and that’s when I feel like I'm start losing the opportunity to get a job. So question number 5, ten years into the future I wish I'll be optimistic, like I was 15 years ago when I first came. I don't, I think the country, because of the economy maybe the country is moving in the opposite direction. Maybe people don't want to share anymore, maybe people are more welcoming. I hope I make the right decision when I move here.

>>Moderator: Thank you, thanks for telling your story. [Applause] Yes?

>>Audience Member: Mic? Try to get --

>>Audience Member:?

>>Moderator: Not tonight. [Laughter]

>>Audience Member: Not tonight. That is where we need to start. I think the institution is a system, there was an article in Hamilton a few weeks back about the first experience, it is the pronunciation of the name of the child called by the teacher when they say what is your name, how do you pronounce that? So I think the first we should be introducing today is the teacher should never ask the student about how to pronounce their name in public in the classroom. They should do that prior to seeing the child by calling their parents. [Applause] And ask the parents how do you, how do you want me to pronounce the name of your child? And do their homework before coming to the classroom and say how do you pronounce that or do you want me to call you, instead of Nebille I call you Bill. Then that child will go home and say to his mom, you know what I don't like Nebille anymore, I will go with Bill, my teacher is okay with that, I'm okay with that too. That is the first institution to address our schooling system. And this is so serious, that is the first dose of putting somebody down by not being able to pronounce their name right. Second thing is our Human Resources, second institution to address, is our publicly funded positions. Governing jobs, health care and you name it. These are being paid salaries like tax payers, they must be [speaker off mic] place for people who are not white to guarantee not the job, but grant the interview. So if I work for the city of Hamilton and obviously it was my last day you can guess what religion I am, obviously I'm black and obviously African. It was my accent you can also guess I'm an Immigrant. But we need to have Human Resources for any publicly funded agency to grant a specific percentage of [speaker off mic] being short-listed to be for people who are minorities. How do we recognize they are by having that on the application? You feel online it has to identify. Do you belong to any of these groups. Just like in the US, not to step back actually it is a step forward. It must interview, belong to -- I think grant a chance for them to get the job they are looking for. If that doesn't work then it has to be proportional. Then we must have what somebody said here before, one councillor is not white or 10% of teachers to be from visible minorities. It has to be that way because I'm not expecting the other side will give, what they of privilege. I have to take it. The last point I want to make, it just came through the presentations, somebody belong to Muslim council of Canada or something -- an organization, I don't know if he is here. Thank you.

>>Moderator: Thank you. [Applause] So it seems I have two more speakers, am I correct? Because you know I've been asking. [Laughter] All right. So three more speakers. Great, thank you. You are next.

>>Moderator: You are next.

>>Audience Member: Thank you I am a poet, story teller, speaker with passages, a platform for a newcomer speakers, born in Zimbabwe, had experiences of racism from the time I was born and in the United States and in Canada. But for a very long time I didn't want to look at it as racism. I wanted to see it as something else. Because I didn't want to deal with that. I just want to talk about myself, maybe to consider your problems to be bigger than those, those around you, I just want to talk about myself for a little bit I have received a call from a friend many years ago, received a call from a friend who is in panic because she had gotten a letter in the mailbox from the KKK they just wanted to know they don't believe people in colour and white people should live in the same building, I told her to call the police and she later told me the police said that the KKK just wanted to intimidate her, but it was okay. I was threatened with death for telling a, that permanent residence came with conditions because sponsored, violence, domestic violence in the family and has been said, comes and tells you that I'm going to kill you. Now no race was mentioned but I wonder if things might have been different if I had been of a different colour. When that happened, I'm not going to get into that, I received an e-mail from a man who is a very nice guy. His family came to Canada in the 1800s and he just wanted me to know that the true immigrants who report for Ireland, Scotland and England, said spoke for thousands of others, the title of that e-mail, I think I still have it, is get out. He mentioned all kinds of names for people Pakistan, people from Africa, people from, he said to me years ago, when we saw a Black man walking down the street, get out and be so excited to see someone different now there is just so many of you out there, we don't know what to do with you. I've been to more schools talking about being inclusive and talking about the dissimilar between white kids, African kids, Aboriginal kids and their needs than anybody else I know in the Niagara region. What I notice is children are more susceptive no difference between us or among us, our skin colours are slightly different. All our needs are the same. One other thing within that the schools that had more problems with issues like name calling and racism and bullying, when I suggested coming in there to just talk about these things, no race, nothing, I got more resistance from those schools than the schools that were more accepting. I have experienced a situation where in my office is the person in my office, in my satellite office, when a client walked in they didn't want to talk to me because or they didn't really say the natural response to me was to look towards a person who was lighter skinned. Now I don't complain about that because I have learned how to deal with that, because one of the main things I have going for me is my confidence. Because I grew up in a place at that time in a place where my teacher looked like me, where my, where the pilot looked like me, where my counsellor looked like me, where with the person selling vegetables looked like me, where the doctor looked like me and so on and so forth, that built confidence for me. Unfortunately that country was lacking in many other things, so I ended up in Canada. I'm about to finish, I kicked a Black man out of my office for racially abusing a white co-worker. I don't tolerate that. Someone said to me, do you know how difficult it is to find a job with a name, last name like frankly I never thought of that before, these are things sometimes we take for granted. If you have a privilege going for you, it is very, very difficult to think about some of these things and tonight I just want to encourage everybody. Step out of your comfort zone, step out of what is defying you, step out of the constructs that you grew up with and for one moment look at life from somebody else’s perspective. Thank you.

>>Moderator: Thank you. [Applause] So I have two more. Please go ahead.

>>Audience Member: Good evening Ontario come here from British Columbia, fell into the practise of holistic health after 17 years of dedicating my career and my community activism to the questions on this screen. 17 years. And in that time from dealing with very overt racist violent acts of having an elder in my community killed as an initiation process for a young white man to enter the Heritage front which is a white supremacist organization in Canada. While he was caring for the grounds of our, our community place of spiritual practise and healing. That comes after years of dealing with you know, I acknowledge my life is going to, I acknowledge my role as a settler in this country. I fell into healing work because I thought those questions could be tackled by holding organizations accountable, by getting involved in political action, by being part of these kinds of consultations and really dedicating myself with integrity to the process. And I think a whole lot of optimism too that perhaps things would change in that 17 years. So fast-forward to last week where a Muslim masque attempted to be fire bombed five blocks away from where I live here in Hamilton. Folks that have misconceptions and entrenched privilege and systemic bias in own existence will use violence to try to instill fear in communities. As a government and as systems we have to knock on those doors to have crimes be seen not just as hate crimes but as, as it is terrorism. [Applause] Come with intentional to instil fear in the communities they have attacked. We are doing a tremendous disservice when we tackle terrorism as a government only focused externally from our country into the world around us recreating and further instilling the kind of bias that allows these kinds of violent actions to take place in our communities. So I'm not going to address any of those questions except for 4-D which is how should the government work with racialized communities? Period. I can't speak for the Indigenous community, I'm not going to go there, not going to communicate around engaging. There has been plenty of work done to answer these questions in the last 17 years. But what I'm here to stand for is healing. The trauma that people live through on a day-to-day basis, whether or not we have experienced direct first-hand violence due to racism or the repeated on slot of daily interactions and impact of dealing with systemic racism, folks are traumatized. For generations in this country. And very little is being done by our government to support the healing process that is being led by these communities, by our communities. That honours our tradition, honours our capacity to share and learn from each other. Honours our elders and honours a process that allows generations to follow, to pick up the torch around healing, so that our communities can thrive here on this land. So I feel that the government has some work to do on figuring out how to increase access to healing services and initiatives that are offered through community design and community led practices that honour who we are as a people, that honour our traditions, that honour our elders and our healers. The public health system denies all of the work that we do as having any evidence-based impact on the healing of people living with chronic diseases as a result of the trauma that they're living with every day. That’s it. Thank you so much. [Applause]

>>Moderator: Thank you. I believe we have two more?

>>Audience Member: Hello. . I'm here for different hats, , I'm an -- [speaker off mic] community in Toronto-based and I moved it here, have to help us as Somalia community. I will tell you right now individual and I'm standing on my own feet to tell you my story of the first one. The systemic in this government. Last year I lost my son, last August, violently, racism he want to do something different his life. He left in Hamilton to have a better life and he went Vancouver to have a better life. While he left his work and he is doing the work and time for evening time and he wants to talk with a white woman, the guy he came behind him and he knocked down to his head. My son, he fall down and he injured his head and he was con unconscious he never wake up. After nine days he passed away. Because he was talking to a white woman. And the man who hit him is a white man, after a year still I didn't have an answer. I ask everybody, you know, whatever I found help and I said I wanted somebody to hear me, my pain. It’s not only me, it is a lot of Somalia, a lot of black moms. They hurt and they lost for their love one. And we don't know where to go. And we are like a chicken headless and we go around like merry-go-round. Last year one of the community in Toronto I went to him, I said I need help. And he says what do you want it, I said I need justice. And he says what is wrong with you? You know, I know it is your son, he pass, same like other. I said maybe mine is different. Because it is my son. You know what they called my son? John Doe. He have his driver license in his pocket and he have a social insurance in his pocket and $2 and two cigarette lighters. They put on the back, they put on his name and date of birth, and the hospital staff they told me they said oh he is a newcomer, when did he come to Canada? And I ask specifically I said even though if he come to Canada did he have a right to have afford these medications? And they said we need where we can charge for the hospital money. For the government, educated people is not like you have a diploma, I'm a doctor, I'm a social worker, that’s not the issue. Where is educational system for anti-racism, where is the justice, not only me it is like another some of the women in Hamilton and their children, they were killed in Hamilton. Young man say Black Lives Matter, but it matter because he is a human being. [Applause] Thank you. But all I'm asking you Sir, change for this system the federal itself, educate them and make a law, because anti-racism, it is unknown. You cannot feel when it is going to hit you and you don't know where it is going to hit you. So it needs to -- law. It says this is when you are going for this step, you break the law and you go to jail. So I don't want it to play the words like oh systemically the word is perfectly or not or whatever it is. But it is our children in Hamiltonian, especially newcomers, they don't have a place. They don't have a voice. That’s one our sister they said it, is the best schools is closing down. And that was two buildings in Hamilton. One in the jail and that’s the one in the school. And they close the school where our kids, especially newcomers, they go to the jail. Please I'm asking you again change these systemically and political words and some moms like me to understand and to have a voice or exactly our words to be heard. I don't want it like my son, he born in Ottawa, he passed away in Vancouver and they said to me he is not in database in Canada. Systemically it is wrong. If the social insurance doesn't help, driver license doesn't help, why we have it? Thank you very much Sir. [Applause]

>>Moderator: And our final speaker, thank you very much.

>>Audience Member:

>>Moderator: Our final speaker. Okay. You were here when I asked about speakers? Okay.

>>Audience Member: Hi. Yeah it’s good, thanks. Thanks for sharing. I also want to share experience of survival of systemic racism and that’s my single mother. My strong single mother. My mother and I were forced to leave Zimbabwe in grade 9, left at refugees, but don't let her know that I called her by her first name. She went from being an HR manager entrepreneur to coming to Canada and having to clean and having to do personal support work: she worked nights and our relationship wasn't the same. And my mom was stolen from me, wasn't able to do the parenting she was doing and was doing a good job of. The first-year passed, she was still doing that type of work. The second year passed now over a decade. It is past a decade and he she is still doing same type of work. She went back to school, got new credentials, that are Canadian, but still not good enough for some reason. Maybe it is her accent. Maybe they like my accent because I lost my Zimbabwe accent, right. My beautiful black Queen have to do this type of work, she has really strong skills to do better. So what’s a good reason there is no equivalence of work and educational experience? This is a cycle of systemic oppression that when we don't have the means to not only survive we can't like live properly. So here in Hamilton, we talked about Hamilton, the destination for immigrants, now it is not. One of the reasons is that there is hardly any affordable housing. And it is because of this, that’s hurting our community and breaking down the communities like the Black communities, the Muslim communities that have lived here for so long and now they are being told their rent is going up every single year. Trying to be driven out by renters and they are saying rather have these Toronto hipsters and yuppies come over and take over Hamilton. What’s a good reason there is no equivalence for work experience and education between immigration, immigrants. Is this our first and third-world mentality, really a couple years ago MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the admissions Dean resigned because she lied about her credentials. She had worked there for 28 years, so it is not about oh people from Africa may buy their University or college degree Clerkship or anything like that, because it happens here. Canada has problems, they need to always audit these new educational institutions because it does happen here in Canada too. People do buy their education from that piece of paper with no coursework involved. It is not about first and third-world mentality. Work experience is work experience. Education is education and the systemic oppression needs to stop. A person is a person is a person a man is a man. A woman is a pillar of our community. [Applause] My mom didn't get the opportunities to shatter glass ceilings -- this mental violence turns into physical violence. I think if [speaker off mic] the Aboriginal woman although there is an inquiry it is all about documents and not enough action. I just want to thank people like, my mentors. Thanks. [Applause]

>>Moderator: Thank you. I'm actually going to hold our last speaker to actually two minutes. So starting now and I will be timing you.

>>Audience Member: Okay. I was asked to speak as a youth and since I came I was like, why should I speak? What’s the point of me speaking, you know, they are going to cover all the basis and they are going to leave, you know, people with suits, smiling faces, going to all these meetings and nothing will change. I looked over here and I was surprised there isn't a lot, yeah I know, right now we are wrapping up, but even when I came in I imagined it would be packed because when I came to Canada nine years ago, I was told it is a big happy family and this is what I was told and I believed in it. But that’s not the case. When you look at this mandate of yours policy research and evaluation, first one. Why do you still need to do it, we know, you just do all the research you want in the word at the end of the, you know, what needs to happen. Keep doing research, good for you. Do your evaluations, good for you, great. Let’s just keep doing all over again and you know what’s going to happen. So why we're just like lying at each other and we're saying oh this is what we need to do. Well put your words in action, implement something for God sake, for once. The second one is public education and awareness. Public education, I went through High School here and no one told me that there is something called, you know, First Nations. I was like oh -- you mean the red Indians, you know that I thought this was coming from Jordan, this is what I learned about these people, this is what I knew about these people. Me going on exchange program I realize well oh wow, well they fail me, this education system fail me and --

>>Moderator: Time. wrap up now please.

>>Audience Member: I think I'll try, these people don't want to -- if you --

>>Moderator: I request that you wrap-up.

>>Audience Member: Okay, I'll try my best, thank you. Collaboration with communities, but it’s tough, you know. It’s really tough so I seriously like God I think my problem with it is if you want to engage youth, you have to start by trying to harder, because you are not trying harder. Okay that’s how I would wrap it.

>>Moderator: Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. [Applause]

>>Audience Member: Thank you.

>>Moderator: So we have come to the end of our evening, I want to thank you so much for taking the time out of your lives to many of you once again to share and to share from your lives and from your experiences and for those who are representing organizations to, I know you have done some work to come together to create some statements which are important and part of this process, so that’s very much appreciated. Those of us who have been around a long time in this work, we know that we have been down this road before and it is frustrating, I think many share that frustration. There were comments made around importance of interknowledge and lack of sharing of that knowledge, except that we know the research is there, many of you alluded to that. We also know that whether talking about Indigenous racism anti-Black racism, other kinds of racism and racism in terms of employment, racism in terms of education, racism in terms of upward mobility, we know that it exists and we also know the research has been done. So many of you spoke extraordinarily eloquently to that and passionately to that. We heard many recommendations and in fact I would say that similar to the missing Indigenous woman and the report that was done on the plight of the Indigenous people, those are really calls to actions more than recommendations. I think that’s what many people are saying, Minister, there needs to be action and that is coming through loudly and clearly from many people who spoke this evening. We also heard comments about the importance of looking at disaggregated data. I don't think there is anyone in the room that doesn't think that is important, but we heard passionately about how that data needs to be used and that perhaps we need to turn it around a little bit and look at the practices of exclusion as opposed to normal way that we use the data. So I think we heard that as well. We heard about the importance of accountability, not just accountability in terms of those that commit racism and racist acts but accountability in terms of those of us who are responsible for implementing recommendations. So we also heard that we need to be accountable for the many reports and calls to actions and recommendations that have come out of that and the fact that multiples of millions have been spent on the reports. So the tax dollars that we have been paying have been spent on the reports but we have yet to see the fruits of that. We also heard about and several people spoke to the importance of looking at the possibility of having legislation or an act around working on anti-racism and what needs to happen in terms of that. So I will emphasize that was said about three times by three different speakers. We heard about environmental racism and the importance of looking at that as well. We heard, I think a couple people talk about the importance of youth movements such as the Black Lives Matter movement. And we've heard the importance of having ensuring that we have an intersectional, someone said integrated but really intersectional approach to addressing racism that is not just about segmenting and having people go here or there, but looking at how the different work that and impact of racism that also the different Ministries that are responsive for different things, how they need to work together and have an intersectional approach. So we heard a lot, I won't go over everything. But we have recorded the comments you made this evening. One of the things that I think resonated with me was that someone made a comment about the importance of seeing hate crimes as it is -- terrorism, the word terrorism is really around only particular types of people that do particular types of things. So we're hearing about the impact of that, we also heard about looking at the trauma of racism and the importance of healing. Perhaps that’s a good place to end in terms of looking at what needs to happen around the healing due to the trauma of racism that many people experience. At this stage I think what I would like to do is call on the Minister to make some comments to wrap up our time together and to also reiterate some of the importance of the work that needs to be done going forward. Minister Coteau.

>>Minister Coteau: Well thank you very much, I just want to thank the volunteers that were here tonight helping. Our youth ambassadors for being here, thank you very much. [Applause] I want to thank our facilitator for the great job she did this evening, thank you Paulette. [Applause] I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say thank you very much for being here. I know this conversation could be frustrating and I heard from many people tonight that we have had this conversation for many, many years. I just want to take a minute to tell you a little bit of a story. When I was a trustee at the Toronto District School Board I brought forward a motion to start to collect race-based data we had public consultations on this issue. We heard from the community groups. It was, you know, 500 or 600 people showing up, had a couple consultations throughout the city and the exact same point came forward. We have been down this road before, we have done this before, it is a waste of time, you know, you should be doing it right away and that conversation took place because there is a lot of frustration out there because people have been working on these issues for many, many years. A year after that we got the first series of data that came forward and it showed us a whole new perspective on what was happening in the City of when it came to academic performance, suspension rates, expulsion rates, things like that. We took that information and applied it back to, we put a lens in the system and started changing policy. You know, perfect example was the learning opportunity index, it ranked schools by most needy schools to the least needy schools when it comes to resources. And overnight those schools numbers changed. Schools that were number three, jumped to 350, schools that were 200 jumped to number 5, we saw transformation in how extra resources were put out there for new people. We started to monitor suspension and expulsion rates. We know over the last decade the expulsion rates had drastically dropped. There have been challenges the Toronto School Board has taken on. It has a transparent way of monitoring issues and really putting that lens into policy making. So I know I heard comments that, you know, policy evaluation research, what does that mean? Well it does mean a lot. It means a lot because it is public accountability. It shows us exactly what is happening in the system at any given moment and the questions we put forward today was to say if we're going to collect data, should we start in hospitals, should we start in schools? Should we start in corrections, should we start in government and policing. There is only a certain amount of work you can do at the very beginning, it has only been six months since we start up this Directorate, but we're here today to ask you for your advice to move forward. So I understand people may be pessimistic about the future of this Directorate. And we should just move on with what we're, you know, what we should be doing. I'll tell you this, when we were in Sudbury, Thunder Bay, London, when we're in Ottawa, we're going to hear different conversations, we're going to hear different stories. The story this mother told tonight about her son, the stories about son saying his mother, you know, was, these are important stories. We need to hear these stories before we launch this Directorate. I just want to say thank you for sharing those stories, I know it is difficult and you have my commitment that the stories we heard here tonight, the information we're going to be gathering from across this Province, will be brought into our plan and we will be able to build a better Ontario. So please have some faith in us, we're trying to do the right thing and hold the system accountable and really reveal what’s going on in the system in order to make changes, not only in my Ministry, children youth services but through our government. Thank you very much for your time and I hope everyone has a safe trip home, thank you. [Applause]

appening in the system at any given moment and the questions we put forward today was to say if we're going to collect data, should we start in hospitals, should we start in schools? Should we start in corrections, should we start in government and policing. There is only a certain amount of work you can do at the very beginning, it has only been six months since we start up this Directorate, but we're here today to ask you for your advice to move forward. So I understand people may be pessimistic about the future of this Directorate. And we should just move on with what we're, you know, what we should be doing. I'll tell you this, when we were in Sudbury, Thunder Bay, London, when we're in Ottawa, we're going to hear different conversations, we're going to hear different stories. The story this mother told tonight about her son, the stories about son saying his mother, you know, was, these are important stories. We need to hear these stories before we launch this Directorate. I just want to say thank you for sharing those stories, I know it is difficult and you have my commitment that the stories we heard here tonight, the information we're going to be gathering from across this Province, will be brought into our plan and we will be able to build a better Ontario. So please have some faith in us, we're trying to do the right thing and hold the system accountable and really reveal what’s going on in the system in order to make changes, not only in my Ministry, children youth services but through our government. Thank you very much for your time and I hope everyone has a safe trip home, thank you. [Applause]