Lady Gaga’s Super Gay Super Bowl Halftime Show Came When We Needed It Most – The Daily Beast

2017/02/07 Leave a comment

While the overall view appears to be that Lady Gaga played it safe, her goals were less so:

It was actually rather inspiring to listen to Lady Gaga talk about the goals she had for the performance at a press conference last week.

“Music is one of the most powerful things the world has to offer. No matter what race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, or gender that you are, it has the power to unite us, so this performance is for everyone. I want to, more than anything, create a moment that everybody who’s watching will never forget—not for me, but for themselves,” she said.

This whole political statement debate? “The only statements I’ll be making during the halftime show are the ones that I have been consistently making throughout my career,” she said. “I believe in a passion for inclusion, I believe in the spirit of equality, and [I believe] the spirit of this country is one of love and compassion and kindness, so my performance will uphold those philosophies.”

It’s one thing to hear that, and another to watch it unfold over the course of 13 minutes on TV, fatigued from another week of horrifying headlines and cultural frustration that’s long passed its boiling point. Who knew how much we’d need Lady Gaga right now?

“Essentially, that kid that couldn’t get a seat at the cool kids table and that kid who was kicked out of the house because his mom and dad didn’t accept him for who he was? That kid is going to have the stage for 13 minutes,” she said. “And I’m excited to give it to them.”

And we needed to receive it.

Source: Lady Gaga’s Super Gay Super Bowl Halftime Show Came When We Needed It Most – The Daily Beast

CBC did a nice round-up of the messages of the ads, largely explicitly or subtly in favour of diversity and inclusion:

It’s rare that you want to watch the commercials. Normally you want to change channels, go get a snack or fast forward through them — except during the Super Bowl.

For Americans, commercials have long been part of the attraction. And this year — finally — Canadians got to take part in the fun, thanks to a CRTC decision.

Every year, more than 30 advertisers spend roughly $5 million US and aim to create the most memorable 30 to 90 seconds by stuffing commercials with celebrities, slapstick humour, cute animals or children.

This year’s crop of ads filled all the categories, but several nodded to the political climate since Donald Trump became president.

The messages

Shortly before kickoff, Coca-Cola’s replayed an ad originally from 2014, which featured America the Beautiful sung in eight different languages. The commercial seems to be a reaction to increased racial tensions in the U.S. New or not, this commercial struck a nice tone.

The most obviously political ad was from 84 Lumber, which had an earlier version rejected for being too controversial. The commercial features the journey of a woman and her daughter travelling through Mexico. The ad directs viewers online to see the conclusion.

At the end of the six-minute piece, you see the characters arrive at a towering wall and appearing defeated until they discover a gate in the wall. The ad ends with the words, “The will to succeed is always welcome here.”

The commercial is clearly in opposition to Trump’s plan to build a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

 The hits, misses and messages of the Super Bowl commercials

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ICYMI: Refugee board redeploys staff to cope with surge in asylum claims

2017/02/07 Leave a comment

The IRB also has about 20 vacancies out of a total of over 90:

The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada says it is changing its approach for scheduling asylum hearings in order to cope with “increasing refugee claims” and “global instability.”

The board has seen a dramatic increase in the number of inland refugee claimants (those who arrive in Canada and seek asylum) from 10,751 in 2013 to 16,914 in 2015. Just nine months into 2016, 16,279 claims had been filed and the yearly tally, which isn’t yet available, is expected to reach 20,000.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s anti-refugee and anti-immigrant policies coupled with as Ottawa’s recent move to lift the visa requirements for Mexican travellers mean Canada is expected to see its annual asylum claims peak again this year.

In a terse notice, the board said it will redeploy up to half of its capacity to address its backlog of claims, which stands at more than 21,000, while the rest of staff will continue to focus on newly arrived claims that must be heard within 60 days under the controversial statutory timelines imposed by the former Conservative government.

In the last year or so, lawyers have been complaining of delays by the Canada Border Services Agency in issuing security clearances, which refugees need before their claims can be heard. If they don’t have a security clearance at their first hearing, lawyers say, claimants are doomed to wait “in a black hole” until a new hearing is scheduled.

“Under a new process, certain claims identified by the (board’s) refugee protection division as straightforward will be scheduled for a short hearing,” said the notice issued Friday.

“The expectation is that a substantial majority of these claims will be finalized at the end of the short hearing. The provision to grant refugee protection to certain claims without a hearing will remain.”

Source: Refugee board redeploys staff to cope with surge in asylum claims | Toronto Star

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Trump Backers Want Ideology Test For Extreme Vetting : NPR

2017/02/06 Leave a comment

Orwellian and ineffective given that those requesting entry are highly unlikely to openly express such views, if indeed they have them (Kellie Leitch to note):

The Trump administration says it is suspending all refugee admissions to the United States until it can come up with a plan for “extreme vetting.”

So what could that mean?

Refugees are already subjected to multiple interviews and a security vetting by nine U.S. law enforcement, intelligence and security agencies that check their backgrounds, social media activity and the reasons they fled their countries. The process usually takes 18 months or more, according to resettlement agencies.

But some of those who helped form President Trump’s policies on refugees are upfront in saying this is not actually about stricter security screening. It’s about something else.

“It means a kind of ideological screening to keep out people who hate a free society even if they are not violent,” says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that supports tighter controls on immigration. Krikorian met with Trump during the campaign and backs the president’s executive order as a “corrective” to the vetting system in place during the Obama years.

In an interview with NPR, Krikorian said he backs an ideological test that poses questions for refugees in the vetting process including, in his words, “Do you think it’s okay to kill apostates? Do you think it’s okay to throw gays off of buildings? Or if Islam’s Prophet Muhammad is insulted, there should be a punishment?”

If a refugee says yes to any of these questions, says Krikorian, “Then we don’t want you here.”

Trump’s executive order on immigration appears to refer to these views by declaring the United States should keep out those with “hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles” and “those who would place violent ideologies over American law.”

This is all of intense concern for refugee advocates. The most pressing refugee need today is among Syrians — some 5 million have fled the country’s civil war. The vast majority are Muslim.

“It’s clearly Muslim-targeted,” says Muna Jondy, a Michigan immigration lawyer of Syrian descent who’s been fielding frantic calls from refugee families in the U.S. whose relatives are now barred from joining them.

She points out the refugee screening process already targets those with extreme Islamist views via counter-terrorism vetting, which checks for links to radical Islamist groups.

But the president appears to echo opinions of a web of supporters who have warned about the wider “dangers” of Islam and more recently have called for rigorous ideological vetting. His national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, has called fear of Islam “rational” and equates Islam with a political ideology.

One of the most outspoken of these supporters is Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Policy Studies and a leading anti-immigration advocate. Human rights groups have described Gaffney as a conspiracy theorist and Islamophobe, but his views have gained traction in the Trump administration. Trump cited his work during his campaign.

…In a broad sense, tests of attitudes aren’t unprecedented. Doris Meissner, a former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, notes that an ideological test for newcomers is “deeply embedded” in U.S. history. The U.S. barred anarchists in 1903. During the Cold War, she says, “It was people who believed in communism. It’s still in our law.”

But Meissner points out these ideological tests have not had the desired outcome, because over time, the tests “have proven to be poorly equipped to actually predict what people are going to do.” And it gets more complex when the beliefs straddle the line between politics and religion.

Meissner compares Trump supporters’ fear of sharia law and their view that it’s at odds with the U.S. system with the fears and debates surrounding the candidacy of John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s. Kennedy was Catholic and his detractors feared that if elected, the American president would be taking orders from the Pope.

“Then, JFK made his well-known statement about his personal faith and his responsibility to the civil system,” Meissner says.

Source: Trump Backers Want Ideology Test For Extreme Vetting : Parallels : NPR

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Dix ans après Bouchard-Taylor, tant reste à faire

2017/02/06 Leave a comment

Good summary by journalists Stéphane Baillargeon, Robert Dutrisac
and Lisa-Marie Gervais:

Québec annonçait il y a dix ans la formation de la commission Bouchard-Taylor. Les deux présidents livrent leur bilan et Le Devoir constate les retards et les échecs dans l’application de plusieurs recommandations centrales.

La « réalité alternative » a la cote par les nouveaux temps trumpiens qui courent, mais les faits sont têtus. Les faits disent, par exemple, que l’organisme Ensemble pour le respect de la diversité, qui fait la promotion du respect des différences, ne reçoit à peu près plus rien de l’État québécois.

Deux ministères (Éducation et Affaires autochtones) fournissent maintenant 4 % des quelque 630 000 $ du budget annuel de fonctionnement. Le ministère de l’Immigration, de la Diversité et de l’Inclusion du Québec (le MIDI) fournit par contre 30 000 $ par année pour deux ans pour un projet de lutte contre la radicalisation.

Nous sommes contents d’avoir du soutien pour les petits projets, mais notre mission n’est pas appuyée

« Nous avons subi une baisse énorme », résume Marie-Ève Paiement, qui assume l’intérim à la direction de l’organisme montréalais, qui, en 20 ans, a donné plus de 10 000 ateliers, visité 965 écoles, rencontré près de 340 000 jeunes du Québec et du Canada. « La recommandation qui nous concerne dans le rapport de la commission Bouchard-Taylor n’a malheureusement pas été appliquée, dit-elle. Nous sommes contents d’avoir du soutien pour les petits projets, mais notre mission n’est pas appuyée. »

En 2004, la Fondation pour la tolérance (l’ancien nom d’Ensemble pour la diversité) tirait le tiers de ses revenus des subventions au fonctionnement. C’était avant la commission Bouchard-Taylor et avant que son rapport de 2008 recommande précisément d’augmenter le soutien financier à ce genre d’organisme et à la Fondation en particulier.

Un autre exemple ? La commission recommandait aussi « d’accorder une attention particulière à la Capitale-Nationale de façon à en faire un deuxième pôle métropolitain d’accueil des nouveaux venus ». Vérification faite, le MIDI a annulé le fonds d’aide à la régionalisation des immigrants il y a trois ans.

« Le Québec est la seule province au Canada où la population immigrante s’installe presque exclusivement dans sa métropole, dit Jean-Luc Gélinas, du Service d’orientation et d’intégration des immigrants au travail (SOIT) de Québec. Les professionnels immigrés ne vont pas là où sont les emplois : ils se dirigent presque tous vers Montréal, où ils ne sont pas assurés de trouver du travail en fonction de leurs compétences et de leur formation. »

Le document déposé en 2008 listait 37 recommandations. Dès novembre 2009, un an après le dépôt du rapport, des porte-parole gouvernementaux affirmaient que 80 % des recommandations avaient fait l’objet d’un suivi.

Jusqu’au départ du premier ministre Jean Charest en 2012, le directeur général de la Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes (TCRI), Stephan Reichhold, produisait un « Bulletin de performance » pour suivre l’application des recommandations. Il évaluait en 2010 que 6 % des stratégies proposées étaient concrétisées. « Je ne penserais pas que ç’a ait beaucoup changé », dit-il au Devoir.

Dans un article publié en 2014 dans le livre L’interculturel au Québec (PUL), le sociologue François Rocher, de l’Université d’Ottawa, estimait pour sa part qu’environ le tiers (37 %) des recommandations avaient été mises en oeuvre. La note positive n’était accordée qu’à 7 des 24 plans jugés prioritaires.

Bref, les bilans ne semblent pas très favorables, et les deux présidents eux-mêmes trouvent aussi, dans les entrevues accordées au Devoir, que les choses traînent.

Le professeur Gérard Bouchard fait directement référence à ce bilan très mitigé. Charles Taylor souligne que deux secteurs concrets font particulièrement défaut, celui de la reconnaissance des compétences et des diplômes et celui de l’intégration comme telle.

Les vérifications effectuées par Le Devoir au sujet d’une dizaine de recommandations décrites comme prioritaires il y a dix ans pointent aussi vers du laxisme, des lacunes, voire des régressions.

Interculturalisme et laïcité. La commission demandait que le modèle de l’interculturalisme soit inscrit dans une loi. Ce modèle diffère du multiculturalisme en ce sens qu’il met l’accent sur la diversité, mais autour d’un noyau francophone. Les commissaires proposaient également l’adoption d’un livre blanc afin de lancer une vaste consultation sur la laïcité dite ouverte.

Dix ans plus tard, il n’y a pas de loi sur l’interculturalisme, pas plus que de livre blanc. Nous en sommes à la quatrième mouture de projets de loi qui ont voulu circonscrire la laïcité — les libéraux préfèrent la notion plus canadian de neutralité religieuse de l’État — et les accommodements religieux. Toutes ces tentatives furent vaines sauf, évidemment, le projet de loi 62, dont on a retardé l’étude en commission parlementaire en raison du climat actuel teinté par l’attentat.

Intégration des immigrants. Le souhait était d’intensifier « la reconnaissance des compétences et des diplômes acquis à l’étranger ». Yann Hairaud, directeur général de la Clef pour l’intégration au travail des immigrants de Montréal (CITIM), juge qu’« il n’y a pas eu de suite à cette recommandation » malgré quelques efforts notables, dont la mise en place d’un mécanisme de traitement des plaintes des décisions prises par les ordres professionnels. Ce problème concerne environ un immigrant au Québec sur dix, soit plus ou moins 4500 personnes par année.

Le Québec compte 46 ordres qui réglementent la profession de plus de 385 000 membres. Une dizaine d’entre elles (dont les médecins, les ingénieurs ou les infirmières) totalisent 80 % des demandes de reconnaissance, avec des taux d’acceptation très variables. Les obstacles viennent par exemple des coûts imposés pour les examens, de la difficulté de trouver des formations d’appoint ou des stages.

Inégalités et discriminations. Les commissaires ont conclu que l’État devrait porter une attention particulière à la lutte contre les crimes haineux et a exigé plus de ressources et de moyens pour les organismes de lutte contre la discrimination, notamment à la Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse. Or, si le budget annuel est resté stable (environ 15 millions de dollars), 33 postes ont été abolis, passant de 161 à 128 (équivalents à temps complet) au cours des dix dernières années. Un service-conseil en matière d’accommodements raisonnables a été mis en place en 2008 pour aider les décideurs.

Pratiques d’harmonisation. Une attention particulière devait être portée à la déjudiciarisation du traitement des demandes d’accommodement ou de la formation des enseignants. Ces formations, qui datent d’avant la commission, sont toujours aussi nombreuses

« Peut-être que, dans les commissions scolaires en région, où l’immigration est plus récente, il y a plus de besoins », dit Marie McAndrew, professeure à la Faculté des sciences de l’éducation à l’Université de Montréal et spécialiste des questions de multiethnicité. « Mais dans les grosses commissions scolaires, à Montréal, […] c’est clair que l’expertise est là. »

Source: Dix ans après Bouchard-Taylor, tant reste à faire | Le Devoir

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CCDI Study shows law firm senior leadership still largely white and male

2017/02/06 Leave a comment

Interesting study by the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion.

In general, I find a three-year time series too short to show much change given the nature of promotion and equivalent processes (a minimum of five years is better, ten is more reliable).

However, it is nevertheless informative in terms of its breakdown by seniority  and a good initiative:

Despite much talk over the last decade around boosting diversity and inclusion in law firms, women and racialized lawyers continue to be under-represented in the Canadian legal profession with Caucasian men continuing to far outnumber those two groups in senior leadership roles, according to a study from the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion.

Level Chan says a lack of women and racialized lawyers at the top of law firms is a matter of retention and advancement. He says there continues to be “over-representation” at the associate and entry-level areas of the firms but they don’t tend to stay.

In fact, the study shows Caucasian men who responded to the survey have the greatest odds of being an equity partner, and they are seven times more likely than racialized women to be an equity partner.

The study, “Diversity by the Numbers: The Legal Profession,” conducted by the CCDI in partnership with the Canadian Bar Association, shows the representation of minority groups in the legal profession has not changed substantially over the last three years that the CCDI has been collecting data. In 2014 and 2015, 73.99 per cent and 76.88 per cent of senior leader respondents were men. In 2016, 75.34 per cent of senior leader respondents to the survey were men and 90.78 per cent of senior leaders were Caucasian.

In 2014 and 2015, 89.28 per cent and 88.91 per cent of senior leader respondents were Caucasian respondents, respectively. Another statistic of note is that 81.9 per cent of senior leaders are equity partners.

“Results from 2014, 2015 and 2016 do not show a shift towards a more diverse and inclusive workforce, particularly in partner and leadership roles,” the report states.

The study, sponsored by Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP, Dentons Canada LLP, McCarthy Tétrault LLP and Miller Thomson LLP, shows women and racialized respondents are under-represented in equity partner and senior leader roles and over-represented as associates and articling or summer students.

Authors of the report say factors contributing to the perpetuation of these numbers include “inflexible working conditions, rigid firm culture, high client expectations and overall economics of the profession.”

While some might point to a tough economy since 2008, Deanna Matzanke, director, measurement and analytics at the CCDI, says the economy is a “significant red herring” and what the report shows is “a compelling validation” that the current law firm model makes it difficult for women and minorities to rise to equity partner positions.

“ . . . the process of billable hours, the emphasis placed on client relationships, and the hierarchal ‘Old Boys Club’ network in law firms do not support or foster a diverse and inclusive environment.”

The report goes on to say that women find themselves in a difficult position when faced with trying to balance family needs with law firm demands. Also, “ . . . lawyers from minority groups do not have the same social and cultural capital to network and find mentors who relate to them, because the pool is very small.”

That means many leave the law firm culture for more flexible and accommodating environments elsewhere, such as in-house roles or solo practice.

Matzanke, a lawyer herself, says the results of the study are disappointing and show that diversity and inclusion are not being successfully implemented in the legal profession, despite the fact the pool of potential lawyers in law school has increased in diversity and at the associate level at law firms shows fairly high diversity.

The majority of racialized respondents in the legal profession are Asian, while all other groups show very small representation.

A total of 11 firms from nine provinces and one territory participated in the 2016 survey. Firms were invited to participate directly by CCDI via the Law Firm Diversity and Inclusion Network, and the Canadian Bar Association sent a letter to all members.

“There’s nothing surprising here really,” says Level Chan, a partner with Stewart McKelvey LLP in Halifax and the CBA’s representative on the CCDI’s advisory committee.

“As to why we’re not moving the needle much, I think it’s a matter of retention and advancement, and as you see particularly with women, there continues to be over-representation at the associate and entry level areas of the firms, but we’re not keeping them. I think that in turn is translating to having fewer people available for senior roles and as equity partners. That is the ongoing issue we’ve had in the legal profession.”

Source: Study shows law firm senior leadership still largely white and male

Link to the study:Diversity by the Numbers: The Legal Profession

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Death of former MP Andrew Telegdi and the “Lost Canadians”

2017/02/06 2 Comments

I wasn’t aware of Telegdi’s role with respect to “Lost Canadians” as most of this occurred before I assumed responsibility for citizenship policy but clear that he played a strong role in helping the main advocate, Don Chapman, and the others who had been affected.

The following letter by Marion Vermeersch is an example:

For me, it all started when my brother and I learned our family had citizenship stripped in 2004 when he (by now retired from the Canadian Navy) went to get a passport.    I soon learned that we had lots of company, as the Canadian War Brides Museum in Fredericton was flooded with calls like mine,  family members of WWII veterans and War Brides who had just learned they were no longer Canadian citizens.  The curator there, Melynda Jarratt,  put us in touch with Don Chapman and the Lost Canadians:   now we learned we were just one of 12 groups – 12 “reasons” for stripping citizenship, all of which sounded ridiculous (born out of wedlock,  born on a CF Base overseas, etc.)

By 2007, the government was studying the matter and invited several Lost Canadians regularly to testify.   It was my turn in March, 2007 to go to Ottawa – nervous and naive, but wanting to help the thousands of us out of citizenship at that time.  When I got there,  Don Chapman was waiting for me and several other Lost Canadians, and that was when I met Mr. Andrew Telegdi,  the Chairman of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

Andrew was very welcoming,   helped us with procedures to ensure that our process of testifying before the Committee was heard by the members of the four political parties present.   He provided excellent leadership, courteous, orderly and patient,    His presence really helped to lessen the intimidation some of us felt in speaking before the Committee,  not all of whom seemed to be favourably disposed towards the idea of citizenship for us.

And what a nice man he was!  Andrew took time from what must have been a busy schedule to talk to us (along with Jim Karygiannis, another supportive MP) at lunch and showed us some of the Parliament Buildings,   even arranging for us to see some of the budget debate going on in the House.   It was truly empowering,  I found, to know that I was far from alone and that we had him there working to support our cause,   that here we had an MP who truly understood and cared about Canadian citizenship and social justice.

Under Andrew’s work in parliament,  we were able to see amendments made to the Citizenship Act in 2009 which restored citizenship for many.   Andrew continued to work for years afterwards as an advisor and advocate for Lost Canadians among all his other causes,  whether his party was in government or not.

This is a big loss for us as remaining Lost Canadians, especially for Don Chapman who has lost a friend as well as someone to share the load of work in fighting for our citizenship.     I hope that Andrew’s work towards democracy and justice in citizenship will be recognized and remembered,

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The Privy Council Office needs some new computers — and they want to buy Apple, not Windows

2017/02/06 Leave a comment

Fun piece by David Akin on PCO’s purchase of Apple. As a long-time Mac user, was frustrated by the corporate IT folks who were overly slavish with respect to Windows and Blackberry.

But Macs have generally always had a place in the Comms shop for videos and other creative work:

Between federal government civilian employees and the RCMP and Canadian Forces uniformed members, there must be close to 500,000 people.  Almost all of those folks would need a desktop computer. Many would need a laptop computer. And many would need a government-issued smartphone.

All those devices — not to mention the servers that store government data and software — present one heckuva a challenge from an information technology management point-of-view. The federal government’s I.T. chief has to worry about security, about cost, interoperability, and ease of administration when it comes to training and software updates. For those reasons, the government has for years standardized on computers that run Microsoft’s Windows operating system which means, almost by default, a standard deployment of Microsoft’s Office suite — Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access.

The standard smartphone deployed to government employees has, for years, been a BlackBerry.

But things are changing.

Example: Last night, the government posted a tender for a supplier to fix up bureaucrats who work in the Privy Council Office with 52 computers — from Apple!

Now, maybe the PCO was working on Macs before this tender offer went out. I’ve asked the department if that’s the case and we will update here. I am told, in fact, by a PCO spokesperson that it is not unusual for departments to have a small number of Apple computer in use “for specialized requirements.”

 

…The PCO is the federal government department that supports the work of the prime minister. It is the civil service mirror/partner, if you will, of the PMO — the Prime Minister’s Office. Officials in both the PMO and PCO work closely together. In my personal experience, I have seen many PMO officials using Apple products. And I know via some documents I dug up using an access to information request that the prime minister himself had some Apple products purchased for his use at his home office at Rideau cottage. He bought (if memory serves) an iPad Pro, among other devices and information technology.

But Trudeau is not the only prime minister to have picked Apple. That’s right: Stephen Harper was an Apple guy. The one and only time I ever saw Harper use any piece of information technology, it was his own personal Apple MacBook, which he brought into the House of Commons one night during a long “take-note” debate. Interestingly, the Apple logo that is on the front of any MacBook had been covered on Harper’s device with a family photo.

And it was another Conservative politician — Stockwell Day — who was the first MP I ever saw to bring a tablet into the House of Commons and, you bet, that tablet was an iPad. Nowadays, if you look down upon the House of Commons, you will see a sea of iPads.

But I can tell you House of Commons I.T. had to be dragged kicking and screaming to agree to have iPads on the House network or to agree to support iPads.

And so it may be with the broader government-wide I.T. community, already dealing right now with a very rough transition to some common platforms and computing environments via Shared Services Canada. (And we won’t even talk about the fiasco that is the computerized Phoenix payroll system.)

But at the Privy Council Office — the command-and-control centre for the entire civil service — 50 Apple computers are on the way.

Why are they going Mac and getting off of Windows? Unknown at this point. Again: Questions are in to PCO and we’ll see what they say. But there might be a few reasons.

First, speaking as a guy who used the original Apple McIntosh to paginate my university paper back in the 80s, who used to be a technology reporter and who still has a working Apple G4 Cube at home, Macs are just, well, machines for the rest of us. (See that famous Apple ad, below, which introduced the world to the McIntosh).

But there is also some evidence that, even though a comparable Apple desktop is more expensive versus a comparable Windows box, the total cost of ownership — TCO in I.T.-speak — is actually lower once you factor in how much it costs to provide tech support to users of device and other issues.  Heck, even IBM now buys Macs and encourages its clients to do so because of lower costs. (IBM, incidentally, was widely believed to have been the firm that was mocked in that original 1984 Apple ad.)

Source: The Privy Council Office needs some new computers — and they want to buy Apple, not Windows | National Post

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New Canadians to pledge honour for Indigenous treaties in revised citizenship oath – Politics – CBC News

2017/02/04 Leave a comment

The first change to the oath since 1977:

New Canadians will soon promise to honour treaties with Indigenous peoples as part of their oath of citizenship.

The mandate letter for new Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen lists making the change to the swearing-in ceremony as one of his key priorities, along with enhancing refugee resettlement services and cutting wait times for application processing.

According to the mandate letter, the proposed change is to reflect the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action.

That reads: “We call upon the government of Canada to replace the Oath of Citizenship with the following: I swear (or affirm) that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada, her heirs and successors, and that I will faithfully observe the laws of Canada, including treaties with Indigenous peoples, and fulfil my duties as a Canadian citizen.”The current oath does not include the words “including treaties with Indigenous peoples.”

The call for action was among 94 recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in December 2015.

Call to revise citizenship test

Another recommendation called on the federal government, in collaboration with national Indigenous organizations, to revise the information kit for newcomers to Canada and the citizenship test to “reflect a more inclusive history of the diverse Aboriginal peoples of Canada.”

That would include information about the treaties and the history of residential schools, according to the document.

Lorna Standingready - RTR4YPUL3

Residential school survivor Lorna Standingready, left, is comforted during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada closing ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa. (Blair Gable/Reuters)

This past December, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the creation of an independent national council to help implement the recommendations.

Source: New Canadians to pledge honour for Indigenous treaties in revised citizenship oath – Politics – CBC News

The specific commitments of Minister Hussen’s mandate letter are (the emphasis on measuring outcomes for settlement services and “rigorous approach to data” is also of note):

In particular, I will expect you to work with your colleagues and through established legislative, regulatory and Cabinet processes to deliver on your top priorities:

  • Ensure the effective implementation of Canada’s increased annual immigration levels.

  • Working with the provinces and territories, ensure a renewed focus on the delivery of high-quality settlement services to ensure the successful arrival of new Canadians.  This will require a rigorous approach to data in order to accurately measure outcomes.

  • Following our government-wide efforts to resettle more than 39,000 Syrian refugees as of January 2017, continue to welcome refugees from Syria and elsewhere, and work with provinces and territories, service provider organizations, and communities to ensure refugees are integrating successfully into Canada to become participating members of society.

  • Work on reducing application processing times, on improving the department’s service delivery and client services to make it timelier and less complicated, and on enhancing system efficiency including the asylum system.

  • Continue to work with the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness towards the adoption of Bill C-6 which would repeal provisions in the Citizenship Act that give the government the right to strip citizenship from dual nationals.

  • Conduct a review of the visa policy framework, including its application to the transit of passengers through Canada, in a way that promotes economic growth while ensuring program integrity.

  • Work in collaboration with the Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs to make changes to the Oath of Canadian Citizenship to reflect the Truth and Reconciliation’s Calls to Action.

  • Work with the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour to improve the temporary foreign worker program so it meets the needs of Canadian workers and employers.  This would include:

    • further developing a pathway to permanent residency so that eligible applicants are able to more fully contribute to Canadian society; and

    • working with stakeholders to act on the recommendations of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities’ study of the temporary foreign worker program.

These priorities draw heavily from our election platform commitments.

Filed under Aboriginal, Citizenship Tagged with , ,

How to teach citizenship in schools | The Economist

2017/02/04 1 Comment

Good discussion of what citizenship or civics education should entail:

IN 2012 David Souter, a retired justice of the Supreme Court, argued that the greatest threat to American democracy was neither a foreign invasion nor a military coup, but ignorance about how government functions. “An ignorant people can never remain a free people,” he said, referring to Thomas Jefferson, “and democracy cannot survive too much ignorance”. People become willing to hand power to a strongman who promises to solve all their problems. “That is how the Roman Republic fell…That is the way democracy dies, and if something is not done to improve the level of civic knowledge, that is what you should worry about.”

He was on to something. The World Values Survey, a global study by social scientists from over 100 countries, found that far fewer millennials object to autocracy than their elders. Only 19% of millennials in America and 36% in Europe say that if the government were incompetent or failing to do its job, a military takeover would still not be legitimate. Just a third see civil rights as “absolutely essential” to democracy. In America, more than a quarter dismiss the importance of free elections. In 1995 only 16% of American youngsters thought democracy was a “bad” system; by 2011, that number had risen to almost 25%.

One reason may be that long-standing democracies have forgotten the need for eternal vigilance. Worried about unemployment and global competition, governments and schools have focused on preparing young people for work, rather than to participate in democracy. Citizenship education, said Michael Gove, Britain’s education secretary from 2010 to 2014, was a “pseudo-subject”. In America, schools no longer bother testing it. When the subject survives, it is often recast narrowly, says Bryony Hoskins of Roehampton University, as a way to counter radicalisation or promote national values to recent immigrants.

In Britain, a positively regarded curriculum introduced by the Labour party in 2002 has been largely dismantled. There is much talk of “educating for character”, with the aim of developing “grit” and “resilience”. But it is narrow and instrumental, says Ben Kisby of the University of Lincoln, reflecting the government’s focus on pupils as future workers and consumers, rather than as voters. In Poland, a recent revision to the syllabus has thrown out all discussion of how the European Union functions; the focus is on Polish identity formation. “‘Nation’ is more important than ‘society’; ‘Pole’ is more powerful than ‘citizen’,” says Alicja Pacewicz of the Centre for Citizenship Education in Warsaw.

In America civic-education classes no longer cover what life is like in non-democracies. Schools used to educate their charges about life in the Soviet Union, points out Richard Kahlenberg of The Century Foundation, a think-tank, making the case for democracy by comparison. But when the cold war ended, that stopped. He thinks declining support for democratic values is a partial consequence. “It’s easy to be sceptical [about the value of democracy] when you don’t know anything different,” he says. Without context to help them appreciate the benefits and safeguards afforded by democracy, young people may be vulnerable to emotional appeals to nationalism and fiery rhetoric about seizing power from “elites”.

Laboratories for democracy
The best civic-education classes do more than impart knowledge about how government works. They create environments in which pupils get used to the tools of democracy, such as debating controversial issues and disagreeing respectfully. Parents may worry that schools are indoctrinating their children, and teachers can be wary of treading on thorny ground. But schools are more ideologically diverse than many other environments, making them ideal testing-grounds for such skills.

It is important to avoid crude propagandising, says Peter Levine of the Centre for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University. Pupils’ criticisms of their country’s politics and governance may be perfectly legitimate. Members of some minorities may be justified in distrusting arms of the state, such as the police; cheerleading in the classroom may alienate them further. Best to combine realism with discussions of practical steps pupils can take to bring about change, says Mr Levine. Rather than simply teaching about Martin Luther King Jr and the Voting Rights Act, for example, use the story to emphasise that social movements are driven by ordinary people, who can make a difference.

Schools in Nordic countries seek to ensure democratic values are developed right across the curriculum, and from the very start. Even the youngest children take part in age-appropriate decision-making: choosing the name of their group, for example, or what they will eat. Older pupils are expected to help develop school policy. They learn to make a case and cope with being outvoted—and that every choice, even that to abstain, has consequences.

Research suggests that these programmes work: pupils who have become used to discussing current affairs are much more likely to be politically engaged and involved in their communities, and to vote when they are old enough. Civic-education programmes also increase the likelihood that pupils will have more accepting attitudes towards people of different backgrounds. In Norway, where 95% of 14-year-olds participate in school elections, more than in any other country, nearly the same share participate in multicultural activities outside school.

A new programme, “Learning Democracy at Utøya”, has turned the Norwegian island where 69 people were killed by a far-right terrorist in 2011 into an education centre. Over three days pupils learn about the attack, as well as challenges to democratic values and how to respond to them. Much of the programme is interactive, prompting students to reflect on their values and argue their position. They then develop lessons to share with their peers back at school. Participants say it is an emotional experience: most of the victims were teenagers. In the words of Marianne Støle-Nilsen, a teacher in Bergen who took four of her pupils to the island, it is a place “where you don’t have to explain why teaching democracy and continuing to fight for it is important”.

Source: How to teach citizenship in schools | The Economist

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We need to understand what ‘Islamophobia’ really means : Glavin

2017/02/04 Leave a comment

Good piece by Terry Glavin:

Getting it wrong can do great harm, because the slipperiness of language occurs in tandem with the slovenliness of ideas. The Southern Poverty Law Center, for instance, recently sustained a nasty self-inflicted wound to its reputation in this way. Long a turn-to organization for research on political extremism, the SPLC published a list of what it described as 15 “anti-Muslim extremists ” that included the unambiguously bigoted American hothead Pamela Geller and the notorious paranoid Frank Gaffney along with the impeccably credentialed Maajid Nawaz, a high-profile reformist Muslim. Nawaz works with the Quilliam Foundation, a British anti-extremism think tank named after the founder of Britain’s first mosque.

The imprecision of the term Islamophobia is almost invariably bound up in dead-end arguments that allow both “counter-jihad” activists and jihadists alike to conflate Islam, the religion as it is practiced by the overwhelming majority of Muslims, with Islamism, the totalitarian ideology that has produced several virulent strains, including the ghastly fanaticism of Daesh, otherwise known as Islamic State.

…The conflation of Islam with Islamism allows anti-Muslim bigotry to flourish. Bigots and lunatics routinely conflate passages from the Quran with the faith of innocently devout Muslims. It’s easy work to find all sorts of bloodcurdling passages in the Quran that can be lifted and rigged to slander Muslims of all kinds. Like these: “When you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks. . . Oh believers, take not Jews and Christians as friends. . . Oh believers, fight the unbelievers who are near to you; and let them find in you a harshness.”

Taking that to mean that Muslims are just waiting for the chance to embark upon rampages of neck-smiting and wickedness is to surrender to racism and dementia. Even more unpleasant, this one’s about Jews: “I shall give you my sincere advice: First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. . . Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed.”

That one’s from a lurid 16th Century tract composed by the prophet of Protestantism, Martin Luther. Shall we all start freaking out about Lutherans now?

The “left” has happily entertained its own hysterical conspiracy theories: the United Nations reconstruction of Afghanistan was really an American imperialist war for oil (Afghanistan, alas, is rich mainly in sand) is one. “Al Qaeda was created by the CIA” is another. Sometimes, the idiocies of the “left” and “the” right are indistinguishable or interchangeable, even in the arguments about President’s Trump’s vulgar excesses.

Who said this? “If they want to build a wall that’s up to them. If they want to throw out illegal immigrants or keep out Muslims that’s up to them. It’s their business.” It could have been the execrable Trump-admiring Brexit rabblerouser Nigel Farage. But it was the disgraced British MP and “anti-war” loudmouth George Galloway, who not long ago was a frequent celebrity guest on fashionable CBC chat shows and a darling of Toronto Star columnists.

During Tuesday’s emergency House of Commons debates on how Canada should respond to Trump’s anti-Muslim executive order, the wisest counsel came not from NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, who did a splendid job attempting to wrest something useful from the government benches, nor from rookie Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Ahmed Hussen, who had nothing to offer in response.

It came from Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel, who is not what you would call a popular person at the Conservative Party’s fringe, where shouting about Muslims is the loudest.

“It is facile for us to believe that there are not others on this planet who disagree with our way of life. There are those who hold views so extreme that they kill in the name of their God. They rape in the name of their God. They subjugate and bring terror in the name of their God. No religion and no nation is immune to this,” Rempel told the House.

“Yet there are those who seek to bring light and beauty to the world. They seek to bring peace, prosperity, and tolerance. Every religion and every nation has these people. They are Muslim and they are Christian. They are Sikh and they are Hindu.”

By closing our arms around the grieving widows and the children and the loved ones of those six martyrs in Sainte-Foy this week, we Canadians might just have allowed some light and beauty to emerge from this horrible thing. Yet there remains an unspeakable hatred of Muslims, and hysteria about Muslims, abroad in the land.

We need to get this right. We owe it to the dead, and we owe it to the living, to face this scourge with decency, with compassion and with honesty, to muster what is right and good about Canada to the cause of seeing to it that those six men did not die in vain.

Source: We need to understand what ‘Islamophobia’ really means – Macleans.ca

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

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