Dignity and Equality

• Author: Alan Borovoy
• Pages: 253-299

• 253 •

chapter eleven

Dignity and Equality

To begin this chapter, I f‌ind it useful to quote from one of my

recent books:

Democracy is the only system in this world that puts a premium on

human dignity. Even though people differ in all kinds of ways, for ex-

ample, in ethnicity, proclivity, and even ability, the democratic system

considers them equal in dignity.1

Not surprisingly, therefore, a sizeable amount of my activity and that

of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) focused directly on

the threats to dignity and equality faced by many of our fellow citizens.

We had occasion to go after our state institutions for both the hurt they

presumed to inf‌lict and the help they declined to provide.

Race, Religion, and Ethnicity

By the time I left the Labour Committee, a lot had been accom-

plished in the f‌ield of human rights, particularly in race and ethnic

relations. Virtually every jurisdiction in Canada had laws against such

discrimination in employment, public accommodations, public licens-

ing, and housing. Moreover, virtually every jurisdiction had a human

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“at the barricades”

rights commission with full-time staff to administer, enforce, and edu-

cate with respect to these laws.

Needless to say, my interest in racial and ethnic relations did not ex-

pire with my departure from the Labour Committee. But, with changes

in the nature of the problems, there had to be commensurate changes

in the way I addressed those problems. I began to learn, for example,

that a signif‌icant amount of job discrimination was being practised by

employment agencies. Numbers of employers who wanted to avoid hir-

ing certain minorities would delegate such dirty work to these agen-

cies. Minority group members who sought employment through these

agencies would typically have no way to know when they were being

improperly passed over. After all, they would have no way to know the

identity of the agencies’ customers.

Over the years, therefore, I instigated a number of surveys into how

various employment agencies would react to discriminatory job orders.

During the fall of 1980, for example, CCLA telephoned twenty-f‌ive ran-

domly chosen employment agencies across the country — in Halifax, To-

ronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. In each case, our tester posed as the

representative of an American f‌irm that was planning to locate rather soon

in that community. In the course of the discussion, which was ostensibly

designed to f‌ind out what kind of services the agency would perform, our

tester asked whether the agency would agree to screen out non-whites.

Only three of the tested agencies expressly refused; f‌ive responded

in rather vague terms but did not refuse; in seventeen cases, there was

no doubt about their willingness to comply. Indeed, many of them ex-

pressed considerable enthusiasm for the assignment. Here are some of

the replies:

• “I’m a businessman . . . if you don’t want a black, we don’t send

a black. If you don’t want any Indians, we don’t send you any In-

dians. . . . My business is to make a placement and make some

money. I’m going to send you what you want.”

• “So it’s white and bright.”

• “Well, that’s why you go through an agency.”

• “I like to get it from my clients right up front. . . . If they don’t

want non-white people, well heaven’s sake, tell me right now and

I won’t send you non-white people.”

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Chapter Eleven: Dignity and Equality

The results were broadcast f‌irst on CTV’s W5 and subsequently

picked up by a number of other media. In the aftermath of the publi-

city, CCLA in Halifax, Toronto, and Winnipeg pressed their respective

governments for follow-up action. Most of the affected governments

at least wrote to the employment agencies and reminded them of their

obligations under the law. In Ontario, the response was somewhat more

aggressive. We called on the minister of labour to launch a program of

auditing the employment agencies irrespective of whether complaints

had been f‌iled. The minister announced that he intended to recom-

mend that the law be amended to require the agencies to keep fuller

records of their activities so as to render the agencies more amenable

to auditing procedures.

The more I learned and ref‌lected on the issue of racial and ethnic

discrimination, the more I began to encounter a largely unaddressed

problem: systemic barriers. The clue to the existence of this problem

was the apparently widespread inequities we found in various sectors

of the economy. Despite the fact that human rights legislation had been

on the books since the early 1950s, we discovered numbers of situa-

tions in which racial minorities were hardly in evidence.

At some point in the 1970s, one of my executive members told me

that he had never seen a non-white f‌iref‌ighter in the city of Toronto. Of

course, I did not know how many f‌ires my colleague was in the habit

of attending. But his observations obviously required further investiga-

tion. I set out, therefore, to learn how many non-white f‌iref‌ighters there

actually were in Toronto.

Of course, the f‌irst problem was: How do you get that kind of infor-

mation? I could just imagine that if we had telephoned the f‌ire depart-

ment and asked them directly, they would likely have told us to get lost.

So, we came up with a ruse. Our researcher telephoned all twenty-seven

f‌ire stations then existing in Toronto and told them that he was the

adult leader of a group of young people whom he wished to take on

a visit to their respective f‌ire stations. But, since he had some visible

minorities in his group, he wanted to take them there when one of their

visible minority f‌iref‌ighters was on duty. (For those who might balk at

such deceptions, I am reminded of the Anglican priest who once told

me that, when you are doing God’s work, you are entitled to be as wise

as a serpent.)