Anti-Racism Data Committee
About the Committee
- Welcome Package
- Terms of reference
- News Release: Eleven people selected to join B.C.’s new anti-racism data committee, Sept. 23, 2022
On September 23, 2022, the Province announced the 11 members, including the chair, of the Anti-Racism Data Committee.
Committee members represent a wide cross-section of racialized communities and geographic regions of B.C. The committee will collaborate with the Province on a number of initiatives to help identify and eliminate systemic racism in the public sector, including:
- Data directives, to guide how government collects, uses and shares information
- Data standards, to determine what type of personal information is collected, used and shared
- Research priorities, to understand where the Province should focus its efforts first to identify and address systemic racism
- Reviewing annual statistics prior to release to prevent community harms
The committee’s goals are to ensure:
- Implementation of the Anti-Racism Data Act is informed by the lived experience and expertise of racialized people
- Their work aligns with the broader goal of the legislation to identify and eliminate racism in government programs, policies and services and to advance racial equity
- Continued connection and collaboration with racialized communities
“This ground-breaking Anti-Racism Data Act seeks to ensure that BC is a province where all people regardless of race can flourish,” said Dr. June Francis, chair of the Anti-Racism Data Committee. “The Anti-Racism Data Committee will be critical to realizing these aspirations. The committee is constituted to ensure the representation of Indigenous and racialized communities and will work hard to ensure the promises made to address systemic racism and gaps in service in the public sector are realized. This will involve a continuous process of working with communities, including their perspectives, and maintaining cultural safety as we collaborate with government to establish key research priorities. The primary focus will be to gather and monitor data to close the racial equity gaps that exist in public service.”
Read the news release announcing the members of the committee to learn more about their work.
Updates from the Committee
- The committee’s latest meeting was held on November 25th 2022
- Read the summary of this meeting, and the agenda
- Subscribe for updates on the committee’s work
Committee Members
Francis is an advocate for equity, diversity and inclusion for racialized groups. She is chair of the Hogan’s Alley Society, whose mission is to advance the social, political, economic and cultural well-being of people of African descent through the delivery of housing, built spaces and programming. She is also director of SFU’s Institute for the Black and African Diaspora Research and Engagement, whose mandate is to strengthen the links between scholarly research, policy and practice related to multicultural and diaspora communities and their role in building innovative, sustainable and inclusive initiatives. Her research focuses on the intersection between racism and the academy and markets and marketing, diversity, inter-culturality, leadership and participatory engagement approaches and community impact, Covid-19 with vulnerable and excluded groups as well as the advancement of non-traditional intellectual property law, including traditional knowledge related to community well-being and cultural and human rights.
Chau is co-chair of the UBC President’s Task Force on Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence and a former chair and co-chair of the Race, Ethnicity and Cultural Issues Caucus of the Canadian Association of Social Work Education. She serves on the Organizing Against Racism and Hate committee in Kelowna, where her focus is to monitor and problem-solve on issues related to racism and intersectional discrimination based on Indigeneity, gender, age, racial-linguistic, ethnicity, religion and disability.
At Métis Nation BC, Corrigal is responsible for liaising with the health-care industry on a variety of issues, including the implementation of the In Plain Sight report, the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls report, and the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action report. He has worked in environmental public health since 1976 and worked with various committees in the B.C. Interior during the COVID-19 pandemic on issues of access and discriminatory and racist incidents at COVID clinics.
Erickson is a Dakelh woman from the community of Nak’azdli and is a member of the Lhts’umusyoo (Beaver) Clan. Erickson also is a master of education candidate at Thompson Rivers University and earned a bachelor of public administration and community development from the University of Northern B.C. Erickson is currently serving on the B.C. Health Regulators Indigenous Student Advisory Group and has served on the trust development committee for the Nak’azdli Band and the City of Prince George Student Needs Committee.
With more than 25 years of senior leadership in the non-profit and public sectors, Gill-Badesha brings expertise in executive management, research, knowledge mobilization, and policy development for children and youth, seniors, immigrant and refugee settlement, and accessibility and inclusion portfolios. She has developed award-winning, large-scale initiatives and strategies for long-term community planning and led changes in policies to make data collection and reporting more accessible within local government and add accountability measures on data related to racism and hate.
Guss has more than 20 years’ experience in business administration and management, including seven years in Indigenous health and wellness. She has mixed ancestry that includes the Haida, Xaxli’p, Xwisten and Squamish Nations as well as mixed European ancestry. Her work experiences have strengthened her abilities in policy, standards, process development and analysis to advance areas aligned with anti-racism strategies and objectives.
Originally from Korea, Kim has worked with governments, businesses and not-for-profit organizations with a focus on anti-racism. She co-leads a grassroots collective of Asian women who collect, analyze, track and share community-sourced data on anti-Asian racism and its impacts. Prior to this, Kim spent 10 years working in community development and frontline social service delivery with global communities experiencing injustice.
Naqvi completed her PhD in economics at Boston University and worked as an academic and international development professional at the World Bank. She leads the equity, diversity and inclusion data working group at SFU and co-chairs the data governance council and other related projects. She is passionate about improving data access to ensure vulnerable groups are well represented in public services and higher education.
Oduro-Marfo holds a PhD in political science from the University of Victoria. His area of academic interest since 2016 has been in issues of privacy, data protection, surveillance and identification systems. He is the lead author and researcher for the Black in B.C. report funded by the B.C. government and released in February 2022. He has been on the advisory committee for Ending Violence Association of B.C.’s anti-racism and hate response program and is a member of the Greater Victoria Police Diversity Advisory Committee.
A sociologist, BIPOC researcher and biracial person of Irish/British and Indian ethnicity, Quinless has worked extensively in Indigenous communities for more than 20 years using gender-based analysis frameworks. In 2013, she was recognized by the Canadian Sociological Association and the Angus Reid Foundation for her community-based research that has advanced human welfare for Indigenous peoples in Canada. She has worked for First Nations communities in a research capacity, including outlining data indicators and measurements tools.
Sandhu is a community activist and a founding member of Wake Up Surrey, a grassroots community organization formed in 2018 in response to increasing gang violence and targeted shootings involving South Asian youth. He has spearheaded the group’s outreach by participating in more than 150 meetings with all levels of government, policing authorities, community stakeholders, educators, mental health experts and victim families. Sandhu also has many years of experience in global sports management.