A Call for a Transformative and Reparative Anti-Racism Strategy for Canada (2024-2028)
A Position Paper
Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy (2024-2028) claims to address racism, hatred, and bigotry by promoting equity, inclusion, and social cohesion. However, the strategy is fundamentally flawed in its approach, failing to engage with the deep-rooted structures that uphold racial inequality. It is not enough to mitigate the effects of racism through anti-hate campaigns and economic integration initiatives. A meaningful anti-racism strategy must acknowledge and address the historical and systemic roots of racial differentiation, economic subjugation, and intergenerational trauma.
This position paper critically examines Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy (2024-2028), arguing that its foundation is built on corporate nationalism rather than genuine justice, that it ignores the European-manufactured concept of race, and that it fails to address intergenerational trauma and the need for reparations. To be effective, the strategy must dismantle race consciousness, recognize Canada’s historical complicity in global oppression, and establish a multi-generational plan that prioritizes trauma recovery, reparations, and re-education.
Submitted to:
Office of the Prime Minister
Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Persons with Disabilities
Public Health Agency of Canada
Canadian Heritage
Canadian Race Relations Foundation (CRRF)
It is true that morality cannot be legislated, but the behaviour of men can be regulated. The question is whether we as a nation are willing to solve these problems.
Conventional wisdom suggests that government strategies such as Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy are driven by nationalist ideals—the desire to foster unity, inclusion, and national progress. However, this perspective fails to account for the economic motivations underlying modern governance.
Canada, like most nation-states, functions as a corporate entity, prioritizing economic return on investment over genuine social transformation. This strategy frames anti-racism in terms of economic productivity, reinforcing the idea that the ultimate goal is to ensure the seamless socio-economic participation of all Canadians. While participation in the workforce and financial independence are essential, the centering of economic productivity as the primary mechanism to combat racism is a neoliberal distortion of justice. It reduces racial justice to economic metrics rather than human dignity.
This corporate-driven framework is evident in how the Anti-Racism Strategy is structured. Its policies are tied to key performance indicators (KPIs) that measure success based on economic participation rather than structural change. The underlying assumption is clear: Racial oppression can be solved through market participation, rather than systemic transformation.
Liberate the minds of men and ultimately you will liberate the bodies of men.
The very systems of differentiation and oppression that Canada now seeks to address were established and maintained by the Canadian state itself as part of its participation in the broader European colonial project. Canada was not a bystander to global racial oppression—it was an active participant in the genocide, land dispossession, and economic exploitation of Indigenous, African, and other racialized communities.
If Canada acknowledges its role in these injustices, how then can it claim to be the solution while still operating from its own ideological framework? This strategy remains rooted in Canada’s dominant ways of knowing and being, which inherently prioritize Eurocentric governance, economic pragmatism, and selective inclusion. A meaningful anti-racism strategy cannot be designed from the same colonial mindset that engineered racial oppression in the first place.
Instead, Canada must shift from a prescriptive approach—one in which the government dictates solutions from its position of power—to a transformative and reparative model in which the communities most affected by racism define and implement their own healing processes.
I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against.
Any strategy claiming to combat racism must first deconstruct the foundational concept that enables racism to exist: the construct of race itself.
Sociologists, historians, and philosophers have documented how race was invented as a category of thought and a practice of domination during the 17th and 18th centuries. The earliest racial typologies, such as François Bernier’s 1684 classification, were not neutral observations but political and economic tools designed to justify global subjugation and resource extraction. Enlightenment theorists used racial categories not as descriptors of human diversity, but as instruments of social control.
Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy fails to confront this fundamental historical truth. Without addressing the falsehood of race, the strategy merely reconfigures the symptoms of racism rather than dismantling its ideological foundation.
True racial justice requires deprogramming race consciousness—challenging the deeply embedded beliefs that sustain racial hierarchies. Any anti-racism strategy that ignores this is, at best, a symbolic effort and, at worst, a perpetuation of the very ideology it seeks to challenge.
It always seems impossible until it's done.
The persistence of racism is not only a social problem—it is a cognitive distortion. Racism is a trauma-based condition, reinforced across generations through epigenetics, cultural transmission, and systemic validation.
When individuals and communities undergo trauma recovery, they are empowered in their identities and evolve beyond race consciousness—beyond the falsehoods imposed on them over 500 years of colonial rule. If Canada were serious about anti-racism, it would center trauma recovery in its strategy.
Healing racial trauma requires structured, community-led programs that integrate:
A 10-year, state-funded National Healing Program that allows communities to own this process should be the core of Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy. Without it, the cycle of racial differentiation will continue indefinitely.
When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.
Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy (2024-2028) fails to meaningfully engage with the issue of reparations, an essential component of racial justice. Without economic, psychological, and structural reparations, addressing racism remains performative rather than transformative. Canada must recognize that anti-racism cannot be effective unless it acknowledges and remedies the systemic dispossession, economic marginalization, and intergenerational trauma that racialized communities continue to experience.
Globally, nations such as Barbados have initiated reparations models that acknowledge historical injustices and provide material solutions to address them. In Canada, the conversation around reparations remains largely symbolic, with little to no commitment to material compensation, trauma recovery initiatives, or systemic change that would genuinely correct the long-standing impacts of racial oppression. If Canada is to demonstrate true leadership in anti-racism, reparations must be central to the strategy.
We propose the following framework as an essential component of Canada’s reparations agenda:
1. Financial Reparations and Direct Support for Trauma Recovery
2. Truth-Telling, Cultural Institutions, and Public Memorialization
3. Intergenerational Wealth Redistribution and Land Justice
Reparations are not an abstract concept; they are a necessary correction to centuries of state-sanctioned injustice. Canada has an obligation to confront its past, rectify its present, and build a future where equity is not just an aspiration but a lived reality. The time for performative action is over. Reparations must be the foundation of any serious anti-racism strategy.
The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.
A true anti-racism strategy must be multi-generational, recognizing that systemic racism is not only embedded in policies and institutions but also in cultural narratives, social norms, and the early development of identity and bias. Canada’s 2024-2028 framework is fundamentally flawed because it treats anti-racism as an immediate policy shift rather than a long-term transformation of societal values. Without integrating re-education into the socialization process of the next generation (ages 0-30), the strategy will fail to interrupt the intergenerational transmission of racial biases, systemic disadvantages, and economic inequities.
The development of race consciousness is deeply rooted in early childhood education, media representation, and institutional policies that continue to sustain racial hierarchies. To truly dismantle racism, Canada must commit to a 30-year strategy that disrupts entrenched racial biases and systemic disadvantages through education, public policy, and institutional reform.
Core Components of a 30-Year Anti-Racist Re-Education Strategy
Integrating Trauma Recovery and Healing into Education and Workplaces
Transforming Media Representation and Public Discourse
Fostering Advocacy Skills and Civic Engagement
Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
Join us on this National Healing Journey. Join us as we speak truth about our collective experience, forgive the atrocities of the past, and reconcile with ourselves to build a future where true justice and equity are experienced by all Black Canadians. This event is a pivotal step towards healing and empowerment. Secure your spot now to contribute to this transformative event. Early bird rates available until June 30, 2025.
The Truth and Reconciliation Jubilee is the culmination of a structured, multi-step process designed to guide an entire community through a transformative communal healing journey. This process begins with the selection of one community in Ontario to pilot the Becoming Project, ensuring that the initiative is deeply embedded in the lived realities of Afro-descendant Canadians.
Once selected, the community undergoes a comprehensive engagement and preparation phase, where 100% of its members are onboarded to participate in the journey toward healing and transformation. A local Communal Round Table is then formed, linking directly to the National Round Table, ensuring that insights, strategies, and resources flow seamlessly between the local and national levels.
Racism is not just a social injustice—it is a psychological wound, passed down through generations, embedded in the DNA and Psyche of communities who have endured systemic oppression. The legacy of colonialism, slavery, genocide, and racial violence does not end with policy reform; it lingers in the form of intergenerational trauma, shaping the mental health, economic opportunities, and lived experiences of Indigenous, Black, and other racialized communities.
Canada has long funded social programs aimed at addressing mental health disparities, yet it has failed to recognize that the trauma caused by racial oppression requires specialized, culturally relevant, and widely accessible care. Without a comprehensive and holistic healing strategy, anti-racism efforts are incomplete.
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Dr. Joan Samuels-Dennis,
Dean, School of Psychotherapeutic Innovations
Becoming Institute Inc
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