Quebec preparing major reform to immigration policy

2015/01/27 Leave a comment

Quebec_Unemployment_Rate

National Household Survey 2011

Imitation is the highest form of flattery, with Quebec Minister Weil wanting to appropriate the Canadian model linked more closely to employer needs.

As indicated in the chart above, visible minority unemployment rates are significantly higher than non-visible minorities in Quebec:

Ms. Weil told The Canadian Press she was ready to launch a “big reform” of relations between new immigrants and Quebec society at-large by the end of the year, a process that will include the revision of Quebec’s immigration law.

Everything will be on the table: the number of immigrants welcomed annually, the selection process and favoured countries of origin, the importance of knowing French before arriving, French language courses, the recognition of training undertaken abroad, regionalization, and the sharing of common values.

The minister said she wanted a wide-reaching debate on the issues, and was “very open to everything that will be proposed.”

Fifty stakeholders are expected to participate in public consultation hearings over the next few weeks on the future of immigration to Quebec. The province’s current policy has been in place for 25 years.

A later consultation will also be held on two specific aspects of immigration: the number of immigrants Quebec wants to welcome every year and their countries of origin.

The emphasis, however, will be placed on the economy and balancing between the recruitment of new immigrants and workforce needs. Finding candidates that can fill empty jobs will be key, and on that point, Quebec is being inspired by Ottawa.

Last year, the federal government reformed its selection process for new immigrants. With the focus now primarily on filling jobs, every candidate for immigration to Canada must produce a “declaration of interest” showcasing his or her ability to meet employers’ needs.

Weil said she wanted to appropriate that model. “ What I want to arrive at, is an immigration system based on the Canadian model,” she said.

Quebec preparing major reform to immigration policy – The Globe and Mail.

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Anti-terror bill: Can government balance security and civil rights?

2015/01/27 Leave a comment

The debate continues over the scope over the Government’s plans to introduce a bill with new measures on Friday:

The ideological debate is summarized by University of Ottawa national security law expert Craig Forcese.

“A risk-minimizing society would permit mass detentions in the expectation that the minimal increase in public safety from the dragnet would outweigh the massive injury to civil liberties,” he writes.

“A rights-maximizing society, however, would deny the state the power to detain except through conventional criminal proceedings, for which it would impose demanding standards, even at the risk of leaving people free whose intent and capacity are clear but whose terrorist acts lie in the future.”

In a recent statement to the Citizen, Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien said: “Canadians want to be safe, but they also care profoundly about their privacy rights.

“Horrific attacks on innocent people obviously raise concerns about safety. But I was struck by the fact that, immediately after the attacks in Ottawa and in Paris, many people were talking about the importance of also protecting democratic rights such as free speech and privacy.

“Security is essential to maintain democratic rights, but our national security responses to acts of terror must be proportionate and designed in a way that protects the democratic values that are pillars of our Canadian society.”

Anti-terror bill: Can government balance security and civil rights? | Ottawa Citizen.

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Diversity our strength (someone tell the bigots)

2015/01/27 Leave a comment

Elizabeth Renzetti puncturing the myth of Toronto being welcoming of diversity, following a political panel of visible minority candidates:

It’s not just Toronto, of course. This week’s controversial Maclean’s cover story claiming Winnipeg is the most racist city in Canada highlighted the virulence of anti-aboriginal sentiment in the last municipal elections. As mayoral candidate Robert-Falcon Ouellette told the CBC last summer, “If there’s one person saying it, there’s 1,000 people thinking it.” (It should be noted that the man who was elected mayor, Brian Bowman, is Métis.)

As Ms. Chow said, “We’ve become complacent.” Because Canada’s largest city mostly trots along in peace and prosperity, it’s easy not to notice the bitter undercurrents that the past four years stirred up. Or perhaps to think that they’ve disappeared, along with the brothers who did the stirring. But that would be wishful thinking.

Politics is, of course, a hurly-burly – a brutal, elbows-up game. I don’t think any of the women who were on that panel thought otherwise when they stepped into public life. “I have very thick skin,” Ms. Chow said. “Probably too thick.” What they didn’t expect was the idea that they had no right to be in the game in the first place.

But those are precisely the kinds of candidates who should be playing the game. If we’re presented with more of the same faces touting more of the same platforms, an already apathetic, disillusioned electorate will switch off – in which case everyone loses.

And diversity among municipal elected representatives is proportionately less compared to other levels of government.

Diversity our strength (someone tell the bigots) – The Globe and Mail.

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French citizenship, reward or punishment in fight against terror

2015/01/27 1 Comment

France rules citizenship revocation legal:

France’s Conseil Constitutionnel – or Constitutional Council – said that the battle against terrorism permits the courts to strip Ahmed Sahnouni, 44, of his citizenship, prompting his lawyer to denounce the ruling as “discriminatory”.

“It creates two different categories of French people – those who are born here and those who receive French nationality,” Sahnouni’s lawyer Nurettin Meseci said in a telephone interview, adding that his client could face up to 20 years in prison if sent back to Morocco.

However, France’s top legal body said after its ruling that the difference in treatment between French-born and naturalized citizens does not violate France’s principle of equality – on the basis that the gravity of the act outweighs the severity of the punishment.

While Sahnouni is only eighth person to be stripped of his nationality since 1973, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said such a measure would be used again.

Prime Minister Manual Valls also welcomed the move saying, “We should not, in any case, deprive ourselves of lawful means to ensure our values are respected.”

Under France’s civil code, Article 25, officials can revoke a person’s French passport if they commit an egregious offense deemed an “act of terror” within fifteen years of being granted citizenship. However, the law only applies to dual-nationals so it does not render them stateless, which would breach international conventions signed by France.

Still unlikely to be ruled constitutional in Canada given Charter rights and the need to treat Canadian solo and dual nationals equally for the same crime.

French citizenship, reward or punishment in fight against terror – France – RFI.

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Canadians cry ‘fowl’ over lack of ethnic chicken, document shows | Toronto Star

2015/01/27 Leave a comment

When supply management can’t meet the demand, particularly for kosher and specialty birds:

Canadians cry ‘fowl’ over lack of ethnic chicken, document shows | Toronto Star.

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The Data Behind Radicalization

2015/01/26 Leave a comment

Findings of a recent study of 1,500 individuals radicalized in the US since WW II:

Compared to violent domestic terrorists on the Far Left and Far Right, Islamists stand out. They’re more likely to be young (between 18 and 28 years old), unmarried and unassimilated into American society. They are also more likely to be actively recruited to an extremist group.

But in other important ways, Islamist extremists in the U.S. as a whole — violent and nonviolent — are not so different from other extremists. People in the three groups were equally likely to have become radicalized while serving time in prison — complicating the narrative that Muslim prisoners are unusually likely to commit to extremism from behind bars — and to be composed of individuals who have psychological issues, are loners, or have recently experienced “a loss of social standing.”

“Social networks are incredibly important to radicalization, but that’s not unique to Islamists at all,” [researcher Patrick] James said. “There’s almost always a facilitator — a personal relationship with a friend or family member who’s already made that leap.”

The Data Behind Radicalization « The Dish.

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Study Says Creativity Can Flow From Political Correctness

2015/01/26 Leave a comment

Interesting study on political correctness and the diversity of teams:

Duguid and her co-authors set up an experiment to see if the notion that politically correctness impedes creativity held up to scientific scrutiny.

They sat down students in groups of three to brainstorm ideas on how to use a vacant space on campus. Some of the groups were all men, some all women, others mixed. Control groups got to start right away on the brainstorming, but the test groups were primed with a script.

The research team told those groups that they were interested in gathering examples from college undergraduates of politically correct behavior on campus. They were instructed to, as a group, list examples of political correctness that they had either heard of or directly experienced on this campus.

“They did that for 10 minutes,” Duguid says.

In the same-sex groups, the old notion held true. Groups of three men or three women who were instructed to think about political correctness were less creative than the control group. But in the mixed-gender groups that got the politically correct instructions, creativity went up.

“They generated more ideas, and those ideas were more novel,” Duguid says. “Whether it was two men and one woman or two women and one man, the results were consistent.”

Study Says Creativity Can Flow From Political Correctness : NPR.

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‘Satire is the fastest way to destroy someone’: How Arabs use the Internet to mock dictators and terrorists

2015/01/26 Leave a comment

More on Arab comedy with some funny and biting examples on extremists:

The parody commercial for “Tak Firi” — the caliph’s favourite cheese — begins with two ISIS terrorists enjoying a picnic in a lush field.

It’s shot in the vein of ads for the French cheese spread La Vache Qui Rit, known in the middle east for corny commercials that often feature a parent encouraging their child to eat a cheese sandwich while waxing poetic about its health benefits.

One of the terrorists spreads the cheese onto a round of pita with his dagger and hands it to his giddy companion. “From the fields of Raqqa,” says the narrator, “we bring you this cheese. Take it with you to wherever you decide to blow yourself up.”

The “Tak Firi” ad — the name references the Arabic term for a Muslim who accuses a co-religionist of apostasy — aired in October on the Albasheer Show, an online Iraqi comedy news program hosted by Ahmed Albasheer, a 30-year-old native of Anbar province.

‘Satire is the fastest way to destroy someone’: How Arabs use the Internet to mock dictators and terrorists

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Tony Abbott tells Sydney Islamic protesters to ‘lighten up’

2015/01/26 Leave a comment

I think Abbott has a point:

The group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, planned to rally in south-west Sydney on Friday evening against the kind of images that proliferated in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings.

Abbott told 2GB he hoped there would be only a few protesters.

“Frankly I don’t think any of us really want to be in the business of insulting anyone, but on the other hand we all believe in free speech, and I have to say some people are a bit thin-skinned about free speech,” he said.

“I just hope the organisers of this protest lighten up a bit, and accept that in our robust democracy, a lot of people say a lot of things, and sometimes it’s right, sometimes it’s wrong, and we just have to accept the rough and the smooth together.”

A spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir likened Abbott’s comments to being asked to “discard the sacredness of our values”.

“It’s quite disingenuous to suggest a people, ie Muslims, lighten up over something that is provocative and quite derogatory to their core values and beliefs, the centre of which is obviously the prophet Muhammad,” he said.

Tony Abbott tells Sydney Islamic protesters to ‘lighten up’ | Australia news | theguardian.com.

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Republicanism vs. Multiculturalism in France | The Nation

2015/01/26 Leave a comment

Good observations of Katha Pollitt in The Nation from her short visit to Paris in the aftermath of the killings:

What was most striking to me was the amount of sheer outrage that the French people I spoke with bring to these largely symbolic issues. Take the controversy over ham and halal meat in public-school lunchrooms. I’m an atheist, and my daughter went to public school, but if most of the students were Muslim and lunch was thus halal, with pork omitted from the menu, I can’t imagine getting all worked up about it—as I would if that lunch was preceded by even the most nondenominational of prayers. Food, after all, is not proselytizing. “You don’t understand,” said Corinne. “It means the government, the taxpayer, is paying for halal meat! It’s collective bullying, but the minute you object, you’re a racist.”

…It would be good to know more—a lot more—about the situation of Muslims in France, but a 1946 law prevents the collection of statistics by race, religion or ethnicity. As with laïcité, a rule invented to address one situation—the Vichy law forcing Jews to register with the police was later used to deport them to the death camps—has had unintended consequences over time. This lack of information is also part of “republicanism,” a concept of national unity that papers over differences due to poverty and racism. Almost the first thing that Catherine, my husband’s cousin, wanted to tell us when we showed up at her apartment was that the news media were reporting that some Muslim schoolchildren—she claimed 25 percent—had refused to stand for the national moment of silence for the Charlie Hebdo victims. Were they indicating their approval of the murders, as she assumed? Or did the children mistakenly believe that they were being asked to honor the caricaturing of Muhammad, as Nilüfer Göle suggested, and no one had taken the time to explain what the ritual was really about? Maybe, as a much older friend suggested, they were just being rude and noisy, the way kids are these days.

Göle seemed to have the most nuanced and subtle but also the most generous perspective of anyone I’d met. “It’s not a question of ‘national unity,’” she told me, “but of many communities coming together. In practice, republicanism is negation and multiculturalism is avoidance. The European public treats Islam through the lens of secularization and freedom of expression, but this excludes ordinary Muslims, who want to be integrated and yet are different. Why, after all, do people want to build mosques in France? It’s because their life is here.”

Republicanism vs. Multiculturalism in France | The Nation.

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