Social Equality In Canada

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Formal equality is a more standard definition when it comes to questions of inequity, where to achieve ‘equality,’ everyone must be treated the same. Substantive equity recognizes that this approach does not work because not everyone shares the same experiences, and so everyone cannot be treated the same. It instead aims to treat everyone differently, depending on their experiences, with an end goal of equality. To understand how and why groups must be treated differently to resolve issues of equity, we must turn to the sociohistorical context of these issues as we recognize them today. Because they are numerous and complex, I will focus on just two – first, the treatment of impoverished groups in Canada; and second, the treatment of racialized …show more content…
Charlotte Whitton, director of the Canadian Council on Child and Family Welfare, was the architect of these policies when she first claimed that welfare – in particular, welfare for mothers who were widowed during the First World War – made individuals dependent on the system to provide, rather than providing for themselves (Swanson, 48). This was including the fact that said welfare was provided exclusively for white women whose husbands had fought in World War I (Swanson, 48). In her writings during the Great Depression, she then extrapolated from this particular group to all on welfare, and appointed social workers to monitor their finances and personal circumstances (Swanson, 48). In order to push people out of welfare, she called for the government to aggressively promote jobs for the unemployed, and by monitoring those on welfare, Whitton could threaten them in order to force them into work – even if it was low-paying and non-permanent (Swanson, 51). Although many social workers objected to this often invasive monitoring system, they were obligated to comply (Swanson, …show more content…
Rather than attend urbanized, often assimilationist institutions, students who attend the Tumul Kin School are taught the traditional Maya ways of life, and thus resist the status quo using education (Penados, 10). Penados, in his 2007 paper Tumul Kin Center of Learning: Redefining development and education, confronts colonialism, neo-colonialism, “development,” and basic racial stereotypes surrounding Indigenous peoples in order to provide students with a new knowledge about their environment and culture. The School also addresses the concept of ‘who knows’: what knowledge is and who is qualified to teach it (Penados, 10). Professor George Dei acknowledged this in his lecture on anti-racism studies – that some types of knowledge and points of view are valued more than others (Dei, lecture, Oct 29 2015). Colonialism brought with it the ‘White Man’s Burden’ – that it was the responsibility of the supposedly enlightened White Europeans to teach people of colour how to be civilized (Rudyard, xi-xii). Though the poem was written more than a century ago, groups are still fighting its meaning. The Tumul Kin School exemplifies a pushback against social structures that only work for whom they were created – namely, White
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