For years, researchers, activists and community leaders have documented how Indigenous people, Black people and other racial groups are disproportionately affected by polluting industries.
Now, new legislation mandates the federal government to better track and seek to remedy this injustice.
Bill C-226, sponsored by Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, was passed into law Thursday night, nearly four years after a similar bill was first introduced in Parliament. The legislation would require the federal government to develop a national strategy on environmental racism within two years.
“There’s no question that Canada has had a problem with environmental racism for decades, and now we need to act,” May said at a press conference earlier this week.
Environmental racism advocates have been calling for years for legislation to combat environmental racism, in which polluting factories and other environmentally damaging activities are disproportionately located near Indigenous and communities of color.
As outlined legislationThe national strategy must include “examination of the connections between race, socioeconomic status, and environmental risks” and the steps taken to address environmental racism.
These could include changes in federal laws, policies, and programs.
“It’s been a long journey,” said Ingrid Waldron, professor of international peace and social justice at McMaster University and a promoter of such legislation.
Waldron is one of the founders of the Canadian Environmental and Climate Justice Coalition. There’s something in the waterdocuments the health impacts of environmental disasters on Black and Indigenous communities in Nova Scotia and beyond, and the actions these groups have taken to combat the pollution that contaminates their communities.
He said the law means two things: it “puts tough demands on governments” and it “means a lot more transparency and a lot more pressure on governments to do something.”
“A step in the right direction”
Supporter The experience of the Aspeeshosewagon Netum Anishinabek First Nation, known as Grassy Narrows in Ontario, is often pointed to as one of the most striking examples of environmental racism and its disproportionate impact on communities of colour.
Local residents have been suffered health damage This is due to mercury contamination from a former paper and pulp mill.
Indigenous peoples Litigation in the Ontario Superior Court Earlier this month it was alleged that the government had failed to prevent or remedy the effects of mercury contamination in the English Wabigoon River system.
Judy Da Silva, a grandmother who lives in Grassy Narrows and is the local environmental health coordinator, compared her community’s experience to that of Walkerton, a small town in southern Ontario where an E. coli contamination killed seven people and sickened more than 2,000 in May 2000. An investigation was ordered the same month the outbreak occurred, and residents were offered compensation the following year.
“They were quickly compensated, but Mr. Grassi has been facing this issue for decades and still has no resolution,” da Silva told CBC News earlier this month. “I think this is environmental racism.”
Judy da Silva, environmental health coordinator for Grassy Narrows First Nation, says the lawsuit against Ontario and Ottawa stems from years of inaction and “environmental racism.”
Environmental racism also surfaces through the regulatory processes for large-scale projects like the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which Indigenous groups say are often driven by a failure to obtain prior consent.
“It’s really important to bring awareness to how unfair this process is,” said Reuben George, manager of the Sacred Trust, an organization started by the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation in British Columbia. Pipeline Expansion Project.
George said his experience with the Canada Energy Regulator and other energy sector review agencies left him feeling the fossil fuel industry was being prioritized over Indigenous concerns.
He said the Environmental Racism Act was “necessary and a good step in the right direction.”
2020 Report United Nations Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights “There is a pattern in Canada of marginalized groups, particularly Indigenous peoples, being on the wrong side of harmful divides and finding themselves in situations that would be unacceptable in the rest of Canada,” he said.
Cheryl Teeraksingh, a sociology professor at Toronto Metropolitan University who studies environmental racism, said in an interview that the bill could also have implications in areas such as public health, urban planning and workers’ rights.
“Having that language and recognition that the federal government thinks this is important gives people rights, and claiming rights is something that all Canadians should have,” she said.
Under the new law, the government may collect health statistics near environmental hazards and work with local groups to develop strategies that must be published by 2026 and reviewed after five years.
Supporters say the plan needs funding to get going.
