CFAA REPORT
PROMOTING EQUALITY & INCLUSION IN OUR SECTOR CFAA’s new equity, diversity and inclusion committee BY
JOHN DICKIE, PRESIDENT, CANADIAN FEDERATION OF APARTMENT ASSOCIATIONS
I
n a time when racial injustice is under a spotlight, it is crucial for the rental housing industry to address the rental experience of racialized and marginalized members of the community through the lens of equity.
CFAA has established an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee to seek to achieve progress on those issues in Canada’s rental housing industry. Besides the moral rightness of that position, the Committee’s work and CFAA actions may help to forestall unjustified moves against the interests within the rental housing industry, and to support the advancement of justified changes. CFAA, FRPO and all CFAA-member associations have long stood for compliance with the human rights laws by all rental housing providers. But now, people and companies are being called on to contribute more actively toward embracing 12
FAIR EXCHANGE | MARCH/APRIL 2021
diversity, and promoting equity and inclusion for everyone in Canada. There are three main areas which seem to drive the current push, namely unconscious bias, microaggressions and addressing historical wrongs. Recent academic research has identified that all (or almost all) of us have unconscious biases. Unconscious attitudes, beliefs and perspectives, about people who are different from us, are often so deeply rooted that we don’t even know they exist. That makes it difficult to recognize when they are affecting our decisions and leaking out into our interpersonal interactions.
