Jun 22 2022 — Erica Ifill — Hill Times — Do the Liberals choose their cabinet through varying degrees of anti-Blackness, or is that just a bonus they throw in? Given that the Toronto Police Service recently gave an apology for their systemic anti-Black racism, reporters should be asking Bill Blair what his contribution to the cause was. Nevertheless, Blair is not in my crosshairs […]
Jun 15 2022 — Erica Ifill — Hill Times — Is there a bill that Pablo Rodriguez has not mashed up? One would think his second time around as Heritage minister—as well as watching his colleague, Steven Guilbeault, be reduced to a political punchline after his stint at Heritage—would give him a clue. Seems like Heritage is the place where underperformers reign before failing up, […]
May 18 2022 — Erica Ifill — Hill Times — The Canadian White Establishment is at it again, gaslighting Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) into disbelieving our own experiences in this country, based and built on white supremacy and the fascism of right-wing, Christian dogma. Over the weekend, a young white man live-streamed himself on Twitch murdering Black people, or what I like […]
May 4 2022 — Erica Ifill — Hill Times — Under his eye, indeed. Across the border, Republicans and conservatives alike are remaking the United States in the image of the Republic of Gilead. On Monday night, Politico broke the story of the year so far, which is that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is poised to overturn one of the most […]
Feb 9 2022 — Erica Ifill — Hill Times — It’s so rare for political pundits to be right—just look at Stephen Maher. Or John Ibbitson. Or Jesse Brown. Or Jen Gerson. But I can assure you that this is not the case for yours truly. I’ve been telling y’all. We are now into Day 12 of the “Freedom Convoy,” which has turned into an […]
Jan 19 2022 — Erica Ifill — Hill Times — Imagine a Black woman who writes about, and advocates against, inequities, who rails against injustice, with an emphasis on the Black experience siding with the anti-vaxxers she cussed only a few months prior. But here we are. Politics makes for strange bedfellows. On Jan. 11, Quebec Premier François Legault announced a tax on the unvaccinated […]
Dec 1 2021 — Erica Ifill — Hill Times — Tell me anti-blackness is global without telling me anti-blackness is global. On Nov. 26, researchers in South Africa detected a new addition to the coronavirus family, a variant named omicron (B.1.1.529). It was first detected in Botswana but identified by South African researchers, after a rapid spike in cases in the city of Pretoria. In […]
Oct 27 2021 — Erica Ifill — Hill Times — Imagine being in the Liberal Party and thinking you’re absolved of white supremacy because you have a Black friend (or you adopted an Indigenous child, *cough* Chrétien). That Black friend is Greg Fergus, and like every model minority, he’s made no waves, kept his head down, and has done the work, expecting it would speak […]
Sep 15 2021 — Erica Ifill — Hill Times — We’re coming down the homestretch of this god-awful election and evidently the PPC aren’t the only ones with white male rage; Erin O’Toole and Justin Trudeau have turned particularly nasty, as both the gloves and the masks come off. This election has been particularly silent on intersectional feminist issues. There has been little to no […]
Mar 3 2021 — Erica Ifill — Hill Times — Dear federal Black employees, Thank you for your words of encouragement and support and for trusting me with your own stories. Your humanity is not to be negotiated and your voices are never to be silenced. Unfortunately, to work in the public service means as Black employees your value will be disregarded, your talents diminished […]
Feb 3 2021 — Erica Ifill — Hill Times — Malcolm X once said, “The white man will try to satisfy us with symbolic victories rather than economic equity and real justice.” This has been the strategy of the Liberal government since their 2015 majority win, but they’re not the only performance in town. Conservative Party Leader Erin O’Toole, in an effort to look more […]
Oct 14 2020 — Erica Ifill — Hill Times — What were you thankful for this Thanksgiving? If you were lucky enough to spend it with your family, complete with the illustrious feast featuring a cornucopia of traditional food items, count your blessings. There are many people who weren’t able to do so and the structural discrepancies between the haves and have-nots are growing during […]
Sep 2 2020 — Erica Ifill — Globe and Mail — In a classic example of what the late John Lewis called “good trouble,” Montreal demonstrators removed the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald from a public space without injury at a protest to defund the police last Saturday. And the outrage from the white Canadian men in whose image Canadian history is taught was swift. […]
Jun 3 2020 — Erica Ifill — Hill Times — Burn. It. All. Down. We’ve marched. We’ve bent the knee. We’ve attended your diversity and inclusion workshops that don’t include us and are run by some random privileged white woman. We’ve been on your mostly white diversity panels and working groups. We’ve reported racism. We’ve spoken nicely to the police. We’ve gotten an education (and […]
May 20 2020 — Erica Ifill — Hill Times — Congratulations Conservatives, you played yourselves. On May 12, Ekos Research released its latest polling results that captured political support amid the coronavirus pandemic. And boy, were they revealing. The landscape has changed dramatically over the last few months since the federal election in October, when the Liberals were handed a minority in Parliament. Now they’re […]