Rights council seeks unity that Jewish, Muslim envoys couldn’t achieve: Miller

2026/07/06 Leave a comment

Not sure whether the council will work (an earlier initiative by Public Safety, the Cross-Cultural Roundtable on Security (CCRS) last evaluation dates from 2008-9, about the same period when I participated, highlighting the limited impact). But clearly the envoy approach didn’t.

“The CCRS has had an impact on the Government’s understanding and sensitivity to community needs. As well, some concrete examples were noted of CCRS impacts on GoC policies, directives and communications materials. However, there is limited evidence that the CCRS has contributed to better community understanding of national security policies, practices and challenges. This may be due to the fact that there are no formal mechanisms in place for disseminating information to communities, and there has been limited formal CCRS member-organized outreach conducted to date. As well, some interviewees noted a lack of clarity as to whether or not CCRS is mandated to do outreach.”

Don’t envy the officials responsible:

Heritage Minister Marc Miller says the government’s widely criticized advisory council on inclusion is meant to unify Canadians in a way previous federal envoys tasked with tackling antisemitism and Islamophobia could not.

“This is an advisory committee that is going to foster dialogue and a space to talk about some extremely difficult issues, chief of which is the current scourge of antisemitism in the country,” Miller told The Canadian Press.

Ottawa first created the role of a special envoy for combating antisemitism in 2020 and a similar position dealing with Islamophobia in 2023.

In February, the government announced it was scrapping both of those stand-alone federal envoy positions and replacing them with a new, broader “advisory council on rights, equality and inclusion” composed of prominent academics, experts and community leaders.

At the time, Prime Minister Mark Carney framed the measure as one aimed at addressing hatred of Muslims, Jews and Indigenous Peoples. 

When he officially launched the council a month ago, the prime minister said it would investigate the causes of antisemitism and improve research and data collection on hate incidents.

Since then, the government has been hit with a torrent of criticism — particularly from Jewish advocacy groups who argue the causes of antisemitism are well understood and documented in parliamentary reports.

“If we are looking at the threats that our community is facing, it’s going to take a lot more than people sitting at a table and speaking to one another to stop bullets from flying through the windows of synagogues and schools,” said Noah Shack, head of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

“When we have international actors directing attacks on Jewish community targets in Canada, and we have radicalized people in the spirit of the Islamic State plotting terror attacks similar to the one that occurred at Bondi Beach in Australia … these are issues that are not going to be solved by dialogue,” Shack said.

His group and other large Jewish organizations have called on Canada to do more to prevent hate crimes and to call out groups affiliated with the Iranian government.

Some groups have also called on Ottawa to restore the antisemitism envoy role and reform it. CIJA had previously suggested modifying the envoy role when the government had left it vacant, but is no longer calling for either envoy’s role to be restored.

He said it’s “a noble endeavour” to seek common ground across communities but he worries the effort will distract the government from directly addressing the elevated threats Jews face.

“Really, what we need is concrete action right now to demonstrate that the government isn’t just convening to explore and study issues but is committed to solving them,” Shack said.

In a statement, the National Council of Canadian Muslims said it wants “a real plan to counter the rise in Islamophobic incidents across Canada” and says Muslims have worked before with other communities on addressing hate.

“Talking about the things the (Islamophobia envoy) office supposedly didn’t do ignores both its mandate and the positive work it did accomplish,” wrote National Council of Canadian Muslims spokesman Steven Zhou, adding the group will work with the advisory council.

Miller said his government is also pursuing anti-hate policies and legislation.

Parliament passed Bill C-9 last month, which creates new criminal offences for intimidating or obstructing someone outside a religious or cultural institution, and codifies a definition of hatred in criminal law.

Miller said the former envoys on Islamophobia and antisemitism, Amira Elghawaby and Deborah Lyons, both provided helpful guidance to the government. He said they were not to blame for the failure to significantly boost dialogue between Jews and Muslims in Canada.

“Perhaps (it’s) unfair to expect real improvement in very polarized groups in society … that largely are not speaking to each other,” Miller said.

“The work that those two (envoys) have done, we can build on. But the focus, I think — and I agree with the prime minister in this — was to make sure that we had a broader group … focused on national unity that, visibly, whether we like it or not, those two secretariats were not achieving.”

Lyons, the former antisemitism envoy, has said that Jewish and Muslims groups disapproved of attempts she and Elghawaby had made to work together on things like provincial school curriculums. Elghawaby has said she wasn’t aware of those sentiments in Muslim communities.

Shack said the mandate for the envoys didn’t appear to mention unifying communities.

“You can’t conflate these two things. Often we would see antisemitism and Islamophobia routinely mentioned in the same breath. I think each community is having its own experience,” he said.

Miller said Carney came up with the idea for the council and discussed it with him back in December, shortly after his appointment as heritage minister.

“We had a long conversation about the unity of the country … but also his concern with the state of polarization,” he said.

The idea behind the council is to have eminent people who are generally representative of Canada’s diversity who can encourage social cohesion, Miller said, because “that fabric has been torn” by multiple factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic and events in the Middle East.

“This isn’t about trying to identify new forms of hate. It’s about looking at the ones that are already there — that in the case of antisemitism is one of the oldest, if not the oldest form of hatred — and look at the current drivers of it,” he said.

“You will find naysayers. We owe it to ourselves — and we owe to our country — to try.”

Source: Rights council seeks unity that Jewish, Muslim envoys couldn’t achieve: Miller

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ICYMI: The Trump administration is deporting a million migrants. Here’s what it means for Canada

2026/07/06 Leave a comment

Hard to see that the STCA will survive the court challenge:

…Aisling Bondy, president of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, believes the U.S. court decisions will further strengthen the pending legal challenges against the Safe Third Country Agreement before Canadian courts.

“The U.S. Supreme Court decision shows just how bad the situation for refugees and migrants is getting in the United States, and just how much Canada is breaching our human rights obligations by not allowing people to make refugee claims at the Canadian border,” she said.

Aiken of Queen’s said this is the moment for Canada to suspend the bilateral agreement. If not, she added, Ottawa should at least amend the proposed regulations of Bill C-12 to build in more exceptions so that people could retain access to asylum based on appropriate circumstances.

Source: The Trump administration is deporting a million migrants. Here’s what it means for Canada

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Why Is Canada’s Refugee Board relying on Francesca Albanese?: Randolph Hahn for Inside Policy

2026/07/06 Leave a comment

Reasonable question that deserves an answer. Difference between her official reports and activism? Institutional capture?

Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) decides who receives refugee protection — and for many successful claimants, a pathway to permanent residence and citizenship. Those decisions depend in part on country information the IRB makes available to its decision-makers as authoritative background material.

That is why one name appearing in the IRB’s National Documentation Packages should alarm anyone who expects Canada’s refugee system to rely on balanced and credible sources: the highly controversial Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Albanese has become one of the world’s most polarizing UN officials. She has been sanctioned by the United States, condemned by several democratic governments, and publicly rebuked by Canada itself. In 2024, Canada’s Permanent Mission in Geneva described her remarks as “unacceptable and incompatible with her duty of impartiality” and added that “antisemitism has no place anywhere.”

Yet, while the Canadian government has distanced itself from Albanese, the IRB continues to include her in reports in its official country documentation for Israel and for what it characterizes as the Occupied Palestinian Territories. After experienced Canadian immigration lawyers formally challenged the decision, the Board reviewed the matter — and chose to keep her reports in place….

Source: Why Is Canada’s Refugee Board relying on Francesca Albanese?: Randolph Hahn for Inside Policy

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Al-A’sar: Finding connection as an immigrant in the lonely city

2026/07/06 Leave a comment

Interesting account, a likely common experience for many communities:

..In that part of the world, cities often have many physical social hubs where people with shared interests tend to gather, and where encounters happen repeatedly and spontaneously, so that relationships can develop naturally. In Beirut, for instance, the coffee shops and bars along Hamra Street have a cultural and social function, too. The same used to be true of downtown Cairo, though things have changed over time because the regime fears any form of social gathering in civic spaces. Back then, if ever I felt bored, I would just head downtown without any plans and wander through city streets, confident that I would run into someone, perhaps at a coffee shop along the way – no itinerary, no prior arrangement, no online-calendar invite needed.

Here in Canada, I find myself needing to schedule a meeting with new friends a week or two in advance just to spend an hour together. I don’t blame them; this is what big cities often do to human relationships. Under the weight of necessity and social pressure, people can turn into rigorously scheduled machines. After all, everyone has daily obligations to fulfill, including work commitments to cover the growing cost of living and household responsibilities – not to mention what is often significant commute times. In this context, free time feels like it’s a privilege. …

Mostafa Al-A’sar is a Toronto-based journalist, writer and human rights defender.

Source: Finding connection as an immigrant in the lonely city

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Expatriate Voting and Citizenship 

2026/07/06 2 Comments

My analysis of expatriate votes in the 2025 election, broken down by province and country, and 13 ridings in which the percentage of expatriate votes is within one percent of the winning margin.

The impact of C-3 (citizenship by descent) is expected to be limited given Elections Canada requires expatriates to have resided in Canada in order to qualify for a special ballot, less likely in the case of second and earlier generations. But we shall see once we have full 2026 data on the overall numbers, ideally broken down by generation.

Expatriate Voting and CitizenshipDownload

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Canada’s shifting rules keep Iranian families apart, permit holders say

2026/07/03 Leave a comment

Of note:

…Immigration lawyers, consultants and affected families say thousands of Iranians made major life decisions based on a humanitarian program that offered temporary protection but no dedicated path to permanent residence or family reunification.

According to records obtained through an access-to-information request by immigration consultant Rami Mamar, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) issued 86,255 permits and extensions for Iranian nationals under the special measures between February 2023 and Jan. 31, 2025. Most — 73,012 — were work-permit extensions.

CBC obtained IRCC data showing 15 spousal open-work-permit applications for Iranian nationals were approved in 2024, 10 in 2025 and that 10 were awaiting decisions in 2026. The department did not provide the number of refusals.

“There are quite a few of them and these people are really suffering,” said Yalda Ghani, an immigration consultant in Toronto. 

Since early 2025, Canada has narrowed eligibility under the broader spousal open work permit program. Foreign workers seeking open work permits for their spouses must now have at least 16 months remaining on their own permits. Eligibility is also limited to highly skilled workers or those in management, professional and certain designated occupations. 

“We are seeing refusals everywhere,” Ghani said. 

Source: Canada’s shifting rules keep Iranian families apart, permit holders say

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ICYMI – Jack Jedwab: Antisemitism flies in the face of Canadian multiculturalism

2026/07/03 Leave a comment

Agreed:

…“Outside Israel, Canada has one of the highest proportions of Holocaust survivors in the world — part of a community that has made a profound mark on this country. When that history is treated as expendable, Jewish belonging becomes easier to question as well. For that reason, Canadian Multiculturalism Day should be an occasion not only to celebrate diversity, but also to recognize the challenges multiculturalism faces when prejudice is rationalized, historical memory is minimized, or minority communities are made vulnerable by conflicts beyond Canada’s borders.

That is why it is important to guard against those who would appropriate Canadian Multiculturalism Day in support of political agendas. A day meant to celebrate pluralism and strengthen mutual respect should not be turned into an occasion for advancing political narratives that decontextualize history or invite Canadians to view one community through the grievances of another. Multiculturalism is not served by selective memory, nor by historical accounts that intensify suspicion and fuel resentment. Ideally its objective should be to reduce intercultural tension, not to exacerbate it.”

Source: Jack Jedwab: Antisemitism flies in the face of Canadian multiculturalism

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ICYMI Atique – Shattered dreams on Canada Day: Broken immigration promises are based on false narratives

2026/07/03 Leave a comment

Classic example of academics in denial about the impact of excessively high levels and their impact on housing, healthcare and infrastructure, and all too quick to label corrections as xenophobic:

Restricting immigration will not fix Canada’s systemic social and economic problems.

Temporary migrants like international students, who are members of our communities, are facing greater barriers, inequalities and uncertainty due to Canada’s abrupt policy changes.

The question remains as to whether Canada will pursue increasingly restrictive immigration policies or tackle divisive xenophobia? As Canadians mark Canada day, it’s worth reflecting on Canada’s past and how to build a more equitable and just future for all

Source: Shattered dreams on Canada Day: Broken immigration promises are based on false narratives

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ICYMI – Douglas Todd: The brain drain from B.C. — and Canada — is worsening

2026/07/03 Leave a comment

The more skilled, the more mobile and higher expectations:

…The best way to measure individuals’ standard of living is through overall gross domestic product, or GDP, per person. And on that score Williams has a disturbing message: “Canada had the second-weakest GDP per capita growth” out of the 38 well-off countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in the period since 2014.

Western University economist Mike Moffat, a founder of the Missing Middle Initiative, is also concerned. Last year, Moffat says, a record-setting 120,000 Canadians moved out of the country, with 50 per cent of them between the ages of 25 and 45. The OECD estimates roughly half move to the U.S, followed by Britain and Australia.

These figures understate the exit phenomenon, Moffat said, because they exclude recent immigrants who leave, as well as “shadow emigration.” By that he’s referring to Canadians who typically keep filing Canadian tax returns and holding Canadian bank accounts while living elsewhere for years.

The worst thing is that the largest cohort leaving B.C. and Canada, according to Williams and Moffat, are educated and talented. They’re engineers, scientists, business specialists, health professionals and high-tech experts.

“One of the challenges for Canada is having a post-secondary education system subsidized by taxpayers and parents, only to see some of the best young people graduate and leave soon after for other countries,” Williams said.

“The loss of young, highly educated workers — often called the brain drain — is concerning because they tend to be net contributors to the tax base. That is, they pay more in taxes than they consume in public services.”

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that many are leaving Canada for the U.S., says Williams. He points to remarkable differences in Seattle, a global tech hub a three-hour drive south of Vancouver.

A highly skilled, recent graduate who aspires to earn a top salary will be heavily taxed in B.C., Williams said. “Once they earn above $261,000 Canadian, they will lose 53 per cent of every extra dollar in personal income tax. B.C. has the fourth-highest combined top personal income tax rate among the 60 U.S. states and Canadian provinces.”…

Source: Douglas Todd: The brain drain from B.C. — and Canada — is worsening

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MPI: From Last Resort to Intimidating Enforcement Tool: Denaturalization in the Trump Era

2026/07/03 Leave a comment

Of note:

The Trump administration has embarked on a robust campaign to strip a record number of immigrants of their U.S. citizenship, shifting resources within the government to achieve the quotas it has imposed on federal prosecutors. While the process of denaturalization is as old as naturalization itself, albeit historically rarely invoked, the administration is seeking to use its authority in greater and different ways. Once reserved largely for Nazis, communists, and security threats, denaturalization now could be used by the Trump administration for a broad set of criminal acts and cases deemed “sufficiently important to pursue,” which some fear could mean naturalized citizens accused of engaging in disfavored speech or political activity.

The administration’s ability to meet its ambitions is uncertain, given the legal protections related to citizenship that have evolved over the years. When Congress brought naturalization under exclusive federal authority in 1906, it saw denaturalization as a measure of last resort. Although hundreds of immigrants were stripped of their U.S. citizenship annually on average in subsequent decades—many of them perceived enemies of the state, anarchists, or nationals of wartime adversaries—the Supreme Court sharply curtailed use of denaturalization after 1967. Between 1990 and 2017, an average of 11 denaturalization cases were filed per year.

The Trump administration tried to buck the trend during its first term, setting a lofty goal of 1,600 denaturalization referrals for the long-running Operation Janus, which was investigating fingerprint records that had not been digitized. But its results fell far short; the average of about 25 civil cases filed per year was a significant increase from the past, though far below rates of the pre-1967 era and well below the goal. (Given that denaturalization is a lengthy and deliberative process, it is unclear how many of these cases ended in individuals being stripped of U.S. citizenship). So far during the second Trump term, the administration had reportedly identified 384 potential denaturalization cases as of April 2026. As of this writing, it had filed charges against at least 39 individuals in 2026.

Whether the latest campaign leads to denaturalization numbers on par with those of a century ago or not, it will likely have the effect of stoking fear among immigrants—even those who had assumed that becoming a U.S. citizen was the final and irreversible act of integration into U.S. society. The administration’s rhetoric and actions have injected doubt in that long-held assumption for some, potentially permanently altering perceptions about the value of acquiring U.S. citizenship.

Source: From Last Resort to Intimidating Enforcement Tool: Denaturalization in the Trump Era

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