As part of our ongoing commitment to anti-racism action, we moved forward in 2021 with a project to help us better understand who is complaining to us, and what their experience has been in accessing and using our complaints process.
The first priority was to gather and analyze disaggregated, race-based data from past complaints. We sent an online survey to consenting complainants who between 2019 and 2020 had filed complaints based on any of the grounds of race, color, or national or ethnic origin. With great success on the first survey, we then expanded the project to survey additional consenting complainants who filed complaints in 2020 citing any of the 13 grounds of discrimination.
The following page outlines some of the highlights of what our data taught us in 2021 about the people who have come to us in recent years because they believe they have been treated unfairly.
Our plan is to make this data collection a permanent pillar of the Commission's online complaints process for all new incoming complaints. This is all part of our broader mission to improve the quality of information we have about who is experiencing discrimination in Canada — particularly with respect to systemic forms of racism and inequality.