Rima Azar, Edmonton Journal, November 9, 2022

In response to the Alberta government’s redesign of driver’s licences and other identification to prevent counterfeiting, the majority of Edmonton Police Commission members have weighed in with an additional proposal: that the racial identity of Albertans be included on their driver’s licences.

The Edmonton Police Service’s justification for collecting data by race seems unclear, other than a result of discussions with Statistics Canada and some vague notion of bias. Edmonton police Chief Dale McFee has endorsed the move with the notion that race-based data, when self-reported, is a “source of truth.”

This is a poor idea for many reasons.

First, “race” and ethnic categories are not as clear as some think. As someone who is Lebanese-born, should I identify as that or Caucasian, Arab, Phoenician, or Semite? It’s not clear-cut and with Canadians of mixed ancestries, it’s even more complex. Imagine someone whose four grandparents were Metis, Caucasian, Black and Japanese respectively. What “race” should they identify with on their licence?

Second is the possible agenda behind more race identification. Canadian governments have increasingly been driving what they call a pro-diversity ideology but which, in fact, has led to new forms of discrimination based on identity.

A good example is Patanjali Kambhampati, professor, department of chemistry, McGill University, who last November told the National Post that he was denied research grants because he was clear that he would hire researchers based on merit and not skin colour. The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada turned down his $450,000 grant application on the justification that “the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion considerations in [his] application were deemed insufficient.”

Kambhampati wondered out loud about the consequences of such a race-based approach: “Some of my group are straight, white men. Am I not to mentor them as equally as the others? That’s what’s implied. I can’t do that in good conscience.”

A third reason why the notion of identification by race on driver’s licences is a poor idea, is because many Canadian immigrants — older ones like myself, or the half a million new ones to arrive every year — often left their respective birth countries (or will) precisely because of identity-based intimidation and even abuse and violence based on the same. It is disappointing, even troubling, when I now see some in my adopted country propose to now identify me — and other immigrants and “old-stock” Canadians — by “race.”

That’s why the hesitation voiced by Edmonton police commissioner Erick Ambtman when he voted against the five-person majority who want race on our driver’s licences (Ambtman was one of three who opposed the idea) was the correct impulse. “I was in South Africa for a year and they do this and it sort of creeps me out” he told the Edmonton Sun. “I don’t have great logic other than it doesn’t feel right.”

Ambtman’s intuition is enough though because I can attest that when governments identify people by race, colour, ethnicity or creed — not in anonymous surveys from the census but on their everyday identification or for grants and jobs — it often has negative, divisive and even deadly consequences.

A meaningful example of both the worst and wisest policy on identity politics hits home. I left Lebanon for Canada in 1990 but before that, while growing up, endured the Lebanese Civil War. The Lebanese suffered greatly, including from occupations by battling, neighbouring countries and their proxies (Syria and Israel, and Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO and Israeli-friendly militias). We as Lebanese also endured intense shelling, hostage-takings, car bombings, and many became refugees while all of us endured chaos for years.

There was also this evil: Civilians were kidnapped or killed at checkpoints by all militias just for being the “wrong” identity, i.e., the wrong religion, on their identity cards, which is why the wisest gesture post-war by the Lebanese government in 2009 was its decree to remove religious affiliations from citizens’ identity cards.

I’m not saying that race and ethnic identification on driver’s licences will lead to mayhem and murder in Canada. I am saying that identifying Canadians on their everyday documents, and the existing practice of awarding grants and jobs in Canada based on race, is divisive and discriminatory, and one suspects more “race” identification will lead to more of the same. Canada should move in the opposite direction, one of race-neutrality.

If Lebanon got rid of religion in identity cards in 2009, why does Edmonton’s police commission propose to identify people by race on driver’s licences in 2022? I have seen the problem with identity-based politics by ethnicity and religion. Little good can come from such proposals.

Dr. Rima Azar is an associate professor of health psychology, Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick, and a senior fellow at the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy.