African ancestral acknowledgement the new City Hall fad
Author of the article:Brian Lilley
Published Sep 03, 2025 • Last updated 14 hours ago • 3 minute read
We need a deeper examination of what is happening at City Hall and how far this agenda will go.
The African ancestral acknowledgement is a new fad at City Hall, writes columnist Brian Lilley.
An “African Ancestral Acknowledgement” in city staff email signatures? They are now included as part of the opening statement before meetings at City Hall and one plays on a loop at Yonge-Dundas Square, the place city officials want us to call Sankofa Square.
Daniel Tate of Integrity TO, a City Hall watchdog group recently raised the alarm about the email practice.
Tate shared a screen shot of the email signature of Lisa Di Felice, the Coordinator Administration and Operations at the Office of the Integrity Commissioner. Her email signature now includes her pronouns, she/her in case you were wondering, plus a land acknowledgement and an African ancestral acknowledgement.
email signature with African ancestral acknowledgment
“Ideology has now seeped into every nook and cranny of life including email signatures,” Tate said.
Tate said that he’s been getting messages from City Hall insiders who say that staff are being told and pressured to open every meeting reading out both acknowledgements. It takes three to four minutes to read them both out loud.
Add that up across all city staff, all city meetings and you get one very expensive and performative waste of time and money.
“It’s a radical ritual that has nothing to do with governance,” Tate said.
So, it’s happening in meetings and now there is a soft but building pressure on staff to include all of these statements in their email signatures.
The average person reading this may have heard of a land acknowledgment before but is likely wondering what an African ancestral acknowledgment is and why we are doing this in Toronto.
According to a city document from February 2021, the practice at City Hall started in 2018 and has grown since then. It started out as “a voluntary recognition offered to support Black staff wishing to use it to acknowledge their ancestors of African descent who have been present and actively contributing to life on Treaty lands and traditional Indigenous territories since the early 1600s.”
Now it is growing, expanding and seeping into all parts of the city’s administration. In addition to an ancestral acknowledgment for Black people, there is one for those who aren’t black as well.
“Though I am not a person of African descent, I am committed to continually acting in support of and in solidarity with Black communities seeking freedom and reparative justice in light of the history and ongoing legacy of slavery that continues to impact Black communities in Canada,” the statement reads at the opening.
“As part of this commitment, I would also like to acknowledge that not all people came to these lands as migrants and settlers. Specifically, I wish to acknowledge those of us who came here involuntarily, particularly those brought to these lands as a result of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and Slavery. In support of the City of Toronto’s ongoing efforts to confront anti-Black racism, I pay tribute to those ancestors of African origin and descent.”
What is reparative justice? It’s a phrase the document that accompanies the statement doesn’t define. It’s also questionable that the city is trying to link Toronto, and by extension Canada, to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade of which there was little to no involvement, and also fails to acknowledge Canada’s role in eradicating slavery as an institution.
These are questionable moves that are taking up a lot of time and effort by city staff and therefore costing city taxpayers dearly.
What value do they have?
The folks behind DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion, will tell you this is about bringing people together, about reconciliation and about healing. It’s not. It’s incredibly divisive but at Toronto City Hall, this is the new religion being pushed by staff and an army of consultants pushing an agenda.
“There is a burgeoning DEI bureaucracy at City Hall, and they inject their ideology into every department,” Tate said.
We need a deeper examination of what is happening at City Hall and how far this agenda will go and how much it will cost.
Stay tuned.
We need a deeper examination of what is happening at City Hall and how far this agenda will go.
torontosun.com