Anti-Black Racism in the Canadian Healthcare System: A Reckoning

Canada is often held out by scholars as the exception to a disheartening global pattern that suggests that high levels of racial diversity in a society are incompatible with support for generous social policies (Banting et al. 2006). The explanation for this pattern is that it is a real phenomenon (rather than an artefactual one) and it can be chalked up to racist motivations that cause powerful racial groups (whites and those non-white people who ally with whites) from endorsing policies that will benefit Black and other non-white groups (Alesina et al. 2001). One of the social policies that we are most often lauded for maintaining is the Canada Health Act (1985), which mandates that the vast majority of physician and hospital services are accessible free of charge. The prevailing discourse in Canada has been that the Canada Health Act (1985) ensures equal access to healthcare among all Canadians. In addition, polling data suggest that the vast majority of Canadians believe racism is a terrible thing (Bricker and Chhim 2020). However, cases such as that of Joyce Echaquan (Nerestant 2021) who died at a hospital in Saint-Charles-Borromée, QC, as nurses looked on and mocked and demeaned her with their words, or Leonard Rodriques (Allen 2020) who was turned away from an emergency room in Toronto during the COVID-19 pandemic and died shortly after, call into serious question the narratives of an egalitarian and benevolent system, in the context of a society that publicly endorses anti-racism.