Canada’s human rights body divided over spoon-eating by Filipino boy

CHICAGO, Illinois - In the gastronomic equivalent of the saying “when in Rome, do as the Romans do," the Quebec Human Rights Commission in the city of Montreal has ruled that the teacher identified only as “M.B." discriminated against and violated the human right of a seven-year-old Filipino boy by disciplining him for eating with fork and spoon at the same time. The Commission, however, found no evidence that Luc Joachim Gallardo-Cagadoc, who was then a Grade 2 student, was reprimanded by the teacher because of his cultural habit. Luc is now 10 years old. This bit of information was relayed to this reporter by the mother of Luc, Maria Theresa Gallardo-Cagadoc, who plans to appeal the ruling before Quebec Human Rights Tribunal because she felt a sense of “deep disappointment, frustration, dismay and disbelief" over the decision. A graduate of B.S. Med. Tech at the Centro Escolar University in the Philippines and now an owner of a daycare center in Quebec, Gallardo-Cagadoc, a native of Quezon city in the Philippines, insisted that the teacher she identified as Martine Bertrand finds it also discriminatory when Ms. Bertrand commented, “whether Filipinos wash their hands before they eat." Bertrand is an educator of the daycare service of Ecole Lalande, a school of Marguerite Bourgeoys School Board in the West end of the city of Montreal. She believes that Bertrand punished Luc when she “isolated" him after eating with a fork and spoon, which was how Luc was raised at home. In May 2006, the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR) in Montreal, a city of Quebec province, filed a complaint on behalf of Gallardo-Cagadoc, who complained that Luc was subjected to negative verbal remarks and other conduct by Bertrand, who described Luc’s habit of eating with spoon and fork “disgusting." In another incident, Bertrand asked Luc, in a “humoristic" manner, whether “Filipinos washed their hands before they eat," although in her written representation, she said, she asked Luc whether, “in his country, do people wash their hands before they eat?" Luc was born in Manila on Aug. 9, 1998 and came to Canada at the age of eight months. Luc speaks Tagalog, English and French, the official language of Quebec. He has a younger sister, Hannah Camilla Cagadoc, now seven years old. His father, Aldrin Cagadoc, also a B.S. Med. Tech. graduate, is a native of Cotabato City in the Philippines. All the members of the Cagadoc family became Canadian citizens in 2002. When Cagadoc brought up the matter with school principal Normand Bergeron, the official told her, “You are in Canada, and here in Canada, you should eat the way Canadians’ eat. If your son keeps eating like a pig, then he will go to another table because that is how we do it here." Gallardo-Cagadoc said she finds Bergeron’s statements as “racially insensitive and discriminatory towards me and my family, something the Commission did not address." It feels “like rubbing a salt in a wound," Gallardo-Cagadoc added. A press statement of CRARR quoted Bergeron as saying, “here, this is not the manner in which we eat … I don’t necessarily want students to eat with one hand or with only one instrument. I want them to eat intelligently at the table. … I have never seen somebody eat with a spoon and fork at the same time." Fo Niemi, executive director of CRARR, said, in a decision dated Aug. 18, 2008 and transmitted to the parties on Sept. 12, 2008, the Commission considered Ms. B’s (which according to Ms. Gallardo-Cagadoc is Ms. Bertrand) comment related to hand-washing in Luc’s “country" as “discriminatory but an isolated incident." Furthermore, the Commission ruled that Luc was actually reprimanded by Ms. B for his “inconvenient" eating manner at lunch and his acting like a clown, rather than for his culture-based eating with a fork and a spoon. The Commission chose not to bring the case before the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal and suggested mediation for the parties. Reacting to a press conference attended by supporting Montrealers, Gallardo-Cagadoc said the Commission “ignored the exchanges between her and Ms. B over the fact that eating with a spoon and fork is part of the Filipino culture. Ms. B. pointed to a Filipina girl, who ate with spoon alone, to claim that eating with two utensils is not part of the Filipino culture. Gallardo-Cagadoc noted that the Commission did not examine the systemic dimensions CRARR raised on its complaint and other representations, which are as follows: 1. That the school board has no up-to-date and effective policies to address racism and discrimination - its policy on the integration of non-Francophone students, intercultural education and citizenship education dates from 1999 and does not even define racism and discrimination; 2. That the school personnel involved in this incident had no training on racism and discrimination; 3. That the school's organizational policies, practices and culture contribute to the discriminatory ways of how my son and I were treated; 4. That the school failed to rule on whether statements allegedly made by the school principal in a telephone interview were discriminatory; and 5. That the school ignored CRARR’s questions as to whether the school board had policies to define and prevent racial discrimination, whether school personnel had adequate training on anti-racism and whether this contributed to the incident. She added the commission's investigation is off the mark and that its decision raises serious and fundamental questions of how it handles this complaint or complaints of racism in an educational system. The Commission simply 'did not get it' and failed to show competence in investigating a complaint of racially biased treatment in a school that led a seven-year-old child to be discriminated upon and ashamed of his own cultural background. Niemi stressed that the Ontario Human Rights Commission has adopted comprehensive policies on racism in education and even concluded settlement agreements with school boards in cases of racially biased conduct of school personnel and school sanctions that discriminate against racialized and disabled students. CRARR will study with the family the possibility of bringing the case before the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal by the statutory deadline in early December 2008. Because Gallardo-Cagadoc will be taking action at her own legal expense, financial donations from all over Canada and the US are being sought now to help fund the lawsuit. Early this year, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered a long-anticipated apology to tens of thousands of indigenous people who as children were ripped from their families and sent to boarding schools, where many were abused as part of official government policy to 'kill the Indian in the child.' GMANews.TV