Each year on Human Rights Day December 10, we commemorate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the first example of a set of fundamental and indivisible human rights that apply to all people, everywhere.

National telephone townhalls for PSAC’s Anti-Racism Action Plan have been launched for Indigenous and racialized members. These national townhalls are the last part of the Anti-Racism Action Plan consultation process that began in 2021.

The federal government has already spent nearly $8 million fighting to dismiss the Black Class Action lawsuit – ten times more (in French only) than it has invested implementing the mental health fund for Black federal public servants promised in the 2022 federal budget. 

Although no slave ship docked on Canadian shores, the transatlantic slave trade and other forms of enslavement existed in Canada for more than 200 years. Today, we reflect on the devastating history of slavery and the legacy of racism that Black, Caribbean, and people of African descent and Indigenous people, particularly women, continue to experience today.

In 2021, PSAC launched [8] the Anti-Racism Action Plan to review how our union serves, mobilizes, engages and represents Indigenous, Black, Asian and racialized members and works to address harm and build a truly anti-racist union. 

The Black Class Action Secretariat and several major unions are renewing calls to settle the lawsuit on behalf of tens of thousands of Black federal public service workers in the wake of the government’s admission the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) discriminated against its Black and racialized employees.

On Emancipation Day, we recognize the struggle for freedom led by enslaved people, the consequences of inter-generational trauma that followed, and the link between slavery and systemic discrimination today. Discrimination in hiring practices, wage gaps, microaggressions, and other inequities continue to be the reality for many Indigenous and Black workers.