How Systemic is the perception about systemic racism in Canada?

October 3, 2025

Systemic racism (also known as institutional racism) is when the societal rules and ways of operating are persistently unfair for certain people because of their race. Non-white persons often face difficulties as a result of systemic racism. There have been while systemic racism is something that happens on a large scale in society. It is racism in the system, in the way things are done. There can be systemic racism in laws, in institutions like schools, hospitals and policing/security. There have been numerous calls on the part of civil society in Canada for governments and various institutions to acknowledge their systemic racism. Some have indeed done so while others have been reticent wanting to have some benchmark or baseline against which to document its existence in a given institution. To provide further insight, we also asked whether Canadians had observed evidence of systemic racism in their province. The results vary across provinces, selected identity markers and other demographics. The findings are based on surveys conducted via web panel by the firm Leger for the Association for Canadian Studies between August 29 and 31, 2025 with 1627 Canadians. While no margin of error can be associated with a non-probability sample of 1627 respondents would have a margin of error of ±2.52%, 19 times out of 20