StatsCan: Overrepresentation of Indigenous and Black adults in provincial and federal custody

2026/01/15 Leave a comment

Usual sound data analysis from StatsCan, higher gaps than I expected:

In 2023/2024, Indigenous adults were incarcerated at a rate 10 times higher than non-Indigenous adults in the six provinces with available data (Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia), according to a new measure called the overrepresentation index. Over the five-year period studied (2019/2020 to 2023/2024), overrepresentation of Indigenous adults in custody increased each year. In 2023/2024, the Black population was incarcerated at a rate three times that of the white population in the four provinces where disaggregated data on racialized groups are available (Nova Scotia, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia).

The overrepresentation of Indigenous (First Nations, Inuit and Métis) and Black adults under correctional supervision in Canada is a significant and persistent concern. Designed to improve the measuring of overrepresentation and to monitor progress more effectively over time, this Daily release presents a detailed analysis of previously released indicators. For the first time, these measures combine correctional data from the federal, provincial and territorial levels to provide data on the entire correctional system for reporting provinces and territories. These measures also allow for further disaggregation of the non-Indigenous population into white and racialized group populations, offering a more comprehensive view of correctional involvement among Indigenous and Black populations in Canada. 

To reflect the distinct histories, structural factors and lived experiences of Indigenous and Black populations in Canada, the analysis is presented in two parts. The reasons overrepresentation exists in the Canadian justice system are complex and long-standing. They are discussed further in this release in the section on overrepresentation of Indigenous people and in the section on overrepresentation of Black persons.

Overrepresentation of Indigenous adults in custody

The overrepresentation of Indigenous people in Canada’s correctional systems is a long-standing and deeply rooted issue. For over three decades, this issue has been highlighted by commissions, rulings from the Supreme Court of Canada and various other official inquiries.

The causes of overrepresentation are complex and interconnected, though indisputably linked to colonialism, displacement, socioeconomic marginalization, intergenerational trauma and systemic discrimination. A key legal milestone was the 1999 Supreme Court case R v. Gladue, which emphasized that lower courts should carefully consider an Indigenous offender’s background during sentencing. This was reaffirmed and expanded in R v. Ipeelee (2012).

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada issued Call to Action 30, urging all levels of government to commit to eliminating the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in custody within a decade. The Call also emphasized the importance of ongoing monitoring through detailed annual reporting….

Overrepresentation of Black adults in custody

In Canada, the Black population faces social and economic challenges linked to the historic and ongoing harms caused by colonial laws, policies and practices, including racial segregation and discriminatory immigration policies. These challenges, compounded by anti-Black racism and systemic discrimination, have resulted in the overrepresentation of Black persons in Canada’s correctional system. As a result of changes in reporting, Statistics Canada is now able to report on the overrepresentation of Black persons in the correctional system for the following jurisdictions: Nova Scotia, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.

Black persons incarcerated at a rate three times their proportion of the population

In 2023/2024, Black persons in custody from the four reporting provinces accounted for 12.8% of the custodial population on an average day, while they made up 3.3% of the general adult population. 

The incarceration rate of Black persons in 2023/2024 was 32 adults per 10,000 population, compared with 8 adults per 10,000 population for the white population. The rate was highest among Black men (62 adults per 10,000 population) and lowest among Black women (2 adults per 10,000 population). By comparison, rates were lower among white men (15 adults per 10,000 population) and white women (1 adult per 10,000 population).

Overall, 0.8% of the adult Black population was incarcerated at some point during the 2023/2024 reference year, compared with 0.2% of the white population….

Source: Overrepresentation of Indigenous and Black adults in provincial and federal custody

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MacDougall | Canada does not need to lie down and accept Elon Musk’s giant mess

2026/01/15 Leave a comment

Good commentary:

…Welcome to the classic Big Tech manoeuvre: make (or enable) a giant mess, and then bark at others to clean it up. But that’s a poor response to minor offences and an egregious one to the generation and distribution of CSAM [child sexual abuse material]. Canadian legislators and regulators shouldn’t accept it.

But how do we stop them from making a mess? And can we do it short of a controversial “ban”?

To begin, we must understand that legislators and regulators have spent most of Big Tech’s existence trying to regulate their content outputs instead of taking a hard look at the inputs, imperatives and incentives driving these services. If these services are spraying crap like CSAM around social media platforms, the answer must be to prevent the platforms from spraying the crap, not trying to clean up all the crap after it has been sprayed on unsuspecting users. This is a business model problem, and we must focus on the model, not what it produces. 

As it stands, the major social media platforms and AI services are free to use (Musk only tucked some of Grok’s features behind a paywall after it was caught facilitating CSAM, though users can still access the features in other ways). And when a platform is “free” to use, it must make its money elsewhere: through advertising. In other words, these platforms exist to monetize our attention, not to provide free speech. And when attention is the key revenue metric, addiction becomes the business model, because more time on screen equals more money. That’s how you end up with a world where children now spend an average of five hours on social media every day, with adults struggling to control their usage, too. 

Given these figures, it’s no wonder the platforms call us their “users” not their customers. If we were customers, we would exchange some money for these services at the point of sale, not be monetized after the fact. If we were customers, we could demand changes to the service we are provided, not simply be forced to accept whatever content the platforms find delivers better “engagement” (hint: it’s not journalism). If we paid, the platforms would be forced to compete on utility, not addictiveness.

In this new world of competition, nobody but pedophiles would be asking X and Grok for CSAM. So let’s build this world instead of accepting the business models people like Musk are now forcing on us. And if the platforms don’t want to have that conversation, we should look good and hard at a ban, but of their business models, not their outputs. There is no rule saying we must accept a business model that generates tremendous harms while forcing the public to bear the cost of those harms.

Source: Opinion | Canada does not need to lie down and accept Elon Musk’s giant mess

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MPI: Unleashing Power in New Ways: Immigration in the First Year of Trump 2.0

2026/01/14 Leave a comment

Usual good and comprehensive analysis by MPI:

Having campaigned on and won re-election with immigration as a top issue, President Donald Trump has kept it at center stage in the first year of his second term. Immediately upon returning to office, the administration advanced sweeping changes to immigration policy, unprecedented in their breadth and reach. These changes have made the United States more hostile to unauthorized immigrants while also altering how the government treats immigration and immigrants of all legal statuses and the communities in which they live. The impacts on individuals, families, workplaces, and the nation’s overall economic outlook and global standing will be felt for years ahead.

While some efforts have stalled or not yet met the White House’s lofty goals, the administration has dramatically reshaped the machinery of government to target unauthorized immigrants in the country, deter unauthorized border arrivals, make the status of many legally resident immigrants more tenuous, and impose obstacles for lawful entry of large swaths of international travelers and would-be immigrants. These changes could set the course for reduced family, humanitarian, and employment-based immigration in the future, while also driving key aspects of U.S. foreign policy.

In This Article

To accomplish the administration’s mass deportation goal, Trump advisor Stephen Miller and other aides dismantled longstanding norms. The White House invoked archaic statutes, enlisted support from state and local law enforcement as well as federal agencies that historically had no immigration enforcement role, and pressured foreign governments to receive deportees. Perhaps most visibly, it militarized immigration enforcement: Scenes of troops and masked federal agents roaming U.S. streets, lobbing tear gas and in some cases violently—and even fatally—subduing individuals, have garnered global attention and profoundly changed how many residents go about their daily lives. Among other changes, some U.S. citizens now feel compelled to carry identification with them at all times.

The administration has leaned heavily on executive action rather than seeking legislative change in Congress. As of January 7, Trump had signed 38 executive orders related to immigration, accounting for nearly 17 percent of the 225 total orders signed so far during his first year, which is more than the 220 executive orders signed during his entire first term. The administration also ushered in hundreds of other actions via presidential proclamations and policy guidance that have had profound impacts on immigration policy. The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) estimates that the Trump administration in the first year of its second term took more than 500 actions on immigration, surpassing the 472 actions over all four years of Trump’s first term.

While some elements of the administration’s approach mirror policies of the prior term, albeit at far greater scale and scope, the changes of the last year have been arguably more impactful than any during the first term. Administration officials appear to have learned from their first-term experience and have also benefited from a much more sympathetic Congress and Supreme Court. Indeed, Congress in July provided the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with a staggering $170 billion to upscale over Trump’s second term what was already the world’s largest detention and deportation machinery. And the Supreme Court has greenlit several high-profile actions, including revoking Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from about 600,000 Venezuelans, although it blocked the administration from deporting noncitizens without due process and did not allow deployment of the National Guard for immigration enforcement. Key questions on birthright citizenship and other immigration policies are yet to be resolved.

The net change has been dizzying in its scope and speed. After the administration further shut down access to asylum, unauthorized arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border plummeted to the lowest levels since the 1970s. This development has allowed the administration to shift its focus largely to unauthorized immigrants living in the United States, whom MPI estimates numbered 13.7 million as of mid-2023. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests have more than quadrupled since Trump took office, while average daily detention has doubled. On December 19, DHS said that 622,000 noncitizens had been deported since Trump took office, a high—but not historic—number. It is below the 778,000 repatriations carried out in the final full fiscal year of the Biden administration, and well short of the Trump team’s pledge of 1 million deportations per year. The administration’s deportation number likely includes noncitizens turned away at U.S. borders and at airports; limited release of immigration enforcement data means it is unclear who is being counted and how. While the administration claims 1.9 million people have “self-deported” during that same period, it has not provided any data, including on use of the CBP Home app, through which immigrants are offered a free flight and $1,000 payment if they return to their origin country.

The hardline approach has extended to many lawfully present immigrants and those aspiring to come legally. The administration has stripped temporary legal protections from more than 1.5 million humanitarian parolees, nearly completely halted refugee resettlement, and severely restricted access to asylum. It has also erected obstacles and therefore slowed the granting of lawful permanent residence, temporary visas, and U.S. citizenship. International students and scholars have been targeted for expressing their political opinions, many newcomers face extensive vetting of their social media activity and medical history, and hefty new fees and visa bonds have caused some would-be immigrants and visitors to rethink plans to come to the United States. Slower legal immigration will likely affect labor markets, local economies, and the broader economic outlook for years to come, with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and the Congressional Budget Office already reporting negative effects and potential future implications.

This article reviews the changes to U.S. immigration policy during the first year of the second Trump term….

Source: Unleashing Power in New Ways: Immigration in the First Year of Trump 2.0

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Ottawa’s shutting-out of startup founders is shutting down Canada’s future

2026/01/14 Leave a comment

Hard to square “rigorous integrity checks” with speed in decision making. Government generally has a poor record in assessing business immigration programs:

…We are not the only country wrestling with the politics of immigration. Even as the United States turns inward and raises barriers for skilled workers and entrepreneurs, its technology dominance still rests disproportionately on immigrant founders and their teams. 

This should be Canada’s moment: to position ourselves as the destination of choice for the world’s builders, especially in the sectors that will determine our economic sovereignty – artificial intelligence, quantum computing, defence and dual‑use technologies, life sciences, energy transition and advanced manufacturing.

It is not too late to correct course. Ottawa must treat the shutdown of the Start‑up Visa Program not as a restart but a fast pivot. That pivot must include a fast‑track, by‑invitation pathway for founders with credible backing to build from Canada, with rigorous integrity checks rather than paralyzing backlogs. Anything less will send the most ambitious entrepreneurs elsewhere.

Yung Wu is a serial entrepreneur and the former chief executive of MaRS Discovery District.

Source: Ottawa’s shutting-out of startup founders is shutting down Canada’s future

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Horak: The protests in Iran echo past uprisings. But this time, they feel different, Regg Cohn, Ebadi and Akhavan

2026/01/14 Leave a comment

Some of the better analyses of the situation in Iran, starting with former Canadian diplomat Dennis Horak:

…Notwithstanding the challenges the regime faces, it would be foolish to underestimate the repressive abilities of the Iranian security apparatus to protect the Islamic Republic. The forces stacked up against the protesters are formidable; the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in particular, is brutal and experienced, and its leadership has strong vested interests in maintaining the status quo, including vast economic holdings. They, like the protesters, have something to fight for, and they have the weapons. The regime will not be going quietly. 

The regime is also bolstered by the fact that the exiled opposition movement continues to be fractious, and thus offers little hope as a viable alternative. While the son of the deposed Shah, Reza Pahlavi, has gained more visibility this time around, he carries a difficult legacy that will make it hard to rally around him, notwithstanding the effectiveness of his communications team. 

It is difficult to predict how this will all turn out. Most revolutions fail, until they don’t. But it is likely that some measure of change is coming this time, even if the current revolt is put down. It is hard to see how the status quo in Iran is sustainable. It will take more than vague promises of economic reform of the sort uttered by President Masoud Pezeshkian on Sunday to placate current or future protesters. Fundamental reform will be required, beginning with policy shifts on the nuclear front and an end to regional meddling to allow for the lifting of crippling sanctions and draw the country back from the radical, revolutionary fringe. 

To achieve this, there will need to be profound changes in how the regime functions, if there is not to be regime change. The question is: can Iran have the former without the latter? 

Dennis Horak was Canada’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Yemen from 2015 to 2018 and chargé d’affaires in Iran from 2009 to 2012.

Source: The protests in Iran echo past uprisings. But this time, they feel different

Regg Cohn | As protests grow, Iran finds itself more isolated than ever

…And so revolution is in the air again, just as it was nearly five decades ago in the twilight of the shah’s despotic rule. Iran’s tortured history teaches cruel lessons of false hope and false starts.

In 1979, secular leftists and religious rightists joined forces to topple the shah of the day, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The clerics, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, hijacked the revolution and declared an Islamic Republic.

They were usurpers, not liberators.

Pahlavi, who went into exile in 1979, was the son of an army officer who had crowned himself shah in 1925. Pahlavi fled the country in 1953 in a dispute with the democratically elected parliament — only to be restored to power in a CIA-backed coup days later.

Now, all these years later, his son — declared crown prince at age seven — is claiming the mantle of leadership from exile.

As Iranians try one more time to break free of the Islamic Revolution, nearly half a century after it supposedly liberated them, the last thing they need is to be tethered to a pretender to the throne. The people of Iran will chart their own path, cheered on by supporters in the diaspora but without taking orders from them — lest another revolution face another hijacking.

Iranians are fighting for liberation, not usurpation.

Source: Opinion | As protests grow, Iran finds itself more isolated than ever

As Iran cracks down on protesters again, the world cannot be silent

…The continuing heroism of the Iranian people is a reminder of the tremendous potential for the future of a rich civilization that produced the first human-rights declaration 2,500 years ago in the cuneiform text of clay cylinder of Cyrus the Great, which is now housed in the British Museum. The scenes unfolding in Iran today demonstrate that 50 years of totalitarianism has not extinguished this powerful legacy, expressed in the ancient belief that in the end, light will triumph over darkness. Now, the world community must support this awakening and stand in solidarity with those who remind us of the astonishing resilience of the human spirit.

Shirin Ebadi is the founder of the Defenders of Human Rights Centre in Iran and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize. Payam Akhavan is the Human Rights Chair at the University of Toronto’s Massey College, a founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre, and a former UN prosecutor at The Hague.

Source: As Iran cracks down on protesters again, the world cannot be silent

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ICYMI – Revealed: How international student spots are being distributed — unevenly — across Ontario

2026/01/13 Leave a comment

Good and useful data:

…Previous efforts to understand how PALs were distributed across the province were hindered by confidentiality claims and concerns about the impact on competitive advantage, but data obtained through an FOI request provides a detailed breakdown of 2024 allocations and usage, as well as this year’s allocations. Usage data for 2025 is not yet available.

In 2024, Ontario was allocated a total of 235,000 PALs, with a target of 141,000 permits.

Ontario’s public colleges were given 189,416 PALs but used only 55 per cent of them. Public universities, by contrast, used 82 per cent of their 35,460 allocation.

Ontario determined its first year of PAL allocations based on 2023 study permit levels, with exceptions for Algoma University and 13 colleges, including Conestoga, which received fewer permits.

Within the college sector, usage varied widely, with Humber distributing nearly all of its PALs, while Northern College used just 28 per cent. Northern, which had to shutter a private partnership as part of the federal policy changes, has since experienced layoffs, but the loss of international student has been broadly felt across Ontario’s college communities, with more than 10,000 faculty and staff let go and more than 600 college programs suspended or cancelled.

Among public universities, the University of Toronto handed out the largest number of PALs (6,165) in 2024, while the likes of Trent, Guelph, Ottawa and Waterloo universities used nearly all of their allocation. An outlier was Nipissing University, which used only 11 per cent of its PALs.

… What about this year?

In 2025, Ontario’s PAL allocation took a deep cut, falling to 181,590, which had to include, for the first time, graduate students.

Reflecting that, as well as the overall decrease, the province’s public colleges received 113,793 PALs while 57,685 went to universities.

The inclusion of PhD and master’s applicants meant, in some cases, individual numbers rose: U of T, which had 6,395 PALs the year before, received 12,338 this year.

Going into 2026, graduate students attending public institutions will be exempt from the PAL requirement but will be included in the overall cap allocation. So once again, the numbers for individual schools in 2026 will look different….

Source: Revealed: How international student spots are being distributed — unevenly — across Ontario

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ICYMI: Newcomers seeking permanent residency face uncertainty, frustration over Ontario immigration changes

2026/01/13 Leave a comment

Fixing problems after the fact rather than more due diligence in program planning or earlier corrective measures should be the goal:

…Lou Janssen Dangzalan, an immigration lawyer in Toronto, said misrepresentation and fraud has plagued OINP with “unsavory agents or ghost consultants and sometimes even licensed representatives” padding applications with problematic documentation. 

But Dangzalan said it is still a “disruptive and drastic” move to the applicants and the businesses to cancel the trades stream entirely.

“This is purely a political policy choice,” he said.

“I do applaud the Ontario government for acknowledging that there’s a problem, but I’m not sure if basically using a hammer to kill a fly would be a good idea in a house of glass.”

Dangzalan said realistically, applicants should start planning for a possible future where they may need to leave Canada.

“But that doesn’t mean that their PR journey is necessarily over right there. Leaving Canada doesn’t mean that you’re already automatically excluded from the Canadian experience class.”

He said if people have to leave and wait in their home countries for PR, they can work toward gaining skilled work experience there, which can bump their scores, and boost language scores, including by learning French. 

“So, 2026 is going to be tough for a lot of people… 2026 is going to be a year of enforcement… IRCC’s going to scrutinize every single application with more diligence than they ever did before.”

“From a large policy perspective, this is a crisis… There’s still an immigration arms race. A lot of candidates are available who are very fantastic candidates and Canada is going to need this, especially at a time where Canada is trying to wean itself away from its dependence from the United States.”

Source: Newcomers seeking permanent residency face uncertainty, frustration over Ontario immigration changes

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ICYMI: The government is still not hiring enough disabled people: PSC report

2026/01/13 Leave a comment

Of note (I await the EE report to assess the impact of the cuts on EE groups):

…The report found that public servants with disabilities “were consistently under-represented in acting appointments in comparison to their representation in the public service.”

In comparison, all other equity groups (Indigenous people, women and visible minorities) were represented on par or exceeded their representation in acting appointments….

The report also found gaps in other equity groups, particularly with the upkeep of Indigenous applicants, who had been applying to public service jobs in numbers that were lower than their overall workforce availability.

Around 2.8 per cent of applicants to the public service in 2024 to 2025 identified as Indigenous, while their workforce availability was 4.1 per cent….

Source: The government is still not hiring enough disabled people: report

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An impatient Mark Carney would rather bypass the public service than reform it

2026/01/12 4 Comments

Public service reform is a thankless task politically and takes an inordinate amount of time, effort and political support. Needed but rarely executed given previous failures like UCS.

Former deputies need to share some of their concrete experiences with efforts in public service reform and lessons learned, rather than more general diagnostiques and recommendations. More on the how and less on the why:

…Unlike his predecessors, Mr. Sabia took over as Clerk of the Privy Council with decades of business experience under his belt. That makes him an oddity in Ottawa, where most senior bureaucrats have never worked outside the capital, much less outside government.

Therein lies the problem that Mr. Carney and Mr. Sabia face as they try to inject new dynamism into a public service that has long operated according to the principles of risk minimization and strict adherence to procedure. The senior bureaucracy is almost exclusively composed of individuals who climbed the ranks during an era of increasing centralization of power and policymaking in the Prime Minister’s Office. Their skill set revolves around keeping the dust down, rather than disrupting the status quo. 

As in any organization, however, disruption is a necessary component of innovation. And the federal public service is desperately in need of it. 

“[N]otwithstanding the massive increase in hiring over the last decade, too few public servants have been hired for the leading-edge skills required for modern government,” write former PCO clerk Kevin Lynch and ex-PCO official James Mitchell in their newly published book, A New Blueprint for Government. “When Amazon can deliver a package to almost anyone in Canada the next day, public expectations for government service standards increase accordingly. Yet those expectations are too often not being met.”

Source: An impatient Mark Carney would rather bypass the public service than reform it

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Canada’s immigration system is favouring these kinds of applicants — even over others who score higher

2026/01/12 Leave a comment

More of the preference for French-speaking immigrants in express entry, diluting the CRS:

French-speaking candidates made up 42 per cent of the people invited for permanent residence last year via Canada’s flagship skilled immigrationselection system, which favours applicants fluent in French and is upsetting those who aren’t.

In total, 48,000 of the 113,998 applicants picked under the Express Entry system were chosen for their ability in French. They were selected in periodic draws from the talent pool where candidates post their profiles, and are awarded points out of a 1,200 maximum and ranked based on age, education, work experience and other attributes.

The prioritization of francophone immigration outside Quebec has frustrated non-French-speaking candidates and critics, especially now that Ottawa has slashed the overall intakes of permanent residents in coming years. Many question if this makes sense when candidates without French are passed over despite higher ranking scores.

The deliberate effort is in part to redress the decline in the demographic weight of French-speaking Canadians outside Quebec — down from 6.1 per cent in 1971 to about four per cent today — and ensure the long-term vitality of these minority communities that are key to “Canada’s bilingual and multicultural character.”

“Human capital really isn’t a concern for the francophone draws,” said Calgary-based immigration consultant Mandeep Lidher. “With a score in the high 300s, you’re definitely less educated and you could say less likely to succeed in the Canadian labour market or economically establish yourself.”

In response to the criticism, the Immigration Department pointed out that only top-ranking eligible candidates are selected through the francophone draws. Since selected candidates must meet general eligibility criteria, it said “they demonstrate the ability to economically establish and succeed in the Canadian labour market.”

Ottawa has reduced its permanent resident intakes from 485,000 in 2024 to 380,000 in 2026, while raising the portion of the French-speaking newcomers outside Quebec in the mix from six per cent to nine per cent, and to 12 per cent in 2029….

Source: Canada’s immigration system is favouring these kinds of applicants — even over others who score higher

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