BIV MAGAZINE
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WOMEN IN BUSINESS 2021 PUBLISHED BY BUSINESS IN VANCOUVER
Q&A: KASARI GOVENDER A little over two years ago, Kasari Govender assumed office as British Columbia’s first independent Human Rights Commissioner, a role dedicated to the protection and promotion of human rights in B.C. Previously, Govender held leadership positions at the legal education and action fund West Coast LEAF from 2008 until 2019. She also played a pivotal role in establishing the non-profit Rise Women’s Legal Centre.Earlier this year, Govender joined Business in Vancouver’s equity, diversity and inclusion podcast ‘EDI on BIV’ to talk about the work of her office. That conversation has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
WHAT ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF HOW YOUR
WHAT GAPS EXIST FOR THE PEOPLE THAT
OFFICE PROMOTES AND PROTECTS HUMAN
YOU SERVE? WHAT IS COMING OUT OF YOUR
RIGHTS IN B.C., AND ARE THERE ANY SPECIFIC
RESEARCH AROUND INCLUSION?
AREAS YOU’RE FOCUSED ON? We have a number of tools in our tool belt. We’ve got a big, broad mandate to promote and protect human rights, and there’s some ways to whittle that down to make that more practical. There’s a big focus on education in our work. That includes doing research and building our body of knowledge and thinking about human rights in the province. It includes doing policy and law reform work, so advocacy for changes to how our government makes decisions. But our mandate is much broader than government. Our mandate is really everybody in the province. Everybody is a stakeholder in human rights, both as rights holders, and also as duty bearers as people who have responsibilities under the Human Rights Code and human rights law more generally. Another couple of tools in our tool belt are more legal in nature. Intervening in cases, meaning getting involved as a third party in ongoing litigation, to talk about some of the systemic implications of a case, as well as doing inquiries and investigations into narrow areas of human rights or big, broad areas of human rights. I’ve got a fair amount of discretion to decide what those are. There are a number of strategic priorities that we’ve defined for my term in office, and that includes poverty as both cause and effect of inequality and injustice in the province. It includes the rights of those who are detained by the state, whether that’s in the criminal justice system or in the mental health system. And it includes the rise of hate and white supremacy, which was an issue before the pandemic, and has been in the news and brought to our attention in much more dramatic ways during this pandemic. It also includes decolonization as a key priority for my office, as well as dealing with discrimination as defined by the Human Rights Code, which is really in the context of employment, in the context of services, that are usually available to the public: what are the responsibilities of businesses, as employers, as service providers and potentially as housing providers?
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I think there’s a couple of different ways to look at that question. And I think, from my perspective, talking about equity, inclusion, diversity issues is very important. It’s also important to do that in not too narrow a way. It is important that employers, service providers, governments, big businesses, think about reflecting the people they serve and the people who work at those offices. But it’s also broader than that. I think really doing equity, diversity and inclusion work well entails understanding how racism, sexism and ableism might play out in your workforce, and understanding that these issues have systemic roots. Hiring people is an important step, but it won’t actually make your workforce anti-racist, for example. That takes further steps. That’s the way I’d like to think of your question: having some concrete deliverables, but also having deeper roots below that that take some deeper thinking. WHAT ARE SOME OF THOSE CONCRETE STEPS? We’re starting to delve much more deeply into the areas of employment. Next year or so we’ll be producing some more comprehensive guidance around what employment equity steps all different kinds of employers might be able to take around the full range of steps around employment: recruitment, hiring, retention, progress through the levels of your organization, how to ensure that people in these roles reflect those you serve or those in our communities, and to think about that a little bit more comprehensively than we have traditionally.
THERE ARE BUSINESS BENEFITS TO DOING THIS WORK. THIS IS A CONVERSATION THAT MORE AND MORE AND MORE PEOPLE CARE ABOUT AND WANT TO SEE REFLECTED IN THEIR INSTITUTIONS AND IN THEIR BUSINESSES
2021-09-22 2:56 PM
