Policies for Racial & Socio-Economic Equity

Racism isn’t just an interpersonal issue—it’s built into how the economy works. From slavery to low-wage migrant work, racism has been used as a tool to justify the exploitation of land and labour despite its harms to our well-being. It keeps wages down, divides workers, and lets the wealthy hoard more.

Racism is expensive to maintain. When racism is used to deny fair wages, secure housing and accessible healthcare to a portion of the population, communities as a whole see both their well-being and economic potential blocked. Inequality breeds economic instability.

But here’s the catch: while racism is bad for the economy as a whole, it’s good for the people at the top. That’s why it persists—it’s profitable to exploit some and keep others scrambling. Fighting racism is about refusing to let a powerful few ‘divide and conquer’ us for profit. It’s about creating a fairer and more efficient economy where all communities have the chance to thrive.

Effective Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs make businesses more innovative, attract talent, and improve decision-making. But in practice, DEI efforts can often be surface-level, meant to protect companies from bad PR, not dismantle the racist or exploitative systems those companies benefit from.

Yes, DEI is “good for business.” But beyond profit margins, DEI shouldn’t just be about sprinkling in more diverse faces while business as usual continues. It should challenge who holds power, who sets the rules, and why some communities are always stuck at the bottom.

DEI is a start, but without tackling capitalism’s built-in hierarchies, it risks being a band-aid on a broken system.

Yes. Colonialism means one group taking land and power from another. But unlike colonial systems where colonized people regained formal independence—such as in Algeria, India, Ghana, or Vietnam, for example—Canada is a settler colonial country. Settler colonialism is about more than resource extraction and the exploitation of labour; it involves the permanent occupation of lands by settlers who aim to eliminate and replace the original population. This is the case in countries like the United States, Australia, and Israel.

The theft of Indigenous land here didn’t stop in 1867—it continues today through pipelines, dams, mining, and government policies that ignore Indigenous sovereignty. When governments and corporations exploit land without consent from Indigenous nations, when Indigenous communities lack clean water while nearby cities thrive, when children are still taken from Indigenous families through child welfare systems, that is colonialism.

The Canadian state continues to suppress Indigenous Peoples’ power because we’ve built an economy of profit from stolen land. So yes, colonialism isn’t history here—it’s policy.

“Decolonizing” might sound like a buzzword, but at its core, it’s about fairness, accountability, and fixing a system that’s rigged.

Right now, the economy works by extracting wealth from people and the planet (especially Indigenous, Black, racialized and working-class communities) and transferring it to a small group of corporations. Decolonizing the economy means reversing that logic. So it’s not about handouts, it’s about justice.

Decolonizing the economy means recognizing that the economy we have was built by stealing land, labour, and lives. It means things like giving land back to the communities it was taken from, paying off historic debts, and making sure decisions are made by and for the people they affect.

For some, this sounds threatening, but only if you benefit from the status quo. For everyone else, it’s about building something better: an economy that sustains life for the long term, not just this quarter’s stock prices.

Start where you are. Global systems rely on local complicity, so local action is global resistance. Here are some starting points:

1. Support Indigenous sovereignty in your area.
2. Organize your workplace and defend other workers’ right to organize—unions and worker co-ops help us to reclaim our power.
3. Push your city, bank, school or workplace to divest from destructive industries—like fossil fuels, prisons and weapons.
4. Learn from others and share your knowledge. Talk with your neighbours.
5. Challenge injustice when you see it. Write to your representatives. Remember: those who uphold capitalism want us to feel small and powerless, because solidarity is dangerous to them.

You’re not going to topple these systems overnight, but every act that builds community, redistributes power and centres justice chips away at their foundation.