Taking Action to Advance Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Kingston
The Kingston Economic Recovery Team has been focused on several key priorities to ensure we build back in better and more inclusive ways on the other side of the pandemic. One of these priorities is to create more opportunities for underrepresented and marginalized groups. We want everyone in our city to have access to employment and career opportunities, access to services, and ensure that everyone’s voice is heard as we make decisions about the future of Kingston. We’re taking a number of actions to help move these priorities forward and make that vision a reality.
On February 25th the economic recovery team is hosting a session for local businesses and organizations highlighting the competitive advantages that comes from hiring a more diverse and inclusive workforce. If you’re interested in attending that event, I’ll leave a link in the comments that provides more information. At next week’s City Council meeting, we’ll also be looking to approve a new Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee and create a dedicated position within the City to help ensure we are open and inclusive in how we hire new employees and how we offer services to residents. We’re also helping to support a new anti-racism community working group led by the Kingston Immigration Partnership, to bring all sectors of our city together to combat systemic racism and discrimination. As mayor, I am incredibly proud to champion a vision for a truly inclusive community, where no one is left out and no one is left behind. Let’s make Kingston a city where everyone can succeed and thrive.
*If you missed the event on February 25th, you can watch a recording at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbAxrzvYvw0
** The Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee was approved by Council.
One Response
Please tell me how Kingston suffers from “systemic” racism based on it’s demographics which one can easily look up those stats. Please tell me how Kingston -which opens it arms and it’s programs to immigrants – is systemically racist?
And could you please provide some instances that employers in Kingston do not hire people based on the color of their skin instead of if the applicant can actually do the job offered or speak the english language. Every low level entry job has 1000 St. Lawrence graduates applying… so is that racist? People of colour and minorities have equal chances to be educated in Canada, free. But we have systemic racism? We need committees on this??? Another curriculum change that will infuse this into our school systems?
Please offer me examples how our schools underrepresent minorities or are racist, or our kids have unconscious biases towards minorities based on the make up of the kingston demographics of our public schools. I want answers to these questions so that I can look my kids in the eyes and explain why they are part of a political agenda and guilt campaign over the colour of their skin. Made to see things that do not exist in their world at 12! Made to believe that Kingston… let alone Canada is racist.
Please tell me why our schools are making our kids feel like they are not inclusive enough, when my children and most I know do not see colour, nor do they treat others unfairly due to their skin colour – this is an adult problem. This is something parents should be teaching their children.
Public schools should teach English Math, French Science Geography etc and not try to indoctrinate our children with a relentless agenda of EQUITY and Inclusion. The books that my children are reading offer nothing of language skills, imagination, story telling lessons, grammar or fantasy they can use to write or speak properly. The books they read are full of subliminal messaging – based on story lines of a black child getting shot by a white police officer, or LGBT kids and their difficulties, or worse the book called ” Joey Pigza” which describes a ADHD kid disturbing reality of swallowing a key and poo-ing it out, and his grandmother has mental disorders and people make fun of him but its really his “dud meds”. What message is this ingraining? This literature is CRAP. And my kids at this age don’t need to be reading this awful material. Why? Because they are children. To force them to read and therefore “relate” to the new reality in their world where we are forcing this new “all inclusive reality” equity, non discriminatory -by forcing them to read about the depressing, disturbing, and often biased world and teaching of our public schools – is wrong. Canadians are NOT racist , my kids are not racist. Kingston is very inclusive. Stop telling us we are systemic – PROVE IT TO ME, so I can teach my children.
EQUALITY is what we should teach our children, everyone is equal, under the law, under God and as a human being. Equity takes away from one group and gives it to another, equity tells one group they are more deserving than another of things, programs, money, opportunities- MORALLY wrong. Show me where the data is that says Kingston and it’s population is not inclusive enough, or racist, or not diverse enough. Queens U anyone?