For hundreds of years, racialized and Indigenous communities in Canada have been fighting against discriminatory policies and regulations to defend their environment. Benjamin Chavis, an African American civil rights leader was aware of such prejudice and coined the issue environmental racism, which he defined as “... racial discrimination in environmental policy-making, the enforcement of regulations and laws, the deliberate targeting of communities of colour for toxic waste facilities, the official sanctioning of the life-threatening presence of poisons and pollutants in our communities, and the history of excluding people of colour from leadership of the ecology movements.” This is not a novel problem in Canada, where Indigenous, Black and other racialized communities have historically suffered from this type of discrimination and to this day suffer its health and economic impacts. Modern positive action needs to be considered in the historical context of the suffering of communities which have been discriminated against across Canada. 

Canada’s Chemical Valley is a region of Ontario home to about 40% of Canada’s chemical industry. The pollution originating from these factories affects tens of thousands of people in the surrounding areas, particularly the members of the Aamjiwnaang nation. Africville, Nova Scotia, was home to a community of hundreds of descendants of African slaves. As industrialisation progressed in Halifax, dumps, an infectious disease hospital, and an abattoir were all placed in and around the town, causing the  community to be declared a slum and eventually bulldozed. A persistent example of environmental racism in Canada can also be found in the fact that First Nations homes are 90 times more likely to be without safe drinking water than other Canadian homes. These are only a few of the many policies and decisions that have resulted in environmental degradation disproportionately affecting communities of colour, consequently leading to worse health outcomes for these groups. 

These cases are no coincidence, but rather the result of problematic policies which actively discriminated against people of colour such as the 1885 Head Tax, the 1923 Exclusion Act, and the Indian Act. While these policies did not directly cause environmental racism, they are critically motivated by racist attitudes that persist in Canadian society and government. Some other policies, though, reflect an explicit disregard for the environment of these communities. For example, the penalties for dumping garbage or waste on Crown Land are typically thousands of dollars, the penalty for dumping on areas designated as Indian Reserves are only $100. 

While some of these policies persist to this day, others have also been enacted to mitigate the health impacts of existing environmental racism in the past and to prevent it in the future. In 2017, Ontario announced it would spend $85 million on cleaning up the mercury contamination  in Grassy Narrows, where 90% are expected to suffer from its effects due to a chemical plant that dumped mercury into the rivers where this Ojibway community sources their food.  An additional $68.9 million will be spent on the creation and upkeep of a centre to care for people in the area suffering from mercury poisoning. While this in no way repairs the damage done to this community, it demonstrates how the efforts of the Grassy Narrows community have been somewhat successful in sparking action towards an issue they have been fighting to bring attention to for years. 

Campaigns are also underway to amend the Canada Environmental Protection Act so it protects the most vulnerable communities. In June 2021, Bill C-230 was introduced by MP Lenore Zann, which proposed a requirement for the federal Minister of Environment and climate change to examine the link between race, socio-economic status, and environmental risk and subsequently develop a national strategy to prevent environmental racism and advance environmental justice. Unfortunately, given the dissolution of Parliament a few months later for the September 2021 election, the bill could not move forward. As the country slowly turns to an endemic response to COVID-19, these issues remain imperative and must be re-examined in Parliament. However, this is not an easy battle to win. In 2015, Zann, a member of the Nova Scotia legislature, drafted Bill 11 - the Environmental Racism Prevention Act- which demanded a provincial strategy regarding environmental racism. This act was defeated. Only in 2021 did the Nova Scotian government approve the Environmental Goals and Climate Change Reduction Act, which pledges to redress environmental racism in the province. 

Canada has made grave mistakes in its treatment of Indigenous and racialized communities; environmental policy is no exception to this general attitude. There has recently been an increase in positive action to redress these wrongs and build a more just future including on the environmental front. Two types of action are necessary going forward: compensation, clean up and health care to support communities that have already suffered, and secondly, appropriate policies and sanctions to ensure that history doesn't repeat itself. Fundamentally, respect towards these communities and their health needs to be at the heart of policy decisions. It is only once they are perceived and treated as equals and affirmative action is taken to support them in their recovery for the historical wrongdoings they have suffered that we can begin to move towards a more just and equal society where a clean, safe environment is truly a right for all.