• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About The Charity Report
    • Editorial
    • The Charity Report: Frequently Asked Questions
  • Bespoke Research About Charities
  • Contact The Charity Report
  • Log In

The Charity Report

your independent source of news in the charity sector

Become a Subscriber
  • Photo Essay
  • Features
  • News
  • Headlines
  • Literary Circle
    • Books Reviewed
    • Reading Now
    • Reading Next
    • Literary Circle Review Panel
  • Book Shop

Should the Order of Canada be abolished?

(January 21, 2021) When the Governor General announced 114 new appointments to the Order of Canada in November 2020, it was remarkable how few women and visible minorities made the cut. 

The Order of Canada has three tiers—Member, Officer and Companion—with Companion being the top spot.

Of the 114 awards given in 2020, eight were promotions from Officer to Companion. Three were women. Twenty-one people were promoted from Member to Officer. Eight were women. Of the 84 newly minted recipients to the Order, 25 were women. In all, 36 per cent of the 114 recipients honoured in 2020 were women. A tiny minority were Indigenous, Black or a person of colour. 

It was a slight increase from the 2019 tally, when 28.6 per cent of the total appointees were women and 5.4 per cent were visible minorities.

The Order of Canada “recognizes outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the nation.” Since its inception in 1967, more than 7,000 people have received the award. 

Of the 514 people awarded the Companion of the Order, the highest honour, since 1967, 77 per cent were men, and almost all those men were white. 

Formally awarded by the Governor General, the recipients are recommended by an independent 13-member advisory committee chaired by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. 

Is the lesson to take from these numbers that white men are intrinsically more meritorious, while women and visible minorities are fundamentally perceived as having less merit? Why else would the Order of Canada--created in Canada's centennial year---be so unrepresentative of Canadian society? Are the number of women and visible minorities nominated less than the number of white men nominated? If so, why? Do women and visible minorities engage in fewer overt efforts to be nominated?

Throughout the 1980s the Canadian satirical weekly Frank, published by Michael Bate, documented with unmitigated glee the extraordinary effort at self-aggrandizement now-Senator Michael Duffy (who it dubbed ‘the Duffster’) exerted to be awarded the Order of Canada.  

In October 2020 Sarah Kaplan, director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy at the University of Toronto, told the CBC, and that it’s “not acceptable, in the Canadian context — a country that considers itself to be a land of opportunity, a land of equal opportunity, a land that pays attention to the diverse communities that exist within Canada — that we would see the awards going mainly to men."

"Our definition of merit is one that is self-reinforcing, about giving the same elite people the same awards. And so, when people say it should be based on merit, they're not recognizing the fact that the idea of merit itself has been designed by the people in positions of privilege to reinforce their privilege and keep others out," she said.

In a more disturbing example, in her recent book, A Perfect Nightmare: My Glittering Marriage and How It Almost Cost Me My Life, Karen Gosbee widow of Calgary businessman and philanthropist George Gosbee peels back the veneer of her seemingly fairy tale marriage.  In the book, she relates an incident when her husband has pinned her against granite steps in their bedroom and began to choke her. Pretending to hear a noise from their children, she was able to get away, run downstairs and call 911. George became even more angry once he realized the police were on their way

“George began freaking out even more, raving about how he’d never be given an Order of Canada,” Karen Gosbee writes. “Being found out as a domestic abuser would ruin his chances. That’s what he was most concerned about.” 

Filed Under: News Tagged With: abolish the order of canada

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe and download your intelligence reports

For $360 a year or $35 a month, you will receive exclusive up to 10 comprehensively researched intelligence reports.  Reports available to subscribers now include:

  • Community Giving: The Growth and Giving Priorities of Community Foundations (January 2021)
  • Who Give and Who Gets: The Beneficiaries of Private Foundation Philanthropy (December 2020)
  • Charity Sector Employees: Employee Stats, Industry Compensation and Salary Averages for 2018 (September 2020)
  • Where Wealth Resides: The Funding of Philanthropy (July 2020)
  • The Cost of Conflict: How we measure the global failure in Syria (June 2020) 

Subscribe and download now!

Books of the Week

How to lose everything: Unimaginable and uplifting

February 18, 2021 By Literary Circle

The Art of Logic: Arriving Just in Time

January 28, 2021 By Literary Circle

Undercurrents: Channeling our outrage

December 18, 2020 By Literary Circle

What Bears Teach Us: The push and pull of co-existence

December 9, 2020 By Literary Circle

When More is Not Better by Roger Martin: ‘Has the familiarity of my grandma’s wisdom’

December 8, 2020 By Literary Circle

Takaya: What a lone wolf teaches us

December 2, 2020 By Literary Circle

  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Footer

About

The Charity Report is an independent voice in the charity sector. Our job is to provide knowledgeable well-balanced, well-researched information to people working in the charity sector. We showcase the work of charities within the context they are operating, provide analysis of sector wide trends and ask tough questions when we have to. We offer news in the form a free website, a series of intelligence reports for subscribers and bespoke research for any organization seeking individualized information.

Learn more.

Recent

  • Great Women Authors: 10 of the best
  • Why we experience ‘Zoom fatigue’ and what can be done about it
  • CCA announces additional funding for arts organizations
  • Participation in the arts makes Canadians healthier
  • Looking for an alternative to performative webinars on race?

Search

Copyright © 2021 The Charity Report · Log in