Businesses applaud changes to allow temporary foreign workers to stay as long as permits renewed

2016/12/17 Leave a comment

Yet another reversal of the previous government’s policy but partial  -the caps on company numbers remain with priority to be given to under-represented groups in Canada:

The government announced Tuesday afternoon it will allow migrant workers to continue filling jobs in industries ranging from meat-packing to tourism for as many years as their employers continue to renew their permit – in effect, making the presence of these temporary workers more permanent.

“Many people who fell under this category are people who would return to Canada, again and again and again, year after year,” said Michael Burt, director of industrial economic trends at the Conference Board of Canada. “It’s a positive thing in a sense that, broadly speaking, both employers and TFWs were looking for opportunities to stay in Canada to keep that relationship going.”

After four years of working in Canada, most migrant workers in occupations requiring little or no post-secondary education would then be unable to return here for another four years unless they secured permanent residency through a provincial immigration program.

That “four-in-four-out” policy was created by the Conservative government in 2011 to ensure that jobs filled by temporary foreign workers were truly temporary. It led to thousands of foreign workers remaining in Canada undocumented, and thousands more leaving while employers in industries like agriculture, food processing and hospitality complained of persistent labour shortages.

“It uprooted people who had lived and worked in the country for many, many years,” said Syed Hussan, an organizer with the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, which is calling for permanent residency for temporary foreign workers upon landing.

In many cases, employers proved no Canadians were available for the jobs these workers were leaving behind so they could hire new temporary foreign workers to fill the roles. In others, the four-year limit, combined with other restrictions on the temporary foreign worker program, meant that jobs went unfilled even though employers increased efforts to recruit Canadians.

“It has had the effect of forcing a lot of people to go home that we should really be pursuing to stay in Canada permanently, as opposed to giving them the boot,” said Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

Kelly and other industry representatives are hopeful the Liberal government will soon follow through on its promise to develop pathways to permanent residency for lower-skilled workers, who are currently shut out of federal immigration programs.

…Some economists, such as Armine Yalnizyan at the left-wing Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, also support granting permanent residency to more migrant workers. Relying on a permanent stream of temporary workers destabilizes local labour markets by suppressing wages and opportunities for young Canadians, Yalnizyan said.

But others say the removal of the four-year limit blurs the distinctions between permanent and temporary immigration programs, raising questions about the future of Canada’s immigration system.

“What distinguishes the two streams now, when the idea of ‘temporary’ is taken out of the equation by removing the amount of time they can spend in Canada?” said Colin Busby, associate director of research at the C.D. Howe Institute.

It is unclear how Canada will balance taking in a large number of temporary foreign workers permanently with the permanent immigration system’s traditional focus on high-skilled workers to meet Canada’s long-term economic needs, Busby added.

But, for many in the agricultural sector, including Portia MacDonald-Dewhirst, executive director of the Canadian Agricultural Human Resources Council, long-term economic and social integration of temporary workers is precisely the point.

“There should be opportunities for them and pathways to become Canadian citizens,” she said.

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‘Extraordinary initiative’: Canada’s private refugee sponsorship system exported as model for the world 

2016/12/17 Leave a comment

While I am always cautious in exporting any Canadian “model,” as local conditions, history, geographies and identities vary, nevertheless good to share our experience and lessons learned with others (and likewise, learn from them):

The world could make strides in resolving the global refugee crisis by adopting Canada’s private sponsorship model, says Immigration Minister John McCallum.

Speaking at a news conference to officially launch the Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative, which will train and advise other countries on how to establish programs that allow private individuals and groups to finance, facilitate and support refugees coming to the country, McCallum urged other countries to do more.

“I think one aspect of this crisis today is that there are not enough countries receiving enough refugees to solve the problem, to put it mildly,” he said. “So I do believe this initiative, which is essentially to export to interested countries in the rest of the world our privately sponsored refugees [program], could make a significant impact on the refugee crisis.”

Participants from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Germany, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S. are in Ottawa for a three-day session on how Canada’s program could be replicated in their own countries. About 90 international delegates are attending.

Canada is dedicating six staff to spearhead the initiative to get the greatest “buy in” from other countries.

McCallum said the world is seeing the worst refugee crisis in decades, and a growing number of countries are keen to embrace Canada’s project as a way to help. Engaging citizens will boost public support for newcomers, and help refugees integrate with greater ease and success.

According to the department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the private refugee sponsorship program has helped resettle more than 288,000 refugees since the late 1970s.

More than 13,000 Syrian refugees have been resettled in Canada through private sponsorship since November 2015.

1.2 million refugees in life-threatening situations

In March, Canada’s government-assisted and private sponsorship of refugees was hailed as a model for the world by Filippo Grandi, the head of the United Nations Refugee Agency.

Johannes Van Der Klaauw, the agency’s representative in Canada, said today there are now 1.2 million refugees who are in life-threatening situations. He urged other countries to follow Canada’s lead to encourage private sponsors to complement government-assisted programs.

Gregory Maniatis, an international resettlement expert with Open Society Foundations, called Canada’s program an extraordinary initiative.

While there are many obstacles, including many governments around the world, he said there is a groundswell of grassroots support from citizens.

“If you look at what’s happening on the ground, amongst citizens….we think and we have seen, a tremendous desire to help,” he said.

McCallum said while Canada is a very welcoming country compared to others, it is not universally so. He said to stem potential resentment, the government is always careful to ensure refugees are not seen to be treated better than other Canadians when it comes to social housing, health or other benefits.

“We have to ensure that the way we behave is fair. Fair to refugees, but also to Canadians,” he said.

The Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative is led by the federal government, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the University of Ottawa, the Radcliffe Foundation and the Open Society Foundations

Source: ‘Extraordinary initiative’: Canada’s private refugee sponsorship system exported as model for the world – Politics – CBC News

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Identity politics returns to Quebec: Patriquin

2016/12/17 Leave a comment

Martin Patriquin’s balanced take on Quebec’s Bill C-62 (banning face covering when providing or receiving public services):

Quebec is home to a majority population of about 6.6 million French speakers, where about three-quarters of the 50,000 immigrants who arrive here every year settle in the region of Montreal. The city is multicultural and multilingual. The rest of the province is largely white and French.

The populism resulting from this unique demographic circumstance, which surfaced in the 2007 election campaign, had a distinctly Trumpian narrative to it. To wit: the political elites in Quebec City were corrupt and out of touch. Immigration had turned Montreal into a Babylonian hellhole, and threatened to do the same to the hinterland. By throwing out the first and radically curtailing the second, Quebec would be . . . well, it would be great again.

Two political parties, first the right-of-centre Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ) and then the Parti Québécois, attempted to harness this resentment. Both failed miserably. The ADQ ceased existing in 2012, while the PQ suffered one of the worst defeats in its history in 2014.

Still, issues of immigration and religion remain a stubborn constant in Quebec politics. Both the PQ and the Coalition Avenir Québec, the successor to the ADQ, have introduced plans to cut immigration levels. Both have equated the rise in immigration under successive Liberal governments to the decline of French in the province—a contention disproved by several recent Quebec government studies.

PQ Leader Jean-François Lisée said burqas should be banned before “a jihadist uses one to hide his movements.” The CAQ recently ran an advertisement suggesting the chador would become commonplace in Quebec classrooms should either the Liberals or the PQ form the next government. (In truth, body-covering Muslim garb is about as rare in Quebec as Maple Leafs fans.)

Yet despite all this rhetoric over the last 10 years, Quebec remains a comparatively welcoming province. At 3.2 per 100,000, police-reported hate crimes in the province are below the national average of 3.7—and well below Ontario’s average of 4.8, according to the most recent Statistics Canada data.

It is in the crucible of the debate that the province has developed guidelines for so-called “reasonable accommodations” of religious and cultural practices. In 2017, Quebec’s National Assembly will vote on Bill 62, which would compel anyone giving or receiving a public service to do so with their face uncovered—unless the temperature, not religion, dictates otherwise. It is the second time in six years that the province has attempted to pass such a thing.

The bill has its critics, and will almost certainly be the subject to a court challenge should it become law. Yet in limiting its reach to the public service, the legislation strikes a balance between religious freedom and state religious neutrality. (Such is decidedly not the case in France, where the very act of wearing a religious face covering in public is illegal.) The final vote on Bill 62 will take place outside the context of an election campaign, when instances of chest-thumping vitriol tend to be lower. The optimist hopes cooler heads will prevail.

While America is hardly new to the caustic politics of race and identity, it raced to new lows during the last presidential campaign. Trump’s victory has invigorated populist movements around the globe; suddenly, the world is awash in worry over immigration and religion.

In Quebec, this sort of thing is old hat. Long the outlier on the identity front in Canada, Quebec’s take on matters of religion and immigration suddenly seem sensible, even desirable, in a world of border walls and Muslim bans.

Filed under Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

USA ICYMI: Fight Continues to Close Citizenship Loophole for Adoptees

2016/12/17 Leave a comment

Another example of people falling between the cracks through no fault of their own:

Today Adam Crapser calls Korea home, a home he hasn’t been to since he was just 3 years old. But a ruling just last month called for the Korean-born adoptee to be returned to his birth country despite having no connections or family in Korea, nor any understanding of the Korean language.

For the past year, Adam Crapser has been the poster child for the Adoptee Citizenship Act, as he has fought to stay in the United States. Adopted at age 3 by American parents, Crapser was abused by his adoptive parents who never made sure to file for Crapser’s American citizenship. Later adopted by another abusive family, no one ever took care of the paperwork necessary to get his citizenship complete, something that automatically occurs for children adopted internationally after 2000 thanks to the Child Citizenship Act. The loophole in the law has eft an estimated 30,000 adoptees vulnerable to deportation because their parents did not fill out the proper paperwork for their citizenship, according to the Adoptee Rights Campaign.

For Crapser, that meant coming under scrutiny after acquiring a criminal record, in part in an effort to retrieve belongings from his second family, who were convicted of a number of serious criminal charges due to their treatment of Crapser.

Crapser’s attorney on the case, Lori Walls, said Crapser’s story is similar to other cases she’s worked on and seen over the years. Walls began working with Crapser in 2015 after Crapser heard about the successful outcome for one of Walls’ other Korean adoptee clients caught in a similar predicament. In that case the outcome was more positive, but that adoptee’s criminal charges were also less severe than Crapser’s. Regardless, Walls said it’s a travesty that children brought to the United States and adopted by American parents should face such harsh penalty for circumstances beyond their control.

“The United States government facilitated these adoptions and it’s outrageous that the government is now deporting these people,” Walls said. “It doesn’t make sense that someone who entered as an infant or toddler is subjected to deportation proceedings as an adult.”

For that very reason, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., has been working to change the loophole through the introduction of the Adoptee Citizenship Act. If passed, the act would grant citizenship to adoptees whose parents and guardians failed to go through the proper channels to ensure their child’s citizenship.

“We’re talking about people who have no connection whatsoever to their birth country,” Smith said. “They’re subject to the laws of the United States if they commit a crime, but they shouldn’t be subject to deportation.”

For that same reason the Citizenship Act of 2000 was passed to provide adoptees with immediate citizenship upon adoption. However, the law didn’t retroactively cover children adopted prior to 2000.

Source: Fight Continues to Close Citizenship Loophole for Adoptees

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Opinion: Scorn for multiculturalism in Quebec yields troubling results

2016/12/17 Leave a comment

Quebec human rights lawyer Pearl Eliadis:

Interculturalism starts from the premise of the de facto precedence of Quebec’s majority culture over others. That practical reality was not supposed to have morphed into legal precedence, nor to have operated in a way that perpetuates the privileges of that majority. However there are troubling indications that it has done just that.

Other rights have been subordinated, including racial and religious equality. This is in part the result of Quebec’s brand of laïcité-lite that has imposed religious neutrality on non-majoritarian faiths and individuals as well as on the state. Equality and reasonable accommodation for minorities have become battlegrounds in the fight for “Quebec values.” The Supreme Court keeps having to intervene, as it did in the Multani decision in 2006 (to permit an observant Sikh boy to wear a sewn-in, concealed kirpan to school) and in several other cases after that.

In 2011, the National Assembly barred Sikhs from its precincts after having invited them to participate in a debate on reasonable accommodation. In 2013, there was the PQ’s nativist Charter of Values, Bill 60, built squarely on the foundations of Quebec values and interculturalism.

In 2015, the Quebec Liberals introduced Bill 62. It is nowhere as troubling as the Charter of Values, but it does weaken the flexibility of the public sector in accommodating religious minorities. Both Quebec’s human rights commission and the Quebec Bar Association have objected to several aspects of the bill.

As for the practical effect of protecting the “de facto precedence” of the majority, minorities are dealt with as satellite communities revolving around the “host society” until they are absorbed, effectively assimilated, and no longer seen as threats. Nowhere is the impact of this approach clearer than in the relatively poor employment prospects of immigrants in Quebec and, of course, in the low representation of minorities among the senior ranks of the Quebec public service. The issue is systemic and transcends party loyalties, and yet we continue to be forced to ask questions for which the answers are, depressingly, well known. How many senior appointments among Quebec’s public institutions, agencies and commissions are from racialized or ethnic minority backgrounds? How many are anglophones or allophones?

When the news about Thermitus [candidacy for the presidency of Quebec’s human rights commission] became public, the PQ quickly pivoted, perhaps mindful of the appalling optics, and said it would support the appointment. That is good news, even if it’s not yet clear whether Thermitus will get the job. But the broader issue of the rejection of multiculturalism in Quebec reminded me of something that Zadie Smith, the British-born novelist, said in November while accepting a literary prize: “The people who ask me about the ‘failure of multiculturalism’ mean to suggest that not only has a political ideology failed but that human beings themselves have changed and are now fundamentally incapable of living peacefully together despite their many differences.” That is not an outcome any of us should be prepared to accept.

Source: Opinion: Scorn for multiculturalism in Quebec yields troubling results | Montreal Gazette

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Rare views of Japanese-Canadian internment: 19 images remembering one of Canada’s darkest hours 

2016/12/16 Leave a comment

1941_boats-u1369Good and harrowing series of photos (have chosen just two):

Last week was the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Amid commemorations of the Americans killed in the attack, as well as the brutal war that followed, also came a solemn remembrance of how the United States interned coastal Japanese-American populations that it wrongly believed were a dangerous fifth column.

A similar tragedy, of course, played out in wartime Canada. In a country with an established tradition of respecting civil liberties, wartime hysteria led to 21,000 people of Japanese descent being forcibly removed from a 100-mile “defence zone” along the British Columbia coast.

But that’s only part of the story. The National Post has combed through archives across the country to unearth these rare photos of one of the darkest hours in modern Canadian history.

propaganda

Beginning in March 1941 — eight months before the attack on Pearl Harbor — Japanese-Canadians were required to obtain these identity cards, which have been recently featured as part of the museum exhibition Registered. Something to note on these cards is that issuers felt the need to stamp them with the words “Canadian born.” It would have been understandable for the owners of these cards, both of them Canadian citizens, to see that stamp as a kind of insurance policy in case of war with Japan. But ultimately, 75 per cent of those interned were Canadian citizens, including many who could not speak Japanese or had fought for Canada in the First World War. With no similar mass internments taken against Italian- or German-Canadians, it was clear to them that this was motivated by a belief that Japanese were racially incapable of loyalty. As U.S. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson summed it up, “their racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or trust even the citizen Japanese.”

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Is 2016 the Year That Fashion Finally Embraced Diversity? – The Daily Beast

2016/12/16 Leave a comment

I don’t follow the fashion press but this analysis is both interesting and revealing, particularly the contrast between different publications:

2016 is shaping up to be the most diverse year yet for the fashion industry, according to a new report tracking racial representation on glossy magazine covers.

Released Wednesday by the Fashion Spot, a 70,000 invitation-only community of industry insiders, the annual report found that more women of color were featured on glossy covers this year than the past three years (the Fashion Spot began conducting its annual report in 2013).

The report tracked 679 cover appearances from 48 top international fashion publications and found that 29 percent (197 covers) featured nonwhite women. Fashion runways have become increasingly diverse as well, suggesting a shift in the industry at large.

In October, the Fashion Spot’s biannual report gauging diversity on the catwalk found that 25.4 percent of nonwhite models walked the runway during Spring 2017 fashion week in New York, Milan, Paris, and London, making this season the most diverse in history.

New York had the most models of color (30.3 percent) this year, while Milan scored the lowest points for diversity on the runway (20.9 percent).

That glossy magazine covers are featuring more women of color coincides with a larger cultural demand for more diversity in the entertainment industry, particularly in Hollywood and on network television.

Last year, some of Hollywood’s most famous black actors called for a boycott of the Academy Awards when it was revealed that—for the first time in two decades—every single acting nominee was white.

The #OscarsSoWhite hashtag began trending with the controversy, prompting the Academy to announce an initiative promising greater diversity in its future voting body.

Actresses and entertainers make up a large percentage of fashion magazine cover models, and stars like Beyoncé, Zendaya, and Rihanna are regulars on top glossy covers. While the Fashion Spot has no data on how covers showing women of color affect sales of magazines, it’s clear that famous women of color—Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Michelle Obama, to name a few popular cover stars—sell.

Still, the only nonwhite woman in the report’s list of top 10 cover models this year was actress Lupita Nyong’o, who graced five covers. By contrast, top model Gigi Hadid snagged 14 covers, while her Instagram-famous peer Kendall Jenner and sister Bella Hadid landed 10 and 8 covers respectively.

“I think nonwhite actresses are seen as a ‘safer’ bet over traditional models of color in terms of sales,” Jennifer Davidson, the Fashion Spot’s editor in chief, told The Daily Beast, noting that Zendaya, Zoe Kravitz, Selena Gomez, Jessica Alba, Rihanna, and Beyoncé were “more likely to earn multiple cover appearances” than models of color.

Among the worst diversity offenders were Harper’s Bazaar, Love, Marie Claire U.K., Porter, Vogue Germany, Vogue Netherlands, Vogue Paris, and Vogue Russia (all failed to feature a single woman of color on their covers this year).

I-D, InStyle, Paper, Teen Vogue, Vogue India, Vogue Korea, and Vogue Taiwan had the most racially diverse cover stars, though the fact that Vogue Indian, Korea, and Taiwan featured nonwhite models is likely owed to their buying demographic’s predominantly nonwhite ethnicities rather than a conscious effort to be more diverse.

Source: Is 2016 the Year That Fashion Finally Embraced Diversity? – The Daily Beast

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Why Islam Gets Second-Class Status in Germany – The New York Times

2016/12/16 1 Comment

Interesting commentary by Alexander Gorlach:

Religion in Germany is not a private affair. Government at all levels recognizes religious communities as public institutions, and encourages participation in them — Germans who register with the state as Roman Catholics, Protestants or Jews pay a “religion tax,” which the government then sends to their respective institution. Religious groups are also allowed to give faith-based instruction in public schools: It’s not uncommon for a small-town pastor, priest or lay person to have a spot on the local high school faculty.

To enjoy this privileged status, religious communities must have a defined set of beliefs, their members must be recorded, and they must have historical and social significance. The Catholic, Protestant and Jewish religious communities are organized as public institutions; in the state of Berlin, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormon Church are as well.

It might seem as if Islam, with 4.3 million adherents in Germany, would have qualified easily. But so far, the German government has resisted including it.

The reason is both simple and complex: Muslim communities are separated along ethnic lines as well as along denominational lines among Sunnis, Shiites and Alawites. Often there is little unity among these groups, hence they fail the most important state criterion: a unified religious body with shared goals and doctrines.

These requirements for a religion to get a privileged status in Germany highlight the anachronistic state of the secular federal republic in its approach to faith. The idea that the state can cooperate with religious groups in the same way it cooperates with, say, labor unions presumes a certain unity and hierarchy on the part of those groups. But Islam doesn’t work that way. It simply doesn’t fit within criteria written for the structured Christian churches that have shaped Europe, with bishops and baptismal registers.

For quite some time, there have been demands that the law be renamed to the Religionsrecht (State and Religion Law), and for it to include a wider diversity of religions. Though nothing much has changed on the national level, there has been progress in the states, where most of the country’s religious laws are promulgated. Bavaria, a conservative Catholic state that polls very high in measurements of xenophobia and anti-refugee sentiment, nevertheless has been running an Islamic-education pilot program in schools; it is also home to Germany’s oldest mosques. Perhaps the Bavarians, precisely because they protect their own religious and cultural traditions so ferociously, are also the most willing to recognize and support the traditions of others.

But it’s not only in Bavaria that reform is moving forward. In the Protestant-dominated north, Christian Wulff, a premier of Lower Saxony, set up training courses for future imams and Islamic religious teachers at the universities of Münster and Osnabrück. Later, when he was president of Germany, Mr. Wulff said, “Islam belongs to Germany.”

Though Mr. Wulff served just two years as president before resigning in 2012 over allegations of corruption (since dropped), his actions on behalf of Islam — and that quotation in particular — set off a debate that continues across the country. Critics of Islamic religious education in the schools, including many Muslims themselves, say that there is no group in the country that can speak for all Muslims. And indeed, it is estimated that the Central Council of Muslims and the Islamic Council for the Federal Republic of Germany, the two groups that have the best claims to speak for Islam in Germany, represent no more than 20 percent of German Muslims.

Germany is a secular country, but the German legal framework approves of institutionalized religions in a biased way. The religions must organize themselves according to state standards, and those standards are tailored toward the structures of the Christian religion.

The result is a delegitimization of the state’s relationship to religious groups in the eyes of many non-Christians, particularly Muslims — a dangerous prospect at a time when rapid integration is essential to maintain social peace. In the context of a growing Muslim community and a rising number of citizens affiliated with no religion at all, Germany may not be able to maintain an order that arose many generations ago.

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

Liberals scrap parent visa application process over concerns people pay for spots at the front of the line

2016/12/16 Leave a comment

Market responds and government reacts:

Coveted spots for the parent and grandparent visa program will be awarded by lottery in 2017 after the federal Liberals have scrapped the old first-come, first-serve system that had raised concerns over people paying to be at the front of that line.

Applications for the always over-subscribed program had been accepted only via courier or mail at a single immigration office and since they were processed in the order received, couriers had been doing brisk business promising to be at the front of the line, in exchange for fees that could be as high as $400.

But that system has now been replaced by a random draw, the federal immigration minister announced Wednesday.

“We’re ensuring everyone can access the application process by giving them the same chance to have their name chosen,” Immigration Minister John McCallum said in a statement.

Beginning Jan. 3, Canadians will have 30 days to fill out an online form indicating their desire to sponsor a parent or grandparent. From those, immigration officials will randomly draw 10,000 individuals who will then be asked to submit the full application within 90 days.

The change comes after The Canadian Press first reported earlier this year that the previous first-come, first-serve process was seeing couriers charge more than $400 to guarantee applications would be at the top of the pile for the spots available in 2016.

That raised concerns that the visas were going to those who could afford to pay the high fees or camp out for hours at the Mississauga, Ont., immigration office.

A lot of people had been rejected in the past and were looking forward to this year

High demand came in part from the fact the previous Conservative government closed the program entirely between 2011 and 2014 to bring down a massive backlog.

It re-opened in 2014 with an annual cap of 5,000 applications. Last year, 14,000 applications were received and the Liberals later raised the cap on the number of applications they would accept to 10,000.

Couriers had already started taking reservations to deliver 2017 applications, with fees ranging from $60 to $200, depending on whether someone wanted to guarantee their application was delivered first.

Source: Liberals scrap parent visa application process over concerns people pay for spots at the front of the line | National Post

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For racialized communities, electoral reform is about more than voting | Toronto Star

2016/12/16 Leave a comment

While Avvy gets the numbers wrong – there are 47 visible minority MPs, not 46  (14 percent), close to the 15 percent of visible minorities who are also Canadian citizens and who can vote, her broader point on the need for better representation would benefit for more attention to the declining naturalization rate, and how that disproportionately affects visible minorities, and hence participation in elections (see Citizenship Applications: Third Quarter Continues to Show Decline).

Moreover, while it is legitimate to criticize the specific choices of which  visible minorities made it into Cabinet (four Canadian Sikhs, one Afghan Canadian), a broader look at senior political positions (parliamentary secretaries etc) and Senate appointments presents a more nuanced picture (see my Government appointments and diversity).

My focus is more on the declining naturalization rate given the longer term impact on social inclusion/cohesion and representation:

When the 46 so-called “visible-minority” MPs were elected to the Canadian Parliament in the 2015 election, some media called it a “watershed” moment in our history and a victory for Canada’s multiculturalism. In reality, out of a total of 338 seats, the politicians from different communities of colour represent just over 13 per cent of Parliament, while about 19 per cent of Canada’s population is made up of people of colour, with the largest three groups being South Asian, Chinese and black, who together made up 61 per cent of all communities of colour. When Trudeau named his cabinet, one that he described as looking like Canada, not one Chinese or black made it to his short list.

Today, tens of thousands permanent residents of Canada are denied the right to vote because of the strict naturalization law, not to mention the 200,000 or immigrants with precarious status who have lived and worked in Canada for years, in some cases decades, without ever given a chance to regularize their status.

As Canadians ponder which electoral system will be best for our democracy, considerations should be given for the following two questions:

  • Which electoral system will be best able to engage the marginalized communities, including racialized communities and new Canadians, in order to ensure their full participation in the democratic process.
  • Regardless of which system is chosen, what can we do to make our political bodies more fully reflect the makeup of Canada?

On both questions, the special committee report fell short. While the Report did make some passing references to the need to increase representation of “visible minorities,” no specific recommendation — or an attempt to come up with one — was made to address this issue.

This is in contrast with the committee’s treatment of some of the other under-represented groups, or groups that are not as engaged in the political process as they should, such as indigenous peoples, students, youth, people with disabilities, and women, where there were specific sections in the report devoted to analyzing how to increase their democratic purification, and in the case of indigenous people and women, their political representation. But even then, the committee did not offer any concrete solutions for these critical challenges.

The government has since been hosting its own online consultation to gather public opinion. Apart from offering no public education or information about the electoral reform process or the various possible options, the questions posted on Mydemocracy.ca are replete with false dichotomy.

Canadians are asked a number of “either-or” questions, as if the choices presented are mutually exclusive. One question assumes, for instance, a system that requires greater collaboration among parties would be less accountable. Another asks Canadians to choose between improving representation of under-represented groups and greater political accountability.

While there is no perfect system, there is no reason why we cannot aspire to design a system that is inclusive, accountable, and above all, responsive to all Canadians.

Source: For racialized communities, electoral reform is about more than voting | Toronto Star

Filed under Citizenship, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

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