Here is the speech I gave at the first Peace and Justice Dinner Honouring Dr Pearleen Oliver on Oct 2, in Halifax NS. We came to remember the Nova Scotia’s late Black human rights advocate and activist.

First a big thanks goes to Kathrin Winkler of VOW (Voice of Women for Peace) who thought about this evening and worked hard to made it happen.

Thank you for coming tonight, and listening to me for a few minutes.

As some of you know, I am one of the founders of Equity Watch, a nonprofit, NS-based human rights organisation. 

We started 5 years ago. Our mandate is to watch  and monitor, and make sure the NS Human Rights Commission (NSHRC) and its Boards of Inquiry (BOI) follow up decisions they make in human rights cases. 

Our first victory…

Our first victory led to the creation of Equity Watch. That was the case of Liane Tessier. As many here know, she was a firefighter in the Halifax Fire Service.  Liane was the victim of workplace harassment, bullying and gender discrimination. In 2017, after her case had been ongoing for 12 years— she finally received financial compensation, a public apology, and an admission from the fire service that there was a culture of gender discrimination within the fire service.  There was also a commitment from the fire service and HRM to implement policy changes. 

Equity Watch decided to follow up on those eight policy changes.  Those eight promises, included education programs, workplace complaint policies, inclusion of members of designated groups on hiring panels, training for those panel members, a policy review and an annual update and collection of data on recruitment and hiring. As far as we in Equity Watch know, only one – hiring a woman for the management team has taken place.  Every year we write the NSHRC and ask if the other issues have been addressed—in six years we have never received a reply from the Human Rights Commission, or HRM or the Fire Service on what they have done. 

After that decision, Liane Tessier, my husband Larry Haiven and I decided to found Equity Watch to hold the powerful to account and to ensure decisions made by Human Rights Boards of Inquiry are carried out.

The case of Kirk Johnson…

A case that showed us how important monitoring was is that of Kirk Johnson. As many of you know, Johnson was a successful boxer from North Preston.  After being stopped by Halifax Regional police 29 times in 3 months, for “driving while black,” Johnson complained to the NSHRC.  In 2003, he won his case and one of the recommendations of the Board of Inquiry was that the police keep statistics on the race of all drivers they stopped.

The police kept the statistics from 2005, probably at the bottom of a drawer somewhere, but no one analysed the data for 11 years.  In 2016, a CBC reporter filed a FOIPOP request and found that the data revealed Black people were stopped three times more often than whites in HRM. From there, the commission  hire University of Toronto criminologist Scot Wortley who found that the figures were much worse:  police stopped Black men six times more often than they did whites.  This is an example of why monitoring and demanding accountability is essential.

The case of Andrella David…

Finally, I want to talk briefly about the 2016 NS Human Rights case of Andrella David.  In 2009 David and her daughter (who are Black) were shopping at the Sobeys store in Tantallon [a Halifax suburb] when a clerk at the checkout accused David of shoplifting.  When David was showed the store’s camera footage, she saw the person Sobeys accused was not her. She launched a human rights complaint that she was racially profiled.  Seven years later, the Board of Inquiry (BOI) ruled in David’s favour and demanded Sobeys apologize to David, that all staff should be trained about racial profiling. The BOI also said that Sobeys had to deliver a report to the NSHRC to confirm details of the training. This was in April 2016. 

By August 2016, Sobey’s had appealed the NSHRC decision and had done nothing.  But the Black community, including 19 churches and community allies (me included), started a boycott of the Tantallon Sobeys to demand it follow through on the Board’s orders.  Sobeys eventually abandoned its appeal. And a company spokeswoman insisted that Sobeys was working on training to be delivered to all current employees, new hires and security guards plus those working in Sobeys subsidiaries.   We have no idea if these promises beyond a mere apology were kept.  The boycott did force Sobeys into the public spotlight – but it’s not clear what training was done, and how thorough it was. 

Kudos to Black activists and to the Media…

What I’m getting at is this:  here we have two examples of how in one case the media, and in the other a large group of mainly Black activists pressured major organizations in this province to carry out the remedies ordered by Boards of Inquiry of  the NSHRC.  And there are many more examples.

Equity Watch was created to watch, to watch over the decisions and make sure remedies ordered are indeed carried out. 

It took 11 years for someone at the CBC to ask about the statistics kept on street checks—originally ordered by the BOI in the Johnson case. It took months, a boycott, and rallies to pressure Sobeys to drop their appeal and carry out anti-racism training of its staff.  Now it’s up to Equity Watch and the rest of us not to allow corporations and governments who do discriminate to get off the hook.

To read Equity Watch’s 2021 critique of the NS Human Rights Commission, read Justice Impeded online here.

Featured image at the top: By Tara Reddick, a Black artist originally from Antigonish. Reddick created this during her artist residency in Antigonish from July – September 2020. In her words, “I would encourage you to check out ASAP – The All –Of-Us Society for Art Presentation. They are dedicated to creating opportunities for BIPOC individuals and 2SLGBTQIA+ artists.” To read more, look at this.