Canada’s only Jewish Senator, David Croll, lambasted Canadian big business today for practicing what he described as discrimination against minority groups in filling executive positions of men or women in business. He spoke as the Upper Chamber passed a bill authorizing the Canada Permanent Trust Company to amalgamate with the Toronto General Trust Corporation. The bill now goes before the Commons.
Senator Croll named no specific companies as practicing discrimination toward minority groups but he lambasted particularly banks, mortgage, insurance and trust companies. “Few banks, mortgage companies, insurance and trust companies, have permitted their high executive positions and directorates to be filled by men whose racial origins differ from that of Anglo-Saxon.”
The 61-year-old Senator said the thinking seems to be that it’s all right to do business with minorities “but keep them from going as far as their capabilities would and should take them. This sort of reactionary exclusiveness has no place in nation-building or organizational concept and permanence, and these managerial groups who are attempting to perpetuate themselves are leading us down a blind alley,” he said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
