Zena Simces

Who stops the hate?

Taylor Owen speaks at the third annual Simces and Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights, Nov. 9. (screenshot)

Canada, like most of the world, is behind in addressing the issue of hate and violence-inciting content online. In attempting to confront this challenge, as the federal government will do with a new bill in this session of Parliament, it will be faced with conundrums around where individual freedom of expression ends and the right of individuals and groups to be free from hateful and threatening content begins.

The ethical riddles presented by the topic were the subject of the third annual Simces and Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights, Nov. 9, in an event titled Is Facebook a Threat to Democracy? A Conversation about Rights in the Digital Age.

The annual dialogue was created by Jewish Vancouverites Zena Simces and her husband Dr. Simon Rabkin. It was presented virtually for the second year in a row, in partnership with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

The featured presenter was Taylor Owen, who is the Beaverbrook Chair in Media, Ethics and Communications, the founding director of the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy, and an associate professor in the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University. He presented in conversation with Jessica Johnson, editor-in-chief of The Walrus magazine.

The advent of the internet was seen as a means to upend the control of a society’s narrative from established media, governments and other centralized powers and disperse it into the hands of anyone with access to a computer and the web. Instead, as the technology has matured, online power has been “re-concentrating” into a small number of online platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, which now have more global reach and cultural power than any preexisting entity.

“Understanding them and how they work, how they function, what their incentives are, what their benefits are, what their risks are, is really important to democratic society,” said Owen.

These are platforms that make money by selling ads, so it is in their interest to keep the largest number of people on the platform for the longest time possible, all while collecting data about users’ behaviours and interests, Owen said. These demands prioritize content that is among the most divisive and extreme and, therefore, likely to draw and keep audiences engaged.

The sheer volume of posts – in every language on earth – almost defies policing, he said. For example, in response to public and governmental demands that the company address proliferating hate content and other problematic materials, Facebook has increased resources aimed at moderating what people post. However, he said, 90% of the resources dedicated to content moderation on Facebook are focused on the United States, even though 90% of Facebook users are in countries outside of the United States.

A serious problem is that limitations on speech are governed by every country differently, while social media, for the most part, knows no borders.

Canada has a long precedent of speech laws, and Parliament is set to consider a controversial new bill intended to address some of the dangers discussed in the dialogue. But, just as the issues confounded easy answers in the discussion between Owen and Johnson, attempts to codify solutions into law will undoubtedly result in fundamental disagreements over the balancing of various rights.

“Unlike in some countries, hate speech is illegal here,” said Owen. “We have a process for adjudicating and deciding what is hate speech and holding people who spread it liable.”

The United States, on the other hand, has a far more libertarian approach to free expression.

An example of a country attempting to find a middle path is the approach taken by Germany, he said, but that is likely to have unintended consequences. Germany has decreed, and Owen thinks Canada is likely to emulate, a scenario where social media companies are liable for statements that represent already illegal speech – terrorist content, content that incites violence, child exploitative content, nonconsensual sharing of images and incitement to violence.

Beyond these overtly illegal categories is a spectrum of subjectively inappropriate content. A single media platform trying to accommodate different national criteria for acceptability faces a juggling act.

“The United States, for example, prioritizes free speech,” he said. “Germany, clearly, and for understandable historical reasons, prioritizes the right to not be harmed by speech, therefore, this takedown regime. Canada kind of sits in the middle. Our Charter [of Rights and Freedoms] protects both. The concern is that by leaning into this takedown regime model, like Germany, you lead platforms down a path of over-censoring.”

If Facebook or YouTube is threatened with fines as high as, say, five percent of their global revenue if they don’t remove illegal speech within 24 hours, their incentive is to massively over-censor, he said.

Owen said this will have an effect on the bottom line of these companies, just as mandatory seatbelts in cars, legislation to prevent petrochemical companies from polluting waterways and approval regimes governing the pharmaceutical industry added costs to those sectors. Unfortunately, the nuances of free speech and the complexities of legislating it across international boundaries make this an added burden that will probably require vast resources to oversee.

“It’s not like banning smoking … where you either ban it or you allow it and you solve the problem,” said Owen. There are potentially billions of morally ambiguous statements posted online. Who is to adjudicate, even if it is feasible to referee that kind of volume?

Rabkin opened the dialogue, explaining what he and Simces envisioned with the series.

“Our aim is to enhance the understanding and create an opportunity for dialogue on critical human rights issues, with the hope of generating positive actions,” he said.

This year’s presentation, he said, lies at a crucial intersection of competing rights.

“Do we, as a society, through our government, curtail freedom of expression, recognizing that some of today’s unsubstantiated ideas may be tomorrow’s accepted concepts?” he asked. “Unregulated freedom of speech, however, may lead to the promulgation of hate towards vulnerable elements and components of our society, especially our children. Do we constrain surveillance capitalism or do we constrain the capture of our personal data for commercial purposes? Do we allow big tech platforms such as Facebook to regulate themselves and, in so doing, does this threaten our democratic societies? If or when we regulate big tech platforms, who is to do it? And what will be the criteria? And what should be the penalties for violation of the legislation?”

Speaking at the conclusion of the event, Simces acknowledged the difficulty of balancing online harms and safeguarding freedom of expression.

“The issue is, how do we mitigate harm and maximize benefits?” she asked. “While there is no silver bullet, we do need to focus on how technology platforms themselves are structured. Facebook and other platforms often put profits ahead of the safety of people and the public good.… There is a growing recognition that big tech cannot be left to monitor itself.”

The full program can be viewed at humanrights.ca/is-facebook-a-threat-to-democracy.

Rights in the digital age

Taylor Owen, one of Canada’s leading experts on digital media ethics, is the featured speaker at this year’s Simces & Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights event Nov. 9. (photo from cigionline.org)

On Nov. 9, the Simces & Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights, in partnership with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, hosts the online program Is Facebook a Threat to Democracy? A Conversation About Rights in the Digital Age.

Platforms like Facebook, which collect and share huge amounts of information, are being accused of putting profit above democracy and the public good. Can government regulation protect us and our children from online harm and misinformation – or is “Big Tech” ungovernable? How can Canadians balance freedom of expression and protection from harm on social media?

These questions and many others will be discussed by Taylor Owen in conversation with Jessica Johnson.

Owen is the Beaverbrook Chair in Media, Ethics and Communications, the founding director of the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy, and an associate professor in the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University. He is the host of the Centre for International Governance Innovation’s Big Tech podcast, and is also a senior fellow of CIGI. His work focuses on the intersection of media, technology and public policy.

Johnson is editor-in-chief at The Walrus magazine. A former editor at the Globe & Mail and National Post newspapers, she is an award-winning journalist who has contributed essays, features and criticism to a wide range of North American publications. She was the co-creator, with Maclean’s journalist Anne Kingston, of #MeToo and the Media, an inaugural course in the University of Toronto’s Book and Media Studies program.

The Simces & Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights will be on Zoom on Nov. 9 from noon to 1:30 p.m. PST. It will include an audience Q&A session opportunity. Register to attend the event via humanrights.ca/is-facebook-a-threat-to-democracy. Once registered, you will receive a confirmation email and, later, a reminder for the event.

– Courtesy Simces & Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights

More than a guide for work

Vancouver-based consultant Zena Simces’ You Can Make a Difference: A Guide to Being a Great Consultant(Tellwell Talent, 2020) is an informative, concise and useful primer for anyone considering this career path – or, really, anyone who works with diverse individuals or groups.

Zena Simces shares lessons from her experiences in You Can Make a Difference: A Guide to Being a Great Consultant.

Based on knowledge gleaned from 30-plus years of experience working with a wide range of clients, as well as other research, You Can Make a Difference is what its title says, a guide to being an effective consultant. But it also is kind of a guide for how to be a good person and interact well with others. As Simces notes in the chapter on “Upholding Ethical Standards”: “My parents (who were in the grocery business) shaped me as a person and as a consultant. Their motto was to treat people the way I want to be treated.”

Perhaps now, in the context of ethics and family, I should mention that Simces is a longtime family friend. While I don’t think that this fact has influenced my opinions, it is interesting that, more than once in her book – starting with the first chapter – Simces discusses the need for consultants to be aware of things like unconscious bias and to try and mitigate their impacts.

“Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is important,” she writes. “We all struggle with self-awareness, but effective consultants recognize their biases and how to address them. They are natural self-starters and strive for excellence in all that they do, so they are aware of their blind spots and work to improve in areas they are weak.”

The book is full of practical advice like this – not earth-shattering insights but valuable information, collected into one easy-to-read volume of about 100 pages.

You Can Make a Difference is divided into two main parts. The first section takes readers through how to become a consultant, including consideration of whether that’s really the right career path for them. The second section highlights the main skills needed to do the job well. The four-page selected bibliography offers a start for readers who want to dive into the topic more deeply.

The two-and-a-half-page foreword begins with an example from Simces’ career – an instance when things did not go as planned, at least initially.

“While I have learned much from my successes, ‘failures’ like this one offer me the opportunity to learn and grow, which is essential,” she writes. “Being a successful consultant does not only involve substantive knowledge and technical skills, but also ‘soft skills,’ such as relationship-building, listening, communication and leadership. This combination allows a consultant to more efficiently and thoroughly achieve his or her clients’ goals.”

As she notes, these abilities, in reality, are “too important to be called ‘soft’ skills and have become the essence of what is required to be a great consultant. In fact, the Business Council of Canada’s Skills Survey (2018), which is based on responses from 95 of Canada’s largest companies, lists soft skills such as collaboration, communication, problem-solving, analytical capabilities and resiliency as top priorities for entry-level hires. Companies also valued these soft skills for mid-level employees.”

This is another example of why Simces’ book also would be of interest to people who aren’t necessarily wanting to become a consultant. And that she starts her book with sharing how she learned from a misstep illustrates another of her points that would be beneficial to anyone, not just consultants – that it’s OK to “show some vulnerability. In fact, it takes courage to show vulnerability, and it takes strength to redirect to find a better solution. This can contribute to greater confidence between you and your client.” Or any relationship.

Unlike other books of this kind, Simces doesn’t give multiple examples or long stories to help drive home or explain a point. She gives one – and short ones at that – and moves on, which I appreciated. She trusts readers’ intelligence and doesn’t fill pages with unnecessary or ego-inflating narratives. Each chapter ends with a summary of the ideas therein and, in the second section, each chapter also includes a list of key tips covered. While this may seem like overkill, I found it helpful, especially when wanting to quickly find the details about something I only semi-recalled reading. I could see the tips or summaries making the book an accessible reference tool to have on your shelf or computer desktop long after having read it.

Whether or not You Can Make a Difference translates into your being able to make a difference in the world as a consultant, I can’t say, but it gives anyone considering this career path a solid framework for trying to do so. And its lessons and observations are applicable beyond the work setting. We could all use a gentle reminder on how to build trust in relationships, to have the courage to admit what we don’t know, to be flexible and open to change, and other such life, never mind consulting, skills.

Our rights in the age of AI

Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, chief executive officer and founder of Parity, gave the keynote address at the Simces & Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights. (photo from rummanchowdhury.com)

Data and social scientist Dr. Rumman Chowdhury provided a wide-ranging analysis on the state of artificial intelligence and the implications it has on human rights in a Nov. 19 talk. The virtual event was organized by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg and Vancouver’s Zena Simces and Dr. Simon Rabkin for the second annual Simces & Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights.

“We still need human beings thinking even if AI systems – no matter how sophisticated they are – are telling us things and giving us input,” said Chowdhury, who is the chief executive officer and founder of Parity, a company that strives to help businesses maintain high ethical standards in their use of AI.

A common misperception of AI is that it looks like futuristic humanoids or robots, like, for example, the ones in Björk’s 1999 video for her song “All is Full of Love.” But, said Chowdhury, artificial intelligence is instead computer code, algorithms or programming language – and it has limitations.

“Cars do not drive us. We drive cars. We should not look at AI as though we are not part of the discussion,” she said.

screenshot - In her presentation Nov. 19 at the Simces & Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights, Dr. Rumman Chowdhury highlighted the 2006 Montreal Declaration of Human Rights. — In her presentation Nov. 19 at the Simces & Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights, Dr. Rumman Chowdhury highlighted the 2006 Montreal Declaration of Human Rights.

The 2006 Montreal Declaration of Human Rights has served as an important framework in the age of artificial intelligence. The central tenets of that declaration include well-being, respect for autonomy and democratic participation. Around those concepts, Chowdhury addressed human rights in the realms of health, education and privacy.

Pre-existing biases have permeated healthcare AI, she said, citing the example of a complicated algorithm from care provider Optum that prioritized less sick white patients over more sick African-American patients.

“Historically, doctors have ignored or downplayed symptoms in Black patients and given preferential treatment to white patients – this is literally in the data,” explained Chowdhury. “Taking that data and putting it into an algorithm simply trains it to repeat the same actions that are baked into the historical record.”

Other reports have shown that an algorithm used in one region kept Black patients from getting kidney transplants, leading to patient deaths, and that COVID-19 relief allocations based on AI were disproportionately underfunding minority communities.

“All algorithms have bias because there is no perfect way to predict the future. The problem occurs when the biases become systematic, when there is a pattern to them,” she said.

Chowdhury suggested that citizens have the right to know when algorithms are being used, so that the programs can be examined critically and beneficial outcomes to all people can be ensured, with potential harms being identified and corrected responsibly.

With respect to the increased use of technology in education, she asked, “Has AI ‘disrupted’ education or has it simply created a police state?” Here, too, she offered ample evidence of how technology has sometimes gone off course. For instance, she shared a news report from this spring from the United Kingdom, where an algorithm was used by the exam regulator Ofqual to determine the grades of students. For no apparent reason, the AI system downgraded the results of 40% of the students, mostly those in vulnerable economic situations.

Closer to home, a University of British Columbia professor, Ian Linkletter, was sued this year by the tech firm Proctorio for a series of tweets critical of its remote testing software, which the university was using. Linkletter shared his concerns that this kind of technology does not, in his mind, foster a love of learning in the way it monitors students and he called attention to the fact that a private company is collecting and storing data on individuals.

To combat the pernicious aspects of ed tech from bringing damaging consequences to schooling, Chowdhury thinks some fundamental questions should be asked. Namely, what is the purpose of educational technology in terms of the well-being of the student? How are students’ rights protected? How can the need to prevent the possibility that some students may cheat on exams be balanced with the rights of the majority of students?

“We are choosing technology that punishes rather than that which enables and nurtures,” she said.

Next came the issue of privacy, which, Chowdhury asserted, “is fascinating because we are seeing this happen in real-time. Increasingly, we have a blurred line between public and private.”

She distinguished between choices that a member of the public may have as a consumer in submitting personal data to a company like Amazon versus a government organization. While a person can decide not to purchase from a particular company, they cannot necessarily opt out of public services, which also gather personal information and use technology – and this is a “critical distinction.”

Chowdhury showed the audience a series of disturbing news stories from over the past couple of years. In 2018, the New Orleans Police Department, after years of denial, admitted to using AI that sifted through data from social media and criminal history to predict when a person would commit a crime. Another report came from the King’s Cross district of London, which has one of the highest concentrations of facial-recognition cameras of any region in the world outside of China, according to Chowdhury. The preponderance of surveillance technology in our daily lives, she warned, can bring about what has been deemed a “chilling effect,” or a reluctance to engage in legitimate protest or free speech, due to the fear of potential legal repercussions.

Then there are the types of surveillance used in workplaces. “More and more companies are introducing monitoring tech in order to ensure that their employees are not ‘cheating’ on the job,” she said. These technologies can intrude by secretly taking screenshots of a person’s computer while they are at work, and mapping the efficiency of employees through algorithms to determine who might need to be laid off.

“All this is happening at a time of a pandemic, when things are not normal. Instead of being treated as a useful contributor, these technologies make employees seem like they are the enemy,” said Chowdhury.

How do we enable the rights of both white- and blue-collar workers? she asked. How can we protect our right to peaceful and legitimate protest? How can AI be used in the future in a way that allows humans to reach their full potential?

In her closing remarks, Chowdhury asked, “What should AI learn from human rights?” She introduced the term “human centric” – “How can designers, developers and programmers appreciate the role of the human rights narrative in developing AI systems equitably?”

She concluded, “Human rights frameworks are the only ones that place humans first.”

Award-winning technology journalist and author Amber Mac moderated the lecture, which was opened by Angeliki Bogiatji, the interpretive program developer for the museum. Isha Khan, the museum’s new chief executive officer, welcomed viewers, while Simces gave opening remarks and Rabkin closed the broadcast.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

***

Note: This article has been corrected to reflect that it was technology journalist and author Amber Mac who moderated the lecture.

Focus on online hate

Kasari Govender, British Columbia’s human rights commissioner. (photo from Wosk Centre)

Hate in British Columbia, in Canada and globally is on the rise. In 2017, there were 255 police-reported hate crimes in British Columbia, an increase of 55% from just two years earlier. In 2018, Metro Vancouver had the highest rate of hate crimes reported to police in any of Canada’s three largest metropolitan areas, most based on the victim’s ethnicity or religion, with a smaller but significant number based on sexual orientation.

These alarming statistics, and others, provided a framework and urgency for an event Sept. 12 at Simon Fraser University’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue in downtown Vancouver. The event, titled From Hate to Hope in a Digital Age, is envisioned as the inaugural annual Simces and Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights.

Contextualizing the discussion, Shauna Sylvester, executive director of the Wosk Centre for Dialogue, cited the results of a report undertaken by her organization. These indicate that one in three Canadians believes Canadian-born citizens should have greater say in government than those born outside the country. One-quarter of Canadians say we have too many protections for minorities and one in four also believes we have too many protections for religious freedom.

Keynote speaker at the forum was Kasari Govender, in just her second week on the job as British Columbia’s human rights commissioner. She is the first to hold this role in the province since that office was closed in 2002.

“In my view, there is a strong connection between hateful speech and hateful violence, both on an individual and a systemic level,” she said, citing racist manifestoes sometimes posted online by perpetrators in advance of a mass killing. She said it is necessary to trace the path from speech to violence.

A common theme of recent mass murderers is anti-immigration sentiment, sometimes emphasizing the “purity of the nation, whether that nation is Canada, New Zealand, the U.S. or another,” she said, adding that many of the attacks around the world that have been linked to white nationalism correspond to discourse in mainstream political debates over immigration and public policy.

The worst antisemitic mass murder in United States history, the attack on Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, happened while U.S. President Donald Trump and others were promoting fears of the so-called “migrant caravan” coming from Central America. Part of that conversation, Govender said, “was somehow blaming the Jews for this migrant caravan, drawing a connection in the public discourse, and then there was the shooting.”

Boris Johnson, now prime minister of the United Kingdom, compared women who wear burqas to bank robbers, which led, Govender said, to an increase in acts of hate against Muslim women in the United Kingdom.

Online hate is a particular product of technologies that have emerged in recent decades, she said. “The anonymity, reach and immediacy afforded by the internet escalates the problem beyond what we’ve seen before,” she said. “The internet is a very effective tool for fomenting hate from belief to action, from hateful words to violent actions.”

While forcing social media platforms to police hate speech might be criticized as an infringement of free expression, she said, the opposite is true. Regulating platforms to shut down violent rhetoric actually improves access to freedom of expression for many, as people of colour, women and others are being silenced online by racism and misogyny, she said.

Participants at the Wosk Centre offered a wide range of perspectives.

Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, outlined the approach his agency takes in confronting online hatred.

“Legal [action] would be our last recourse against a hate group or a hate propagandist,” he noted, saying that their first response is to “try to hold somebody socially accountable.” That means, if the person is anonymous, exposing them. If the person is not anonymous, this might mean bringing their posts to the attention of their employers, family and friends.

“Those might provide checks on their behaviour,” he said, adding, “We’re not really trying to reform people here, we’re just trying to stop the spread of hate propaganda.”

For those who do not respond to social accountability, Balgord said, Canada’s laws are insufficient. Application of the Criminal Code’s section that deals with the wilful promotion of hate and distribution of hate propaganda is unwieldy.

“We did use to have a better recourse,” he said. “It was Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. It would allow a private individual to essentially file a complaint, which would be vetted by the Canadian Human Rights Commission and, if found credible, would go to the tribunal. They could order a cease-and-desist order against that individual and up to a $5,000 fine.” If, at that point, the individual failed to comply, they would be in contravention of a court order and could face jail.

“We really want to see something like Section 13 come back,” he said.

Several speakers agreed that social media platforms need to do more policing of hate speech. Some countries have laws that force social media companies to address hate material on their platforms within certain timeframes or face serious fines.

Social media platforms, Balgord said, may already be in contravention of Canada’s existing laws against discrimination in the provision of a commercial service, because women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ people and other members of targeted groups are exposed to abuse, harassment and death threats that could drive them off the platform.

Rabbi Dr. Laura Duhan-Kaplan, director of inter-religious studies at the Vancouver School of Theology, noted that government budgets are limited but that education can take place everywhere – and that everyone is an educator. Early childhood is crucial, she said.

“What children do together, the songs they sing, the books they read, all of that becomes the building blocks of the way they think,” she said. “All of us who interact with children have an opportunity to begin to teach values of respecting difference, helping others, nonviolence.… One week of summer camp with friends on a theme of diversity, peace, public service – these are experiences that stay with teens and we really, really bring them into young adulthood in a different way.”

A speaker from the audience, a counselor and educator, noted that inequality, including economic inequality and poverty, makes people susceptible to fear and that can become a foundation for hate.

Another speaker contended that there is, in effect, no such thing as race.

“I think it’s very problematic to use the term race as if it’s a reality,” he said. “There is such a thing as racism but not really race. If you look at the majority of anthropologists, geneticists and so on, they say that we have much, much more in common with each other [than differences].… Even using terms like black and white to refer to people reinforces racism. We never call people yellow anymore, because that’s racist. We need to come up with a new language that doesn’t emphasize unreal differences and that are respectful to everybody.”

Lorene Oikawa, president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians, contended that sharing one another’s stories is an effective means to education.

“People really don’t know the stories,” she said. “For sure, there are some people who do, but they don’t know the [extent of the] harm that was done and the intergenerational trauma.”

She applied lessons of the past to current events. “In 2019, Japanese-Americans, Japanese-Canadians are horrified by some of the hateful rhetoric we’re hearing [that] could be lifted from 1942,” she said. “If people knew their history, more people would be going, ‘Wait a minute. What we did back in 1942 was wrong. Why are we saying the same things about people from [other] countries, putting people in camps, separating families, separating children from their families?’ All that stuff happened to Japanese-Americans, Japanese-Canadians and it’s being repeated today.”

She added: “We feel it’s our duty that what happened to our community must never happen to another community again.”

Clint Curle, senior advisor to the president of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, agreed that education is pivotal.

“Is there a lesson, an experience, we can give children especially that will make them resistant to hate speech and resistant to hateful violence?” asked Curle. He compared hatred to a communicable disease.

“If this was polio, what would we do? If this was polio, we would do what we did, which is vaccinate. The way vaccinations work is you get children and you give them just enough of something close to the disease [so] that they develop an internal resistance to it, so, when they encounter the disease, there is something within them that says, no. So, when they encounter hate, they’ll know.”

With more than 1.5 million visitors to the museum since it opened five years ago, Curle said what resonates, especially with young people, is exactly what Oikawa suggested.

“The thing that seems to work best is storytelling across social boundaries,” he said.

Zena Simces, a health and social service policy consultant and a former Pacific region chair of the now-defunct Canadian Jewish Congress, conceived of the annual event with her husband, Dr. Simon Rabkin.

“We felt that we wanted to enhance an understanding of human rights in our community and to create an opportunity for dialogue on human rights issues,” Simces said. “Our aim is to select current and relevant themes each year and to invite experts and community leaders and community members to advance and generate positive action.”

Rabkin, a cardiologist, professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia and president of the medical staff at Vancouver General Hospital, added: “The dialogue this evening … is seeking to enhance our understanding and knowledge of how this increase in hate and its consequences can be addressed from legal, social media and community perspectives.”

A dialogue on human rights

Zena Simces and Simon Rabkin (photos from organizers)

A first-annual event next month aims to mobilize individuals and groups to tackle issues of human rights in a comprehensive way.

The Simces and Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights, on Sept. 12, will feature Kasari Govender, British Columbia’s incoming human rights commissioner. A number of invited guests will offer comments from the audience and a reception will follow for less formal interactions. The free event has already reached full capacity.

Govender is the province’s first human rights commissioner since 2002, when the government, under the B.C. Liberals, abolished the position, making this the only province in the country without a human rights commission. Currently, Govender is the executive director of West Coast LEAF (Legal Education and Action Fund), which advances gender equality through involvement in equality rights cases at all levels of court. Govender assumes her new position in September.

The dialogue event, intended to be replicated each year, is the brainchild of Vancouver couple Zena Simces and Simon Rabkin. The series is presented in partnership with Simon Fraser University’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue, where the event is to take place, and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. The topic of this year’s forum is From Hate to Hope in a Digital Age.

“Human Rights has been an interest of mine for many years,” said Simces, a health and social service policy consultant who has worked with minority communities. She is also a former Pacific region chair of the now-defunct Canadian Jewish Congress. “Simon and I felt that there was not one overall organization in Vancouver that was devoted to human rights issues.”

When Simces lived in Fredericton, N.B., she set up a lecture series in conjunction with the Atlantic Centre for Human Rights. It has continued for 30 years and Simces travels there annually for the event.

“In the last year or so, there’s just been so much going on about hate and abuse of human rights, violence, far-right groups and antisemitism, so we both felt there was a void in Vancouver with respect to a dedicated program on human rights,” she said. “There are a lot of different interest groups – women’s groups, specific minority groups – that have different programs, but there isn’t one group really now in Vancouver that is looking at the whole area of human rights broadly for the whole community. When we approached Simon Fraser’s Wosk Centre for Dialogue, they felt the same and thought it was a great idea.”

Rabkin is a cardiologist, a professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia and president of the medical staff at Vancouver Hospital. He also does investigative research in cardiology and has led numerous organizations.

“I’ve been involved for years with looking after individuals in either under-serviced areas in Canada or in Africa and have looked after disadvantaged peoples as patients and have seen the impact of problems of human rights affecting individuals’ lives, and so I wanted to see about doing something that might alter the attitudes towards minimizing or denigrating human rights, which have affected people that I’ve been involved with,” he said.

With SFU, the pair set up an advisory group that includes thought leaders in the field, including a legal expert in international human rights; a former ambassador who has dealt with peace, security and human rights issues; a representative from the Canadian Museum for Human Rights; and representatives from the Wosk Centre.

“We also brought together a multicultural group of young leaders for a one-time focus group,” Simces said. It was out of this group that the idea arose to prioritize the issue of human rights in the digital age.

In addition to opening the event up to the public, specific invitations were made to multicultural organizations, indigenous groups, police, members of the legal community, health workers, educators and representatives of different religious communities, including Rabbi Laura Duhan-Kaplan, director of inter-religious studies at the Vancouver School of Theology, among others.

“What we wanted to do is to create a venue and an opportunity for people to start talking together … not just to complain about problems, but also to be able to start formulating approaches to solve problems and address them and solve them,” said Rabkin. “We don’t have a political mandate to change things. But we believe that by dialoguing and by having the community speak to and hear from the newly appointed commissioner and to have people such as the Canadian Museum for Human Rights involved and other groups involved … then there will be a lot of important ideas created and a lot of opportunities for exchange of information and thoughts and we believe that this will be a catalyst moving forward.”

Simces added that she expects antisemitism to come up in the discussions, as statistics indicate that the Jewish community is one of the most targeted groups for hate crimes. However, she added: “We wanted this to be broader than just the Jewish community. I think it’s educating the broader community on antisemitism and other issues, so we wanted to make sure that this was a dialogue within the broader community.”

“If we can reduce hate generally, then that impacts a reduction in antisemitism,” said Rabkin. “That’s the objective.”

“We hope people will come and participate in the dialogue and really think about how to follow-up in terms of addressing the issue of hate from a legal, social media, education and community perspective,” Simces said.