To the music-banning Muslim father: Rejecting compromise is extremism: Zarqa Nawaz

2016/09/09 Leave a comment

Nawaz gets it right:

The school did its best to accommodate the father’s requests by offering alternatives to his children such as not playing instruments and writing a paper on Islam’s long history of religious-inspired music. But those compromises were rejected. Accommodation has to be a two-way street for it to work. To continually reject a reasonable compromise is also a form of extremism.

If a parent feels this strongly about an issue, they have two options: find a religious private school or home school. But to ask a public institution to create an environment that is micro-managed to appeal to every minute religious request is unreasonable. If you take the anti-music logic to the extreme, how can that parent buy groceries in stores where music is playing, eat in a restaurant or even go up an elevator in which many non-Muslims could get behind a music ban for the sake of some peace and quiet?

Muslims believe that Islam takes the middle road when it comes to dealing with issues. We are to be neither extreme in overindulgence or rejection.

The school board offered reasonable solutions and a middle way, which was very Muslim of them, but they were rejected. So if you’re going to be extreme in your response, then typically what happens is that people find enclaves to live their lives separately with their own set of rules. The most infamous example of this is the community of Mormons in Bountiful, B.C., where a sect of Christians believe that polygamy and child marriage is part of its belief system. Because these practices contravene the Canadian Criminal Code, the community has opted to separate itself from the larger majority to minimize their dealings with law enforcement. Muslims have chosen to not live in separate enclaves.

We have chosen to integrate and be part of the majority culture where we contribute and enrich the communities we belong to.

We have Muslim women and men creating art in the form of song, poetry, dance and music. Faith and fun don’t have to be mutually exclusive. You can have your cake and eat it while a Muslim screeches in a microphone near you.

Source: To the music-banning Muslim father: Rejecting compromise is extremism – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

A Danish school now separates children by ethnicity – The Washington Post

2016/09/09 Leave a comment

Unlikely to help integration and reflective of a broader trend in Denmark:

Nearly a year after the influx of migrants into Europe reached its peak, the repercussions can now be felt in thousands of classrooms across the continent as a new school year begins.

Whereas most other schools are focused on assimilating migrant children, one Danish school in the city of Aarhus has decided to separate them. The idea has drawn criticism from human rights advocates who question the legality of segregating children based on their ethnicity.

Many countries provide separate schooling for newcomers in efforts at quicker assimilation. In special “international classes” in Germany, for example, migrant and refugee children receive intensive language training in an attempt to move them into normal German classrooms as soon as possible.

The Danish school’s approach, however, is somewhat different because it was not originally designed to integrate migrant children better. Instead, it seeks to allow children to avoid classes with more migrants than ethnic Danes, according to the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which first reported the story. There are now four classes for migrant children and three mixed classes in which the ratio between migrants and ethnic Danes is equal. The policy does not only apply to refugees or children born abroad, but also to pupils who grew up in Denmark but have parents who migrated from abroad.

The case of the Aarhus school is considered isolated. About 25 percent of the school’s pupils were either migrants or the children of migrant parents in 2007, but that number has since risen to 80 percent.

Some critics of the plan say it reflects a deeper trend within a society that has grown opposed to more immigration. Denmark made headlines last year with a law that allowed police officers to seize valuables from refugees as a way to help defray the costs of hosting the new arrivals — many from war-ravaged countries such as Syria and Iraq. Opponents of such policies say that Denmark is increasingly isolating itself and portraying the country as unwelcoming to refugees and others. The number of refugees coming to the country has decreased significantly as a result.

 “It is pure discrimination when you sort people according to whether they are white or brown Danes,” Jette Møller, the president of the nongovernmental organization SOS Against Racism, was quoted as saying by Jyllands-Posten. The school headmaster has rebutted such criticism, saying the measures were necessary to prevent ethnic Danes from leaving the institution.

Source: A Danish school now separates children by ethnicity – The Washington Post

Filed under Integration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

ICYMI: How do you screen beliefs? The troublesome task of testing for ‘anti-Canadian values’ – Wherry

2016/09/08 Leave a comment

Good overview along with good questions on how would you actually administer a values test by Aaron Wherry:

When Kellie Leitch, one of four candidates officially seeking the leadership of the Conservative party, was first reported to have asked her supporters whether immigrants to this country should be screened for “anti-Canadian values,” it was tempting to assume she believed that prospective citizens should be handed a cup of Tim Hortons coffee, sent to a professional hockey game and made to at least pretend that they were enjoying themselves.

But, as it turns out, the “anti-Canadian values” Leitch believes new immigrants should be checked for include “intolerance towards other religions, cultures and sexual orientations, violent and/or misogynist behaviour and/or a lack of acceptance of our Canadian tradition of personal and economic freedoms.”

And this, Leitch explained in a statement on Friday, is “a policy proposal that I feel very strongly about.”

Indeed, she later enthused to her supporters that, “We are going to have an open discussion about what Canadian values are and what they are not.”

“If you are tired of feeling like we can’t discuss what our Canadian values are, then please help me to fight back by making a donation,” she added.

So as to assist those who feel like this can’t be discussed, let’s discuss it.

Precedents for a values test

Leitch’s proposal is not without precedents.

Two weeks ago, noted wall-enthusiast Donald Trump suggested that those hoping to become American citizens would undergo ideological screening, hearkening back to a Cold War policy that was meant to keep communists out.

“Those who do not believe in our Constitution or who support bigotry and hatred will not be admitted for immigration into our country,” he said. “Only those who we expect to flourish in our country and to embrace a tolerant American society should be issued visas.”

Belgium recently began to require that non-European migrants sign a pledge committing themselves to certain “values.”

In Canada, we do present potential citizens with a guide that explains our history and speaks of values, but we do not then check to make sure every newcomer believes fully and completely in each and every one of those ideals.

At the moment, it is not clear how Leitch imagines we should.

How would we screen for beliefs?

Would immigrants be asked to confirm their agreement with a series of statements about equality? How would we know they were telling the truth? Would we hook them up to a lie detector? Would we have public servants checking Twitter histories and Facebook profiles for evidence of intolerance or unacceptable views?

Are we comfortable with the idea of regulating beliefs? Who defines the values and how they will be measured? How specific would we get?

Would immigrants have to be fully supportive of same-sex marriage? (To pick a right that Conservative party members have only just come around to not opposing and which some current Canadian citizens still don’t support.) What about transgender rights? (To pick an issue that Parliament will soon be considering.)

What constitutes an intolerance for economic freedom? Would that rule out socialists? What about anyone with an inclination to vote for the NDP?

What great benefit would we derive from the effort? And what would be the effect of such a test?

We might, for instance, imagine that living in Canada could open the mind of a homophobe, or at least provide his or her children with a good atmosphere in which to grow up.

But, while we’re on the topic, what of the bigots and misogynists who were born here?

What problem does this mean to solve?

But perhaps we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let us go back to the premise, or at least try to understand what it might be.

What problem does this debate over Canadian values mean to solve? Are great hordes of bigots and misogynists entering our country at present? Are their beliefs having some kind of deleterious impact on our society? Are we faced with some kind of threat that must be dealt with?

The implication that we are is inherent in Leitch’s idea: That immigrants with “anti-Canadian values” are coming to this country. That Canada is faced with a meaningful problem. That even though we have become a tolerant, pluralistic society alongside decades of mass immigration (and despite whatever prejudices were held by our naturally born citizens and new arrivals), we are somehow now in need of greater protection.

That is a troubling suggestion to leave hanging in the air as thousands of newcomers continue to try to settle into our country. We should not uncarefully implicate an entire class of people.

“This suggestion, that some immigrants are ‘anti-Canadian’, does not represent our Conservative Party or our Canada,” Michael Chong, a fellow leadership candidate, said in a statement on Friday. “The language and context that Kellie used has led key Conservatives, including Prime Minister [Stephen] Harper’s former director of policy, to criticize this move as the worst of dog-whistle politics.‎”

(Interim Leader Rona Ambrose has since joined Chong in questioning Leitch’s proposal, noting there are already criminal background checks for potential immigrants.)

Does someone wearing a niqab make us vulnerable?

The suggestion of a threat also suggests a vulnerability.

In this way, screening for anti-Canadian values seems similar to the previous government’s fretting about some women wearing the niqab during the citizenship oath.

We might not like what we imagine the niqab to represent, just as we might not like the idea of anyone with even a single misogynistic, bigoted or homophobic thought making a home in this country.

But we might believe that we are collectively strong enough to welcome a vast array of beliefs and practices without losing ourselves. That we are not so fragile or weak.

That, in contradiction to the implication found in Donald Trump’s proposal, our best and noblest ideas will prevail and win out. And that our values might indeed spread, as newcomers arrive and settle here.

If some of us are worried, we might try to understand why. But we might decide that a proper Canadian value is to not be fearful.

Source: How do you screen beliefs? The troublesome task of testing for ‘anti-Canadian values’ – Politics – CBC News

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

The real threat: Immigrants to Canada, or Kellie Leitch’s divisive politics? Adams

2016/09/08 Leave a comment

Michael Adam’s take:

This surge of worry about cultural integration is stronger among Conservative supporters than it is among Canadians at large. Indeed, when we examine the values of Canadians broken out by party preference, wariness of cultural difference is a key differentiating value of Conservatives. Given that Dr. Leitch is currently running not for prime minister of Canada, but for leader of the Conservative Party, critics who say that her threat of cracking down on anti-Canadian values is itself anti-Canadian are unlikely to do her much harm and may do her some good – for now.

Recent years have shown us that a backlash constituency does exist – a constituency alarmed by some aspects of living in a diverse society, and affronted that they are not permitted to air their alarm without being accused of racism. (It is no accident that Dr. Leitch’s campaign literature had an aggrieved tone: “If you are tired of feeling like we can’t discuss what our Canadian values are, then please help me to fight back by making a donation.…”) U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump is one champion of this backlash; he proposed ideological screening for immigrants a few weeks before Dr. Leitch did. Here in Canada, there was Rob Ford, lavish in his political incorrectness yet beloved by many newcomers, who embraced his little-guy-fighting-smug-liberal-elites narrative. And there was the Parti Québécois’s Charter of Values, which would likely have won them an election had their leader not careened off-message.

A political opportunity exists with those who feel angry and dismissed, but when Dr. Leitch courts Conservatives who want to “fight back,” she is playing a risky game that may trade short-term partisan gain for long-term political pain.

Yes, the wider Canadian context is more fearful than it was 20 years ago, but it is still positive toward immigrants and, importantly, proud of not being xenophobic. Canadians feel pride in their country (and immigrants are especially proud, surveys show), but one of the things Canadians are most proud of is a belief that different kinds of people can live here in harmony and that immigrants can be just as good citizens as anyone born here – sometimes better.

If voters see particular groups of immigrants as a threat to that harmony, Dr. Leitch might win support among Conservatives. But if many Conservatives and even more ordinary Canadians, including the four in 10 of us who are immigrants or their children, see Dr. Leitch as the threat, she will not become prime minister – and Conservatives will feel that so-called hotline sting for a second time.

Source: The real threat: Immigrants to Canada, or Kellie Leitch’s divisive politics? – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Immigrant-screening proposal about promoting tolerance, Leith says [with a straight face]

2016/09/08 Leave a comment

Telling:

But the harshest words for Ms. Leitch have come from Mr. Harper’s former policy director Rachel Curran – now a senior associate at the former prime minister’s new international consulting firm, Harper & Associates.

Ms. Curran called Ms. Leitch’s proposal “really dangerous politics” and accused her of specifically targeting Muslim immigrants.

“We have never had the government actually test people on what their thoughts and beliefs and their values are in Canada, and I don’t think we should go down that path,” Ms. Curran said.

“It’s a pretty dangerous path. It’s actually a pretty Orwellian path.”

Ms. Curran called the barbaric cultural practices tip line an “ill advised policy” that was poorly communicated at the time, but defended it as a last-minute request from a specific ethnic community that she declined to identify. She said she hasn’t spoken about the issue with her former boss, but doesn’t feel he would support Ms. Leitch’s proposal.

“Much of our party’s support came from new immigrants who believed in what the party was doing, and believed in what prime minister Harper was doing. And there is simply no way that he ever would have pursued or proposed a policy that was frankly fundamentally anti-immigrant,” she said.

“I think it does the party a tremendous amount of harm, and if nothing else it divides the party, which is also a bad thing.”

Ms. Leitch denies her proposal targets Muslims in any way.

“I understand the compulsion to paint a discussion about values in this way. But I actually don’t think it’s fair, and I don’t think it’s right,” she said.

Ms. Leitch also brought up two instances where her party sought to block the entry into Canada of those who she said contravene Canadian values of gender equality and women’s rights: so-called “pick-up artist” Julien Blanc in 2014, and in February, Daryush Valizadeh, also known as “Roosh V,” an American blogger who says rape should be legalized on private property.

Source: Immigrant-screening proposal about promoting tolerance, Leitch says – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Canadians lack faith in upper ranks of public service: survey

2016/09/08 Leave a comment

Interesting and worrisome for the public service:

The findings of a survey, conducted by Environics Institute and the Institute on Governance, into how Canadians view accountability and oversight in government underscore a troubling level of mistrust among Canadians in their government, both elected officials and public servants.

Canadians put more faith in front-line public servants delivering services — as long as they have the resources and authority to do the right thing — than they do for MPs and senior bureaucrats.

The majority have at least some trust in front-line workers and MPs, but views of senior public servants are almost equally divided between some trust and little or no trust.

At the same time, Canadians overall perceptions about government and its effectiveness — even among its harshest critics who believe government is broken — improved significantly since a similar survey in 2014, which some attribute to the “Trudeau Effect.”

 The two surveys into Canadians’ views into how we are governed were conducted 18 months apart.  One survey was conducted during the final stretch of the Conservatives’ near decade in power, and the second was conducted during the early months of the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau.

The latest study was conducted online in February with 2,000 Canadians over the age of 18.

In that survey, only six per cent of those surveyed expressed a lot of trust in senior public servants compared with 18 per cent who reported trusting front-line federal workers.

Maryantonett Flumian, president of the Institute on Governance, said Canadians’ growing trust appears to rest with the prime minister, not government institutions such as the public service.

That, she argued, poses a big challenge for the public service.

Expectations of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government are running high, but it’s the public service that has to deliver on their promises. She said the bureaucracy’s bungling of its new pay system and foul-ups installing a new email system raise questions about management.

“It’s Trudeau they trust, not the public service,” she said. “Now the question: Is the public service up to the challenge?

“A public service mired in trying to think through how to manage a new pay system and consolidate email systems is not a good match for the aspirations of an activist government and a Canadian populace who seem to have elected this government with a blank cheque.”

Canadians in the survey pointed to the public service and the Senate as two federal institutions that need changes. Those surveyed said the Senate needs a bigger overhaul than the public service and they ranked Senate fixes as a top priority.

About 56 per cent of those surveyed said the Senate needs major changes and 23 per cent said minor reforms. For the public service, 33 per cent said it needs major change and 47 per cent thought minor changes were needed.

In all cases, support for major changes is strongest among two groups:

  • Those who also said they feel the government is broken; or

  • Those who said they had faced bad service or an unpleasant experience dealing with government over the past year.

Source: Canadians lack faith in upper ranks of public service: survey | Ottawa Citizen

Filed under Government Tagged with , , ,

Who has the right to say what’s correct? Mark Kingwell

2016/09/07 Leave a comment

Kingwell on political correctness and civility, making the important distinction between politeness and a willingness to engage in meaningful yet respectful discussion and debate:

Civility is much misunderstood. It is not politeness, the stifling of personal opinion in the service of social niceties. Politeness is a minor virtue of communal life. I might reply, when asked my opinion of a dinner, that it was “quite good.” I don’t really believe it and probably my host doesn’t either. Enough said.

Genuine civility, by contrast, marks a willingness to engage the other in the service of understanding, not competition. This is never easy. Will what I say offend someone else? Well, maybe. Is there still good reason for saying it, and saying it this way? What, finally, is the point, here?

Nobody anywhere, on campus or off, has ever had the privilege of saying anything at all without consequences. The next time you think political correctness has “gone too far,” ask yourself if maybe you are the one saying unproductive, small-minded or stupid things. Just as important, we all need to remember that nothing is ever correct until we argue the point – and usually not even then.

Source: Who has the right to say what’s correct? – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

ICYMI: China trip may help Trudeau win Chinese-Canadian votes

2016/09/07 Leave a comment

Good and interesting analysis regarding the differences among Chinese Canadians voting patterns and the efforts by the Liberals and Conservatives to attract their votes. For the breakdown of major voting groups in the 33 ridings where visible minorities are in the majority, see 2015 Election Top 33 ridings more than 50 % visible minorities):

As Justin Trudeau tries to build economic ties during his first state visit to China, he may also be helping himself a little with a political goal back home: breaking through with the country’s largest immigrant group.

Among the very few disappointments for Mr. Trudeau’s campaign team, in last year’s election, was how their party fared with Chinese-Canadians. Liberal candidates did as well or better with just about every other demographic as they could reasonably hope; this was one with which they struggled, and the Conservatives retained strength, more than they anticipated.

Markham-Unionville, with the highest concentration of Chinese-Canadian voters of any riding nationally, was one of the very few Greater Toronto Area seats where the Liberals failed to top the Tories – and, according to members of Mr. Trudeau’s inner circle, the only seat in the country they wrongly expected to win.

 The one other riding where more than half of eligible voters are of Chinese descent, the Vancouver-area Richmond Centre, also proved beyond their grasp; narrower-than-expected margins in a few ridings they did win, notably in Toronto’s inner-suburb of Scarborough, suggested a pattern.

It’s one the Liberals need to break, as the country’s largest immigrant population – 1.5 million and growing – could yet be the difference in a close election.

But there are no shortcuts, in the form of goodwill from foreign trips or anything else, to breaking through. Based on conversations with party organizers who have worked on the ground in Chinese communities, the reality is more an array of complex factors that the Liberals will have to work hard to change.

Underscoring the nuance is a key distinction between families who came from Hong Kong, mostly through to the 1980s, and those who have come from mainland China in the past couple of decades. The general consensus is that the Liberals tended to do better with the former and the Conservatives with the latter in last year’s vote.

While that may have helped the Liberals at least significantly narrow the gap from 2011 in a riding like Richmond Centre, where many of the Chinese-Canadian voters have Hong Kong roots, it’s of little consolation since even there those voters are increasingly being overwhelmed by waves of mainland emigrants.

The Liberals’ election postmortems seemed to leave them with all sorts of explanations for why they’ve struggled with the newer arrivals.

The most popular of those explanations, among Mr. Trudeau’s top officials, is social conservatism. The Conservatives made a concerted effort to convince immigrant voters (not just Chinese-Canadians) that the Liberals would allow the sale of marijuana to children; in Ontario, the Liberals also had to contend with controversy around their provincial cousins’ sex-education changes.

While such concerns may have gotten traction among evangelicals with Hong Kong roots, Liberals say they especially heard about them from mainlanders new enough to Canada to be worried about the radicalism of a party they had not seen much (if at all) in power.

Those issues may have penetrated partly because the Tories out-advertised the Liberals in Chinese-Canadian media. And Conservative-friendly ownership of leading outlets such as Fairchild TV and the Sing Tao Daily newspaper helped the Tories get more positive earned media than the Liberals in primary news sources for many relative newcomers – if not as it related to hot-button social issues, then in how the leaders and their agendas were generally presented.

That ties into a whole bunch of other explanations floating around. The Liberals’ polling, according to a source familiar with it, suggested former mainlanders were receptive to what some other Canadians saw as Stephen Harper’s authoritarian streak, considering him a much stronger leader than Mr. Trudeau.

A veteran organizer in the Chinese community suggested economic conservatism was borne of relatively affluent recent arrivals being concerned about their assets’ safety from government intrusion. Just as earlier waves of immigrants had a positive association with the Liberals because that party was in power when they got here, more recent ones might have felt that way about the Tories.

Merely having won government may help the Liberals with that last factor, and some of the others besides. They can set to rest some of the more extravagant fears about their social liberalism by not legislating like radicals. Mr. Trudeau will seem stronger just by virtue of his office.

A trip like this week’s is a prime opportunity to forge better relations with Mandarin media outlets, while also getting copious coverage in them. (Although it also runs the risk of alienating some of their supporters who came here from Hong Kong, and are wary of Canada’s government cozying up to the Middle Kingdom.)

But there is also an underlying reality that belies quick fixes, and will test the Liberals’ commitment to their “hope and hard work” mantra to winning over voters.

Source: China trip may help Trudeau win Chinese-Canadian votes – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Why the ‘barbaric cultural practices’ debate won’t go away: Delacourt

2016/09/07 Leave a comment

One of the better commentaries on Kellie Leith’s “barbaric cultural practices” repeat performance:

The good news for Kellie Leitch — and she might need some right now — is that many Canadians believe this country needs young, female political leaders.

The bad news is that most Conservatives — the people who make up the party Leitch wants to lead — do not share that view.

These findings come from new research by Abacus Data. By sheer happenstance, Abacus and the Leitch leadership campaign were out in the field in late August, doing some survey work that touched on Canadian values. The two surveys dovetail in some fascinating ways.

The Leitch survey asked, controversially, whether respondents would support screening immigrants for “anti-Canadian values.” This was quite the surprise coming from the MP for Simcoe-Grey, once the federal labour minister, who only months ago was apologetically backtracking for her role in the infamous “barbaric cultural practices” tip line proposal of the 2015 election campaign.

Now, we seem to be back in the middle of a debate we thought had been settled in the last election. Maybe it wasn’t.

The Abacus survey sounded people out on the traits and values they’re seeking in political leaders. Leitch and her supporters no doubt will be heartened to hear that 54 per cent of respondents to the Abacus poll said they would prefer a woman leader. Moreover, a whopping 65 per cent — nearly two-thirds — said they would rather have someone under 50 years of age. Leitch, 46, comfortably meets both criteria.

The problem for Leitch, however, is that her own fellow Conservatives aren’t as enthusiastic about young female leaders. Almost 60 per cent of Conservative respondents to the Abacus poll said that if they had their choice between someone over 50 and someone under 50 to lead a political party, they’d select the older candidate. Only 13 per cent said they would prefer a younger, female leader.

Those results are even more striking when compared to the views of Liberal and NDP supporters who participated in the Abacus poll. Nearly 70 per cent of Liberals and 77 per cent of NDP supporters said they’d opt for a woman leader given a choice between a man and a woman of equal qualifications.

The obvious conclusion, then, is that Leitch is running for the wrong party. Then again, she might have trouble selling Liberal or NDP voters on the idea of screening immigrants for potential anti-Canadian values.

Even some folks in her own party (her leadership rivals, anyway) are balking. Michael Chong called it “dog-whistle politics.” Maxime Bernier, taking a more practical approach, called it an “unworkable” idea.

open quote 761b1bClearly, Leitch’s campaign believes this issue taps into a rich vein of support, at least in Conservative circles. Which could explain why Bernier called the idea ‘unworkable’ rather than, say, ‘egregious.’

Abacus conducted its poll online in late August, asking 2,010 Canadians of voting age all kinds of questions about their ideal political leaders. When they got around to the subject of leadership qualities, the results turned out to be highly interesting.

The top two traits? “Understanding different parts of the world” and “thinking about what’s right for the next generation.” Respondents also placed a high value on leaders who “think a lot about the future of the world”, are “open-minded about different lifestyles” and “care about the poor.”

Buried in the list, however, is a possible rationale for Leitch’s controversial survey question.

Only 18 per cent of the respondents to the Abacus poll said that a leader must embrace the idea that “immigration is good for Canada.” Understanding different parts of the world is one thing, apparently, while welcoming them here is another matter entirely.

Nick Kouvalis, Leitch’s campaign manager, has said that the survey was based on what the campaign had been hearing out on the road over the summer. Kouvalis, for those who may have forgotten, has not been shy in the past about courting controversy with provocative survey questions. His firm, Campaign Research, was scolded by the Commons Speaker several years ago for polling Montreal residents about Irwin Cotler’s allegedly imminent resignation. (Cotler, then the MP for Mount Royal, protested in the Commons that the survey breached his parliamentary privileges, though he did eventually step down before the last election.)

Kouvalis, let’s also remember, was one of the early backers and staffers for former Toronto mayor Rob Ford (he was also one of the first to walk away when things started to go crazy in Fordland). Kouvalis was on John Tory’s team in the last mayoralty election in Toronto and helped B.C. Premier Christy Clark pull off an unexpected victory in 2013.

On Twitter, Kouvalis has been predicting that all the leadership candidates eventually will perform some “world-class gymnastics” to embrace Leitch’s views on screening immigrants for anti-Canadian values. Clearly, her campaign manager believes this issue taps into a rich vein of support, at least in Conservative circles. Which could explain why Bernier called the idea “unworkable” rather than, say, “egregious.”

Among the other admirable leadership qualities cited by respondents to that Abacus poll were the ability to “ask for help when you need it,” to “seek advice from smart people everywhere” and to “apologize when you make a mistake.”

One can’t help but notice that Leitch hasn’t apologized for this survey question — perhaps on the advice she needed from people she considers smart.

“Oftentimes, debating and discussing these complex policies requires tough conversations — conversations that go well beyond media sound bites and simplified labels,” Leitch wrote in an emailed statement after the controversy.

“I am committed to having these conversations, to debating theses issues, and I invite Canadians to give their feedback.”

So, like it or not, immigration may become a hot-button issue in the Conservative leadership race. Consider this an early warning — especially for those complacent Canadians who say that Donald Trump’s rhetoric on immigration couldn’t possibly work here.

The people in Leitch’s Conservative party may not be the biggest fans of female leaders under 50, but this particular candidate could be giving them the campaign’s sleeper issue. In other words, the debate about “barbaric cultural practices” didn’t die in 2015; it’s simply been slumbering, waiting for an opening.

Source: Why the ‘barbaric cultural practices’ debate won’t go away

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

ICYMI: CAQ wants to let fewer immigrants into Quebec

2016/09/07 Leave a comment

It is always amazing – but not necessarily surprising – that politicians pick numbers out of a hat without any real justification (apart from it being a nice round number (20 percent or 10,000).

But  we are likely to see a similar approach with the Liberal government’s strong indications of a substantial increase in immigration.

Not every criticism of increased immigration fans “the flames of intolerance,” it depends on the words used and the concerns raised:

The Coalition Avenir Québec wants to decrease the number of immigrants allowed into Quebec.

The right-leaning party says it would reduce the province’s immigration threshold by 20 per cent, from 50,000 to 40,000 people per year.

Leader François Legault announced his party’s newest idea in Saint-Jérôme Tuesday, the last day of caucus meetings ahead of the fall parliamentary session.

He said thousands of immigrants haven’t mastered French and haven’t entered the job market.

“We have to open our eyes. We have a real problem,” he said.

When asked whether current immigration policies threaten Quebec identity, Legault said that he can “objectively” see that certain people who live in the province “don’t adhere to a fundamental value, equality between men and women.”

However, Legault said he still believes the majority of Quebecers believe in that equality.

“But we have to be careful, we have to ask questions, like the ones they’re asking in Europe,” he said.

In April, Immigration Minister Kathleen Weil said the provincial government is planning to keep the threshold at 50,000 people for 2017.

In an interview with Radio-Canada, immigration lawyer Stéphane Handfield questioned the reason for a 20 per cent decrease.

“Why not 45,000, why not 30,000, why not 35,000?” he said.

During the announcement, Legault repeatedly mentioned the need to protect the French language.

Quebec has a special agreement with the Canadian government when it comes to immigration — skilled workers must obtain what is called a selection certificate from the Quebec government before applying for permanent residency.

Handfield said while he is all for protecting the French language, he pointed out skilled workers who want to immigrate to Quebec must demonstrate they can speak French in order to obtain that certificate.

Quebec’s Trump?

Both Premier Philippe Couillard and Québec Solidaire MNA Françoise David have recently compared Legault to U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump.

In March, Couillard accused Legault of “fanning the flames of intolerance” when Legault questioned a possible increase in the province’s immigration threshold.

Source: CAQ wants to let fewer immigrants into Quebec – Montreal – CBC News

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →