We in Canada are just beginning to appreciate how people experience environmental hazards and pollution differently, depending on how rich or poor they are.
There is a private member’s bill before Parliament, sponsored by Liberal MP Lenore Zann, which mandates the government to come up with a strategy to deal with what it calls “environmental racism.”
The bill points out that “a disproportionate number of people who live in environmentally hazardous areas are members of Indigenous, racialized or other marginalized groups.”
It explains that “environmentally hazardous sites, including landfills and polluting industries,” have been established “in areas inhabited primarily by members of those communities”.
These odious practices, Zann’s bill concludes, “could be considered a form of racial discrimination.”
There is no consequential action associated with the bill. Private members’ legislation cannot entail new government spending.
All the bill calls for is further study, with the aim of possibly taking concrete action in the future.
Not just race, but also being poor
It is true that industries and governments have often located polluting waste sites, dirty industrial operations such as chemical plants and oil refineries, and even massive super highways in neighbourhoods where people of colour and Indigenous people live.
It is also true that environmental dangers and hazards are visited upon people as a function of their social class as much as of their race and ethnicity.
If you’re poor in an urban area you will almost inevitably have noisier streets, dirtier air, more dangerous traffic, and less green space than your more affluent fellow citizens.
Rich people don’t locate their monster houses in the shadows of traffic-clogged elevated expressways or giant smokestacks.
The wealthy would rather build their homes adjacent to pleasant public green spaces.
Urban authorities originally created those green spaces to provide…
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