Human Resources Legislative Update
Anti-Racism Act, 2017 Now in Force
Date: June 2, 2017
On June 1, 2017, Bill 114, the Anti-Racism Act, 2017 received Royal Assent and came into force.
Among other things, the Anti-Racism Act, 2017 (Act):
- requires the Ontario government to maintain an anti-racism strategy which includes:
- initiatives to eliminate systemic racism, including those that assist racialized groups that are most adversely impacted by systemic racism, including Indigenous and Black communities
- initiatives to advance racial equity, including those that address the adverse impact of different forms of racism, including anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Black racism, anti-semitism and Islamophobia
- targets and indicators to measure its success
- requires the government to prepare annual progress reports on the strategy and review the strategy at least every five years
- provides for data standards for the collection, use and management of information, including personal information, to identify and monitor systemic racism and racial disparities for the purpose of eliminating systemic racism and advancing racial equity
- permits the establishment of regulations requiring public sector organizations to collect specified personal information, in accordance with established data standards
- requires the government to provide notice to individuals from whom specified personal information is either directly or indirectly collected
- permits public sector organizations to disclose an individual’s personal information collected in accordance with the Act in specified circumstances
- establishes requirements for researchers seeking the disclosure of personal information collected by public sector organizations, including a written application and a research plan that sets out researcher affiliations, the nature and objectives of the research, and the anticipated public or scientific benefit
- empowers the Information and Privacy Commissioner to:
- review the practices of public sector organizations that have collected or used personal information under the terms of the Act, and compel production of any information and records necessary for that review
- make various orders in respect of any public sector organization found to have breached the terms of the Act
- requires the government to establish an anti-racism impact assessment framework to assess the potential racial equity impacts of policies and programs, and develop policies to mitigate, remedy or prevent inequitable racial impacts from those policies or programs.
