La diversité sera «le défi de ce siècle», dit Couillard

2014/06/26 Leave a comment

Quite a change in tone from the PQ government and its Values Charter – Couillard’s remarks on the Saint-Jean:

Après plusieurs mois de débats sur la Charte des valeurs et le multiculturalisme, le premier ministre a mis de lavant sa vision dun Québec «fier», mais «en transition. «Sa belle et forte identité est définie notamment par notre langue commune, notre culture qui rayonne tant, nos valeurs sociales distinctes, notre régime juridique, a-t-il exposé. Le défi de ce siècle sera de conjuguer cette identité avec une diversité croissante. Une identité québécoise distincte, forte, partagée par tous les Québécoises et Québécois de toutes régions et de toutes origines. Voilà notre projet et notre avenir.»

M. Couillard a souligné que le Québec «de millions de familles» dici avait débuté par«un navire, un avion pris vers lespoir dun avenir meilleur». «Notre date darrivée au Québec peut être différente, mais notre fierté à légard de notre peuple nous réunit tous, parce quensemble, nous sommes le Québec», a-t-il ajouté.

La diversité sera «le défi de ce siècle», dit Couillard | Philippe Teisceira-Lessard | Politique québécoise.

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Live-in caregivers may be next target of immigration reform

2014/06/25 Leave a comment

Further to the Douglas Todd overview (Live-in Caregiver Program faces nine questions), a sense that something is brewing. Expect the politics will be such that this will be post-election (in addition to the Filipino community, families that employ live-in caregivers are another constituency that would be affected):

Internal documents show the Canadian embassy in Manila has been alerting colleagues since at least 2007 that fraud was an “ongoing problem” in the program and the absence of mothers was proving disruptive to families left behind in the Philippines, “causing infidelity, etc.” Similar warnings were repeated in a 2011 report by Citizenship and Immigration, which noted that large percentages of nannies are brought in to work for relatives.

Live-in caregivers come to Canada through the temporary foreign worker program, but when Ottawa announced major changes last week, the caregiver component – as well as the rules for agricultural workers – was largely unchanged.

Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, who has obtained extensive internal reports on the program via Access to Information, predicts Ottawa will announce this fall that it is phasing out the program.

“It’ll be sensitive because of October, 2015,” said Mr. Kurland, in reference to the impact it will have on Canada’s Filipino community ahead of next year’s federal election.“It is going to be politically controversial within that particular community,” he said, noting that Canada’s Filipino community tends to live in hotly contested swing ridings. Hong Kong and Manila are the top two Canadian missions in terms of approving live-in caregivers. Mr. Kurland notes that internal documents show many of the workers approved in Hong Kong are originally from the Philippines.

Live-in caregivers may be next target of immigration reform – The Globe and Mail.

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Expat voting: Court denies Ottawas fight for 5-year rule for voters abroad

2014/06/25 Leave a comment

While the Government failed to get a stay for the by-elections this coming Monday, expect that the Government will make a formal appeal of the earlier decision removing the five-year limit for the 2015 elections (see earlier Expat voters launch legal challenge of ‘5-year rule’):

In Mondays ruling denying the federal governments request of a stay, Justice Robert Sharpe wrote that while there was “an arguable appeal” from the Attorney General of Canada, “the balance of convenience weights in favour of refusing a stay.”

Sharpe dismissed the government’s argument that it could cause “irreparable harm” if a close election came down to the single vote of a non-resident who, it might turn out, was ineligible to vote. But such a scenario would be “fairly remote,” Sharpe said.

He also reasoned that Elections Canada had already taken administrative steps to allow citizens abroad to vote after the lower court ruling, and it was counterproductive to “undo what [Elections Canada] has already done.”

Only 13 Canadian ex-pats have so far registered to vote since the May decision.

Even so, Sharpe wrote today: “To grant a stay in this case would require Elections Canada to rescind the registrations of up to 13 non-resident electors and claw back the vote of citizens who may well in the end have the right to cast their ballot.”

Expat voting: Court denies Ottawas fight for 5-year rule for voters abroad – Politics – CBC News.

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Mohamed Fahmy, Egyptian injustice and Canada’s spineless response: Neil Macdonald

2014/06/25 Leave a comment

Good overview piece on Ottawa’s reaction to Mohammed Fahmy’s sentence.

Does seem a bit out of step with the normal language and rhetoric out of the Government, and particularly out of step with the US, UK and Australia:

The government of Canada, on the day that one of its citizens was sentenced to a long prison term in Egypt for the crime of committing journalism, was moved to note that Egyptians are, after all, “progressing toward democracy.”

And, added our prime minister’s parliamentary secretary, “We don’t want to insult them.”Because, you know, that would just be rude.

Instead, the government in Ottawa, which runs around the world, chin out and elbows up, lecturing other governments about respecting human rights and democratic self-determination, prefers soft-spoken diplomacy toward the regime in Cairo….

It’s probably best, the Harper government has apparently concluded, to remain largely silent as a journalist who carries a Canadian passport is sent off to some hellishly violent Egyptian prison for doing his job.

Best to have cabinet members avoid cameras on this sensitive and unsettling day, instead sending out Harper’s parliamentary secretary, Paul Callandra, to advise against giving any insult to Cairo.

Technically speaking, this foreign conviction could trigger revocation (the Government refused an amendment to the Citizenship Act requiring an explicit test of equivalence in judicial processes), although unlikely the Government would do so.

Mohamed Fahmy, Egyptian injustice and Canada’s spineless response: Neil Macdonald – World – CBC News.

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Dual citizenship can complicate diplomatic protection

2014/06/25 Leave a comment

A good overview on some of the implications on dual citizenship when visiting one’s country of origin, in light of the Mohammed Fahmy verdict (Mohamed Fahmy, jailed Egyptian-Canadian journalist, sentenced to 7 years).

A counter example to some of the comments on the Government side during the debate on C-24 Citizenship Act, who talked about the benefits of dual citizenship, not the risks.

As Macklin notes, some countries do not allow dual nationals to enter with their Canadian passports:

As well, unlike Canada, many countries, in particular non-G8 countries, do not recognize dual citizenship. Canada doesn’t require an individual to give up any citizenship of another country. But whether that persons country of origin recognizes their dual citizenship is a question from country to country, Niren said.

Some applicants will have to give up their home citizenship because they’re not going to be recognized anymore. For example, many Chinese nationals coming to Canada must give up their Chinese citizenship, as China doesn’t recognize dual citizenship.

A government of Canada website also cautions Canadians who have dual citizenship that it “may not be legal in the country of your second nationality, which could result in serious difficulties.

“You may have outstanding obligations in the second country, such as military service or taxes. Dual citizenship can also cause problems in a third country if there is confusion over which citizenship you used to gain entry,” the website says. It advises people to contact the appropriate foreign government office in Canada before heading abroad.

Some countries may also feel more justified on their claim on a dual citizen who has gotten in trouble with the law if that person used that country’s passport to enter.

An easy solution for Canadians would seem to be to always use their Canadian passport.

But “some countries take the position that they don’t mind if you’re a dual citizen, we don’t care, but when you’re coming into our country, you use your passport from this country,” Macklin said.

Dual citizenship can complicate diplomatic protection – Canada – CBC News.

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Diversifying trade: report shows immigrant export success, with a catch

2014/06/25 Leave a comment

Good Conference Board study demystifying new Canadian SMEs and their potential for increasing Canadian exports:

For one thing, most of the successful immigrant-owned SMEs are inefficient retail traders that aren’t getting high rates of return.

“It is important to note that the superior growth in the profits of non-U.S. immigrant exporters does not translate into superior rates of return from business operations,” the report says.

These aren’t innovative, knowledge-intensive exporting businesses, and they’re more “likely to compete on the basis of a low-pricing strategy,” it suggests.

The advantages they have, therefore, might not make up for their lack of productivity in the long-term, and their success could be short-lived.

“Some may suggest that recent immigrants may play a more substantial role in export activity if they have a higher participation rate in business start-ups in Canada,” the report says.

“However, the findings in this study suggest that it is not the proliferation of young and small, immigrant-owned export businesses that will substantially advance Canada’s export agenda over the long-term; rather it is the existence of a few medium to large innovative non-U.S. immigrant exporting businesses.”Unfortunately, the report adds, those innovative companies are also much less likely to get bank financing because of their uncertain prospects.

Diversifying trade: report shows immigrant export success, with a catch (pay wall)

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Destination 2020 Video

2014/06/24 Leave a comment

On a lighter note, a bit over the top!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPAiWR7puQM

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Ottawa’s foreign workers decision hogs spotlight in Western Canada

2014/06/24 Leave a comment

From “There are tens of thousands of employers who tell me that they would go out of business if they couldn’t find people to fill those jobs” to “I can’t count the number of people who tell me their kids can’t get jobs in the fast-food industry.”

Along with a shift to data and evidence-based policy by Jason Kenney:

But federal Employment Minister Jason Kenney insisted in an interview that the program had caused serious “distortions” in the labour market, and Albertans, like most Canadians, understand that. The reforms are based on data and evidence, not on “special-interest politics,” he said.

“There are some political actors in Alberta who are more attuned to a few thousand beneficiaries of this program than to the broader public,” Mr. Kenney said in phone interview from Calgary. “Everywhere I go people are thanking me for the changes, unprompted. Most people here believe the program grew beyond its original intent and caused distortions in the labour market. … I can’t count the number of people who tell me their kids can’t get jobs in the fast-food industry.”

The changes are expected to hit hard in Alberta’s fast-food industry, where employers complain they can’t find Canadians to work because of tight labour markets.

The government is showing a rare populist streak with its about-face on the foreign worker issue, baffling traditional allies in the business community.

Ottawa’s foreign workers decision hogs spotlight in Western Canada – The Globe and Mail.

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Moral Judgments Depend on What Language We’re Speaking – NYTimes.com

2014/06/24 1 Comment

Interesting psychological experiment on language. Believe there have been similar experiments with managers working in a second-language which both slows down their thinking (Kahneman’s System 2) and removes some of the emotion:

But we’ve got some surprising news. In a study recently published in the journal PloS One, our two research teams, working independently, discovered that when people are presented with the trolley problem in a foreign language, they are more willing to sacrifice one person to save five than when they are presented with the dilemma in their native tongue.

One research team, working in Barcelona, recruited native Spanish speakers studying English and vice versa and randomly assigned them to read this dilemma in either English or Spanish. In their native tongue, only 18 percent said they would push the man, but in a foreign language, almost half 44 percent would do so. The other research team, working in Chicago, found similar results with languages as diverse as Korean, Hebrew, Japanese, English and Spanish. For more than 1,000 participants, moral choice was influenced by whether the language was native or foreign. In practice, our moral code might be much more pliable than we think.

Extreme moral dilemmas are supposed to touch the very core of our moral being. So why the inconsistency? The answer, we believe, is reminiscent of Nelson Mandela’s advice about negotiation: “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” As psychology researchers such as Catherine Caldwell-Harris have shown, in general people react less strongly to emotional expressions in a foreign language.

An aversion to pushing the large man onto the tracks seems to engage a deeply emotional part of us, whereas privileging five lives over one appears to result from a less emotional, more utilitarian calculus. Accordingly, when our participants faced this dilemma in their native tongue, they reacted more emotionally and spared the man. Whereas a foreign language seemed to provide participants with an emotional distance that resulted in the less visceral choice to save the five people.

If this explanation is correct, then you would expect that a less emotionally vivid version of the same dilemma would minimize the difference between being presented with it in a foreign versus a native language. And this indeed is what we found. We conducted the same experiment using a dilemma almost identical to the footbridge — but with one crucial difference. In this version, you can save the five people by diverting the trolley to a track where the large man is, rather than by actively shoving him off the bridge.

Moral Judgments Depend on What Language We’re Speaking – NYTimes.com.

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Fix the link where science and policy meet

2014/06/24 Leave a comment

More on the cumulative impact of Government actions on science and science policy from Homer-Dixon, Douglas and Edwards:

The federal government has severely degraded its internal scientific capacity, including its ability to perform and publicize its own scientific research, track outside scientific research, and monitor and assess policy issues with complex scientific content.

Federal ministries have created rules that require government scientists – especially those working on resource and environmental topics – to get approval from senior bureaucrats before publishing their research. They have also sharply restricted travel to scientific meetings and blocked their scientists from communicating with journalists without prior authorization, and even then often only under supervision. Across the federal government – but especially within the departments of Fisheries and Oceans, Environment, and Natural Resources – large numbers of scientists have been laid off and vital labs and libraries closed. Remaining scientists speak of a climate of fear and self-censorship.

Fix the link where science and policy meet – The Globe and Mail.

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