The city’s immigrant population has a new advocate on the Ottawa Police Services Board. The body that oversees policing in the capital now includes Carl Nicholson, longtime executive director of the Centretown-based Catholic Immigration Centre.
Originally from Jamaica, Nicholson’s work on behalf of newcomers to Canada spans 32 years and several not-for-profit organizations. In addition to the Catholic Immigration Centre – located on Argyle Avenue – he has held executive positions at the United Way, CUSO, the Jamaican Canadian Association of Ottawa (of which he is a founding member) and others.
In his new role, Nicholson says he will be applying values that have been with him throughout his career, primarily the belief that people need to interact in order to understand one another.
“Mixing is always good,” he says, adding that mutual understanding is the key to preventing and resolving conflict.
Nicholson says that increasing ethnic diversity within the police community and educating officers about multicultural concerns will help build trust for the police in immigrant communities.
“The make-up of the police force should be reflective of the community,” he says.
“Policing now isn’t so much about being big and burly as it is about being smart,” he adds. “This means understanding that people from Africa, South Asia or the Middle East have different points of view, different cultural drivers, than many people born here.”
Nicholson is no stranger to the police, says police board member and West Carleton-March Coun. Eli El-Chantiry, wryly. He has known Nicholson since 2003.
“He’s always been one of our partners,” El-Chantiry says, explaining that he first got to know Nicholson as the representative for the CIC at police board meetings, and then as the voice of a police-community liaison committee when Nicholson became its co-chair.
“There’s a history of the police board working with Mr. Nicholson,” says El-Chantiry.
Jim MacEwen, city hall’s citizen representative on the board, says Nicholson’s long resume of involvement in the community makes him an ideal candidate for the position.
“I think that he’ll bring a very wide spectrum of experience to the board, because he’s served on all these committees,” he says. “His broad knowledge of the community as a whole is very important.”
El-Chantiry describes Nicholson as a man who is fully committed to social justice and to understanding the roots and implications of changing demographics here and abroad. “He’ll bring to the board the real picture of change in the city of Ottawa. The real picture is diversity and the changing demographics of the community,” he says. “He’ll also bring with him his experience in social justice – not just in policing, but also in things like social housing and helping new Canadians.”
El-Chantiry, himself an immigrant from Lebanon, says 52 per cent of Ottawa’s residents were either born outside of Canada or are part of the first generation to be born in the country. “They make up the majority of the city today,” he says.
MacEwen says Nicholson’s understanding of immigrants’ concerns will help the board address issues such as some people’s distrust of the police. “We have to consider that people from other countries might have less positive views of police, and do what we can to improve that,” he says.
Though he is a black Jamaican-Canadian, Nicholson is not simply a “black activist,” says El-Chantiry, but “a real activist” for all people, whether they are Canadian-born or immigrants from any corner of the world.
Nicholson says that between the 1960s, when he came to Canada, and today, racism has changed but has not disappeared. “There are still issues of colour,” he says. “The colour of poverty, for instance, is changing – it’s becoming a lot blacker and browner – and we need to figure out what’s behind it.”