For a long time, the erasure of Black Canadian history has allowed for the notion to persist that Black people living in North America could more or less be categorized as African Americans. 

As Andre Alexis so iconically states “No one, Black or white, has yet accepted the fact and history of our [African-Canadian] presence, as if we thought Black people were an American phenomenon that has somehow crept north.”

American history, data, and current events are often cited to give context to the experience of Black Canadians. But the history and daily life of African Canadians is different, and it’s significant, despite the fact that it isn’t often legitimized.

But that could change.

The Canadian Institute for People of African Descent (CIPAD) affirms African Canadians as a distinct people with unique experiences and challenges, and aims to give voice to African Canadian experiences through data, and alter the current trajectory through policy.

The United Nations visit to Canada and the declaration of the Decade for People of African Descent (2015 - 2024) inspired Meeting of the Minds, an informal gathering of individuals and organizations from African Canadian communities across Canada.

The group began meeting in 2018, and collectively acknowledged that African Canadians need to be affirmed as a national entity. The group also identified the need for research and policy-making aimed at addressing the Social Determinants of Health (SDH) for African Canadians. With these objectives in mind, the group envisioned an institute dedicated to these goals, the Canadian Institute for People of African Descent (CIPAD).

“Despite many strengths, borne of diversity, we are falling behind precipitously, compared to non-African Canadians, in all measurements of our social determinants of health, in every province across the country. We view research, policy and public education, as imperatives to alter racialized trends and disparities.”

-CIPAD Feasibility Study

CIPAD aims to be a hub for research, community engagement, and policy development, all for the purposes of improving quality of life for African Canadians.

“They foresaw a unique physical and virtual institution,” says Quammie Williams, CIPAD Project Manager. “To create and criticize policies to support our growth as a unique people in Canada.”

CIPAD plans to to work with critical race theorists and applied scientists across a variety of disciplines, using an intersectional approach  to “close longstanding gaps in quality research on the lived experiences and cultural perspectives of Canada’s People of African Descent,” as stated in the organizations’ feasibility study.

A variety of statistics across Canada illustrate the need for an institution like this. According to the 2020 feasibility study conducted by CIPAD, African-Canadians make up 3 per cent of Canada’s population and 18 per cent of Canadians living in poverty. 

The study also showed that women of African descent account for 8.8 percent of women who have university degrees and are unemployed, compared to 5.7 per cent of white women who are unemployed and have high school diplomas.

Lastly, the study highlights that African Canadians make up 9.7% of the Canadian prison population while representing only 3.5% of the overall Canadian adult population. 

“CIPAD will create policies to end the great push-out of African Canadian students from the school systems into the school to prison pipeline experience,” says Williams. Racial profiling and over-policing increase risks and vulnerabilities leading to over-representation in federal and provincial prisons and enduring cycles of social exclusion. CIPAD will be tasked with performing research and influencing policy decisions that will target the high rates of incarceration and recidivism known to be existing for our people of African descent (PAD).”

CIPAD has also looked into the unique challenges of senior African Canadians, many of which were exacerbated and highlighted by Covid-19.

“The cumulative effect of higher rates of unemployment and/or underemployment due to workplace discrimination, on mature and senior African Canadians, has been reduced earnings and subsequently reduced retirement income,” says Williams. “This has also had a negative effect on PAD abilities for resilience in the face of COVID-19 and its devastating effect on community well being. CIPAD will research the nature and effect of this underemployment and unemployment on mature PAD and create or recommend strategies and policies to alleviate the occurrence and associated risks.”

An institute dedicated to gathering and distributing data, and challenging and recommending policy on behalf of African Canadians would be huge. Especially given the historical erasure of African Canadian identity.

As race-based data is often borrowed from the U.S. or Ottawa, Alberta is in a unique position to benefit from the gathering and distributing of data. CIPAD will partner with local regions to procure region-specific data, which will allow for more informed storytelling, and as a result policy, around race in Alberta. 

So far, CIPAD has received $348,000 in funding to complete the feasibility study, and it is anticipated that an additional $4.6M will be allocated to the institute in its start-up phase. 

To learn more about CIPAD, visit https://cipad.ca/