The tears Rechie Valdez shed as she took the oath as minister of small business in this week’s federal cabinet shuffle marked a breakthrough for her — and for the Filipino community she represents.
“It was a profound moment for me to know that I was representing the close to one million Filipinos now here in Canada,” she told CBC News on Friday.
Filipinos are arguably the most politically underrepresented group in Canadian federal politics.
A community that, according to the latest census, has 960,000 members has not had a single Filipino-Canadian representative in Parliament since 2004 other than Valdez, who was elected in 2021. Rey Pagtakhan became the first Filipino-born Canadian to be elected to the House of Commons in 1988 and served in the Liberal government’s cabinet.
By comparison, Canada’s 770,000 Sikhs were represented by four out of 40 ministers in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first cabinet. Prominent Sikhs outside the government include NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and Conservative finance critic Jasraj Singh Hallan.
Rechie Valdez has experience in small business, having run her own bakery. She said she takes seriously her opportunity to serve as a voice for a community that is underrepresented.
“I can tell the community across Canada I’ll definitely be advocating on your behalf and I will continue to listen to your needs and bring it up to cabinet,” she said.
Census data shows Filipino-Canadians have a unique demographic profile, said analyst André Bernard of Statistics Canada.
“The Filipino population have lower unemployment rates and lower poverty rates than the general population,” he said.
Fewer than five per cent of Filipino-Canadians fell below the poverty line in 2020, compared to over eight per cent of the general population.
“But they also have lower wages,” said Bernard. “They have lower employment income.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau poses for a photograph with a family during a visit to a Filipino restaurant in Surrey, B.C, on May 19, 2017. A Statistics Canada study found Filipinos have higher rates of employment than people who are Canadian-born. (Darry Dyck/Canadian Press)
Filipino wage-earners average $26.59 per hour, as opposed to a national average of $33.22 per hour and $31.23 per hour for all racialized groups.
Filipinos “tend to be over-represented in certain industries and occupations,” Bernard said. “For example, over a quarter of women are working in health occupations. That’s much more than for the general population.
“As well, men are more likely to work in manufacturing and utilities than the general population.”
Filipino immigrants have historically shown a willingness to move to where the jobs are, creating communities such as those that serve the meatpacking industry on the Prairies. The way that Filipinos have entered Canada also has shaped the community, said Bernard.
“Over a third of Filipino immigrants who arrived since 1980 were admitted under the caregiving program in Canada … compared to three or four per cent for all immigrants,” he said.
Low representation in the business world
The 2016 and 2021 census revealed that Filipinos ranked lower than any other Canadian ethnic group in rates of self-employment in both the male and female rankings.
In June of this year, just 4.9 per cent of Filipino workers were self-employed, compared to 13 per cent of the general population.
(Self-employment does not map precisely onto business ownership — but it does overlap fairly closely. Entrepreneurs are by definition self-employed, and any self-employed person making revenue over about $30,000 a year typically has to register a business.)
Jackie Wild owns Tito Boy restaurant in Winnipeg’s south end. She said Filipinos don’t lack the entrepreneurial bug.
“Back home, entrepreneurism, being a business owner, is very, very commonplace,” she said. “Whether you’re a small business owner, maybe you’re a farmer, maybe you are like a side hustler doing things on top of your day job.
“Being a business owner myself, and having witnessed a lot of the obstacles that folks from our community face, it’s not easy to start up a business coming from an immigrant community, whether you’re a newcomer or even a subsequent generation. Because a lot of our family members … my family included, when they come to a country like Canada, they are in survival mode. They are simply trying to just make ends meet and to be able to pave the right path and future for their children and for their grandchildren.
Jackie Wild, owner of the Tito Boy restaurant in Winnipeg, said Filipino-Canadian entrepreneurs face many obstacles. (CBC News)
“There is a growing number of Philippine business owners in our community. However, a lot of them are just humbly doing the work. They have their heads down. They’re just trying to again survive day-to-day and pay the bills and feed their families. So we don’t often hear from them.”
Wild said it’s hard to break into the business world without intergenerational wealth or contacts.
“If they don’t know the communities that they can reach out to, they don’t know the resources that exist for them,” she said. “It really does discourage them from even taking that first step.”
The Trudeau government hasn’t hesitated to implement ethnicity-specific programs to help members of other communities overcome such barriers and break into the business world.
Indigenous-owned businesses also have access to startup loans of up to $500,000 and special access when bidding for government business.
No such programs or preferences exist for Filipino-Canadians trying to make it as entrepreneurs.
Greater needs, fewer benefits
“I think in terms of priorities, it was really important for us to ensure that we were starting off with marginalized communities like the Black entrepreneurs, Black women, [the] LGBTQ plus community,” said Valdez.
It’s far from clear from the statistics why the Filipino community would be denied access to the kinds of programs that were extended to communities with higher rates of business ownership.
It was the Trudeau government that insisted on restoring the long-form census when it came to power after the 2015 election, arguing that an “evidence-based” government needed good data to make good policy.
The very next census produced detailed data on the ethnic breakdown of self-employment in Canada.
The census results showed that both Black Canadians and members of First Nations were more than twice as likely to report self-employment as Filipino-Canadians.
Some segments of the Black population were well above the national average. Ethiopian-Canadian men had a self-employment rate of 14.9 per cent — higher than men who reported their ethnic backgrounds as English, French, Scottish, Irish or German.
No scholarships
Help in starting businesses is not the only area where Filipinos have been overlooked compared to other groups.
Student Karla Atanacio chairs Pinoys of Parliament, the largest Filipino-Canadian youth leadership conference. It brings some 250 Filipino youth to Ottawa every year.
She said access to higher education is also an issue.
“Tuition is getting a lot more difficult to fund, and students like me often have to find part-time jobs in order to sustain our education,” she said. “And that results in staying in school for longer and not being able to afford it, and sometimes running out of tuition money to actually help us to go through university.
“And if we’re talking about economic stability, if we’re talking about lifting a lot of people out of poverty, I think that should be a priority for the government as well.”
While there are numerous scholarship funds reserved for Indigenous Canadians and BlackCanadians, neither government nor the private sector has shown much interest in creating such funds for Filipino-Canadians.
“We’re welcoming a lot more immigrants and refugees, but is there really room for a lot of us?” said Atanacio. “There’s a rental crisis going on. And so if we really want Canada to be as welcoming as we say it is, then we have to work together with our small businesses, with our housing people who are knowledgeable in housing in order to solve this problem.”
While the government has set aside $40 million to help Black Canadians find housing, there has been no such program for Filipinos.
A community closing the gap
Despite the lack of political representation, the lack of government assistance and the relative lack of private-sector philanthropy, the Filipino-Canadian community is closing the income gap with the rest of the population and raising its profile in the business world.
Atanacio said the Filipino-Canadian community is undergoing “reinvigoration” and welcomes having a minister in cabinet.
“We’re the fastest growing ethnic group now in Canada,” she said. “But in terms of mobilization, I think it was only in the last few years that we looked around and were like, wait, we are just as capable and … our stories are worth telling, that we really came together and decided that this is the time for us to step up.”
She said the community has high hopes for its first cabinet insider.
“It’s different when you actually have your own person representing yourself up there,” she said.
Valdez said she knows there are many expectations focused on her new role.
“My hope is that now that I am here,” she said, “I’ll be able to put forward my ideas and recommendations that can better further support the Filipino community.”
PHOENIX (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent proponent of debunked public health claims whom Donald Trump has promised to put in charge of health initiatives, said Saturday that Trump would push to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day in office if elected president.
Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century.
Kennedy made the declaration Saturday on the social media platform X alongside a variety of claims about the heath effects of fluoride.
“On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water,” Kennedy wrote. Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, “want to Make America Healthy Again,” he added, repeating a phrase Trump often uses and links to Kennedy.
Trump told NBC News on Sunday that he had not spoken to Kennedy about fluoride yet, “but it sounds OK to me. You know it’s possible.”
The former president declined to say whether he would seek a Cabinet role for Kennedy, a job that would require Senate confirmation, but added, “He’s going to have a big role in the administration.”
Asked whether banning certain vaccines would be on the table, Trump said he would talk to Kennedy and others about that. Trump described Kennedy as “a very talented guy and has strong views.”
The sudden and unexpected weekend social media post evoked the chaotic policymaking that defined Trump’s White House tenure, when he would issue policy declarations on Twitter at virtually all hours. It also underscored the concerns many experts have about Kennedy, who has long promoted debunked theories about vaccine safety, having influence over U.S. public health.
In 1950, federal officials endorsed water fluoridation to prevent tooth decay, and continued to promote it even after fluoride toothpaste brands hit the market several years later. Though fluoride can come from a number of sources, drinking water is the main source for Americans, researchers say.
Officials lowered their recommendation for drinking water fluoride levels in 2015 to address a tooth condition called fluorosis, that can cause splotches on teeth and was becoming more common in U.S. kids.
In August, a federal agency determined “with moderate confidence” that there is a link between higher levels of fluoride exposure and lower IQ in kids. The National Toxicology Program based its conclusion on studies involving fluoride levels at about twice the recommended limit for drinking water.
A federal judge later cited that study in ordering the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to further regulate fluoride in drinking water. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen cautioned that it’s not certain that the amount of fluoride typically added to water is causing lower IQ in kids, but he concluded that mounting research points to an unreasonable risk that it could be. He ordered the EPA to take steps to lower that risk, but didn’t say what those measures should be.
In his X post Saturday, Kennedy tagged Michael Connett, the lead attorney representing the plaintiff in that lawsuit, the environmental advocacy group Food & Water Watch.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine organization has a lawsuit pending against news organizations including The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy is on leave from the group but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.
What role Kennedy might hold if Trump wins on Tuesday remains unclear. Kennedy recently told NewsNation that Trump asked him to “reorganize” agencies including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and some agencies under the Department of Agriculture.
But for now, the former independent presidential candidate has become one of Trump’s top surrogates. Trump frequently mentions having the support of Kennedy, a scion of a Democratic dynasty and the son of former Attorney General Robert Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy traveled with Trump Friday and spoke at his rallies in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Trump said Saturday that he told Kennedy: “You can work on food, you can work on anything you want” except oil policy.
“He wants health, he wants women’s health, he wants men’s health, he wants kids, he wants everything,” Trump added.
Americans and Canadians are cousins that is true. Allies today but long ago people were at loggerheads mostly because of the British Empire and American ambitions.
Canadians appreciate our cousins down south enough to visit them many millions of times over the year. America is Canada’s largest and most important trading partner. As a manufacturer, I can attest to this personally. My American clients have allowed our firm to grow and prosper over the past few decades. There is a problem we have been seeing, a problem where nationalism, both political and economic has been creating a roadblock to our trade relationship.
Both Democrats and Republicans have shown a willingness to play the “buy only American Made product” card, a sounding board for all things isolationist, nationalistic and small-mindedness. We all live on this small planet, and purchase items made from all over the world. Preferences as to what to buy and where it is made are personal choices, never should they become a platform of national pride and thuggery. This has brought fear into the hearts of many Canadians who manufacture for and service the American Economy in some way. This fear will be apparent when the election is over next week.
Canadians are not enemies of America, but allies and friends with a long tradition of supporting our cousins back when bad sh*t happens. We have had enough of the American claim that they want free trade, only to realize that they do so long as it is to their benefit. Tariffs, and undue regulations applied to exporters into America are applied, yet American industry complains when other nations do the very same to them. Seriously! Democrats have said they would place a preference upon doing business with American firms before foreign ones, and Republicans wish to tariff many foreign nations into oblivion. Rhetoric perhaps, but we need to take these threats seriously. As to you the repercussions that will come should America close its doors to us.
Tit for tat neighbors. Tariff for tariff, true selfish competition with no fear of the American Giant. Do you want to build homes in America? Over 33% of all wood comes from Canada. Tit for tat. Canada’s mineral wealth can be sold to others and place preference upon the highest bidder always. You know who will win there don’t you America, the deep-pocketed Chinese.
Reshaping our alliances with others. If America responds as has been threatened, Canadians will find ways to entertain themselves elsewhere. Imagine no Canadian dollars flowing into the Northern States, Florida or California? The Big Apple without its friendly Maple Syrup dip. Canadians will realize just how significant their spending is to America and use it to our benefit, not theirs.
Clearly we will know if you prefer Canadian friendship to Donald Trumps Bravado.
China, Saudi Arabia & Russia are not your friends in America. Canada, Japan, Taiwan the EU and many other nations most definitely are. Stop playing politics, and carry out business in an unethical fashion. Treat allies as they should be treated.
