N.B.’s former commissioner on systemic racism ‘gutted’ by province’s year of inaction

New Brunswick’s first-and-only commissioner on systemic racism said it’s unacceptable that the government has yet to respond to her report almost a year after its release.

“It hasn’t even made a ripple,” Manju Varma said of the report she released last December with 86 recommendations.

“There was more impact around the announcement of this position than there is actually from the report,” said Varma, who left the job in February and is now executive director of human rights, equity and inclusion for the Nova Scotia Community College.

“To see it languishing after a year — and from what I read recently, they’re not even going to look at it until next year — disappointing is not the word.”

Varma said the province “appears to be less inclusive since I released my report than it was before the report. And that’s gutting.”

Arlene Dunn, the minister of post-secondary education, training and labour, was not made available for an interview, but sent an emailed statement earlier this month.

“Our government remains committed to ensuring New Brunswick is inclusive, welcoming, and supportive. We value the important work of the Commissioner on Systemic Racism that will help inform meaningful change in our province.

“We have reviewed the commissioner’s report, and we are now in the process of developing a workplan, based on a collection of data, that will help us perform a root cause analysis into systemic racism in New Brunswick in the new year.”

Liberal Leader Susan Holt said the province has taken far too long to respond.

“It shouldn’t take longer to respond to a report than it did to produce the report,” said Holt.

“How are people supposed to feel when we’re trying to grow this province and retain people here and the government can’t prioritize acting on reducing racism?”

Holt said the delay in responding in any public way “says that this government doesn’t take racism seriously.”

Even from her vantage point as an MLA and as leader of the opposition, “we haven’t heard a peep on this. … I haven’t seen any signs that this is on the radar.”

Indigenous reaction

Indigenous groups aren’t happy about the government’s lack of response either — nor were they happy about the process.

The six chiefs of the Wolastoqey Nation declined to participate, saying the commissioner’s year-long investigation was an “ill-equipped and ineffective alternative to an inquiry.”

Midway through the process, nine Mi’kmaw communities withdrew, alleging political interference after a mid-term report from Varma seemed poised to endorse a public inquiry. Plans to release anything mid-term were shelved after Varma met with Premier Blaine Higgs and Dunn in spring 2022, although Varma has always maintained there was no political pressure.

In an emailed statement sent to CBC News earlier this month, Chief Ross Perley of Neqotkuk First Nation said, “This is exactly why the six chiefs of the Wolastoqey Nation refused to participate in the commission.

“We were concerned from the very beginning that this commission was a sham process designed to deflect from the need for an Indigenous-led inquiry into systemic racism.”

The province is no safer today for Indigenous people “and systemic racism is still an everyday reality,” Perley said.

“We are at the same point we were three years ago: waiting for action.”

Action taken — just not by province, Varma says

While the province hasn’t publicly responded to Varma’s report with a plan, she said some work got underway.

“Some things have been done, but not from the provincial government,” she said.

The cities of Moncton, Saint John and Fredericton “have all taken recommendations from the report and framed them in a municipal context.”

She said various sports organizations and other provinces are following some of the recommendations from the report.

“That gives me hope because even though it was written for the province of New Brunswick, systemic racism is everywhere.

“So if other organizations, other provinces are using some of that information that is very hopeful for me.”

She said the New Brunswick government has “kind of” followed at least one of her suggestions.

• Province reveals replacements for 2 N.B. place names containing racial slur

Although it didn’t link the announcement to Varma’s recommendations, the province earlier this month said it has come up with a new “streamlined approach” to renaming geographic locations in the province that contain racial slurs, beginning with the names of two geographical features in northern New Brunswick that contain a slur against Indigenous woman.

Varma said she’s disappointed the announcement was the closest the province came to acknowledging or following her recommendations.

“I’ve been working in this area a long time and … it’s a lifetime of being a woman of colour,” she said. “So this represents far more than just one year of my life.

“So yes, I’m absolutely disappointed as the writer of that report, as a New Brunswicker of colour, as someone who believes in inclusivity on all sorts of levels. … And of course I’m angry as a taxpayer as well.”

Varma said it’s frustrating to see the amount of energy expended by government when supporting — or in the case of a school policy on gender-identity and pronoun preference — a cause.

“The energy that went into Policy 713 is — I would love to have seen a quarter of that energy go into implementing some of the recommendations that I made.”

She said her frustration extends beyond her report and the lack of government response.

“It’s not just about the report. It is seeing the way that this province is moving backwards in so many ways around inclusion.”

Lots of ‘low-hanging fruit’ to start with

She said she made it really easy for government to respond — even incrementally.

“There are 86 recommendations, each of which could ripple into smaller recommendations. There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit there.”

She said the recommendations weren’t ever presented as “an all-or-nothing thing.” She said she would have been content had they just tried to chip away at the list.

And, “even when they follow a recommendation, they don’t even recognize that it’s a recommendation,” as in the case of changing racist place names, she said.

“They could have easily said, ‘See, we’re doing something.'”

Varma said government officials don’t even have to read past Page 2 of the 45-page report to find her priority recommendations.

To make it even clearer now, she’s picked her top two.

The first would be to “educate GNB senior leaders and elected officials on the meaning of systemic racism,” she said. “So even before you get to your civil servants, educate the top — educate the ones that are public facing. Educate the ones that make announcements and make decisions.”

The second priority would be to create a permanent office that “looks out for people who are marginalized” and speaks up for them.

“To the government, I would say, ‘Please take the energy that you seem to be putting into making the province less inclusive, and put that into energy that makes the province more inclusive,” Varma said.

With 86 recommendations to choose from, Holt said the government could have made a quick start “with the low-hanging fruit.”

“Change the stuff that is within the control of this government to change right away,” she said.

Or they could have started by creating a group to prioritize the recommendations.

“I think that seems like a logical, doable step to tackling the rest of the problem,” Holt said.