Meet Alberta’s first Anti-Racism Advisory Council

February 25, 2019 – from Government of Alberta

Alberta’s first council dedicated to combating racism will bring expertise and experience to assist in government’s commitment to end racism.

The council includes 24 members plus Education Minister David Eggen, who is responsible for government’s anti-racism initiative. The council will advise government as it develops strategies to end racism and discrimination in Alberta. This council is the first of its kind in the province.

More than 300 Albertans applied to participate on the council. Members were selected for their demonstrated leadership abilities and experience in advocating for diverse communities. The council includes people from various faiths and other diversities, and members represent regions across the province.

“Establishing the Anti-Racism Advisory Council is an important part of our government’s efforts in fighting racism in this province. Each of the council’s new members brings a wealth of knowledge and lived experience to our government’s anti-racism work. I have a great deal of confidence in this new council and I look forward to working together to ensure all Albertans feel safe and respected. We will work together towards a common goal of ending racism in our province. We owe this to our future generations.”

David Eggen, Minister of Education

Minister Eggen will have two co-chairs on the Anti-Racism Advisory Council: Heather Campbell and Lucenia Ortiz.

“I am extremely proud to share the leadership of the Alberta Anti-Racism Advisory Council (AARAC). Thank you, Minister Eggen, for entrusting me with this fundamental element of the government’s plan to address racism. All Albertans will benefit from AARAC’s inspired work developing community-based solutions to address racism and remove barriers, allowing everyone to thrive.”

Heather A. Campbell, co-chair, Anti-Racism Advisory Council

“I am honoured to be selected as one of the co-chairs of the Alberta Anti-Racism Advisory Council. I look forward to working with the members of the Advisory Council who share a commitment to tackle racism and make Alberta a more welcoming and inclusive province.”

Lucenia Ortiz, co-chair, Anti-Racism Advisory Council

Council member biographies

Co-Chairs

Heather A. Campbell, Calgary

Campbell is a practising licensed professional engineer and procurement manager with the Alberta Electric System Operator. Campbell is a member of the advisory council for Western Engineering, sits as vice-president of the board of directors of Downstage Theatre and is a board member of Arts Commons.

Lucenia Ortiz, Edmonton

Ortiz is a planner with the City of Edmonton’s Citizen Services. Ortiz is a founding member of the Edmonton Multicultural Coalition and a member of the Multicultural Health Brokers Co-op.

Council Members

Shan Ali, Calgary

Ali is the owner and publisher of Express Media Network Ltd. where he launched Weekly Canadian Express, one of Western Canada’s largest South Asian newspapers, covering Calgary, Edmonton and Fort McMurray. Ali also publishes South Asian Xpress Magazine and hosts the Sangeet Studio Radio show. Ali is a board member for the Asian Heritage Foundation and the South Asian Canadian Seniors Society.

Sonia Aujla-Bhullar, Calgary

Aujla-Bhullar is a public school teacher in Calgary and a PhD candidate in the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary. Her current work centres on exploring multi-ethnic and multicultural community engagement within schools as part of present-day inclusive education measures. Her work with community organizations includes local and national initiatives within the Sikh community and she is a member of the South Asian Police Advisory Committee for the Calgary Police Service.

Melodie Bastien, Brocket

Bastien is the NorthStar parent connector at Opokaasin Early Intervention Society in Lethbridge. She provides one-on-one support, wraparound support services and cultural programming for families. Bastien participates in the Blackfoot Traditional way of life within the Blackfoot Confederacy.

Iman Bukhari, Calgary

Bukhari is a multimedia professional working as a planner in channel management for the City of Calgary. Bukhari is also an adjunct professor at Columbia College where she teaches human rights and diversity courses. She is the founder and CEO of the Canadian Cultural Mosaic Foundation.

Yic Camara, Edmonton

Camara is an integration and community liaison agent with Centre d’acceuil et d’etablissement of Northern Alberta, establishing and maintaining contact with French multicultural communities in Edmonton. Camara has been actively involved in the Guinean community and sits on the board of directors for Institut Guy-Lacombe de la Famille (Parent Link Centre) in Edmonton.

Nadine Eagle Child, Lethbridge

Eagle Child is a student counselor at Red Crow Community College. She is an executive member of the Apiistamiiks – White Buffalo Trail Blazers, a grassroots group fighting against racism, hate and discrimination in Southern Alberta. She has served as the co-chair of the Employment and Education subcommittee with the City of Lethbridge’s Interagency Group, and chair of the Student Success and Retention working group under the Iniskim Education Committee at the University of Lethbridge.

Michael Embaie, Calgary

Embaie is a practising, licensed immigration consultant and has volunteered with not-for-profit local, provincial, national and international organizations for over 25 years, including as president and board member of the Southern Alberta Heritage Language Association and as founding member and president of the African Community Association of Calgary.

Sithara Fernando, Fort McMurray

Fernando is a community-based environmental monitoring instructor at Keyano College. Fernando formerly served as the secretary and chair of the governance committee for the Pride Centre of Edmonton and the vice-chair of Some Other Solutions crisis prevention centre. Fernando is a registered professional forester and a mental health advocate.

Nahla Gomaa, Edmonton

Gomaa is an associate clinical professor, researcher and educator at the faculty of medicine and dentistry at the University of Alberta. Gomaa serves as the Interfaith Portfolio chair in the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities, contributes to the city’s commemoration of Remembrance Day and organizes Islamic history month at city hall.

Adil Zaki Hasan, Edmonton

Hasan is the vice-president and chief operations officer at Hasco Development Corporation. Hasan is active in the community including as vice-president of civic engagement for the Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council and board member for Al Mustafa Academy and Humanitarian Society.

Zahro Hassan, Edmonton

Hassan is a doctoral student at the University of Alberta. She has extensive community and youth development experience within several multiracial/multicultural immigrant communities in Toronto, Ottawa and Edmonton. Hassan is a board director at the Edmonton Social Planning Council and a former support staff for the Toronto District School Board Task Force on the Success of Students of Somali Descent.

Abdulghani Haymour, Edmonton

Haymour is a business manager who works closely with the Canadian Arab Friendship Association (CAFA) to assist community members in areas such as filing government documents, accessing government resources and facilitating events. Haymour attends CAFA board meetings as a guest member.

Bernadette Iahtail, Edmonton

Iahtail is co-founder and executive director of Creating Hope Society, a society founded for the survivors of the Sixties and Seventies Scoop of Indigenous children in care. Iahtail is an active member of the Edmonton Coalition for Human Rights, Aboriginal coalitions, the Edmonton Aboriginal Leadership Team and Stony Plain Wapekin Leadership Team.

Adebayo Katiiti. Edmonton

Katiiti is the founder and president of RARICAnow, an organization for all LGBTQ refugees in Canada. Katiiti advocates for the rights of refugees by creating awareness of their existence in Canada and ensuring that newcomers and refugees learn Canadian culture and get support in navigating the refugee and settlement process.

Feisal Kirumira, Edmonton

Kirumira is special advisor to the dean of international students at Augustana campus, University of Alberta. Kirumira chairs the International Student Engagement Committee and participates on the Bridging Program Advisory Committee and the International Week planning committee.

Omar Najmeddine, Edmonton

Najmeddine is the executive director of the Al Rashid Group and leads all corporate functions for the organization. He is a board member with the American University of Beirut Alumni Foundation and a former board member with the Red Cross, and Community Interest Companies Association.

Roy Pogorzelski, Lethbridge

Pogorzelski is the director of Indigenous Student Affairs, an instructor for the Dhillon School of Business at the University of Lethbridge and owner and operator of three business. Pogorzelski is a member of the U of L senate, board member with the YMCA of Lethbridge, president of the Rotary Club of Lethbridge Mosaic and board member of the chamber of commerce. Pogorzelski is also an appointed director for the Canadian Race Relations Foundation (CRRF) and sits as the CRRF advisor to the National Canadian Coalition of Municipalities Against Racism and Discrimination committee.

Tasneem Rahim, Calgary

Rahim is the director of fund development and alumni engagement at Bow Valley College. Rahim serves as a member and manages community relations on the Aga Khan Council for the Prairies, and is the communications member of the Management Committee for Generations: Multi-Generational Housing and Community Centre Campus Calgary.

Judy Shapiro, Calgary

Shapiro is the former associate executive director of the Calgary Jewish Federation, overseeing all of its programming areas. She is a member of the Calgary Interfaith Council and a regular volunteer at the Calgary Interfaith Food Bank. Shapiro is a past board member for the Calgary Council of Christians and Jews and the Committee on Race Relations and Cross-Cultural Understanding.

Pavit Sidhu, Calgary

Sidhu is the WiseGuyz program facilitator and sexual health educator at the Centre for Sexuality in Calgary. Sidhu served as a member of the University of Calgary senate in 2013 and as an appointee of the students’ union representing the undergraduate student body.

Delainah Velichka, Worsley

Velichka is a school board trustee with Peace River School Division No. 10. Velichka’s portfolios include Administrators’ Association, Teacher Board Advisory Committee, Transportation Liaison Committee, Audit Committee, Alberta School Boards Association Second Language Task Force, Clear Hills Trades Training, Council of School Councils Liaison Committee, Discipline Committee and the First Nations, Métis & Inuit Liaison Committee.

Teresa Woo-Paw, Calgary

Woo-Paw is owner and principle of Teresa Woo-Paw & Associates Ltd. Woo-Paw is a member of the board of directors for the Calgary Arts Foundation, board president of Action Chinese Canadians Together Foundation and is a founding member and current co-chair of the Asian Heritage Foundation.

Related Topics:Alberta Anti-Racism feature

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Alberta

Is Canada’s Federation Fair?

Published on April 6, 2025

Todayville

David Clinton

Contrasting the principle of equalization with the execution

Quebec – as an example – happens to be sitting on its own significant untapped oil and gas reserves. Those potential opportunities include the Utica Shale formation, the Anticosti Island basin, and the Gaspé Peninsula (along with some offshore potential in the Gulf of St. Lawrence).

So Quebec is effectively being paid billions of dollars a year to not exploit their natural resources. That places their ostensibly principled stand against energy resource exploitation in a very different light.

You’ll need to search long and hard to find a Canadian unwilling to help those less fortunate. And, so long as we identify as members of one nation¹, that feeling stretches from coast to coast.

So the basic principle of Canada’s equalization payments – where poorer provinces receive billions of dollars in special federal payments – is easy to understand. But as you can imagine, it’s not easy to apply the principle in a way that’s fair, and the current methodology has arguably lead to a very strange set of incentives.

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According to Department of Finance Canada, eligibility for payments is determined based on your province’s fiscal capacity. Fiscal capacity is a measure of the taxes (income, business, property, and consumption) that a province could raise (based on national average rates) along with revenues from natural resources. The idea, I suppose, is that you’re creating a realistic proxy for a province’s higher personal earnings and consumption and, with greater natural resources revenues, a reduced need to increase income tax rates.

But the devil is in the details, and I think there are some questions worth asking:

Whichever way you measure fiscal capacity there’ll be both winners and losers, so who gets to decide?
Should a province that effectively funds more than its “share” get proportionately greater representation for national policy² – or at least not see its policy preferences consistently overruled by its beneficiary provinces?

The problem, of course, is that the decisions that defined equalization were – because of long-standing political conditions – dominated by the region that ended up receiving the most. Had the formula been the best one possible, there would have been little room to complain. But was it?

For example, attaching so much weight to natural resource revenues is just one of many possible approaches – and far from the most obvious. Consider how the profits from natural resources already mostly show up in higher income and corporate tax revenues (including income tax paid by provincial government workers employed by energy-related ministries)?

And who said that such calculations had to be population-based, which clearly benefits Quebec (nine million residents vs around $5 billion in resource income) over Newfoundland (545,000 people vs $1.6 billion) or Alberta (4.2 million people vs $19 billion). While Alberta’s average market income is 20 percent or so higher than Quebec’s, Quebec’s is quite a bit higher than Newfoundland’s. So why should Newfoundland receive only minimal equalization payments?

To illustrate all that, here’s the most recent payment breakdown when measured per-capita:

Equalization 2025-26 – Government of Canada

For clarification, the latest per-capita payments to poorer provinces ranged from $3,936 to PEI, $1,553 to Quebec, and $36 to Ontario. Only Saskatchewan, Alberta, and BC received nothing.

And here’s how the total equalization payments (in millions of dollars) have played out over the past decade:

Is energy wealth the right differentiating factor because it’s there through simple dumb luck, morally compelling the fortunate provinces to share their fortune? That would be a really difficult argument to make. For one thing because Quebec – as an example – happens to be sitting on its own significant untapped oil and gas reserves. Those potential opportunities include the Utica Shale formation, the Anticosti Island basin, and the Gaspé Peninsula (along with some offshore potential in the Gulf of St. Lawrence).

So Quebec is effectively being paid billions of dollars a year to not exploit their natural resources. That places their ostensibly principled stand against energy resource exploitation in a very different light. Perhaps that stand is correct or perhaps it isn’t. But it’s a stand they probably couldn’t have afforded to take had the equalization calculation been different.

Of course, no formula could possibly please everyone, but punishing the losers with ongoing attacks on the very source of their contributions is guaranteed to inspire resentment. And that could lead to very dark places.

Note: I know this post sounds like it came from a grumpy Albertan. But I assure you that I’ve never even visited the province, instead spending most of my life in Ontario.

Which has admittedly been challenging since the former primer minister infamously described us as a post-national state without an identity.

This isn’t nearly as crazy as it sounds. After all, there are already formal mechanisms through which Indigenous communities get more than a one-person-one-vote voice.

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Alberta

Big win for Alberta and Canada: Statement from Premier Smith

Published on April 2, 2025

Government of Alberta

Premier Danielle Smith issued the following statement on the April 2, 2025 U.S. tariff announcement:

“Today was an important win for Canada and Alberta, as it appears the United States has decided to uphold the majority of the free trade agreement (CUSMA) between our two nations. It also appears this will continue to be the case until after the Canadian federal election has concluded and the newly elected Canadian government is able to renegotiate CUSMA with the U.S. administration.

“This is precisely what I have been advocating for from the U.S. administration for months.

“It means that the majority of goods sold into the United States from Canada will have no tariffs applied to them, including zero per cent tariffs on energy, minerals, agricultural products, uranium, seafood, potash and host of other Canadian goods.

“There is still work to be done, of course. Unfortunately, tariffs previously announced by the United States on Canadian automobiles, steel and aluminum have not been removed. The efforts of premiers and the federal government should therefore shift towards removing or significantly reducing these remaining tariffs as we go forward and ensuring affected workers across Canada are generously supported until the situation is resolved.

“I again call on all involved in our national advocacy efforts to focus on diplomacy and persuasion while avoiding unnecessary escalation. Clearly, this strategy has been the most effective to this point.

“As it appears the worst of this tariff dispute is behind us (though there is still work to be done), it is my sincere hope that we, as Canadians, can abandon the disastrous policies that have made Canada vulnerable to and overly dependent on the United States, fast-track national resource corridors, get out of the way of provincial resource development and turn our country into an independent economic juggernaut and energy superpower.”