National eLearning course to address Consumer Racial Profiling
December 7, 2018 – The Canadian Association of Statutory Human Rights Agencies (CASHRA) today launched Serving All Customers Better, a free online course that will help businesses nationwide address and prevent consumer racial profiling.
The new course is a valuable resource for businesses to prevent consumer racial profiling. It can help train the thousands of front-line service staff across Canada. The announcement was made during CASHRA’s mid-year meeting in Toronto.
“Consumer racial profiling has been identified by human rights commissions across the country as a significant issue affecting Canadians,” said Charles Dent, CASHRA chair. “Offering this course online in both official languages is one way we can work together to prevent discrimination.”
This initiative is the result of a collaboration between Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial human rights commissions and the Retail Council of Canada, a non-profit association representing more than 45,000 retail stores including independent merchants, regional and national mass and specialty chains.
“Retailers appreciate the steps that human rights commissions have taken to collaborate with the Retail Council of Canada in developing the course, which will complement their existing training,” said Diane J. Brisebois, President and CEO of the Retail Council of Canada. “We’re confident this course will provide retail employees and other service industry staff with a better understanding and appreciation of the shopping experiences of all Canadians.”
Consumer racial profiling is a serious issue in Canada. Racialized customers are significantly more likely to be followed, searched and ignored. Human rights law in Canada makes it illegal to deny someone service or discriminate against them by treating them differently because of their race, colour or ethnicity.
Tomee Elizabeth Sojourner-Campbell is the founder of PreventCRP, a Toronto-based organization with global connections focused on addressing and preventing consumer racial profiling in all service sectors:
“PreventCRP understands the detrimental impact of consumer racial profiling,” said Ms. Sojourner-Campbell. “We believe that addressing and preventing consumer racial profiling across Canada requires collective effort. We are excited to be part of the national launch of CASHRA’s online course aimed at retail businesses and their employees.”
Learn more about Serving All Customers Better at cashra.ca/classroom.
Be part of the conversation and use the hashtag #ServingAllCanada.