B.C.: Funding Dries up for Successful Citizenship Exam Program

2014/10/10 Leave a comment

While I don’t know the details for this particular decision, we do know from CIC data that some groups have poorer success rates than others, largely related to education levels and language, correlated in many cases with ethnic origin.

This type of training was a means to help such groups become citizens without diluting the integrity of language and knowledge testing:

This year’s Citizenship Week marks a sad occasion for the staff at the Victoria Immigration and Refugee Centre. That’s when the centre will end its highly successful citizenship training course, a government program to help permanent residents pass Canada’s citizenship exam.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada began funding the two-year pilot program at several agencies in January 2013. But VIRC’s funding dried up in July this year, so the centre invested $100,000 of its own money to cover the costs and keep the program going.

However, VIRC’s executive director David Lau says that can no longer continue and the program will end on Oct. 17, a date that falls during Citizenship Week.

“It’s heartbreaking,” says Lau, noting that the staff and volunteers put a lot of effort into the program. “We had to shut down the program before the end of our contract,” he adds. “We’ve been trying to reach Citizenship and Immigration Canada for months, but they’re not returning our calls.”

VIRC offered its Citizenship 101 course once a week for 10 weeks. The program ran five times and graduated 140 permanent residents. “We had really good dialogue [with CIC]. We sent in regular reports on the program and it met or exceeded all our milestones,” Lau says. “We had a 100 percent success rate.

”Word about the pilot’s success spread and Lau and his team began training people to teach the course for use in other agencies. Twelve non-profits were involved—ten in B.C. and the other two in Winnipeg and New Brunswick.

Funding Dries up for Successful Citizenship Exam Program – The Epoch Times.

Filed under Citizenship, Discover Canada, Language Tagged with ,

Charte des valeurs: Lisée aurait démissionné plutôt que de l’appuyer | Le Devoir

2014/10/10 Leave a comment

Well, that’s a change. He didn’t show any reserve when in Government:

Jean-François Lisée a désavoué, mercredi, le défunt projet de charte des valeurs de son collègue Bernard Drainville. Six mois après la défaite du gouvernement minoritaire de Pauline Marois et le naufrage de la charte, le candidat pressenti à la direction du Parti québécois prétend qu’il avait des objections majeures à l’endroit du projet de loi 60, tel que conçu.

Le député de Rosemont a déclaré qu’à défaut d’un assouplissement dans les dispositions de la charte, il n’aurait pas hésité à quitter ses fonctions de ministre en guise de protestation.

«Je trouvais que la charte était une très grande avancée dans la marche vers une plus grande laïcité de l’État, mais j’étais favorable à une application très graduelle», a expliqué M. Lisée lors d’une mêlée de presse.

«Je considérais qu’il n’était pas acceptable humainement que des employés qui avaient travaillé pour l’État pendant plusieurs années soient menacés de congédiement ou de sanctions parce qu’on avait décidé de changer les règles en cours de route. […] Il me semblait impossible d’appuyer une partie de la législation qui allait soumettre des gens à des pressions et à un stress terrible», a-t-il précisé.

…. L’ancien ministre responsable de la région de Montréal semblait pourtant à l’aise lorsqu’il défendait publiquement le projet de charte aux côtés de M. Drainville, ministre responsable du projet de loi.

En outre, à l’automne 2013, il cosignait une lettre dans le New York Times avec M. Drainville dans laquelle il faisait l’apologie de la charte, en la comparant au concept du «mur entre l’État et la religion», attribué à l’ancien président américain Thomas Jefferson.

Il écrivait que «le fait de demander aux employés de la fonction publique de ne pas porter de signes ostentatoires pendant qu’ils sont au travail» constituait «la suite logique» du processus de laïcisation en cours au Québec depuis les années 1960.

Charte des valeurs: Lisée aurait démissionné plutôt que de l’appuyer | Le Devoir.

Filed under Charte des valeurs québécoise, Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Irwin Cotler’s principled abstention on Iraq

2014/10/10 Leave a comment

Thoughtful rationale:

“I have written ad nauseam almost on the responsibility to protect in general and in particular with regards to Syria … I was on record as, not only Canada joining an international coalition, but asking Canada to lead that coalition, to convene a UN security council urgent meeting, et cetera, et cetera.

Therefore, I would have generally supported a resolution of that kind,” Cotler told me this afternoon. “So why wouldn’t I support something that supports my position? Well the answer is because this does not support it, but turns R2P on its head. Harper took the astonishing position to say that … with regards to Syria, if we’re going to go into Syria then it’ll be contingent on Assad’s agreement.

As I said, this not only turns R2P on its head, it’s asking the criminal who should be in the docket or the accused for permission for us to engage in the very international military operation that he’s asking us to support.

To me that not only was the theatre of the absurd on Harper’s part, but in fact it evinced a lack of understanding of the whole initiative that he was speaking about. And then to invoke the UN security council resolution … when in fact there was no UN security council resolution showed, again, a lack of understanding.”

Irwin Cotler’s principled abstention on Iraq – Macleans.ca.

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Changes to live-in caregiver program won’t solve backlog, groups fear – Politics – CBC News

2014/10/10 Leave a comment

More shadow boxing on upcoming changes to the live-in caregivers program:

[Minister] Alexander acknowledged the growing need for more caregivers and nannies across the country.

“Canada needs caregivers … but we need them, and I think caregivers are the first to recognize this, in a broader range of occupations than ever before.

“Some in the traditional role of helping with young children at home. Others, helping with medical need situations in homes. And then in institutions as well where there are a wide variety of needs, professional needs, highly-skilled needs that aren’t necessarily being met anywhere close to the scale needed in many parts of the country,” Alexander said.

Employment Minister Jason Kenney was more critical of the caregiver program in June saying it had morphed into a family reunification program.

NDP immigration critic Lysanne Blanchette-Lamothe criticized the government for its “lack of transparency.”

“They’ve hinted at changes, while vilifying certain communities they claim are abusing the program, without providing any evidence. “They’ve refused to hold public and open consultations and have excluded important advocates and experts from their closed-door consultations,” Blanchette-Lamothe said in a written statement to CBC News.

Changes to live-in caregiver program wont solve backlog, groups fear – Politics – CBC News.

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Government looks to terrorism studies to stop radicalization

2014/10/10 Leave a comment

Not out of character: denouncing something for political purposes while quietly carrying out some needed work:

According to a request for proposals posted online on Wednesday, Public Safety Canada is looking to carry out five research projects delving into such areas as the “psychology” of violent extremism, the role of the Internet in radicalization, and the extent to which women become involved in terror movements.

“We are funding research that is studying the participation of western extremist travellers in the conflict in Syria, how they communicate, how they travel. This research will give us the building blocks that we can use to develop better strategies to stop radicalization before it ever manifests itself,” Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney told the House of Commons public safety committee on Wednesday.

Government looks to terrorism studies to stop radicalization.

CBC report on how the Government continues to emphasize enforcement, not prevention, in its public messaging (both are needed):

[Michael] Zekulin had hoped to hear details of a counter-radicalization strategy announced months ago by the RCMP. He didn’t get it.

“The whole counter-radicalization strategy is to prevent the next generation of fighters. We need to get into communities, recognize the threat at home because groups like ISIS are very sophisticated using social media to recruit to their cause.”

In fact, Canada is well behind other allies in developing a counter-radicalization strategy. Britain, the U.S. and Australia already have such plans in place.

RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson says cooperation between his force and CSIS (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service) has provided timely information that has led to successful arrests and prosecutions in recent years.

“We have about 63 active national security investigations on 90 individuals related to the travelling group — both people who intend to go or who have returned — so the pace and tempo of the operations is quite brisk,” he told the committee on Wednesday, adding “that it’s nothing Canadians need to be alarmed about.

“I think we are managing through our collective efforts our response that is appropriate to the nature of these suspected offences.”

Ray Boisvert, a former assistant director of CSIS, points out that while Canadian security agencies have increased their vigilance, Canadians still wind up in conflict zones.

“At the end of the day when they come back there’s a good chance they are deeply radicalized,” he told CBC News. “They are trained in weapons of war and they may hurt Canadians at home.”

For his part, Zekulin also worries that those radicals will become effective recruiters once they’ve returned. As fighters and as Canadians, he says, they have credibility and a story that can influence others in their community.

So while the federal government is sending jets to stop the spread of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, an important battle over radicalized Canadians may also be taking shape here at home — a battle in which Ottawa may already have waited too long to intervene.

Has Ottawa been too slow to take on radicalized Canadians?

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with , , ,

Confusion reigned at CIC after Kenney kept on multiculturalism

2014/10/09 Leave a comment

Embassy article on how CIC had to scramble to figure out the implications of Minister Kenney retaining responsibility for the multiculturalism file, including my quotes:

The Conservative government owes its current majority in part to strong support from ethnic communities in suburban Canada, and Mr. Kenney has led the party’s efforts to appeal to immigrant diasporas.

Prime Minister Harper credited Mr. Kenney for turning “small-c conservative” immigrants into “big-C conservatives” and urged United States conservatives to learn from his party’s example during a recent sit-down interview with the Wall Street Journal in New York.

“This is a huge transformation. It’s why we’ve come to office, and have stayed in office,” Mr. Harper commented, according to a report by the Canadian Press.

Andrew Griffith, a director general for citizenship and multiculturalism at Citizenship and Immigration Canada from 2007 until 2011 and now retired, said that the decision to keep Mr. Kenney on the multiculturalism file was “a political point.”

“He engaged the communities, he developed the contacts there, he recruited candidates for the party and he played a major role in the electoral strategy of the party,” said Mr. Griffith, author of the book Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias: Resetting Citizenship and Multiculturalism.

“It didn’t make any sense for them to switch to another minister who would have to build up the relationships. I suspect that Kenney probably didn’t want to give it up either, because it’s part of his political base.”

Even in situations where Mr. Alexander is responsible for signing off on multiculturalism decisions, Mr. Griffith said that the documents make clear that the minister for multiculturalism is responsible for the substance of those decisions.

“From a bureaucratic point of view, I don’t like it because it’s messier and I think it impacts the ability to do good policy work. But from a political point of view, I understand why the prime minister made that decision,” said Mr. Griffith.

“If I were him, I probably would have made the same decision.”

Message to current public servants: be careful what you say in emails. “Confusion reigns!” may be accurate but may also be too vivid for the public!

Confusion reigned at CIC after Kenney kept on multiculturalism | Embassy – Canadas Foreign Policy Newspaper.

Earlier blog posts and reporting:

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Trinity Western grad attacked for being Christian in job rejection

2014/10/09 1 Comment

Interesting incident. The Norwegian company’s emails are pretty amazing and outrageous, whether or not one agrees with Trinity Western or not.

A Trinity Western University graduate says she was “attacked” over her religion by a Norwegian wilderness tourism company, just for applying for a job.

Bethany Paquette claims her application to work in Canada’s North for Amaruk Wilderness Corp. was rejected because she’s Christian.

“It did really hurt me and I did feel really attacked on the basis that I’m a Christian,” Paquette said.

In her complaint to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, Paquette outlines a series of emails from executives from Amaruk Wilderness Corp.

Paquette, an experienced river rafting guide, applied to be a wilderness guide for Amaruk’s Canadian operations in the North.

She says she was shocked when she read the rejection email from Olaf Amundsen, the company’s hiring manager.

He wrote that she wasnt qualified and “unlike Trinity Western University, we embrace diversity, and the right of people to sleep with or marry whoever they want.”

Trinity Western is the Christian university in Langley, B.C., where Paquette earned her biology degree.

All students must agree to a covenant prohibiting sexual intimacy outside heterosexual marriage, under pain of possible expulsion, which has led to controversy over the university’s new law school.

Paquette was furious and told CBC, “My beliefs have developed who I am as an individual, but they don’t come into play when I am doing my job.”

Her last line is critical – can she separate her personal beliefs when doing her job, presumably with clients who do not share her values?

Trinity Western grad attacked for being Christian in job rejection – British Columbia – CBC News.

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

FATCA Paris Meeting: Lee and Bopp: A Chance to Turn the Tide

2014/10/09 Leave a comment

Victoria Ferauge’s reporting on a FATCA meeting with American expatriates in Paris this week:

Bright and early Monday morning, Senator Mike Lee and superlawyer James Bopp, Jr. addressed a full house of frustrated and forlorn US citizens over at Reid Hall in Paris.  Some came in suits, some in jeans. There was a very young woman with blue streaks in her hair and men whose touches of gray were a testimonial to a lot of living.  There were lawyers, stay at home mothers, IT workers and artists.  A diverse group that was far more representative of the true face of Americans abroad than the usual caricatures of champagne-sipping yacht-owners living it up in Gay Paree.  It was coffee and croissants and a frank discussion that at times was fraught with emotion.

Senator Lee spoke first and he began with some anecdotes from the time when he was first elected to the Senate.  He’s a young man with a quiet and modest demeanour.  He recounted how in the very beginning he had moments where because of his youth and appearance he was taken for something other than a member of that august body, the US Senate, and how he finally had to quietly but firmly assert himself as the elected-by-the-people junior Senator from Utah.  He invited us to laugh with him and we did. But the funny stories took a very serious turn when he shared the lesson he drew from that experience: “We must assert what is rightfully ours,” he said, “if it is to have any meaning.”

US citizens wherever they live, he said, have constitutional rights that cannot be taken away by anyone.

The Franco-American Flophouse: Lee and Bopp: A Chance to Turn the Tide.

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , , , ,

Australian PM orders crackdown on visas for radical Islamist preachers

2014/10/09 Leave a comment

Hard to argue against the obvious cases but expect some controversy or debate over borderline or less clear cases, and whether this will only be applied to radical Islamists or more broadly:

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Wednesday that he was ordering a crackdown to prevent radical Islamist preachers entering the country, amidst rising tension with the Muslim community following a series of security-related raids.

Abbott, who recently warned that the balance between freedom and security “may have to shift” to protect against radicalized Muslims seeking to carry out attacks, said hate preachers would now be “red-carded” during the visa process.

The tougher new system, which he said would not require new legislation, comes on the heels of a public meeting in Sydney last week by Hizb ut-Tahrir, an international group that says its goal is to establish a pan-national Muslim state.

Conservative commentators have seized on the speech to urge greater restrictions on radical preachers.

“What we want to do is to ensure that known preachers of hate do not come to this country to peddle their divisive extremist message,” Abbott told reporters in Sydney.

“What I’m doing is declaring that we will henceforth have a new system in place which will ensure that preachers of hate can’t come to Australia to peddle their extreme, divisive and alien ideologies.”

Australian PM orders crackdown on visas for radical Islamist preachers – The Globe and Mail.

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with , , ,

No, A Canadian Mosque Is Not Teaching 4-Year-Olds to Behead

2014/10/09 Leave a comment

Sun News Network at its best in distortion, with Tarek Fatah, not necessarily known for soft views on Muslim extremism, trying to provide Sun host Brian Lilley with some needed context:

However, Lilley admits that he is no expert on Muslims or their faith, and asks his guest on the show, liberal activist/author Tarek Fatah, author of The Jew is Not My Enemy: Unveiling the Myths that Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism, to explain the play to him, asking if it was similar to Catholics teaching their children about Jesus by having them conduct a play on his crucifixion.

Fatah replies that the scenarios are actually quite similar, as the play depicts the martyrdom of Muhammad’s grandson and brother.

“It’s a Shiite school, and it’s commemorating one of the great tragedies in Islamic history, which is the slaughter of the Prophet Muhammad’s family by the caliphate of the time,” says Fatah, who also notes that he himself watched these plays as a boy growing up in Pakistan.

“The children really go out to participate,” he explains. “Looking at it from a Canadian context, I was deeply disturbed because it means that the indoctrination of 3, 4-year-olds that has been going on for centuries – and which even I as a child in Pakistan thought it to be perfectly normal – how much damage it would do in desensitizing me or my friends or buddies who are now in their 60s as to what is ‘martyrdom’ and why would anyone wish death was a good thing.”

However, Fatah notes that he does not believe that the parents, or teachers, at the Islamic Jaffari Centre are “trying to make the kids into radicals.”

“After all, these are the victims of radicals,” he says. “Most Shiite Muslims today are being slaughtered by fellow Muslims. So that context has to be there. This was not some ISIS or al-Qaida or Taliban type of people.”

…..In the news segment, Fatah acknowledges that someone needs to talk to the leadership of the community – particularly the Islamic Jaffari Centre – and explain to them that “celebrating death, no matter what, is a bizarre experience. It desensitizes bloodshed among kids.”

Fatah is right. We need to start a dialogue so that leaders do not expose young children to such scenarios. But by that rationale, is it not equally detrimental for children to conduct a play on the Crucifixion of Christ?

If this centre is indeed spreading propaganda that compares Jews to Nazis, or are indeed teaching children to behead others with the intentions of becoming radical jihadists, then news agencies, condemn away. But to publish misleading headlines that will only add fire to the flame and ostracize Muslims from Western society – just as during this summer Jews and Israelis were ostracized ample times for supporting an “apartheid” state – is wrong.

Violence and discrimination against Muslims today, whether in the West or in Iraq and Syria, is real, just like such violence and anti-Semitism against Jews is real, and taking place right now. We cannot blame the entirety of Muslims for the threat of ISIS, just as we cannot blame the entirety of Jews for the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir.

Despite the percentages, despite the terrorists, despite Jihad, it is unfair to accuse an entire religion of people for what a group of individuals do. There may be a higher percentage of Muslims who support joining religion and state as opposed to other religions, and there may be even more Muslim terrorists than there are Jewish, Christian, Hindu, etc., but that doesn’t justify always assuming the worst of Muslim people,

That goes against the fundamental principles of what makes Canada and the United States a haven for open-mindedness and democracy. Worse, it goes against everything we are supposed to stand for.

No, A Canadian Mosque Is Not Teaching 4-Year-Olds to Behead – Page1 – Shalom Life.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

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