Careful community outreach most promising means to counter extremism: government report

2015/04/10 Leave a comment

Interesting reading and good that behind the huff-and-puff of government politicking, there is some serious work:

Of all the approaches being explored by the federal government to prevent radicalization, the one showing the most promise is community outreach and engaging young people in candid conversations about violent extremism, newly released documents suggest.

However, the briefing documents, obtained by the National Post through access-to-information legislation, also point to the need for public safety officials to be careful to choose trusted community leaders as partners in prevention.

“Reaching out to the wrong people — self-styled leaders and spokesmen who have no real credibility — can exacerbate the very tensions that (prevention) strategies are trying to alleviate,” one of the documents states.

Over the past year, public safety officials have visited cities in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta, to talk to young people, aged 17 to 30. Participants at the town hall meetings are shown ripped-from-the-headlines narratives depicting radicalized Muslims or converts, right-wing extremists, Sikh extremists or “eco-terrorists,” then they are asked to discuss what could have been done to intervene.

Presented in the first person and in the present tense for maximum effect, the case studies have generated an enthusiastic response from the 500 youth who have taken part.

“Often, audience members expressed knowing someone ‘just like’ the characters from the narratives,” according to the briefing notes prepared by Public Safety Canada last fall.

Most participants said they walked away from the sessions “better able to recognize the signs someone is going down the wrong path.”

But whatever form community outreach takes, it must not be bogged down by complicated legal jargon, the Canadian documents emphasize.

“Material that appears to have been prepared by middle-aged bureaucrats will almost certainly fail to engage.”

The briefing notes indicated other narratives about Buddhist and Israeli extremists were being developed, but a government source said Wednesday those ideas were dropped because they were not deemed to be as relevant.

Careful community outreach most promising means to counter extremism: government report

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CRRF Launches Directions: Call for Submissions

2015/04/10 Leave a comment

For those interested in contributing, CRRF’s new publication, Directions, opens its call for papers for the Winter 2015 Issue:

Published in print and online December 2015, The Power of Words speaks to the importance of reviewing and evolving science terminology in response to changing demographics and settlement trends. The concept of hyphenated Canadians, terms such as ‘visible minorities’ and ‘newcomers,’ and even the idea of ‘race relations’ require ongoing reassessment, and are being challenged and re-examined in the context of our changing society.

Directions provides a space for established and emerging scholars, community organizations and race relations practitioners to publish their research. It also offers a forum for important dialogue and debate on race-related issues and best practices, and practical recommendations for policy development and change. Directions is curated to promote social cohesion amongst all individuals and groups living in a harmonious Canada.

Research Questions

How do language and lexicon in policy, in the media, and in daily interactions influence our experiences, identities, attitudes, and relationships? How can discourse create and perpetuate unbalanced power relations, marginalizing certain groups and individuals? How can we use language to promote positive race relations in a harmonious Canada?

These dynamic questions represent the types of issues that CRRF intends to explore in the upcoming issue of Directions in Winter 2015.

Yours truly is one of the members of the Editorial Advisory Board so I, along with the others, have a vested interest in encouraging thoughtful and provocative submissions.

Directions Journal.

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Federal report warns ‘marriages of convenience’ a threat to immigration system

2015/04/09 Leave a comment

More anecdotal than hard evidence, but anecdotes generally signal issues:

More than a third of the applications to bring new spouses to Canada from India may involve bogus marriages, according to internal government documents made public on Tuesday.

“Marriages of convenience” in India “have become a threat to the integrity of Canada’s immigration program,” states the 2013 report from the Canada Border Services Agency’s enforcement and intelligence operations directorate.

Applications involving Indian nationals engaged in phoney marriages “are constantly evolving and creatively testing the bounds of the Canadian immigration system.”

The report, which cited statistics up to 2012, said it is “presumed” that there is a link between organized crime and the arrangement of phoney marriages.

The broader problem of marriage fraud primarily involves applicants from 10 to 15 countries. The report identifies China, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, Guyana and Haiti as the “high risk” countries involving Canadian permanent residents sponsoring bogus spouses under the immigration system’s family-class section, according to Border Services.

But the report said the problem appears to be “most prevalent” in India and it makes an unsubstantiated assertion that “it has been estimated that as much as 36 per cent of the spousal caseload” involving that country “may be fraudulent.”

The report offers suggestions to Border Services and Citizenship and Immigration Canada officials to detect fraud, but that advice was not released under provisions of the Access to Information Act protecting sensitive information.

Nationally, the document shows that the refusal rate on spousal applications from all countries had been around 14 per cent from 2008 to 2011, but jumped to 17 per cent in 2012 when there were a little over 4,500 applications.

…The report, obtained by Vancouver-based immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, properly points out a legitimate concern about marriage fraud, according to Manpreet Grewal, director of multicultural and immigrant integration services at Abbotsford Community Services.

But she said that trend is likely to drop over the long-term due to growing government vigilance, combined with the government’s increased preference for economic immigrants rather than the family-class applicants who can sponsor relatives.

There is also less interest among second-generation Indo-Canadians to be involved in arranged marriages involving Indian nationals, she said.

Border Services, she said, is making a “far-fetched” link between marriage fraud trends and the decline in the relative number of marriage-age Indian women due to sex-selection abortion practices.

“I have never seen the two things connected. It seems to be a bit of a stretch,” she said.

Federal report warns ‘marriages of convenience’ a threat to immigration system.

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Is the Divisive Bill on Vietnamese Refugees All About the Election?

2015/04/09 1 Comment

“Shopping for votes” and micro-targeting among Vietnamese Canadians, along with a mix of ideology:

Some observers say the bill is a textbook case of targeted political pandering for ethnic votes ahead of what is shaping up to be a close-fought federal election.

Alberta-based political strategist Stephen Carter says, “This is being done in essence to gather support from those people in the first generational subset. It absolutely is being done for votes, there is no other way around it.”

Veteran poll analyst Paul Barber says that, among multiple strategies that parties use to woo ethnic votes is the use of “overarching symbolic things that are connected to their homelands.”

Senator Ngo’s office refuted the accusation that the Senator’s intent with this bill was to play into ethnic politics, and said that he only wanted to have a day to commemorate the Vietnamese boat people’s saga and pay tribute to Canadians who assisted them.

But a former Liberal strategist told iPolitics that this scenario is typical of the Conservatives, who he says have a history of targeting subgroups within larger ethnic communities. “I think of Hong Kong Chinese versus mainland Chinese, I think of Sri Lankans, or people of Indian descent; Conservatives are good at targeting subgroups within immigrant communities.” he says.

Phil Triadafilopoulos, a professor of Political science at the University of Toronto who has researched the Conservative Party of Canada’s “ethnic outreach” strategies, also says that Canada’s electoral system facilitates these types of approaches. “With our electoral system, you don’t need everybody, you just need enough to win. Some of our communities have upward to 40, 50, 60% people who are on board. Never mind second generation.” he says.

As to those who wonder how the Conservative government is threading the thin line between courting communist Vietnam as a trade partner and commemorating those who fled its brutal communist regime, Carter says “You do it very carefully.”

Is the Divisive Bill on Vietnamese Refugees All About the Election? – New Canadian Media – NCM.

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Reza Aslan explains why it’s fine to blame ISIS on Islam — and why Islamophobes still have it wrong

2015/04/09 Leave a comment

Reasonable words and reminders:

“But that’s not very helpful,” he added, “and it’s also not true. A Muslim is whoever says he’s a Muslim. A Christian is whoever says he’s a Christian. A Jew is anyone who says he’s a Jew. If you are saying that this is your identity, and you are acting according to your identity, then we should probably take your word for it. Because it’s not helpful to say ‘no, that has nothing to do with religion,’ because like it or not, these actions are being done in the name of a specific religion.”

“How do we confront that?” Aslan asked. “The knee-jerk response is just to blame religion. If ISIS is killing in the name of Islam, then it’s Islam’s fault. But that’s just a very simple and unsophisticated way of thinking.”

“Listen,” he continued. “I am totally fine with you blaming Islam for ISIS. If you want to place the responsibility for ISIS on Islam, that’s fine with me — as long as you also credit Islam for the people who are fighting ISIS. For while it is true that ISIS are Muslims, it’s also true that so are the tens of thousands who are battling them, and the tens of thousands of victims of ISIS. They’re all Muslim too.”

“So if ISIS is Muslim, and the people they are killing are Muslim, and the people who are fighting ISIS are Muslim — what does that say about Islam?”

“Not much, actually,” he said, answering his own question. “Nothing much, nothing you can make some grand generalization about. If you want to blame religion for all of the bad things that religion does, fine. As long as you are willing to credit religion for all the good things religion does.”

“Of course, that’s usually not the case.”

Reza Aslan explains why it’s fine to blame ISIS on Islam — and why Islamophobes still have it wrong.

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Pianist says TSO donor threatened to cut funds if she performed

2015/04/09 Leave a comment

Diaspora politics at play?

Valentina Lisitsa, whose appearances were cancelled this week by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra because of tweets she posted about the Ukrainian crisis, says the TSO told her agent a donor threatened to withhold funds if she performed as scheduled.

In an interview in Toronto on Tuesday, the Ukrainian pianist also said orchestra CEO Jeff Melanson repeatedly refused to discuss the matter directly with her, and that orchestra management was swayed by “malicious translations” of some of her tweets in Ukrainian.

Ms. Lisitsa swept into a downtown hotel late in the afternoon saying she was determined to play in recital somewhere in Toronto on the nights she was to have played Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. “Maybe I’ll play it without them, just the solo part,” she said. “I’ve done it before.”

Ms. Lisitsa’s account of her dismissal conflicts at several points with the account given on Tuesday by Mr. Melanson. But they agreed that she would not retract the offending tweets.

Mr. Melanson said in a phone interview there was “absolutely no donor pressure.” Ms. Lisitsa showed The Globe and Mail an e-mail from her agent, Tanya Dorn at IMG Artists, dated Feb. 27, in which Ms. Dorn said she had spoken with Loie Fallis, TSO vice-president of artistic planning, who told her (in Ms. Dorn’s words) a “Ukrainian donor wants to pull his sponsorship.”

Mr. Melanson said the TSO received complaints from “a wide swath of Torontonians, I would say in the hundreds” about Ms. Lisitsa’s engagement because of her social media posts. He pointed to four tweets, one of which was translated as: “Dear conscious Ukrainians: I will never get tired of reminding you that you are dog feces. Thank you kindly for your attention.” Another shows the behinds of three hogs, with a text translated as: “Here are the faces of the leaders.”

Ms. Lisitsa said the translations were wrong, that “leaders” should have been “bureaucrats,” and that the first comment, translated without the quotation marks of the original, was an ironic quote from a literary work. Other tweets have been taken out of context or misinterpreted, she said.

…On March 13, Ms. Lisitsa said, the TSO forwarded to Ms. Dorn an e-mail from Toronto lawyer Michael C. Smith that cited section 319 of the Criminal Code concerning “wilful promotion of hatred,” and said “there is a possibility that Ms. Lisitsa could be stopped at the border … and deemed ‘unacceptable’ to Canada.” An attached note from Mr. Melanson, who is not a lawyer, went further, stating that Ms Lisitsa’s social media posts “would likely breach or come close to breaching the Criminal Code of Canada.” Ms. Lisitsa replied with her lawyer’s opinion rejecting that of Mr. Smith.

“The TSO said they were concerned,” she said, “and I offered to talk, but they never would. Jeff would never talk to me in person. They would say, ‘Jeff is going to talk to the Ukrainian community and he’ll get back to you.’ And I said, ‘Why won’t he talk to me?’ There was always a wall.”

Mr. Melanson gave a somewhat different account. “I think there was one offer to speak with us,” he said, but added that Ms. Lisitsa eventually insisted all communications go through lawyers. On Sunday, Ms. Lisitsa sent Ms. Fallis an e-mail, which she shared with The Globe, in which she said: “I am more than happy, if you wish, to meet tomorrow and talk how to best handle things that will arise from my appearance with TSO… I am not coming to give political speeches.”

That day, Ms. Lisitsa said, the orchestra told her manager her appearances were cancelled, and proposed a “very neutral” public statement that she was unable to perform. Ms. Lisitsa said that had she acquiesced, those in the local Ukrainian community who objected to her engagement would claim victory, “and wave it like a flag. I thought, it’s going to come out anyway, and not on my terms.”

Pianist says TSO donor threatened to cut funds if she performed – The Globe and Mail.

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Conference Board Summit Encourages National Dialogue on Immigration

2015/04/09 Leave a comment

CBoC Immigration SummitWill be interesting what new approaches this summit comes up with, as well as next year’s on the more social focus of next year’s summit:

NCM: The summit is heavily focused on business and economic growth. What about the more social aspects of immigration integration?

Bloom: In total, a set of events will cover the whole range of issues in immigration. As an organization we have a lot of experience in working on economic issues in particular. But I expect to see more on social issues at the second summit next year. This year, we want to flesh out our understanding of such issues and bring that to the next event. The action plan will definitely be covering social issues as we do more research.

We recognize that security is important for Canada and Canadians, but we need to do more research on how to frame this in the context of immigration.

NCM: How do you see current events like the Syrian refugee crisis and emerging security concerns as shaping Canada’s immigration policy?

Bloom: We still have some work to do on this. We have substantial experience on working on security issues at the Conference Board. We recognize that security is important for Canada and Canadians, but we need to do more research on how to frame this in the context of immigration. We have not yet done enough work at the intersection point of these issues.

We know the security issue is not going away, but we need to understand this more clearly and do more research before we can address it. Once we have done our due diligence on this, we can expect to address this next year as well with all the right questions. The multi-year approach of the action plan will help us with this as we develop our research plan further over the coming years.

NCM: What will be your next steps after this summit?

Bloom: We hope to take what we learn from the summit and use it to enrich our research plan. We will be starting a major project to update a study we did in 2001 on brain gain. We will do a big piece on the credential issue starting June 1. This summit is also bringing together over 100 people and we hope that we can engage them in our actual centre.

We hope to be doing more regional meetings; in the year ahead we will convene out East, in Toronto, Quebec and out West. We will also be starting to plan for next year’s summit and ramp up our communication efforts. Speaking to the media is an important part of getting the message out for us and we will be doing more webinars and online outreach to try and engage and inform a broader audience.

Summit Encourages National Dialogue on Immigration – New Canadian Media – NCM.

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Three ways Liberals and NDP can win over conservative voters: Michael Adams on citizenship

2015/04/08 Leave a comment

Michael Adams on citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism in the context of the coming election:

Civic education and pride in citizenship were once rather conservative ideals. They were connected to the patriotism and loyalty to country that right-leaning people have often claimed as special virtues. Recently, however, Canada’s immigration program has taken on a more transactional character. It has become more strongly associated with short-term labour trends than with long-term nation-building. And indeed, a recent analysis has indicated that the rate at which immigrants become citizens has declined.

Despite some concerns about cultural integration (a process that citizenship and belonging only help), Canadians remain positive about immigration and take pride in multiculturalism. Shifting the immigration frame away from this quarter’s want ads and toward meaningful citizenship, civic participation, and inclusive nation-building might just appeal to some Canadian patriots who believe countries and their citizens do best when their responsibilities toward each other are durable and deeply felt.

Three ways Liberals and NDP can win over conservative voters – The Globe and Mail.

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Ralph Heintzman: Creeping politicization in the public service

2015/04/08 1 Comment

Heintzman on the Finance Department’s crossing the line and calling for stronger action by the Clerk:

But we don’t need to wait for action until the next Parliament. The arrival of a new clerk gives her an opportunity to provide the kind of leadership for which the rest of the public service yearns.

It’s time to stand up for a professional, non-partisan public service, as described in all the official laws, regulations and policies of the government of Canada. But too often betrayed in practice.

It’s not enough to reaffirm, verbally, “the principles of a non-partisan professional public service,” as the clerk did in a recent interview (Canadian Government Executive, 2 February 2015). Words like these are only hot air if they’re contradicted by public service behaviour. The walk has to match the talk.

If the clerk wants her words to be taken seriously, she should start by doing something about the unaddressed and still uncorrected case of the department of finance. And she should tell us what’s being done to prevent public servants from crossing the line, from non-partisan to partisan communications, in future.

Ralph Heintzman: Creeping politicization in the public service | Ottawa Citizen.

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CRA audits of charities look fair but feel foul – Don McRae

2015/04/08 1 Comment

Looking and finding patterns in the selection of charities for CRA audit:

The Charities Program Update states that one of the factors in building the audit plan was that groups from all four charitable categories were audited. (The categories are relief of poverty, advancement of education, advancement of religion, and other purposes of benefit to the community.)

As of Jan. 31, 2014, there were 31 files under audit. Twenty-two of the 31 audits were community benefit groups (where environmental, social justice and human rights groups are found). This segment, which is 23.3 per cent of all charities, makes up 71 per cent of the 31 audits. There appears to be no cause for an over-representation of these groups as they make up only 18.5 per cent of all charities revoked for cause since 1967.

In a Canadian Press story last August, the director general of the charities directorate, Cathy Hawara, explained the audit selection process. She said the CRA considered formal complaints from citizens, lobby groups, MPs or even cabinet ministers. (Having a complaint from a minister raises questions about the selection process.) These external complaints led to 30 “leads” to investigate.

From 2008-09 to 2010-11, there was an average of 24 such complaints to the CRA each year. This went up to 139 complaints in 2011-12 and 159 the year after that. Ethical Oil, the lobby group with Conservative ties that encourages “people, businesses and governments to choose Ethical Oil from Canada’s oilsands,” made several complaints and at least five of these groups are being audited.

Of the 20 self-identified charities, 11 do some work on environmental issues and seven work on social justice or international development. Seven of the 20 have had their federal funding eliminated since 2006. KAIROS, the group that was famously not recommended by the former CIDA minister Bev Oda, is being audited under the auspices of the United Church of Canada. Four other groups identified on the church’s website as partners are being audited. Some of the audits have taken years, draining staff time, resources and energy from the organizations.

The Conservative government has assured Canadians that the system of political activity audits is fair and neutral. The limited evidence we have suggests a different conclusion. To paraphrase Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, the system looks fair but feels foul.

There are two major losers in this process. The first are Canadians, who will not benefit from the research, experience and advice of Canadian charities. The second is the CRA, which must defend what appears to be a stunted and warped selection process by finding new ways to say “trust us.”

CRA audits of charities look fair but feel foul | Toronto Star.

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