‘Mansplaining’ the return of political correctness: Neil Macdonald

2015/03/19 Leave a comment

Neil Macdonald on the current trends in politically correct discourse (there is a line being sensitive in one’s use of language and being over-sensitive as some of his examples indicate):

Employers or school officials, faced with tens of thousands of sneering tweets, can be forgiven for thinking the quickest way out is to sacrifice the sinner, even if the sinner hasn’t really sinned.

Students who follow this crypto-salafist orthodoxy despise the concept of free, protected speech (except, obviously, their own).

On campuses, many still tend to follow the thinking of the feminist scholar and activist Catharine MacKinnon, who argues that free speech is just a weapon in the patriarchal arsenal.

In reality, this view is not very new at all. Back in the early 1990s, the head of student government at Stanford University declared “We don’t put as many restrictions on free speech as we should.”

Of course, there are others who think that way, too.

The Bush-era neoconservatives who clamped down on speech and stepped up surveillance in the name of security after 9/11 are one example.

The Canadian government, with the broad provisions in its Bill C-51 allowing it to order the removal of what it calls “terrorist propaganda” from the internet, is another. (Define terrorism? Canada’s justice minister says the public should just “look it up.”)

As the social critic and author Robert Hughes put it in his brilliant 1993 book The Culture of Complaint, “paleo-conservatives and free-speech therapists are both on the same wagon, the only difference being what they want to ban.”

But re-reading Hughes’s book I am confident of one thing: in another generation or two, language that now seems so inclusive and tolerant, words designed to create a “safe place” for discourse, will undoubtedly seem jarring, if not insulting. Language police will be insisting on new argot.

My grandchildren will no doubt someday stare agape at their parents for using the term “people of colour,” and inform them that any reference to colour is divisive and ugly.

Or that “transgender” implies that there was ever any validity to “gender” in the first place.

The urge to control other people’s speech is atavistic. It will never lessen, and my guess is the technology to enforce it will only grow more sophisticated.

‘Mansplaining’ the return of political correctness – World – CBC News.

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Microsoft’s new B.C. workforce may consist mostly of foreigners: draft plan

2015/03/19 Leave a comment

Interesting reading:

The freedom of information documents, given to CBC News by a third party who works in the industry, reveal Microsoft Canada initially promised that only only 20 of those 400 new jobs — or five per cent — would go to Canadians. The documents also suggest that, through a variety of programs including the controversial Temporary Foreign Worker program (TFWP), the majority of the new workers would come from abroad.

The plans date from 2013 and 2014, and include letters and briefing notes from Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) and British Columbia’s Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training. They show:

150 positions would be open to both Canadians and foreigners as “rotational employees” who would be brought in under the TFWP program with “no guaranteed number of Canadians.”

200 “core employees” would be brought in at the “executive [level], management or those with specialized knowledge,” but the company only committed that 10 per cent of those 200 core employees would be Canadian. The document states the number of Canadians “is likely to grow over time.”

50 positions would go to “foundry employees” — paid student interns from Canadian universities. But the document stipulates that some of those students could be international students, and do not have to be Canadians.

The documents also show that, in the planning stages, most of the 200 “core” employees at the Microsoft Centre of Excellence were expected to be foreign workers from three categories: intra-company transfers (people who have worked at least one year for Microsoft abroad); those brought in under the TFWP; and contract workers hired abroad who qualify to work in Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

…In December, CIC told CBC News “most” of the 400 jobs would be held by Canadians.

However, in a written statement yesterday, Microsoft Canada made no such promise. Instead, the company said a majority of its current workforce in Vancouver is Canadian, but that may not last for long.

“[As] we hire staff for our new excellence centre, we will be recruiting talent from around the world (in addition to Canada), which may result in that balance shifting,” officials with the company wrote.

Despite requests from CBC News, neither Microsoft Canada nor B.C.’s jobs ministry provided any updated ratios of foreign to Canadian workers.

In an email, a spokesman for B.C. Jobs Minister Shirley Bond said the training centre will provide a “net benefit” by bringing in “at least $90 million annually for up to 10 years.”

Bond’s spokesman said no Canadians would be displaced from their jobs by the creation of the centre — although he would not say what proportion of the new positions would go to Canadians, calling that “proprietary information” belonging to Microsoft.

Seems like CIC may have exaggerated the initial job figures (doesn’t necessary mean that longer-term impact greater).

Microsoft’s new B.C. workforce may consist mostly of foreigners: draft plan – Politics – CBC News.

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Larry Miller and the case against the niqab – Wherry

2015/03/19 Leave a comment

Aaron Wherry’s two questions:

First, if the government wishes to see the niqab banned, why doesn’t it change the regulations to reflect that? I asked the office of Minister Chris Alexander that question and a spokesman responded, “We are not going to speculate on hypotheticals and we are going to make our arguments in court.” (In an op-ed published today, law professor Richard Moon suggests the government amend the regulations, though Moon notes that would trigger a Charter challenge, which the government would lose.)

Second, and more crucial, it seems to me, if the government adamantly believes the niqab should be banned during the oath, why did the government apparently tell the court that the directive was not mandatory, but optional? Here, again, are the first three sentences of paragraph 30 of Justice Boswell’s ruling:

The Respondent argues that this application is premature. In its view, the Policy is not mandatory and citizenship judges are free not to apply it. As such, there is no way to know what would have happened had the Applicant attended the ceremony and refused to uncover her face.

So it would seem that while the government is publicly declaring that wearing the niqab during the oath is unequivocally not something that should be allowed, it has otherwise defended the policy as quite open to equivocation. Beyond the legal arguments here, that seems to my untrained eye like a serious complication for the government’s political argument.

Whatever Larry Miller’s views of where the hell one should situate oneself, the government’s basic argument would seem to amount to this: that a citizenship ceremony is of a particular nature that the government should be able to impose a standard of dress for it, regardless of an individual’s claim to religious freedom, so far as the niqab is concerned. In light of all else—and, I might add, the Supreme Court’s ruling on when a niqab should be removed during a trial—it remains a weak and uninspiring argument. It is a principle without a practical basis that would have the government dismiss a fundamental right. It is to presume that the state can, without substantial cause, dictate attire and place a limit on one’s religious freedom.

Larry Miller and the case against the niqab – Macleans.ca.

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Immigration: la proposition caquiste est insensée, selon Couillard

2015/03/19 Leave a comment

Premier Couillard responds to the latest proposals of the CAQ (Immigration: la CAQ veut resserrer les exigences):

Le premier ministre s’est insurgé mardi contre la volonté de la CAQ de montrer la sortie aux immigrants qui n’arrivent pas, à terme, à s’intégrer à la majorité francophone, au marché de l’emploi et aux «valeurs québécoises».

À son avis, la proposition de la CAQ ne tient pas la route et ferait fuir «les travailleurs qualifiés» désireux de s’implanter au Québec si elle devait être appliquée.

En vertu de la proposition caquiste, les immigrants seraient soumis à un certificat d’accompagnement transitoire qui leur accorderait trois ans – maximum quatre – pour faire leur devoir.

À défaut de satisfaire aux trois exigences édictées – connaissance du français, emploi, adhésion aux valeurs de la charte des droits et libertés – les nouveaux venus se verraient privés du certificat de sélection du Québec, un document requis pour obtenir le statut de résident permanent et de citoyen canadien.

En Chambre, le chef caquiste François Legault a rappelé que 42 pour cent des 50 000 immigrants que reçoit le Québec chaque année ne connaissent pas le français et que 78 pour cent d’entre eux ne suivent pas les cours d’intégration aux valeurs communes. Endémique, le taux de chômage atteint 17 pour cent chez les immigrés installés au Québec depuis moins de cinq ans.

Le chef du gouvernement libéral a dit convenir que l’emploi «est la source la plus rapide d’intégration à la société» et que l’accès au marché du travail permet «de développer la connaissance pratique du français».

Mais à ses yeux, le projet caquiste se démarque par son «simplisme» et est carrément «insensé».

«Qu’est-ce que c’est que cette histoire? On va faire passer des examens à des immigrants trois ans après leur arrivée et s’ils ne passent pas, bien, ils s’en retournent chez eux. Bravo!», a ironisé le premier ministre pendant la période de questions.

Selon lui, les resserrements préconisés par la formation de François Legault auraient un effet repoussoir sur les travailleurs qualifiés dont le Québec a besoin.

Immigration: la proposition caquiste est insensée, selon Couillard | Martin Ouellet | Politique québécoise.

Globe editorial mocking the CAQ proposal:

This “new pact” with immigrants would be accompanied by a Law on Interculturalism, whatever that means. Half a dozen years ago, the philosopher Charles Taylor said that interculturalism and multiculturalism are really the same thing; the prevailing Quebec ideology, however, insists that there is some distinction.

Mr. Legault is invoking the fear of “radicalization” and “preachers who would denigrate fundamental values.” Similarly last month, while foolishly raising alarm over a project for a mosque in Shawinigan, he called for the creation of a new agency that would scrutinize proposed new religious institutions. The goal is to block any Muslim applicants who “denigrate Quebec values.”

All this, curiously, is accompanied by a worry, among Mr. Legault and others, that immigrants who settle in Quebec have a low rate of actually staying: Only three-quarters of those who came between 2003 and 2012 are still there. Why not welcome them more warmly, rather than spread panic about their religious practices?

 François Legault puts out the unwelcome mat 

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Banning the niqab harms an open society. So does wearing it: Omer Aziz

2015/03/18 Leave a comment

Omer Azis on the niqab debate:

Assuming it is genuine modesty and not an ostentatious display of conservative religiosity that motivates a woman to wear a black veil sequestering her from the rest of society, a cultural practice that demands of one sex to cover up is inherently misogynistic. If anyone should be required to cover their faces, it is the men who torture and kill their daughters and sisters for marrying of their own free will. Let us not mince words here: Women are certainly ‘free’ to wear the niqab, in the same sense as they are ‘free’ to enter the mosque from the side and ‘free’ to stand behind the men while praying. This is a blinkered idea of freedom, but liberalism requires tolerating and legally protecting illiberal attitudes.

The main problem with the niqab, though, is that it diminishes liberal democracy. What separates liberal societies from dictatorships is that the former are open, allow for face-to-face consultation, encourage dissent, and recognize individuals as equals. Liberal societies must allow one citizen to see another citizen’s face when in conversation or contact. When only one party’s face is visible, the informalities of open conversation disappear, body language is eliminated, the natural empathy we humans feel when looking at our fellow human’s face is extinguished. A veil over the face of one citizen permanently alters the terms of the discussion, which is why niqabs have no place in classrooms and other institutions where free discourse is designed to flourish. Imagine a society where all women covered their faces, as some of the more totalitarian Islamists would impose. Call this society what you like, but it would be the farthest thing from liberal democracy.

The enemy of the open society, the late Czech playwright-president Vaclav Havel once wrote, ‘is a person with a fiercely serious countenance and burning eyes.’ Both the politician who seeks to ban what a woman may wear, and the patriarch who seeks to dictate what a woman must wear, are not friends of the open society.

Neither, however, is the niqab.

One of the most articulate commentary yet.

Banning the niqab harms an open society. So does wearing it – The Globe and Mail.

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Immigration: la CAQ veut resserrer les exigences

2015/03/18 1 Comment

The CAQ continues its focus on identity politics in the current consultations on immigration, with probationary residency and a test on Quebec values:

«Il faut être prudents, c’est un sujet qui est complexe, c’est délicat, il ne faut pas faire des amalgames, il faut être respectueux, a-t-il dit. Mais il faut aussi être francs, et je pense que la société québécoise sortirait gagnante qu’on se donne des balises très claires quant à la sélection et l’intégration des immigrants.»

M. Legault a expliqué que ses propositions, dont il espère que les libéraux s’inspireront, visent notamment à répondre aux préoccupations soulevées par les attentats de djihadistes à Paris.

«Il y a actuellement une inquiétude fondée au Québec, a-t-il dit. Veut-on avoir des futurs immigrants qui pourraient devenir des prédicateurs, qui viendraient dénigrer des valeurs fondamentales comme l’égalité entre les hommes puis les femmes? Je pense que les Québécois ne souhaitent pas ça, donc je pense que c’est important.»

Cette nouvelle procédure serait disponible pour les travailleurs qualifiés, qui comptaient pour 58 pour cent des 52 000 immigrants accueillis au Québec en 2013.

M. Legault croit qu’il est souhaitable d’autoriser plus rapidement les immigrants à venir s’établir au Québec quand leurs qualifications correspondent aux besoins du marché du travail québécois.

En contrepartie, la CAQ rehausserait les exigences de connaissance du français en plus d’imposer la réussite d’un cours portant sur les valeurs québécoises véhiculées notamment par la Charte québécoise des droits et libertés.

Trois ans après leur arrivée, les travailleurs qualifiés devraient ainsi répondre à ces exigences de manière satisfaisante en plus de prouver leurs efforts d’intégration du marché du travail, a expliqué le chef caquiste en conférence de presse.

«De la même façon qu’un touriste qui vient ici, au Québec, à un moment donné, ne peut pas rester de façon permanente, de la même façon qu’une personne qui reçoit un permis de travail temporaire ne peut pas rester ici de façon permanente, effectivement, si, dans ce qui est proposé, l’immigrant ne reçoit pas son certificat permanent, bien, oui, il devra retourner, a-t-il dit lors d’une conférence de presse. Puis le gouvernement fédéral devra s’assurer que cette personne retourne chez elle.»

Immigration: la CAQ veut resserrer les exigences | Alexandre Robillard | Politique québécoise.

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National Muslim group warns C-51 posturing ‘giving fodder to extremists’

2015/03/18 Leave a comment

Valid points:

“I quite honestly wanted to tell Ms. Ablonczy, ‘please, stop helping the terrorists win’,” NCCM Executive Director Ihsaan Gardee told iPolitics of their tense exchange.

In the exchange Thursday night, Ablonczy said she wanted to “put on the record” what she said was as “a continuing series of allegations” that the NCCM is linked to groups that have expressed support for “Islamic terrorist groups,” including Hamas. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s former spokesman, Jason MacDonald, is already being sued by the NCCM for similar comments.

At the time, Gardee bristled at the comments, calling them “McCarthy-esque.”

Gardee later elaborated, warning that, “Violent extremists will now use this kind of thing to say to the young and to the vulnerable and uninformed that ‘See? Even if you are trying to be a part of Canadian society, your country will never accept you’ and that despite what they say, they are in fact at war with Islam and Muslims.”

“It’s seems to be open season,” he said.

National Muslim group warns C-51 posturing ‘giving fodder to extremists’

And in related news, it seems to be open season for inappropriate language by Conservative MPs (see earlier John Williamson apologizes for ‘offensive’ comment on temporary workers program):

“If you aren’t willing to show your face in a ceremony where you’re joining the best country in the world, then frankly … stay the hell where you came from,” he said.

“I think most Canadians feel the same. I may be saying it a little harshly, but it’s the way I feel. I’m so sick and tired of people wanting to come here because they know it’s a good country and then they want to change things before they even officially become a Canadian.”

In a statement released Tuesday, Mr. Miller said some of his comments were “inappropriate.”

“I stand by my view that anyone being sworn in as a new citizen of our country must uncover their face. However, I apologize for and retract my comments that went beyond this.”

Carl Vallée, a spokesman for the Prime Minister’s Office, said Mr. Miller’s comments went “beyond our clear position.”

Mr. Miller’s comments went further than Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who said last week that the niqab, a face-covering veil worn by a small minority of Muslim women in Canada, was “rooted in a culture that is anti-women.”

Ihsaan Gardee, executive director of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, said recent comments from the Conservative government were “seemingly designed to keep the electorate focused on identity politics in order to distract them from broader issues in an election year.”

“Even with an apology, the damage has been done, and continues to be done, by elected officials who seem intent on debating an issue that has already been fully addressed in our courts and which does little to address the real concerns Canadians have about their day-to-day lives,” Mr. Gardee said in a statement. “It further creates a climate in which Muslim women may be subjected to anti-Muslim sentiment and discrimination.”

Again, quick apology but damage done.

Remarks on women wearing niqabs were ‘inappropriate,’ Tory MP says – The Globe and Mail.

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Family, friends of radicalized persons wary of reporting: experts

2015/03/18 Leave a comment

Some of the challenges in encouraging families and friends to play a greater part in de-radicalization:

Part of the problem is that friends and family members of individuals who are radicalized believe their only resort is to report their loved one to the police, which might then lead to criminal charges, according to Dr. Lorne Dawson, a terrorist radicalization expert and professor of sociology at the University of Waterloo.

“They (family members) have conflicting loyalties. They don’t know where to report the individual except for the police and they don’t want to be responsible for their loved one being arrested.”

As well, he says, family members may not take the threat seriously. “Maybe the person has a reputation for being over-the-top, or exaggerating things, or being rather extreme in their judgment and views on things.”

Calling the authorities is not ideal for a family that believes it may simply have an emotionally strung-out individual on their hands, he says.

Staff Sgt. David Zackrias heads the Diversity and Race Relations Section of the Ottawa Police Service, which aims to provide outreach and build bridges between police and diverse ethnic communities in Ottawa. He’s also the vice co-chair on the policing side of the Community and Police Action Committee (COMPAC), a community-police advisory body in Ottawa that meets once a month.

He urges family and community members to report an individual who is seemingly in the early stages of radicalization so the person can get help before a violent threshold is crossed.

“If public safety is in jeopardy, we need to make sure the right people are notified,” he says. “But if this is something that we could work with in terms of engagement and there’s an issue with a certain person who is in the infancy stage of being radicalized, then we engage the community and address those issues and share what resources are out there in the community.”

Such community resources may include a psychiatrist or social worker with the skills to help the person address the issue.

Most of Zackrias’ work within the Muslim community involves taking part in panel discussions with imams and Muslim community leaders, in which their concerns and grievances are brought forward.

“When the community comes and informs us about certain things in terms of they’re concerned that certain people are coming to town and giving hate speech, we provide them with the information to make an informed decision,” he says.

Last year, Public Safety initiated a strategy for countering violent extremism with a major focus on engaging and interacting with communities and individuals in order to research the root causes of terrorism and how to combat them, according to the department’s website.

Bessma Momani, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, a non-partisan international governance think-tank based in Waterloo, Ont., says one of the biggest challenges facing a CVE strategy is building trust between communities and law enforcement.

“The RCMP and different municipal police forces have worked with vulnerable communities and leaders,” she said. “They’ve reached out and some of these programs are really fantastic.”

As well, she says that having an open dialogue among family members about the risks of extremism is vital, because young people are adept at hiding their lives on the Internet from others, and many people may not believe that radicalization could happen in their own homes.

“Having parents and families involved is a really important tool for not only deradicalization but also in preventing wannabe foreign fighters. Like any social problem, dialogue, bringing it to the fore, and having a conversation can be helpful,” she said.

According to a Dec. 2013 study in the Journal of Forensic Science of 119 lone-actors who engaged in or planned to commit acts of terrorism in the United States and Europe, in about 64 per cent of cases friends and family members knew of the individual’s intent to commit terrorism-related acts because the individual had verbally told them.

In more than 65 per cent of the cases, the individual expressed intent to hurt or harm others while in almost 80 per cent of the cases, others knew of the individual’s commitment to an extremist ideology. These findings suggest “friends and family can play important roles in efforts that seek to prevent terrorist plots.”

Of course, recent federal government messaging makes it harder for this kind of outreach and engagement.

Family, friends of radicalized persons wary of reporting: experts | Ottawa Citizen.

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How can we help Jews stay in Europe despite anti-Semitism: Jeffrey Goldberg’s Atlantic article doesn’t answer that question.

2015/03/18 Leave a comment

Interesting take by William Salatan on antisemitism in Europe:

I don’t mean to suggest that Muslims don’t understand anti-Semitism. They do. But the anti-Semitism they’re familiar with is the anti-Semitism of resentment, not the anti-Semitism of genocidal success. Goldberg describes a French Jew whose parents fled Tunisia in 1967, “driven out by anti-Jewish rioters who were putatively distressed by Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War.” The key word in that sentence is victory. If Israel had lost—if the Jews of Palestine had been annihilated—Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa might understand anti-Semitism the way Europeans do. Anti-Semitism isn’t about a chant or a salute. It’s about piles of corpses.

Nor do I mean to exonerate the majority of Europeans who are neither Muslim nor Jewish. They’ve played their part in the intimidation of Jews by not playing their part in stopping it. Goldberg credits leaders of Germany, France, and Britain for denouncing anti-Semitism. But he points out that “the general publics of these countries do not seem nearly as engaged in the issue as their leaders. The Berlin rally last fall against anti-Semitism that featured Angela Merkel drew a paltry 5,000 people, most of whom were Jews.” And the silence of the majority leaves Jews feeling isolated. “Everyone is saying ‘Je suis Charlie’ today,” a Jewish student in Paris tells Goldberg, alluding to outrage over the murder of cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo. “But this has been happening to the Jews for years and no one cares.” Another student, using the French term for “Jewish,” suggests: “It would be nice if someone would say ‘Je suis Juif.’ ”

Why don’t non-Muslim Europeans care more about the new anti-Semitism? One reason is that they aren’t Jews. But another reason is that they aren’t Muslims. They’re neither the victims nor the perpetrators. They feel neither the threat nor the responsibility.

…If I were a Jew in Europe, I don’t think I’d leave. Growing up in Texas, I had many encounters—slurs, threats, occasional minor violence—similar to those described by Goldberg as anti-Semitic. They were anti-Semitic. I just had to deal with them. One thing that helped me get through it was the belief that my tormentors represented an ignorant, dying past. The best way to help today’s European Jews is to give them the same confidence, by working on the ignorance at the heart of Muslim anti-Semitism. To do that, you have to focus on the ignorance, not the Islam.

How can we help Jews stay in Europe despite anti-Semitism: Jeffrey Goldberg’s Atlantic article doesn’t answer that question..

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CSIS highlights white supremacist threat ahead of radical Islam

2015/03/17 Leave a comment

A reminder that the threats are broader than government messaging and labelling would suggest:

“Lone wolf” attacks more often come from white supremacists and extreme right-wing ideologies than from Islamic radicalism, internal CSIS documents say.

Citing recent academic research, the unclassified documents note extreme right-wing and white supremacist ideology has been the “main ideological source” for 17 per cent of so-called lone wolf attacks worldwide.

Islamic extremism accounted for 15 per cent of such attacks, the document noted, while left-wing extremism and “black power” groups followed with 13 per cent. Anti-abortion activism (8 per cent) and nationalism/separatism (7 per cent) rounded out the list, while in 40 per cent of cases there was no clear ideological motivation.

“Lone actors tend to create their own ideologies that combine personal frustrations and grievances, with wider political, social, or religious issues,” note the documents prepared for Michael Peirce, assistant director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

“This study confirms that lone actor terrorism runs the gamut of ideological persuasions.”

CSIS highlights white supremacist threat ahead of radical Islam | Toronto Star.

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