August 1 is Emancipation Day
by Waheed Khan*
On March 24, 2021, the House of Commons voted unanimously to designate August 1 as Emancipation Day in Canada. It marks August 1, 1834, when The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 came into force across almost all of the British Empire, with some exceptions, including territories in the possessions of the East India Company.
The Portuguese, in the 16th century, were the first to transport slaves from West Africa across the Atlantic. In 1526, they completed the first transatlantic slave voyage to Brazil, and other Europeans soon followed. Ship owners regarded the slaves as cargo to be transported to the Americas as quickly and cheaply as possible, and sold to work on coffee, tobacco, cocoa, sugar, and cotton plantations, gold and silver mines, rice fields, the construction industry, cutting timber for ships, as skilled labour, and as domestic servants.
By the late 18th century, the anti-slavery movement to abolish the slave trade throughout the British Empire had begun, with the “Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade” established in 1787. The Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, tabled the Act Against Slavery in 1793. Passed by the local Legislative Assembly, it was the first legislation to outlaw the slave trade in a part of the British Empire.
During the Christmas holiday of 1831, a large-scale slave revolt, known as the Baptist War, broke out in Jamaica. It was organised originally as a peaceful strike by the Baptist minister Samuel Sharpe. The rebellion was suppressed by the militia of the Jamaican plantocracy and the British garrison. Because of significant loss of property and life in the 1831 rebellion, the British Parliament held two inquiries. The results of these inquiries contributed greatly to the abolition of slavery with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
In practical terms, only slaves below the age of six were freed in the colonies. Former slaves over the age of six were redesignated as “apprentices”, and their servitude was abolished in two stages: the first set of apprenticeships came to an end on 1 August 1838, while the final apprenticeships were scheduled to cease on 1 August 1840.
The Act provided for payments to slave-owners. The British government raised £20 million to pay out for the loss of the slaves as business assets to the registered owners of the freed slaves. In 1833, £20 million amounted to 40% of the Treasury’s annual income or approximately 5% of British GDP at the time.
The Act specifically excluded “the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company, or to the Island of Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka), or to the Island of Saint Helena.” These exceptions were eliminated by the Indian Slavery Act, 1843 which prohibited Company employees from owning, or dealing in slaves, along with granting limited protection under the law, that included the ability for a slave to own, transfer or inherit property.
In his book Canada’s Forgotten Slaves: Two Hundred Years of Bondage, Quebec historian Marcel Trudel estimated that there were approximately 4,200 enslaved people in the area of Canada known as Nouvelle France, and later in Upper and Lower Canada, between 1671 and 1831. Initially, approximately two-thirds of these enslaved people were Indigenous, and one-third were of African descent.
After British colonial settlers established Upper Canada, the number of enslaved Africans and their descendants increased significantly. It is estimated that 3,000 enslaved men, women and children of African descent were brought into British North America and eventually outnumbered enslaved Indigenous Peoples. Many enslaved Black people resisted slavery by fleeing Upper Canada to a territory known as the Northwest Territory, which included Michigan and Ohio, as well as to Vermont and New York, which had banned slavery in the late 18th century.
In 2014, the United Nations General Assembly declared January 2015 to December 2024 as the International Decade for People of African Descent. Canada endorsed the decade only in January 2018, after significant official reluctance. On December 1, 2020, a class action lawsuit was filed, on behalf of Black federal public service employees, claiming that the Federal Government failed to address systemic discrimination of its Black employees which denied them promotions. A Petition by Justice for Black Federal Public Service Workers was launched on December 21, 2020 which has secured over 30 thousand signatures.
The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat has started implementing one of the demands of Black employees to provide desegregated data, which was previously merged under Visible Minorities (VMs). According to the TBS annual report on Employment Equity in the Public Service of Canada for Fiscal Year 2022 to 2023, Black employees in the Core Public Administration (CPA) recorded an increase of 1,962 employees to a total of 11,771 (equal to 4.6% of CPA and 21.4% of VMs). The Employment Equity Act Review Task Force has recommended that Black workers should constitute a separate employment equity group for the purposes of the Employment Equity Act framework.
While significant progress has been made, Black communities are still dealing with historical and current injustices. In 2020, police-reported hate crimes motivated by hatred of a race or ethnicity represented 62% of all hate crimes. These crimes most frequently targeted the Black population (42% of all hate crimes, or 663 incidents motivated by a hatred of race or ethnicity). In comparison, hate crimes motivated by a hatred of race or ethnicity less commonly targeted White people (5%).
Emancipation Day is an occasion to reflect, educate and engage in the ongoing fight against anti-Black racism and discrimination, which has roots in slavery.
*Waheed Khan is the President of the Community of Federal Visible Minorities (CFVM) and serves on the Board of Directors of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC). Twitter: @2waheedkhan; @CFVM-CFMV; Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WaheedKhanCanada