AUMA statement on recent hate-motivated events

On Sunday, March 21, AUMA released a statement on social media to recognize the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. In recent weeks, Alberta’s media has reported on several hate-motivated events and personal attacks here and around the world. While these events may appear to be isolated incidents, we know that issues of racism are much more prevalent in our society. There are daily acts of racism by individuals and systemic organizational problems that go unreported but are noticed and felt by Black, Indigenous, and people of colour.

Our social media statement communicated that AUMA unequivocally denounces racism and discrimination in all forms. As municipal leaders, we know that communities will prosper when all residents can live their lives without fear of racism or discrimination. Our goal is to support Alberta’s communities to be places where all individuals have a sense of belonging and are given the space and opportunity to contribute to the social, cultural, and economic well-being of the community.

Supporting our members

Our Welcoming and Inclusive Communities initiative has supported municipal governments since 2006 through educational conferences and webinars, toolkits, and connecting people to advance knowledge-sharing. This work continues and we are pleased to see so many municipal councils taking the lead by bringing training into their own organizations to understand how they can become a more inclusive employer, service provider, and leader in the community.

We encourage members to take advantage of our free resources such as:

• Use our Measuring Inclusion Tool for Municipal Governments to spur conversations about how you can improve policies and practices to create an inclusive environment for staff and residents. 
• Check out other tools such as developing an inclusion plan, attracting immigrants to your community, or examples of how other municipalities have structured committees to focus on inclusion issues.
• Watch past webinars to gain guidance on how to approach issues that impact groups in your community.

In the coming months, AUMA will launch a program through which municipalities will be able to apply for funding to assess your readiness to support the integration of newcomers in your community. Issues of bias and racism will likely form part of that assessment so please watch for more details as we release them.

We are here to support you so if you have questions about our resources or want to learn how other municipalities are approaching issues of racism and discrimination, wic [at] auma.ca (contact us) and we’ll start a conversation.