Toronto – May 11, 2024 – UFCW Canada and its local unions are proud to participate in Rainbow Week of Action from May 11-17, 2024. Created by Momentum Canada, the week is dedicated to celebrating diversity, 2SLGBTQ+ progress, and fighting for change.
Toronto – April 3, 2024 – International Day of Pink happens every year on the second Wednesday of April, where people around the world wear their pink shirts and stand in solidarity with the 2SLGBTQIA+ community to continue the fight for equality and acceptance.
Winnipeg – March 13, 2023 – Jim Ogunnoiki is a UFCW 832 member, founder of the Afro-Caribbean Association of Manitoba (ACAM) Community Job Fair, and a 2023 UFCW Canada Equity Grant Recipient.
Toronto – February 14, 2024 – UFCW Canada is proud to announce that the 2024 Equity Grant program is now open to receive new applications until September 30, 2024.
Toronto – January 31, 2024 – Every February, we honour Black History Month by reflecting on the past and present contributions and challenges faced by Black people in Canada.
On January 27, 2005, the United Nations General Assembly officially proclaimed January 27th as the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. The date coincides with the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet troops in 1945. Annually on this day, we remember the victims of the Holocaust and we reaffirm our commitment to counter antisemitism, racism, and hate.
The impact and consequences of the systematic murders of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, impacted countries globally. Today, Canada’s continuous actions to hold solidarity with holocaust survivors also includes moments in our own history when we didn’t do the right thing.
While we didn’t experience the Holocaust directly, Canadians lost family members and loved ones due to persecution happening in Europe. Due to restrictive immigration policies, Canada turned away 900 passengers of the M.S. St. Louis, who were refused entry into Canada and forced to return to Europe. However, in April 1945, Canadian forces also liberated the Westerbork Transit Camp in the Netherlands, where 900 Dutch Jews were still interned there.
Around 40,000 Holocaust survivors resettled in Canada following the war. In 2009, Canada became a member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and in 2010, it led the development of the Ottawa Protocol on Combatting Antisemitism and became the first country to sign the protocol in 2011. This is an important action aimed at measuring a country’s progress in countering Antisemitism. More recently, in 2021, the Government of Canada hosted a National Summit on Antisemitism, following a 2020 appointment of an Inaugural Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism.
As a strong and united union, we commit to doing the continuous work to dismantle and counter all forms of hate, and to ensure that mistakes of our past never happen again. Antisemitism is rising in Canada. Part of our collective responsibility is to ensure that the workplace is a safe place for all workers, free from discrimination of any form. Education is a big part of sustaining a culture free of hate, along with allyship actions that uphold a strong stance against antisemitism and all other forms of hate.
Sign your support for the UFCW Canada digital campaign to counter hate.
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United Food and Commercial Workers Union
Canada's private sector union