Speech to St. Catharines City Council on the Need for a Separate Anti-Racism Advisory Committee

February 11, 2019

Good evening, my name is Saleh Waziruddin. I live in St Catharines and am a member of the Niagara Region Anti-Racism Association.

I want to speak about the working group and proposed committee on equity and diversity, which is not the same as anti-racism or LGBTQ issues. One committee dealing with all these issues, even through sub-committees, cannot do the work the city needs to do on those two issues.

I worked at a call centre here for many years but to make ends meet I worked a second job as a taxi driver. I had so much racist harassment that I had to quit after only a few days. On my first night a customer refused to pay saying I should “go back to Afghanistan”. I was born here and my parents immigrated from India and Pakistan, but that is not the point.

The City can’t solve every problem but the city should have some role to play in making it possible for people like me to try to make a living without harassment. The City can’t just sit by on the sidelines.

The City used to have an anti-Racism committee which did education and responded to racist incidents. And other cities in Ontario have anti-racism committees such as Hamilton just up the highway, so why can’t we have this too? We need to catch up, we are behind not just compared to other cities but even compared to where we were.

A few months ago his worship the mayor very correctly pointed out at an event at the Folk Arts Multicultural Centre that he is the first Polish-Canadian mayor of St. Catharines. Being the first Polish-Canadian mayor might be diversity, but it is definitely not anti-racism. A committee looking at the broader issues cannot do the work needed specifically on anti-Racism and for LGBTQ issues.

We need a separate committee for each. Please amend the the Clerk’s report to give us these two committees, it’s not that much to ask for yet we need it very much.

Thank you.