Working site on citizenship and multiculturalism issues.
2014/08/26 4 Comments
From yesterday’s show, along with related CTV story.
And interesting, CIC Minister Alexander’s spokesperson responded to CTV’s request for comment with an innovative, for this government, recourse to evidence-based policy language:
‘Maternity tourism’: Report recommends limiting citizenship by birth
2014/08/26 Leave a comment
Sobering. Will be looking at Canadian data over the next little while to see how we are doing:
The Census data suggest that the wealth gap in America has widened over the past decade, regardless of how you slice it. The gap between the bottom and top quintiles in America has widened, as has the gap between blacks and whites, and between workers with only a high school degree and those with much more. This implies that the returns to higher education in America are growing (in 2000, households headed by someone with a bachelor’s degree were worth 2.4 times as much as those with only a high school diploma; by 2011 the ratio was 3.4). And racial inequality in wealth is growing, too (in 2000, white households had a net worth 10.6 times larger than blacks; by 2011 it was 17.5).
As of 2011, this is what wealth in America looks like. Toggle between the groups and you can compare them, by quintile. The most well-off whites, for example, are doing substantially better than the most well-off blacks. The differences in education are even more stark. Notably, the bottom quintile of every group has a negative net worth — in other words, those households are in debt.
The state of America’s widening wealth gap – Washington Post
2014/08/26 2 Comments
Lubomyr Luciuk on the World War 1 internment camps and the unveiling of plaques commemorating them. More balanced that some of the language of activists interviewed on CBC that called them “concentration camps:”
That led to the creation of the Endowment Council of the Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund, an inclusive body charged with hallowing the memory of all of the First World War’s “enemy aliens” through commemorative and educational initiatives. I take great satisfaction in recalling how two men working together, one of Chinese and the other of Ukrainian heritage, saw justice done, despite all the naysayers and thwarters. The country Inky and I share is one we are proud to be citizens of.
Today, one hundred years after passage of The War Measures Act — the same Act deployed in the Second World War against our fellow Japanese, Italian, and German Canadians, and against some Québécois in 1970 — over 100 plaques will be unveiled at 11 am local time in over 60 cities, starting in Amherst, Nova Scotia then flowing west to Nanaimo, B.C., a first-ever event in Canadian history. This national wave of remembrance, beginning and ending at internment camp sites, will sweep from coast to coast where a wave of repression once passed. These plaques fulfil Mary’s dream.
Lubomyr Luciuk: Remembering a time when Canadians were caged
2014/08/26 Leave a comment
Following Lucien Bouchard’s reflections on the referendum of almost 20 years ago and the Bloc québécois, Guy LaForest, a well-known Laval professor, comments on the current situation:
Le professeur doit publier dans les prochains jours Un Québec exilé dans la fédération,un essai qui offre une porte de sortie au cul-de-sac politique actuel. Le Québec fait du surplace depuis l’échec du référendum de 1995, déplore Guy Laforest. « On ne part pas du Canada, mais on ne participe pas. Je pense que ça a des conséquences désastreuses pour le Québec », dit-il.
Les Québécois assistent en spectateurs au match politique à Ottawa. Ils n’ont jamais été aussi peu présents dans les cercles du pouvoir fédéral, constate le professeur. Ottawa leur rend la pareille : le Québec ne figure plus sur l’écran radar du Canada. Et les gouvernements successifs à Québec ont échoué à proposer des revendications attrayantes pour les électeurs.
« Comme pas mal d’autres personnes au Québec, sur les plans de l’identité politique et de l’appartenance, je ne suis pas un citoyen heureux dans le Canada de la Charte », écrit Guy Laforest.
« L’expression “exil intérieur” décrit très bien le fondement de ma pensée. Car un exilé de l’intérieur, c’est quelqu’un qui se sent inconfortable, qui vit comme un étranger au sein de son propre pays », ajoute-t-il.
2014/08/26 Leave a comment
Victoria Ferauge, an American expatriate in Paris and active on the FATCA issue, commenting on the Canadian court case (see Virginia Hillis, Gwendolyn Deegan sue Ottawa over new FATCA tax rules):
And here we finally come to the Canadian lawsuit. The plaintiffs claim that FATCA as it is being implemented in Canada violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which among other things, shields Canadian citizens from unreasonable search and seizures and assures equal protection/non-discrimination in the application of the law. Ginny and Gwen, two very courageous women, are “Accidental Americans”. They were born in the US but have lived in Canada most of their lives and they not willing to be reduced to semi-citizenship in Canada. They are Canadian, they live in Canada, and US status should make no difference whatsoever in what rights they have under Canadian law. Period.
If you wish to argue otherwise, please think hard about the implications of that. Could a law made in Mexico that violates the rights of Mexican-Americans under the US Constitution be nevertheless applied to them with the blessing nay, the full participation and enforcement of the US government? And it is all the more troubling when one sees all the situations where individuals do contest the attribution of citizenship without their consent by a country they dont live in and dont consider themselves to have duties and responsibilities to. All dual citizens everywhere in the world should pay close attention to how this shakes out.
If any of you out there are interested in supporting this cause there are a couple of ways you can help. Ginny and Gwen have really gone out on a limb here by going public and they could use your moral support. You can send them a note here. Another, of course, is through a donation which you can make here.
The Franco-American Flophouse: FATCA Lawsuit Filed in the Federal Court of Canada.
2014/08/25 Leave a comment
Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Director Michel Coulombe’s op-ed on radicalization. Not much new in his overview, and no particular insights into why some are radicalized or not, but nevertheless worth reading.
I found however his comment below interesting in light of the Government’s recent changes to the Citizenship Act providing for revocation in cases of dual nationals engaged in terrorist activities.
Coulombe is saying that this is a “Canadian problem.”
Indeed, so why therefore should we banish or exile them, rather than locking them up in Canada?
Even if a Canadian extremist does not immediately return, he or she is still a Canadian problem. No country can become an unwitting exporter of terrorism without suffering damage to its international image and relations. Just as Canada expects other nations to prevent their citizens from harming Canadians and Canadian interests, we too are obligated to deny Canadian extremists the ability to kill and terrorize people of other countries.
Same point made by Chris Selley of the National Post, among others (Stripping jihadis’ citizenship feels good. But what good does it do?, Actually, my citizenship is a right):
Canadians in terrorist armies threaten us all – The Globe and Mail.
2014/08/25 Leave a comment
Renzetti in the Globe on the need for an enquiry regarding slain native women and the double standards society has with respect to the most vulnerable (think of Leonard Cohen’s wonderful song, Everybody Knows):
This government’s fear of facts, study and research into any topic that might cast it in a poor light is well documented, and not worth repeating here. But where actual lives are at stake, this truculence beggars belief: It is only three-year-olds, and not national governments, who should hide in the dark with pillows over their heads hoping that the bad thing will go away if they just don’t look. If they look, of course, they might just see something unpleasant that requires immediate attention, and a bit of courage.
On Feb. 13, the day police believe Inuit university student Loretta Saunders was killed in Halifax, the Native Women’s Association of Canada presented 23,000 signatures to the House of Commons, calling for a national inquiry. Those names may as well have been written in invisible ink, for all the attention Mr. Harper gave them.
Does that sound cynical? I feel cynical at this moment. If hundreds of cattle farmers had gone missing, or if oil executives and Bay Street lawyers were being snatched from the streets, I bet we would have studies and recommendations coming out our ears. You wouldn’t see the Peace Tower for the mountains of paper. Some lucky developer would be building a maximum-security prison to deal with the horrible wave of farmer/executive/lawyer violence. Dolefully voiced television commercials would warn of the danger to men in suits and Stetsons.
But these are aboriginal women, many of them poor and described, euphemistically, as “living a vulnerable lifestyle.” You would think that the vulnerable would be more in need of the state’s protection, not less, but perhaps I’m living in some utopian dream of Canada – the kind you see on TV, sometimes, advertising the country to foreign tourists.
What unites these slain native women? An inquiry might tell us – The Globe and Mail.
2014/08/25 Leave a comment
Well worth a read, the Globe’s profile of Rocco Galati, the lawyer who successfully challenged the Nadon appointment, and a reminder that Canadian multiculturalism was not always so tolerant and welcoming:
The government never thought someone named Galati could defeat it, he says.“They were so arrogant in assuming that an argument from me couldn’t win or shouldn’t win, because we live in a tribal culture. You’re only an expert if you’re anglo or francophone.… That’s been made clear to me for 26 years. I’d put my win ratio in impossible cases up against anybody’s, yet I’m still ridiculed when I bring a challenge. How does that work?”
…. “Because of my sense of history, I don’t like the idea of injustice. Growing up in Toronto was no picnic in the sixties and seventies. It was a very brutal, racist environment. The police were enforcing wartime regulations. On College Street, up until Trudeau rewrote the loitering laws, more than two Italian males could not congregate. They’d get billy-sticked home by the police.”
Silence of his previous announcement that he would challenge the revocation provisions of the new Citizenship Act:
The lawyer who challenged the Harper government and won – The Globe and Mail.
2014/08/25 Leave a comment
Consistent in his messaging and good both within the Muslim and broader communities:
Imam Syed Soharwardy, founder of Muslims Against Terrorism and the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, says he wants to draw attention to the actions of ISIS — a group of militants fighting for an Islamic state in the Middle East whose violent activities show they are not Muslims.
“The atrocity that is being carried out by ISIS is quite horrible. It’s quite inhumane. Its terrorism and in Canada they have successfully recruited more than 100 people to go and fight for them in Iraq and Syria,” Soharwardy said.
“I want to create awareness about the nature of their work — they are using Islam, they are quoting Quran, they look like Muslims, they pray like Muslims but they are not Muslim. They are deviant people, and they are doing exactly everything which goes against Islam.”
Soharwardy said he wants to make sure Muslim youth know that ISIS militants are not Muslims because many are being brainwashed by the terror group and other radical leaders.
ISIS betraying Muslims, says Calgary imam before hunger strike – Calgary – CBC News.
2014/08/25 Leave a comment
A further reflection of the spread of diversity from the larger cities to further afield in Ontario. But still within the context of the “greater” GTA economic space:
“Recent settlement trends reveal that economic regions other than the GTA are receiving a larger share of Ontario immigrants and that the proportion of secondary migration to non-Census Metropolitan Areas is increasing,” according to a 2012 report from the Rural Ontario Institute.
Peel Region is a good example: Mississauga was always a hub for new Canadian but Brampton to its north has expanded rapidly over the last two decades because of new Canadians, reaching ever further into what was once agrarian land in the city’s north. Now that population is starting to head further out.
“This may reflect a combination of factors including that employment/income prospects, or housing affordability may in fact be relatively better in these regions and/or that increasing diversity in smaller communities is contributing to confidence that religious or cultural differences are less of a barrier to a sense of belonging than they once might have been perceived to be,” the report states.
Small towns hope to replace exodus to cities with new immigrants.
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Multicultural Meanderings 