European Union Democracy Observatory on #Citizenship Revocation Workshop papers

2015/11/26 Leave a comment

An extensive series of papers on the issue of citizenship revocation and banishment. For the cognoscenti given the amount of the material.

Audrey Macklin’s rebuttal of those advocating revocation (Kay Hailbronner, Christian Joppke and Peter Schuck) is, no surprise to those who follow my blog, convincing:

Ultimately, arguments about citizenship revocation turn on underlying conceptions of what citizenship is for, and expectations about what citizenship as legal status can achieve. Citizenship signifies membership, but beyond that general descriptor, citizenship inhabits multiple registers across many disciplines which are not reducible to or fully commensurate with one another. Citizenship as legal status is powerful because it carries the force of law, but also limited in what it can achieve for precisely the same reason. It is enabled and constrained because it is citizenship law and because it is citizenship law.

States can and do use law to promote and endorse commitment, patriotism and active citizenship. They do it through public education, programmes for social inclusion, support and assistance, support for the arts and recreation, and other policies that build solidarity and encourage ‘good citizenship’. These various spheres of public activity are enabled through legal frameworks, and so law plays an important role here. Citizenship law’s chief constructive contribution lies in imposing (reasonable) requirements for naturalisation (such as residence and language acquisition) that genuinely facilitate integration and commitment to the national community.

The state must also be concerned about ‘bad citizenship’ and it falls to the criminal justice and national security regimes to address the most egregious conduct that endangers or harms the national community. To conclude that contemporary citizenship law is ill-suited to advancing punitive goals does not deny that some people are very bad citizens, or that law plays a crucial role in addressing that fact. It simply opposes the recruitment of citizenship law to punish bad citizens by demoting them to non-citizens[9]. A man who attacks his mother may be a terrible son who deserves to be prosecuted for his crime, but it is not the job of family law to disclaim him as the son of his mother. Citizenship law is not criminal law. Nor is it national security law. Nor should it be rigged to open up a trap door that shunts citizens to immigration law.

Accounting for citizenship status’ specific legal character also guides us toward what law can (and cannot) achieve. A number of plausible accounts of citizenship’s normative foundation circulate in political theory. They typically involve some idea of commitment or allegiance, whether to the state, the constitution, or democratic self-government. I do not here express a preference among them, but rather observe that they tend to focus on the internal relationship between state and citizen, and the grounds upon which the relationship may be properly said to have ruptured. They do not attend to the external dimension of legal citizenship, namely the role of nationality in stabilising the international filing system for humanity, and they do not furnish a satisfactory normative explanation for why the ‘bad citizen’ should be assigned to another state.

Citizenship law cannot subject to legal regulation the myriad values, practices and aspirations ascribed to citizenship-as-belonging. This is unsurprising: Citizenship status enfranchises citizens above the age of majority, but there is no legal compulsion to vote (except in Australia. Belgium, Brazil and a few other states) and citizenship law does not purport to penalise those who never exercise their right or duty of active citizenship. Citizenship law does not purport to regulate access to most types of civil and social citizenship (in Marshallian terms).

Nevertheless, defenders of revocation insist that citizenship law can and should regulate ‘loyalty and allegiance’ of citizens. The criminal law can punish people for intentionally committing wrongful acts, including treason, murder, and all other forms of horrific violence that concern us here. Some assailants may openly express contempt for their country of citizenship, while others (like the Ottawa shooter Joppke cites) display a messy history of mental illness and petty criminality preceding recent conversion to Islam. The putative value added by citizenship revocation is precisely that it makes lack of allegiance and loyalty the central element in defining crimes against citizenship. But to paraphrase Aldous Huxley, loyalty and allegiance are like happiness. They are byproducts of other activities. Fostering love of country is a valid aspiration of states and worth cultivating. But it cannot be manufactured by the carrot of a citizenship oath (as Joppke has elsewhere acknowledged), nor will it be conjured by the stick of revocation. Law is not adept at producing sentiment on command.

Space constraints have led me to focus on those submissions that directly challenge my own position, and I have not responded to the cogent, provocative and creative insights offered by so many contributors. My own thinking has been deepened and provoked by them, for which I express gratitude and appreciation. I admit that I took as my remit citizenship revocation only in the literal, legal sense. I also acknowledge the criticism that confining my focus to citizenship revocation does not pay due regard to the claim that deportation of non-citizens may also constitute banishment in some circumstances, with attendant human rights implications. I hope that nothing I have said here gives the appearance of foreclosing or prejudging broader or different conceptions of banishment. There is always more to be said, and much to be done.

Source: EUDO CITIZENSHIP

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How America’s Demographic Revolution Reached The Church

2015/11/25 Leave a comment

Religious Minority Comparison Canada USA.001A good long piece analyzing the findings of the Pew Research 2014 Religious Landscape Study, mainly from a political perspective.

The above chart contrasts religious minorities in Canada with those in the USA. The more significant difference is with respect to Christians: some 60 percent of Canadian Christians are Catholic compared to 30 percent of Christians in the USA. Evangelicals form 35 percent of US Christians compared to about five percent in Canada (counting Baptist and Pentecostal as such). This helps explain, in part, the vast difference in political culture between the two countries, given the importance of the evangelical base to the US Republicans.

While the warning to the Democrats that the culturally liberal attitudes of their white upper class elites may create tension with their more traditional Black and Hispanic constituencies, it is unclear whether the ‘culture wars’ play that significant a role compared to more bread-and-butter issues for minorities (in contrast to the Republicans):

Long the dom­in­ant group in Amer­ic­an re­li­gious life, White Chris­ti­ans have fallen be­low a ma­jor­ity of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion—and they are mov­ing to the right polit­ic­ally as they re­cede.

The res­ult is that, like race and age, re­li­gious affiliation marks a sharpen­ing point of dis­tinc­tion between Re­pub­lic­ans and Demo­crats, pre­vi­ously un­pub­lished res­ults from the Pew Re­search Cen­ter’s massive Re­li­gious Land­scape sur­vey show.

As the na­tion re­lent­lessly di­ver­si­fies, both in its radical com­pos­i­tion and re­li­gious pref­er­ences, White Chris­ti­ans now rep­res­ent just 46 per­cent of Amer­ic­an adults, ac­cord­ing to Pew data provided in re­sponse to a re­quest from Next Amer­ica. That’s down from a 55 per­cent ma­jor­ity as re­cently as 2007, and much high­er figures through most of U.S. his­tory.

Yet even as White Chris­ti­ans shrink in their over­all num­bers, they still ac­count for nearly sev­en-in-10 Amer­ic­ans who identi­fy with, or lean to­ward, the Re­pub­lic­an Party, the Pew study found. White Chris­ti­ans, in fact, rep­res­ent as large a share of the Re­pub­lic­an co­ali­tion today as they did of Amer­ic­an so­ci­ety over­all in 1984, when Ron­ald Re­agan won reelec­tion. A clear ma­jor­ity of all White Christians across the United States now identi­fy as Re­pub­lic­an, Pew found.

In sharp con­trast, the Pew data show, the Demo­crat­ic co­ali­tion has evolved in­to a three-legged stool that di­vides al­most evenly between White Chris­ti­ans, non-White Chris­ti­ans, and those from all races who identi­fy either with a non-Chris­ti­an faith or, in­creas­ingly, with no re­li­gious tra­di­tion at all. Most Amer­ic­ans who don’t identi­fy with any re­li­gious faith—a rap­idly grow­ing group—now align with Demo­crats.

These di­ver­ging pro­files create elect­or­al chal­lenges for each side. Re­pub­lic­ans face the ten­sion of bal­an­cing the mor­ally con­ser­vat­ive pref­er­ences of their re­li­giously de­vout base with the deep­en­ing in­stinct to­ward cul­tur­al tol­er­ance of a so­ci­ety that is grow­ing more sec­u­lar, par­tic­u­larly among the young.

Demo­crats must weigh the cul­tur­ally lib­er­al in­stincts of their now mostly sec­u­lar wing of up­scale Whites with the of­ten more tradition­al in­clin­a­tions of their Afric­an-Amer­ic­an and Latino sup­port­ers, who are much more likely than White Demo­crats to identi­fy with Chris­ti­an faiths. In a land­mark shift, few­er than half of White Demo­crats with a col­lege de­gree now identi­fy as Chris­ti­ans; that’s a much smal­ler per­cent­age than among the party’s Blacks and Lati­nos.

Above all, the end of ma­jor­ity status for White Chris­ti­ans marks an­oth­er mile­stone in Amer­ica’s trans­form­a­tion in­to a kal­eido­scope so­ci­ety with no single dom­in­ant group.

Source: How America’s Demographic Revolution Reached The Church

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How a cancelled yoga class stretches the point on cultural appropriation

2015/11/25 Leave a comment

Good piece by Jonathan Gatehouse who puts the yoga and other political correctness stories into context:

But the hyper-sensitivity of a few undergraduate activists shouldn’t be mistaken for a mass movement. Debates over cultural appropriation remain mostly the stuff of little-followed Tumblr accounts and right-wing websites that are in perpetual need of examples of encroaching political correctness. (They are sometimes enabled and abetted by mainstream media inquiries into burning questions like the appropriateness of Valentino’s African-inspired collection for spring/summer 2016.)

When they do get traction, it’s often for good reason. Society evolves and standards change. Calling your football team “the Redskins” might well be a tradition, but it’s a racist one. Blackface went out with Al Jolson. Getting really drunk and dancing around in a feathered native headdress at a music festival is a tribute only to your own stupidity.

Culture is elastic and acquisitive. We adopt all sorts of stuff from all sorts of people. Pasta came from China. (Long before Marco Polo.) Waffles were once Belgian. Jazz, rock and hip-hop were originally African-American art forms and have endured in spite of Kenny G, The Carpenters and Vanilla Ice.

Mostly that process happens without much thought or trouble. Everyone in university residence buys a futon. Thai restaurants and sushi bars edge out the delis and pizza parlours on Main Street. White actors stop getting cast as Othello.

However, that all shouldn’t obscure the fact that our collective thirst for the new and different isn’t always benign. Symbols do get misappropriated. Meanings are lost. And even long-accepted practices can be offensive.

On the odd occasion when concerns and objections are raised, we lose nothing in listening—even if it’s just some student government busybody, stretching the point.

Yoga practitioners aren’t debasing anyone’s culture. But neither are the lunatics now running the asylum.

Now, everybody take a deep breath, and relax.

Source: How a cancelled yoga class stretches the point on cultural appropriation – Macleans.ca

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B.C. Sikh community rallies in support of Syrian refugees

2015/11/25 Leave a comment

Good vignette:

The Sikh community in B.C.’s Lower Mainland is rallying to provide support for thousands of incoming Syrian refugees, with offers this week that include food, transportation and even private school for children.

Randeep Sarai, MP for Surrey Centre, convened a meeting over the weekend where roughly 30 community representatives immediately offered a variety goods and services. The federal government will announce details of its Syrian refugee plan on Tuesday, but – if past distribution models are used – B.C. is projected to receive between 2,500 and 3,500 refugees in the next couple of months.

Community organizer Balwant Sanghera, who attended the meeting, said Gurdwaras from Vancouver, Richmond, New Westminster, Abbotsford and Surrey have all agreed to collect food, clothing, blankets and other donations from their congregations. They also plan to launch a provincewide campaign to find free accommodations for the refugees.

“We are very proud to be Canadians and we are also proud of our heritage,” Mr. Sanghera said. “We feel really good if we can be of any help if we are needed.”

Source: B.C. Sikh community rallies in support of Syrian refugees – The Globe and Mail

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Le PQ doit se rapprocher des non-francophones, dit Péladeau

2015/11/25 Leave a comment

Recognition is there, and positive reference to Syrian refugees is a start, but it will take time given the legacy of the Quebec Values Charter and other positions:

Le Parti québécois doit se rapprocher des anglophones et des communautés culturelles, a reconnu son chef Pierre Karl Péladeau, samedi.

« On n’a peut-être pas mis suffisamment l’accent sur le fait que l’indépendance, c’est bon pour l’ensemble des citoyens, pour toutes les communautés », a indiqué M. Péladeau à son arrivée au Conseil national du PQ.

Le chef péquiste s’est engagé à « multiplier les rendez-vous » avec les Québécois non francophones.

« Il faut renouer l’échange et le dialogue avec les communautés », a-t-il indiqué.

Dans un discours devant 350 délégués à Sherbrooke, il a présenté les réfugiés syriens qui arriveront au Québec dans les prochaines semaines comme « nos nouveaux compatriotes ». Il a dit souhaiter qu’ils soient « reçus dans les meilleures conditions et accompagnés des meilleures ressources » pour réussir leur arrivée.

La fin de semaine dernière, le premier ministre Philippe Couillard a affirmé que le Parti québécois et la Coalition avenir Québec traînent un « lourd passif » sur la question des nouveaux arrivants. Il a cité en exemple la Charte des valeurs qui a été vivement contestée dans les communautés culturelles.

« Notre défi, c’est de combattre les préjugés négatifs dont on nous a affublés », estime le député Maka Kotto.

« On avait peut-être ralenti (les efforts de rapprochement) avec les événements post-référendum, a convenu la députée Carole Poirier. Et là, on repart cette machine pour aller vendre notre projet de pays. »

Les lieutenants de M. Péladeau n’ont toutefois pas fourni davantage de précisions sur les prises de position qu’ils comptent adopter pour se rapprocher des anglophones et des allophones. Et aucun n’a remis en question la controversée Charte des valeurs défendue par le gouvernement Marois.

« De dire aujourd’hui que la laïcité n’est plus à l’ordre du jour, c’est ne pas lire l’actualité internationale, a noté le député Jean-François Lisée. On a un groupe islamofasciste qui propose un État religieux dictatorial. Notre réponse, c’est un État laïc, ouvert à tous, ouvert à toutes les religions, ouvert à toutes les croyances, ouvert à toutes les origines, mais dont le point de ralliement n’est pas la religion. »

Le rapprochement annoncé avec les communautés culturelles coïncide avec la publication d’un sondage Léger Marketing réalisé pour le compte du Devoir et du Journal de Montréal, qui place le PQ largement en tête des intentions de vote chez les francophones (38%). En revanche, le parti indépendantiste ne recueille que 10% des appuis chez les non-francophones.

Résultat : le Parti libéral reste en tête des intentions de vote au Québec avec 35% des appuis, contre 32% pour le Parti québécois et 20% pour la Coalition avenir Québec.

And this needs to be seen in overall context of how Quebec immigrants and visible minorities view and identify more with Canada than Quebec (Seeing the Same Canada? Visible Minorities’ Views of the Federation).

Source: Le PQ doit se rapprocher des non-francophones, dit Péladeau | Martin Croteau | Politique québécoise

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After the terror: A time for calm reflection, not policy on the fly – The Globe and Mail

2015/11/25 Leave a comment

Paul Heinbecker, in his call for reflection, notes an important aspect of Canada’s strength:

Fifth, as for Canada, we, like others, cannot be defeated by terrorists but we can grievously harm ourselves if we scare ourselves into sacrificing too much liberty and dignity for security.

In a world rent by xenophobia, Canada has stood out as a successful society that has profited from refugee flows and immigration better than any other country has done. We can do it again this time with Syrian refugees. We are rare in our capacity to integrate foreigners into our society and to make the consequent diversity a strength.

The example we set is heartening to many people abroad who admire what we achieve and who aspire to the same for their own societies. Our cosmopolitanism is an extraordinary strength that anchors our well-being in a global sea of instability. We should take the time to ensure that our domestic- and foreign-policy choices do not put it at risk.

Source: After the terror: A time for calm reflection, not policy on the fly – The Globe and Mail

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What Canada needs now: a strategy against hate: Elghawaby

2015/11/24 2 Comments

Amira Elghawaby, the communications director at the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), with her suggestions on what should be done to combat anti-Muslim activity:

Yet the events of the past few days, both the terrorist attacks and the apparent backlash, must reinforce our commitment to ensuring Canada remains one of the happiest places on earth—for everyone. Our history shows that we have to work for the country we want.

How should we do this?

First, the federal government should immediately partner with Canadian Muslim communities to fashion an effective strategy to combat extremist narratives. This new brand of terror promotion is a contemporary phenomenon that few know how to tackle. The previous government did provide limited funding for an initiative called Extreme Dialogue which highlights the experiences of a mother of a young Canadian who was killed fighting overseas for extremist groups and the experiences of a former white supremacist. There was also some funding provided to explore community resilience through workshops and public fora. We need more of this, implemented strategically across the country.

Second, community stakeholders must come together to find new ways to teach about acceptance and to promote multiculturalism. Again, leadership is key: for example, provincial ministries of education must ensure that teachers are using the resources that national organizations like MediaSmarts and others provide to ensure curricula are taught through a lens that allows young people to identify stereotypes and to challenge popular misconceptions. We need to create safe spaces for our increasingly global classrooms.

Third, police services must bolster hate crimes units and their responses. Victims are often reluctant to report and it’s important to provide both adequate resources and support. Perpetrators must also be swiftly brought to justice.

Fourth, Islamophobia must be considered as offensive and as socially unacceptable as any other hatemongering out there, whether anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia or sexism. This means that even in political discourse, there must be a responsibility to ensure that questions about refugees, for example, are not giving people license to air anti-Muslim sentiments and fuel suspicions about people fleeing the very same type of terror we witnessed in Paris.

Fifth, it’s time to take the Islam, out of ISIS. Most of the world calls this terrorist movement Daesh and ISIS has been widely condemned by Muslim scholars and institutions worldwide. Muslims and Islam should not be synonymous with a group of barbaric criminals. It hurts our communities, it hurts our children, and it only bolsters their false claims. Even law enforcement agencies agree that language has the power to cast suspicion over entire communities, and provide a veneer of credibility to the terrorists’ claims.

Finally, Canadians must choose “love over fear,” to echo the touching sentiments expressed in a Montreal metro earlier last week by three young men who posted a video of their solidarity. Holding each other’s hands, a Muslim originally from Egypt, his friends from Paris and New York, did what many Canadians must do now—defeat the extremist narrative by coming even closer together.

I would also add to her list: maintain the Statistics Canada annual report on police-reported hate crimes (with the shift of multiculturalism to Canadian Heritage, this should be a priority).

Source: What Canada needs now: a strategy against hate | hilltimes.com

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Inside the $100 Million Scheme to Send the Middle East’s Most Unwanted People to Africa | VICE News

2015/11/24 Leave a comment

More on how the Gulf states use citizenship policy:

El-Baghdadi’s experience isn’t new or uncommon for Middle East’s large and rapidly growing community of exiles and refugees. Palestinians have been expelled in large numbers from both Jordan and Kuwait in the past when they’ve rubbed those countries’ rulers the wrong way.

What is new, however, is the way the Gulf States, intolerant even of critical tweets, are now punishing their own citizens by rendering them stateless. This, el-Baghdadi says, is part of a new, harsher interpretation of the social contract among the region’s oil and gas rich monarchies. “Being a citizen or a ‘local’ can potentially make you a lifelong recipient of government largess,” he says. In return for a cradle-to-grave welfare system “you just need to be completely apolitical and quiet.” Rocking the boat has become an increasingly risky business.

Since the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, three of the Gulf states have revoked the citizenships of hundreds of people, the majority of them advocates for political reform or democratization. Bahrain has revoked the citizenship of 159 people since 2012; Kuwait made about 100 of its citizens non-Kuwaitis with the stroke of a pen in 2014 and 2015. The UAE stripped seven of its citizens of their nationality in 2011; in July 2014, the regional Al Sharq newspaper claimed that hundreds more had been secretly rendered stateless. Amnesty International has independently made a similar claim — that Emerati authorities planned to revoke the citizenship of “scores” of nationals.

Abu Dhabi. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

In 2014, Oman passed a law allowing the government to arbitrarily revoke the citizenship of anyone working “against the interests” of the state, and Bahrain passed similar legislation allowing the state to strip the citizenship of anyone who failed “the duty of loyalty.” Saudi officials have publicly mulled following suit.

This January, Kuwaiti authorities arrested Saad al-Ajmi, the onetime director of the Kuwait office of the Saudi Arabian television channel Al-Arabiya, as he was about to board a flight to Saudi Arabia with his family. His arrest — for skipping out on a short jail sentence that he says he was not aware of — surprised many in Kuwait who knew al-Ajmi as the well-regarded spokesman for the Popular Action Bloc, a parliamentary coalition that is vocally critical of the government appointed directly by the Emir of Kuwait. Surprise turned to shock when, three months later, al-Ajmi was stripped of Kuwaiti citizenship and deported from the country.

When the head of a household loses citizenship in Bahrain, Kuwait, and the UAE, their families are often also stripped of their citizenship, creating a multiplier effect: Hundreds of people may have ultimately lost their status as Kuwaiti citizens due to the purge of 2014, according to human rights researchers tracking their cases, while more than 1,000 Bahrainis may have been plunged into the administrative void. These are people who learn that they and their loved ones have gone from being citizens of some of the world’s wealthiest countries — and most comprehensive welfare states — to being outcasts and exiles without a home.

Source: Inside the $100 Million Scheme to Send the Middle East’s Most Unwanted People to Africa | VICE News

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For one Liberal MP the refugee backlash cuts close to home: Tim Harper

2015/11/24 Leave a comment

Arif Virani, newly elected MP for Parkdale-High Park, on his life story and reactions to intolerance:

There was a backlash in 1972, as there is now, and it surfaced sporadically over the years. It happened again during the campaign, where a handful of voters told Virani they would never vote for a Muslim.

That stings as much today as it did 23 years ago when a guy in a North Bay bar called him a “Paki,’’ or 10 years earlier when the same label was affixed to his mother in a Toronto grocery store.

“You know, I’m a fairly level-headed guy, I like the sound of my own voice,’’ Virani said Thursday.

“I’m a litigator and I can talk and I can usually deal with issues and I’m well-versed in responding at the door.’’

He could handle himself when people objected to the Liberal position on trade, or CBC funding, or anti-terror legislation, but that ease melted away when he faced intolerance.

“Whether you are 3 or 43, when somebody volleys an intolerant, bigoted sentiment to you, it stupefies you for a moment. You want to say, ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ But you can’t say that, because you always want to be respectful.

“I was tongue-tied. I would pause. I would say I’m sorry you felt that way, that’s not the type of Canada I believe in, have a nice day.

“It’s very demeaning and dehumanizing when you get attacked on something because of your skin colour or your religion or your place of origin.’’

So, he agonizes over the mosque-burning in Peterborough, the vandalism of a Kitchener temple, and the assault of a Muslim woman in his old Flemingdon Park stomping ground. The woman was picking up her son at Grenoble Public School, where Virani’s sister used to attend, when she was assaulted in what Toronto police called a hate crime.

Two Muslim women were accosted and verbally assaulted on a subway at Sherbourne Station on Wednesday. A Muslim woman in Ottawa found a threatening note in her mailbox.

Virani believes the Rob Ford regime at Toronto City Hall, then the injection of the niqab in the Stephen Harper campaign, emboldened those who had kept such thoughts to themselves, ripping the filter off those who silently harboured racist views.

“It gave people an issue to latch on to and something to go on the attack about,’’ he said.

But he takes heart in the response to the backlash. The Peterborough mosque raised more money than its goal after it was torched. There was a similar outpouring of revulsion over the Flemingdon Park assault.

That shows progress, he thinks, but adds: “To be blunt, there will always be an element in Canada that is resistant to change and . . . are somewhat intolerant. They fear the unknown.’’

Source: For one Liberal MP the refugee backlash cuts close to home: Tim Harper | Toronto Star

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism, Refugees Tagged with , ,

Canada could be corporate diversity leader, says study | Advisor.ca

2015/11/24 Leave a comment

Slow progress:

But this is unlikely, says the CBDC [Canadian Board Diversity Council], because the pace at which corporate diversity is improving is too slow. In fact, the report card reveals women currently hold 19.5% of FP500 organization board seats. That’s up from 17.1% in 2014, but Canada is still behind when it comes to bringing women on board. In the UK, for example, there are no all-male FTSE100 boards, while there are 109 such boards in Canada.

“The pace of change for board diversity is encouraging, but there’s more work that needs to be done,” says CBDC founder Pamela Jeffery. If each organization on the FP500 replaced one retiring male director with one female director, says CBDC, Canada would be among the leading countries for gender board diversity—at 30% female representation.

EFFECT OF PRESSURE FROM OSC 

According to the CBDC’s report card, the OSC’s corporate diversity disclosure requirements are making a difference. When surveyed, almost half (49%) of directors indicated their boards have written diversity policies, up from 25% last year.

However, this data contradicts findings from OSC, adds CBDC. In a recent report, the regulator found that only “14% [of boards] clearly disclosed the adoption of a written policy, whereas 65% disclosed that they had decided not to adopt a written policy.”

“The findings of this year’s Annual Report Card show board disclosure requirements on diversity are having a positive impact,” says Michael Bloom, vice president of Industry and Business Strategy for The Conference Board of Canada. “However, achieving the goal of truly diverse boards with representation from women, Aboriginal peoples, visible minorities and people with disabilities will require much more of a leadership focus.”

ADDITIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

  • Since 2014, there has been a significant increase in the number of directors who self-report to be a visible minority, nearly tripling to 7.3% from 2% last year.

  • The number of Aboriginal board members rose from 0.8% in 2014 to 1.3% in 2015.

  • Nearly all FP500 corporate board respondents (96%) say board diversity is very important or somewhat important, and that’s a substantial increase from 85% in 2010.

  • In the Utilities and Finance sector, representation of women stands at 27.1%. Meanwhile, women are represented at 27% in the Insurance sector.

  • In the Mining/Oil/Gas sector, representation of women lags behind at 12.2%. Same goes for the Construction sector at 9.3%.

  • Despite the higher-than-average rates of female directors on TSX60 boards (22.6%, up from 20.1% in 2014), there are only 20 visible minority directors, two Aboriginal directors and one person with a disability among the 31 organizations that completed the 2015 TSX60 survey.

Source: Canada could be corporate diversity leader, says study | Advisor.ca

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