It’s just not the systemic discrimination most people talk about

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Systemic discrimination is legal in Canada. It’s just not the systemic discrimination most people talk about.

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The entirely legal forms of systemic discrimination are the so-called “ameliorative programs” meant to help those whom the Charter calls “disadvantaged groups.”

The case that’s always been made for this kind of “affirmative action” — the friendly word for “progressive” discrimination — is that it’s meant to fix a historic and ongoing problem. Certain groups have suffered discrimination and this has led to a whole host of negative outcomes, everything from under-representation in certain jobs among the well-to-do and over-representation in less pleasant outcomes in regards to criminal justice, poverty and educational failure.

All of this was made legal in the Section 15(2) of the Charter back when Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and the premiers negotiated it in 1981 and then the same dispensation was written into various provincial human rights legislation. It makes Canada quite distinct from the United States where these programs have a much more dubious legal basis.

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The question that rarely gets asked, though, is: how long will they continue?

The special provision that allowed........

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