CUPE Ontario and the Racial Justice Committee are proud to observe August 1 as Emancipation Day. The day commemorates the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act,1833, which came into effect in 1834. The law liberated enslaved people in the British colonies, including Canada. In 2021, Canada proclaimed August 1 Emancipation Day.
As we reflect on the legacy of those who fought for the liberation of enslaved people, Emancipation Day serves as our reminder of the resilience and strength of Black communities throughout history. These include the communities represented by tens of thousands of CUPE Ontario members.
CUPE Ontario also honours those whose struggles laid the groundwork for our labour movement. Emancipation Day is our opportunity, as members of a union committed to racial equity, to recommit to the work needed to build a more inclusive and equitable union.
CUPE Ontario’s Anti-Racism Organizational Action Plan (AROAP) was created and adopted to help us accomplish these goals. The plan is our roadmap for addressing the systemic underrepresentation and exclusion of Black, racialized, and Indigenous members in our union.
A cornerstone of AROAP has been the Women in Leadership Development (WILD) program, designed to develop the capacity of Black, racialized, and Indigenous members to become leaders in our union and our communities. At CUPE Ontario’s 2025 convention, we were pleased to welcome the second group of women to graduate from this program. We are confident that our union will benefit from their work and achievements in the years to come.
We will need the courage, resilience and leadership of these members, and indeed of all CUPE Ontario’s nearly 300,000 members, if we are going to to be effective in confronting the rising tide of hate that originates in the forces of the right.
The signs of hate and division are not always overt. We must remain vigilant and learn to read the codes of the ideologies that scapegoat racialized communities, blame immigrants and refugees for the country’s housing crisis, or stoke fear around calls for equity, diversity and inclusion.
The Ford Conservatives – whose leader tried to deny the existence of systemic racism in Canada and who scrapped the position of a minister responsible for anti-racism – are adept at dog-whistle politics. Under the guise of student safety, they plan to restore the presence of police in our high schools. Over the objections of parents, students, educators and school board trustees, Ford is planning to reintroduce the School Resource Officer program, which will only serve to deepen racial inequalities in our education system.
We must redouble our efforts to preserve the progress we have made and never allow hate to break the solidarity that is the key to our power as workers.
And because celebration is a key aspect of solidarity, Emancipation Day is a wonderful lead-in to the joy of Carnival, which is celebrated throughout the province. CUPE Ontario’s Racial Justice Committee coordinates members’ participation in Toronto’s Carnival Grand Parade and we invite CUPE Ontario members to turn out and join the festivities on August 2.
We should honour Emancipation Day all year long in our day-to-day union work. Collective bargaining, union education and activism can all include efforts to dismantle anti-Black racism. Locals and members are urged to make use of these excellent resources created and promoted by CUPE National:
- The Color of Privatization, a CUPE report on the impacts of privatized and for-profit services on Indigenous, Black andracialized workers
- From the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Black enslavement in Canada
- Temporary foreign workers in our union, a guide to help locals support members who are temporary foreign workers in the workplace
- the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent’s country report on Canada
