Environmental racism in Canada

Amanda: This is The Forefront, a Toronto Metropolitan University podcast that explores ideas for cities. I’m Amanda Cupido. 

So here’s the problem: in Canada and around the world, Black, Indigenous, and people of color are much more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

Research has shown that racialized communities in Canada have higher exposure to air pollution and less access to green spaces. 

But there are also large gaps in the research on these issues—and that’s because most of the researchers and policymakers working on environmental issues are white. Plus racialized Canadians are less likely to be educated on how climate change impacts their day-to-day lives.

This collection of issues is referred to as “environmental racism.”

Fatoumata: When we look at this in terms of like the social determinants of health, we can understand that somebody’s location, where they’re situated in a specific environment can be affected because they’re maybe closer to landfills or toxic chemicals.

Amanda: This is Fatoumata Kane.

Fatoumata: And this kind of plays into how their environment overly takes over their life, and how this affects their day to day, their health. And just like their wellbeing in the long run.

Amanda: Fatoumata is a program coordinator for the Black Environmental Initiative — or BE initiative. It’s an organization that promotes the environmental engagement of black communities and the environmental protection of all people, but especially low-income communities.

She says a prime example of environmental racism is at the southernmost tip of Lake Huron on the border between Ontario and Michigan. This is known as “Chemical Valley.” 

More than 40% of Canada’s chemical industry is located on this 24-km stretch. It’s one of the most polluted areas in the country—and home to more than 70,000 people, including multiple Indigenous communities. 

Fatoumata: It’s a bunch of community members who are predominantly marginalized individuals. So when we think of their power and comparisons to these major industries, they have no voice. So that’s another aspect. We may be willing to do the research, but the question is, well, will we be even acknowledged once we put out this research? Because comparing, individual who lives in this secluded environment who barely has access to anything, little to no funds, in comparison to these huge enterprises, it’s a really hard battle, but we know that we have to start somewhere. 

And for us, it really starts with at least educating the environment and educating the people around us, our community members, and finding ways to get that evidence to start putting pressure and holding our officials accountable.

Amanda: We’ll get to that research she’s talking about later on in the episode. But first, let me explain where Fatoumata is coming from. 

Her interest in environmental justice started at a young age, when she was growing up in Senegal. 

Fatoumata: In my middle school years, I was sort of raised there. We did a lot of community engagement in regards to like, how to shift the mentality of: this is something that the government needs to fix, and how one’s day-to-day choices can better their situation.

Amanda: After high school, Fatoumata decided to study international development here, in Canada. But when she got here, she realized that Canada had its own environmental justice issues.

Fatoumata: A lot of people have that preconceived idea of Canada being a developed nation. But when we think about it, there’s a lot of issues within our system itself within, you know, the idea that up north, people still don’t have clean water. That’s an environmental issue that’s now causing individuals, their quality of life to diminish significantly. And this is concerning for not just those individuals in isolated areas, but all of us, because with the environment, it’s sort of like lighting a match. You start lighting one match, and then if it catches any other mass on fire, it’s probably going to just turn into this huge, you know, this huge fire that you’re going to have trouble turning off, right? 

Amanda: Now, her role at BE Initiative focuses mostly on going into communities of marginalized people and sharing information about the repercussions of climate change.

Fatoumata: What we realize is that some folks just don’t recognize that link between health issues and the environment. So the response is that people want to learn about these things, and it’s also proven to be that there’s a huge gap in understanding how important the environment is in our day to day lives. What we understand is that people are willing to learn and people are willing to reconnect with the land, reconnect with the environment, it’s just the means of how do we start doing that, especially if you live in Toronto? You know, this is a city, though we have greenery around us, only very rarely are you able to feel like there’s a connection between you and the environment. 

Amanda: One of her main projects is called the “I Can Breathe program”, which looks at health impacts of air pollution.

Fatoumata: So when we look at the actual history of the engagement, when it comes to air pollution, and the regulations that have been set in place, we know that the government has tried to establish air quality monitors. But the issue with that is that it’s set up in a situation where it only calculates a specific environment, and it’s not hyperlocal. So it won’t get the details of how, for example, Black Creek air quality levels are significantly worse than Richmond Hill. So what we’re trying to introduce is an idea of how we can make it more specific to their local environment and also engage community members.

Amanda: Some of these communities, like the Jane and Finch area in Toronto, have higher asthma rates due to poor air quality. Fatoumata and her team are working on providing air quality monitors to residents, so they can test the air themselves and see firsthand how the environment affects them. 

Grassroots organizations like BE Initiative are crucial, but they’re far from the only ones working to make change. 

Amanda: Strong research goes a long way when it comes to informing policies in this area. That’s where Dr. Cheryl Teelucksingh comes in.

Cheryl: The environment isn’t, unfortunately, getting any better, but there’s greater awareness. And the fact that as an academic, I can provide the evidence that community organizations and activists need that allow them, then to sort of feel like they’re armed with the tools to highlight the things they already know. But community-based research is really about taking problems at the grassroots level and, and making sure that it goes to the next level. 

Amanda: Dr. Teelucksingh is a professor of sociology at TMU. She’s been researching environmental justice for 20 years. She says over the years people have gotten a lot better at understanding her work over the last several years.

Cheryl: I think in the beginning I spent a lot of time doing the really basic descriptive work of just sort of explaining to people that, in particular, that race mattered in terms of the environment in Canada. That was a point where people felt, well, we have multiculturalism in Canada. Canada’s really different from the US and if there are any environmental problems that they would be more likely to be connected to class based issues.

And now I don’t even have to do that basic descriptive work. As soon as I tell people that I do work around environmental justice and the link between issues of race and environmentalism, their heads just start to nod. Everybody knows that these are real issues and they don’t have to be convinced, and everyone’s sort of committed as well to recognizing that there’s different mechanisms for change.

And you know, obviously the people in the physical sciences are doing really important work to look at some of the technocratic solutions and social scientists are then looking at what are our barriers to either adopting these technos or whose voices haven’t been part of the discussions in terms of looking at Identifying who might be most affected by the risk and what the change should look like.

Amanda: Dr. Teelucksingh has worked on a wide range of issues over the years, from gentrification to green jobs. Right now, she’s really focused on how racialized communities bear the burden of climate change. 

Throughout her career, she’s always emphasized community-based research. She knows that her role as an academic is key for taking community issues and elevating them to a policy level.

Cheryl: Community based research really aims at supporting the needs of equity deserving communities. So in my work, this involves working with community organizations and grassroots activists to advocate for policy change.

And I tend to use predominantly qualitative methods, tools in terms of interviewing people using focus groups, increasingly Indigenous colleagues to make sure that processes at the municipal level or in terms of policy changes are aimed towards recognizing the needs of communities who are often not participating in decision making. So there’s a lot of advocacy here.

Amanda: Dr. Teelucksingh is aware that many of the people she works with struggle to feel heard. She wants to urge Canadians to understand that environmental justice is everyone’s problem. 

Cheryl: People think, oh, okay, well it’s not gonna be my problem. It’s going to be somebody else’s problem. But climate change is now so pervasive that the scale of the problem is significant.

And if we have marginalized and disadvantaged communities that require so much more resources, once we have the problem, by doing climate change integration on the front end, we could actually save economic costs and involve equity groups in engaging in solutions earlier on, and having a wider range of solutions gives us a larger toolbox, and I think that’s where the intersectional perspectives are really important as well.

Amanda: Dr. Teelucksingh and Fatoumata are definitely on the same page ere. 

Fatoumata: We never want people to feel like this is a situation of the other. This is an issue for everybody. Whether you like it or not, whether you see it or not. Currently, down the line, this is something that will surely impact all of us one way or another. So it’s best to understand it now and find ways to work on it together, because we understand the fact that though we’re focusing on how we can support marginalized communities who are directly impacted, we still need the support of policymakers who are predominantly white. So we know that this is an issue that everybody needs to come together and resolve.

Amanda: Environmental justice might seem like an impossibly big problem to solve. But as Dr. Teelucksingh and Fatoumata have seen in their work, the most important first step is just listening to the people who are most impacted—and making sure their voices are heard.

Fatoumata: I feel like it really needs to start with individuals within this field to be able to reach out to community members who are impacted firsthand and finding out what they need from us, whether it’s more research, more support, et cetera, and understanding how we can benefit them firsthand. 

And through that, we now must start to hold officials accountable, corporations accountable more specifically, and finding ways to really bridge those gaps where folks feel like they’re being heard. We really want to ensure that the individuals who are most affected and impacted by the issues have a bigger hand and a bigger state in how to resolve these issues of environmental racism, environmental injustice.

Amanda: Before we go, here’s Dr. Teelucksingh one more time with her thoughts on what makes TMU a great place to research environmental justice.

Cheryl: It’s a great university in terms of social innovation and the ties that the university has to the surrounding communities and base Downtown. The fact that TMU now has Metropolitan in the center of its name has been the way in which I have always, as somebody doing urban research, engaged with the city. I can bring my students out of the classroom and walk them over to Regent park and talk about how gentrification is an environmental justice issue.

TMU has been really sort of supportive and in favor of scholars doing that sort of work. I can’t think of another university where addressing equity issues is seen to be more important. It’s reflected in the colleagues in my department, the types of funding opportunities and, I’ve never felt like my research was, seemed to be marginalized or insignificant.

It was always sort of highlighted as this is the type of research that we would like our students to be exposed to and internationally the type of work our scholars should be doing. So yeah, I’ve always considered myself to be really proud to be a faculty member at TMU.

Amanda: This podcast was created for alumni and friends by University Advancement at Toronto Metropolitan University. Special thanks to our guests on today’s episode: Fatoumata Kane and Cheryl Teelucksingh. This podcast was produced by me, Amanda Cupido and Emily Morantz. Katia Galati was the editor for the show. All of us are proud grads of TMU! To learn more about environmental racism, and for more episodes of this podcast and others, visit torontomu.ca/alumni/podcasts.