Ottawa adds retired judge Corrine Sparks to diversity council after pushback over membership

The number one Nova Scotian of African filiation to be prescribed to the province's judicial system is connection the federal government's newly formed Advisory Council on Rights, Equality and Inclusion, after scathing criticism directed at Ottawa for its initial omission of a Black representative.

Corrine Sparks, whom the federal government describes as "a national leader in judicial education," will be part of a body tasked with fighting racism and hate, according to a news release issued by the Canadian Heritage department on Friday.

She retired from Nova Scotia's Family Court in December 2021, after more than three decades of service in the judiciary. 

Sparks, who was named an officer of the Order of Canada on Friday, too, was the first Black woman to serve as a judge in the country.

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The federal government announced the council in February, after saying it was dissolving the Offices of the Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia and Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism. 

Then, earlier this month, Ottawa released the names of the first members of the council, as Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a speech about antisemitism from a Toronto synagogue and said the body's initial mandate would address the rise of anti-Jewish hatred in the country. 

Black advocates called out the government a couple of days later for not including anyone from their communities in the council.

"We're tired of being an afterthought, tired of having to raise our voices to be heard and seen fully," said former MP Jean Augustine, the first Black woman elected to the House of Commons, in a news conference at the time. 

Amnesty International's representative for English-speaking Canada, Ketty Nivyabandi, had said the decision indicated fighting racism is a lower priority for Carney than it was for his predecessor Justin Trudeau.

"It undermines the council's very credibility from the outset, and it reproduces the very inequities it is meant to address," she said. 

At the time, Canadian Identity Minister Marc Miller's office said the government was still holding consultations about the council's makeup, and that it was not finalized.

On Friday, the government also added Donald Bolen, the Archbishop of Regina, to the council. 

Another criticism of Black advocates was how the council's mandate did not include mention of combatting anti-Black racism. 

In its release on Friday, the government still does not directly mention anti-Black racism. However, it says the council will be using Canada's Anti-Racism Strategy and Action Plan on Combatting Hate, documents last updated under Trudeau that include sections on anti-Black racism, as guides in tackling "racism and hate in all their forms." 

The action plan called Black people the "targets of the greatest number of police-reported hate crimes targeting a race or an ethnicity," saying they accounted for 37 per cent in 2023.

Senior reporter

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