Globe editorial: The Trudeau government is failing refugee claimants, and Canadians

2017/07/06 1 Comment

Valid points – backlogs will only increase, requiring more funding and personnel to handle.

Hard to understand why IRB appointments are taking so long – after all, the government has been able to appoint almost 100 judges over the past year and a half (after a slow start):

Our neighbour to the south has taken a pronounced nativist turn in recent months, and the government of Canada’s response has been to throw the doors open – rhetorically, at least.

Last January, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took to social media and proclaimed, “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada.”

As political marketing goes, it was nicely timed. But to be completely insulated from truth-in-advertising complaints, it should have included a disclaimer – “Offer available only to genuine refugees, as defined by law. As we are experiencing an unusually high number of claimants at this time, it could take many years for our government to decide whether you are legally entitled to welcome, or removal.”

According to the latest federal statistics, more than 14,000 people have registered their intention to seek asylum in Canada through the first five months of 2017.

That number doesn’t include refugees from Syria, who are being fast-tracked, and it adds upon the 23,900 who arrived in 2016 – itself a sharp increase from the 16,000 who came in 2015.

Last month, the federal government offered a modicum of good news to 5,500 people whose claims had been shunted to the back burner by the former Conservative government. Most have been waiting in limbo since at least 2012; their cases are expected to proceed in the fall.

Unfortunately, this will barely dent the application backlog, which is estimated at close to 40,000 cases.

The wait faced by refugee claimants – legitimate or otherwise – is too lengthy, and also unfair. It is well known that the longer an application is delayed, the lower the chance of it being accepted.

Meanwhile, the influx of asylum-seekers is unlikely to abate. There’s been a surge in the number of claimants showing up at Canada-U.S. border crossings since President Donald Trump took office in January, but even that is not the whole story.

The United Nations’ Refugee Agency calculates there are more displaced people on the planet right now – 65 million – than at any point since the Second World War.

A government analysis obtained by the Canadian Press forecasts the number of refugee claimants in Canada will hit 36,000 this year, and rise by as much as 20 per cent a year after that.

If the current trends hold, the time required to process an application will reach 11 years in 2021, and could cost $3-billion in social support payments. This must not be allowed to happen.

Hiring more staff and expanding budgets are an unavoidable aspect of correcting the situation, but it isn’t a matter of applying a simple fix.

The new federal appointments process announced earlier this year, billed as independent and competence-based, has been a disaster for the Immigration and Refugee Board. Dozens of key jobs remain vacant, while the number of claims is rising rapidly.

On June 21, the IRB announced its Western Canada immigration appeal division – which deals primarily with applications involving family members and dependents abroad – would be working at reduced capacity “for at least the next six months” because of staffing shortages.

The re-appointment of two outgoing members to one-year terms, announced that same day, won’t do much to ease the bottleneck. There should be 11 on the job, but there are currently only four.

Across all regions, the IRB’s refugee and immigration appeals divisions have a shortage of at least 29 members, and the terms of another 29 are set to expire at the end of this year, according to one news report.

The vacancies, and the slowness with which the Trudeau government is filling them, have led to accusations that Ottawa is culling IRB members who were appointed by the Conservatives in order to replace them with Liberal supporters.

Whatever the reasons, the IRB is unable to handle the load because Ottawa is allowing members’ terms to end while failing to appoint new people in a timely fashion.

Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen recently announced a third-party review to examine resource levels and the various bureaucratic mechanisms involved. However, it won’t be concluded until next year, and that’s not good enough.

The IRB has raised the alert about under-staffing for years. An overwhelmed immigration and refugee process, already buffeted by an ill-advised overhaul under the Harper government, has real-world impacts. It’s bad for asylum seekers, and undermines public confidence.

Ottawa must move quickly to show Canadians that their government is doing more than drifting in its response. Tweeting “#WelcomeToCanada” is an empty gesture by the Prime Minister, if it’s not accompanied by action.

Source: Globe editorial: The Trudeau government is failing refugee claimants, and Canadians – The Globe and Mail

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Une controverse religieuse s’invite au Parc Safari [Muslim call to prayer for private event]

2017/07/06 Leave a comment

The “sugar shack” type controversy of 2017:

Le Parc Safari a lancé un appel au calme, mardi, après avoir été la cible de réactions virulentes sur les réseaux sociaux dans la foulée d’un événement organisé sur place par des musulmans, dimanche.

L’Association musulmane du Canada avait réservé un espace dans le jardin zoologique pour tenir un rassemblement de 900 personnes. En fin d’après-midi, un appel à la prière a été lancé à l’aide d’un mégaphone, ce que certains visiteurs n’ont pas apprécié.

L’événement a été filmé et diffusé sur Youtube.

Après avoir reçu «plusieurs plaintes», le Parc Safari a tenté de calmer le jeu sur sa page Facebook. «Le Parc Safari est désolé que la liberté de religion ait pu offenser des gens, a écrit l’entreprise. En aucun cas, cela n’était l’objectif recherché.»

Au cours d’un entretien téléphonique avec La Presse, mardi, le propriétaire du Parc Safari, Jean-Pierre Ranger, a assuré que le volume sonore du mégaphone respectait les règles et qu’il n’était pas susceptible d’importuner significativement les autres visiteurs.

«La vidéo montre un moment où quelqu’un avec un mégaphone fait un appel à la prière. Bien oui, et puis? Ç’a duré cinq minutes. Ils n’ont pas dérangé 5000 personnes», dit M. Ranger.

Des centaines de personnes ont réagi à la publication du Parc Safari sur Facebook. Certains ont soutenu que l’événement n’avait pas sa place parce que le Parc Safari n’est pas un «lieu de culte» et que la religion «doit se vivre à la maison». D’autres ont salué l’«ouverture» et le «courage» de l’entreprise.

«Il y a un malaise»

Les regroupements et entreprises qui réservent un espace au Parc Safari ne paient pas de frais spéciaux, mais chaque participant doit débourser le tarif d’entrée, qui oscille entre 26 et 39 $, plus taxes. M. Ranger reconnaît qu’il courtise les communautés culturelles, et ce, depuis des années. Les publicités du Parc Safari sont traduites en 20 langues.

«Je ne me mêle pas du contenu éditorial des événements, pourvu que les gens ne se promènent pas tout nus, qu’ils ne font pas d’orgies et qu’ils ne deviennent pas ivres», a énuméré l’homme d’affaires de 73 ans.

«Je ne suis pas heureux de la situation parce que si on pouvait l’éviter, ce serait mieux, mais ça nous permet de constater qu’il y a un malaise», a-t-il poursuivi en faisant référence à l’inconfort que vivent certains Québécois à l’égard des musulmans.

Haroun Bouazzi, coprésident de l’Association des musulmans et des Arabes pour la laïcité au Québec, s’est indigné des commentaires de certains internautes, qu’il a qualifiés de «haineux».

«Ce n’est qu’une preuve de plus qu’il y a des groupes hyperactifs sur les réseaux sociaux qui carburent à la haine des minorités religieuses et principalement des minorités musulmanes», a commenté M. Bouazzi.

«Il est évident que ce non-événement, ça n’a rien à voir avec la laïcité parce que le Parc Safari n’est pas une institution de l’État», a-t-il ajouté.

Source: Une controverse religieuse s’invite au Parc Safari | Sylvain Larocque | Actualités

English version below:

A Quebec safari park that welcomed a Muslim community group Sunday and allowed afternoon prayers to be held on its site has become the target of “racist and hateful” comments after a short video of the gathering was posted online.

In a message posted on its Facebook page, Parc Safari in Hemmingford, Que. denounced the intolerant response and said it was “sorry if freedom of religion had offended some people.”

Park president and owner Jean-Pierre Ranger said Wednesday that the online abuse is coming from a minority of Quebecers who don’t understand what happened at his facility.

“Intolerance is a factor that occurs, but it’s a small percentage,” he said in an interview. “In some way, education will eventually bring the level of understanding a little higher, and there will be less stress in our society.”

The task of inter-cultural education does not usually fall to a zoo, but in Quebec flare-ups of intolerance can occur in unlikely places.

The province’s 2007 debate over reasonable accommodation featured outrage over Muslims being served pork-free meals and given prayer space at a maple sugar shack and Hasidic Jews being provided a kosher refrigerator at a pediatric hospital.

On Sunday, the Centre Communautaire Laurentien, part of the Muslim Association of Canada, organized an outing to the Parc Safari to celebrate the end of Ramadan and Canada’s 150th anniversary. The event had initially been scheduled for July 1 but was postponed because of rain.

About 950 people took part, and they were provided a small roped-off section of the park for a picnic. When the time arrived for afternoon prayers, the group used a loudspeaker.

A user going by the name guindon87 posted a 46-second video to YouTube in which people are seen at a distance gathering for prayer and Arabic words are faintly heard coming over a loudspeaker. The poster, whose YouTube contributions include a video describing Montreal activist Jaggi Singh with a racist slur, wrote that the Hemmingford prayers showed “a serious lack of respect for Quebec and Quebecers.”

The video had attracted 45,000 views Wednesday morning and was picked up by TVA news and other media outlets in the province.

Samer Elniz, manager of the Centre Communautaire Laurentien, said he found the reaction to his group’s visit “ bizarre” and particularly troubling because they were there in part to celebrate Canada.

“Personally, I go into public parks and I see Christians conducting a mass, I see baptisms. That doesn’t bother me, even if I am Muslim,” he said. “I like seeing the diversity, seeing people doing as they wish. There are countries where you don’t have those rights.”

Source: Quebec safari park defends religious freedom following ‘hateful’ response to Muslim visit

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ICYMI – the Duck: The maple leaf flag embodies Canada’s national amnesia | C.P. Champion

2017/07/06 Leave a comment

Historian and former CPC staffer Champion on the current and former flags (under former Minister Jason Kenney, the Red Ensign was displayed at some citizenship ceremonies if memory serves me correct but the Conservative government declined to provide it more official status as Champion recommends):

There is much to celebrate on Canada’s 150th, and there will be no shortage of Canadian flags fluttering about. But the maple leaf flag is also the perfect embodiment of our national amnesia.

Unlike Canada’s original flag—the Canadian Red Ensign—the maple leaf tells no story of our country. The Red Ensign, by comparison, vividly embodies Canada’s rich history, inclusive of First Nations, the fleur-de-lis, and the diversity represented by Scottish, English and Irish symbols.

This history dates back much further than 1867. Canada’s traditions were shaped by the first colonists, the Conquest of 1759, the policies of Lord Dorchester, the resilience of His Majesty’s new French Catholic subjects, generations of American and British immigrants, and First Nations who prospered in the pre-Industrial era and understood themselves as proud, though cautious, allies of the King.

Jon Fogg, Saint James Marine operator, left, and his daughter-in-law Wendy Fogg, unfurl the original Canadian Red Ensign flag that flew over the S.S. Keewatin. Darren Calabrese/National Post

When these old colonies were reimagined and set on a new footing in the 1860s, four distinct Provincial shields were combined on the Red Ensign, which was flown by Sir John A. Macdonald. Lord Stanley, the governor-general, and Henri Bourassa, a French Canadian nationalist, both recognized the Red Ensign as a distinctive Canadian flag. After 1921, the flag bore the shield from Canada’s new coat of arms.

When Canadian soldiers took Juno Beach on June 6, 1944 (D-Day) they carried this Canadian flag ashore. Through Normandy and the Netherlands, between the Maas and the Rhine, under the Klever Tor at Xanten, in liberated Nijmegen, Arnhem, and Groningen: as the Reich flag was lowered across Western Europe, the Canadian flag was unfurled among the banners of victory. In 1945, there could be no doubt that “Canada had a flag,” as John Diefenbaker later said, “a flag ennobled by heroes’ blood.”

The Red Ensign was replaced by the red maple leaf in 1964, recommended in the sixth report of a parliamentary committee, voted for by 178 MPs in a discordant House of Commons, and implemented by a minority government led by a jittery Lester Pearson. Why the jitters? Because the old flag was so popular. As Senator Marcel Prud’homme, an M.P. in 1964, told me in 2007: “You see, we had to kill the Red Ensign” — so that the fledgling maple would have no rival.

Many celebrated the new dawn. The late Lt. Gen. Charles Belzile, who witnessed the maple’s raising for the first time while serving as a young soldier in Cyprus in 1965, told me: “It sure looked pretty good against those green hills!”

But the new flag also had its critics. Historian Marcel Trudel warned in 1964 that Canada’s new flag had “no historic significance” and was “a lamentable failure.” “I am convinced, for my part,” he said, “that any flag, if it is to be truly significant, must contain or represent the symbols of the nation or nations which contributed to establishing the country.”

First Nations leaders were strongly attached to the old flag. James Gladstone, a Blood (Kainai) appointed to the Senate in 1958 said: “Personally I do not want to see any other flag flying but the Red Ensign.” Many chiefs had received a Union Jack as a ceremonial seal on treaties: “Under these symbols of justice, we feel safe. Take them away from us and it will be another sign that we are not safe.”

While the national flag is obviously here to stay, Ottawa should accord the old flag official status as “The Canadian Red Ensign.” It should fly permanently alongside the Canadian flag at the National War Memorial — after all, it’s the flag our soldiers actually fought under. It should fly at war memorials everywhere, and at obvious locations such as the Canadian War Museum grounds. And finally, a Red Ensign should wave permanently above the East Block of Parliament as a symbol of our heritage of freedom.

Source: Beyond the Duck: The maple leaf flag embodies Canada’s national amnesia | National Post

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International students in B.C. could be in fake marriage schemes: Douglas Todd

2017/07/05 Leave a comment

The ingenuity of persons wanting to come to Canada knows no bounds. No hard numbers but widespread anecdotes indicate that there is an issue (India sends the second largest number of students to Canada after China: 77,000 in 2016):

The newspaper ads in India are the visible tip of a booming underground industry in fake marriages involving would-be international students.

The prize for the “spouse” whose family buys an instant marriage with a foreign student is back-door access to a full-time job in Canada and a fast-track to citizenship.

The matrimonial ads normally promise that the foreign students’ sham marriage, plus all travel and study expenses, will be paid for by the Indian families who are determined to have their son or daughter emigrate.

The type of Indian student the ads seek is usually a teenage girl, who must have passed an English-language test and therefore be in line to be accepted as an international student.

Media outlets in India, such as the Hindustan Times, report there is a “booming matrimony market for ‘brides’ who can earn the ‘groom’” coveted status as a migrant to a Western country.

Canada is among the most sought-after destinations for Indian foreign students, say migration specialists, because it is the most generous toward foreign students and their spouses. Australia has also been popular, but recently tightened its rules.

Here is a typical recent ad from one Punjabi-language newspaper in India, Ajit:

“Jatt Sikh, boy, 24 years old, 5 feet 10 inches, needs girl with IELTS band 7. Marriage real or fake. Boy’s side will pay all expenses.”

The ad is listed by a high-caste “Jatt” Sikh male, or more likely his parents. It seeks a contractual marriage with a young woman who has scored well (“band 7”) on an international exam called “IELTS,” the International English Language Testing System. Almost three million IELTS exams are conducted each year.

Here is another ad, from the newspaper Jagbani:

“Barbar Sikh, 24, 5 feet 8 inches. Finished Grade 12. Looking for BSc or IELTS pass girl. Boy’s side will pay all expenses to go to Canada.”

In this ad the family of a lower-caste “Barbar Sikh” is seeking to have their son marry an Indian female with a bachelors of science degree, or a passing mark on the IELTS test, so their son can be allowed into Canada as her spouse.

As these kinds of ads illustrate, the parents of the male “spouse” typically offer to cover all expenses for the international student, who often end up attending one of the scores of private colleges in Canada with low to non-existent standards.

B.C. is home to 130,000 international students, the vast majority of whom are in Metro Vancouver, which has the highest concentration of foreign students in Canada.

In exchange for financing the foreign student, the phony spouse gets to live in Canada and legally work up to 40 hours a week, plus receive medical coverage and other benefits. That puts them in a strong position to become permanent residents of Canada.

The foreign-student marriage rackets are gaining attention in newspapers in India.

Indian media are reporting angry fallout when students financed by other families either fail to get into a Western college or university, or try to break up with their spouses of convenience.

Kwantlen Polytechnic University political scientist Shinder Purewal, a former Canadian citizenship court judge, says Punjabi- and Hindi-language newspapers in India run dozens of such ads each week.

“Families are looking for matches to get their sons or daughters abroad. And the most successful route to Canada is through international-student channels. It’s an easy way to get immigration,” said Purewal.

Source: International students in B.C. could be in fake marriage schemes | Vancouver Sun

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Your name may dictate your apartment, degree, and career: Kutty

2017/07/05 Leave a comment

Ironically, although singling out the federal public service and its pilot project, Kutty is silent on the overall numbers which are largely representative of the visible minority population who are also Canadian citizens – 15 percent (some visible minority groups do better than others).

Above chart shows the 25 year trend for women, visible minorities and Indigenous peoples:

Having found the perfect rental property near the law school, a student of mine could not get a call back from the landlord despite repeatedly leaving messages. When a friend of his called, the call was returned within minutes.

Why?

Well, my student’s name was Mohamed. His friend used the name “Joe.”

Many Canadians with non-Anglicized names can speak of similar experiences. A CBC Marketplace segment from last year, for example, explored the idea of implicit bias affecting shoppers, apartment-seekers and job-hunters across Canada, finding that those with “foreign-sounding” names tended to face challenges that the “Joes” of the country did not.

That phenomenon in mind, then-rookie MP Ahmed Hussen — who has since been named immigration minister — introduced the idea of bringing name-blind recruitment to the civil service in Parliament last year. At the time, he said the move would “assist in our fight to end discrimination and attain real equality in our country.”

Ottawa has now adopted as a pilot project involving six federal ministries: National Defence, Global Affairs, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Public Services and Procurement, Environment and Climate Change and the Treasury Board.

According to the Treasury Board, the initiative will “conceal an applicant’s name, email addresses, employment equity information (i.e., gender, visible minority, person with a disability, Indigenous peoples), names of educational institutions, and country of origin at the initial screening stage.” The results will then be compared to outcomes from traditional applicant shortlisting and will be made available in a report due in October.

There is not much available data yet other than figures showing there has been a slight decrease in the number of visible minority applicants from the year 2012-13 to 2013-14 and subsequent years. One can hope that this initiative would reverse that trend.

As with most government pilots, there are surely some critics wondering why the federal civil service is busying itself with such projects.

Well, first off, there shouldn’t be any dispute that this is indeed a problem. A joint study from the University of Toronto and Ryerson University found that job applicants with Asian-sounding names received 20.1 per cent fewer calls from large organizations than those with Anglo names, and 39.4 per cent and 37.1 per cent fewer calls, respectively, from medium-sized and small employers.

A similar study by the U of T in 2011 — one called “Why do some employers prefer to interview Matthew, but not Samir?” — found that employers in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver were about 40 per cent more likely to interview candidates with Anglo-sounding names, as opposed to those with Chinese or Indian-sounding names, even if the candidates were equally qualified. The government’s pilot project aims to remedy this.

The idea is not new, in fact. Countries such as the U.K. and Australia have led the way in this regard. The British Civil Service and some of the large corporations including HSBC, Deloitte, BBC, and the U.K.’s National Health Service, initiated such a program in 2015. Last year, the Victoria Police, Australia Post and Ernst & Young (Australia) joined a recruitment program that strips out gender, age and cultural details.

Here in Canada, many law schools have implemented a blind grading system whereby students’ names are replaced by numbers to avoid instructor bias. And the Toronto Symphony Orchestra has demonstrated the success of blind auditions for years — evolving from a white, male orchestra in the 1970s to one that is now half female and much more diverse.

A name-blind recruitment process for the federal government is hardly more cumbersome in procedure, and the makeup of the civil service only stands to gain. A more reflective service will have more credibility with the populace but will also better understand the public it is serving. Moreover, as a recent study demonstrated there is a positive correlation between diversity and increased productivity.

That said, as many critics point out: name-blind screening is not a panacea — unconscious biases can’t be eliminated with one little recruitment remedy, and candidates will eventually be evaluated face to face. But removing a barrier to diversity in the federal civil service is a positive step, even if it is a minor one.

Let’s hope that this is just one component of a more comprehensive strategy involving: management acknowledging and confronting their own biases; better training on how biases impact decision-making; more objective hiring processes; and a more diverse group involved in the actual hiring process.

Source: Your name may dictate your apartment, degree, and career: Kutty | Toronto Star

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What an Irrational Immigration Policy Looks Like | Commentary Magazine

2017/07/05 Leave a comment

Hard to argue but not optimistic regarding change:

President Trump was elected on a platform that called for deporting more illegal immigrants who committed crimes and doing more to stop illegal arrivals. In theory, there is little here that anyone can quarrel with. Few Americans other than the most extreme pro-immigration activists will dispute the need to secure our borders and to evict criminal aliens. In the quest for border security, though, we should not sacrifice our humanity or common sense.

To wit: Recently, six teenage Afghan girls assembled a robot to enter into an international robotics competition behind held in Washington this month. They had to travel 500 miles from their home city of Herat to Kabul to apply for visas at the U.S. Embassy—a trip that is far from safe, and yet they made it twice. They had to order components from abroad, and it took extra long for them to arrive because they could easily be confused with bomb-making parts. Yet after trying so hard, and assembling their robot, they were crestfallen to learn that the State Department had denied their visas.  This is all the more inexplicable and heartbreaking given that girls’ education—forbidden under the Taliban—has been one of the major achievements of the post-2001 state created at such great cost in American blood and treasure.

That’s hardly the only episode of temporary insanity resulting from the president’s new tougher immigration initiatives.

Radwan Ziadeh is exactly the kind of Syrian that the U.S. would like to see running the country. He is a young, liberal, pro-American activist. He has lived in the U.S. for the past decade, and his three children were born here. Yet the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has notified him that he may soon be deported because he provided “material support” to an “undesignated terrorist organization.” The “terrorist organizations” in question were the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, which, the USCIS notes, “used weapons with the intent to endanger the safety of Syrian government officials.”

What ICE’s judgment leaves out is that many of the weapons provided to the Free Syrian Army came from the United States. Ziadeh’s association with these two groups stems from his work as an organizer of Syrian opposition conferences in 2012 and 2013 in Istanbul that were sponsored by the U.S. and Canadian governments. “ In effect,” notes a Washington Post editorial, “Mr. Ziadeh is being accused of terrorism because he acted at U.S. urging (and with Canadian funding) to bring together U.S.-backed Syrian leaders.”

Amid this hysteria, the U.S. is at risk of not just sacrificing its soul but also its security.

The Pentagon launched a program in 2009 called Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) to enlist foreigners with vital skills in the U.S. military. They would receive expedited citizenship in return for service. More than 10,400 troops have since served honorably and bravely under the program, bringing vital skills in such disciplines as medicine and Chinese, Pashto, and Russian language skills that are in short supply among native-born recruits. But now the Pentagon is contemplating canceling contracts for roughly 1,000 recruits who are ready to start Basic Training, thus exposing to them to the danger of deportation.

These episodes are the work of three different government departments: Rex Tillerson’s State Department is responsible for not issuing visas to the Afghan girls robotics team. John Kelly’s Department of Homeland Security is responsible for notifying Radwen Ziadeh that he is likely to be deported. Jim Mattis’s Department of Defense is responsible for possibly canceling the enlistment of 1,000 foreign-born volunteers.

The good news is that none of these decisions are irreversible—yet. There is still time for the Cabinet agencies in question to display some humanity and common sense. The risk is, in pursuit of a rational immigration policy, America could lose its mind.

Source: What an Irrational Immigration Policy Looks Like | commentary

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ICYMI – Ray Pennings: Don’t overlook the contribution faith has made to Canada’s first 150 years | National Post

2017/07/05 Leave a comment

More polling data from Angus Reid/Faith in Canada 150:

Beer, beavers, and ketchup chips may be convenient replies to the perennial question “What is Canadian?” but answering with substance takes more than a word. When it comes to Canadian perceptions of the role of faith and faith institutions, new polling conducted by the Angus Reid Institute, in partnership with Faith in Canada 150, exposes unarticulated Canadian values that contradict the one-word answers most might expect on the subject.

Ask Canadians about their own religious perspectives, and 21 per cent fit into the “religiously committed” category with 19 per cent on the “non-believer” end of the spectrum. The majority is somewhere in the mushy middle. When it comes to the most obvious expressions of religion in a local community — physical buildings such as churches, temples, mosques, or synagogues — the response seems to be shrugged shoulders. Sure, 36 per cent see these buildings enhancing the aesthetic of the community (compared to 9 per cent suggesting they detract) but the majority suggests their impact is neutral.

A different story emerges, however, when Canadians are asked about more specific expressions of faith in their neighbourhood. For example, when it comes to the delivery of healthcare, whether through hospitals, homes for the elderly, health clinics or programs for individuals with special needs, between one-third and one-half of Canadians see a positive connection with religious faith compared to less than 10 per cent who see a negative one. Similarly, when it comes to caring for the marginalized and homeless, providing relief in disaster situations, or assisting in the settlement of refugees and immigrants, the proportion of those who express appreciation of faith’s role is anywhere between 31 and 50 per cent higher than those who are skeptical of it. Even non-believers generally affirm these contributions, although they are the most likely to admit ignorance of them in their communities.

As with any poll, there is nuance. It would be misleading to ignore that on most questions approximately one-quarter of the population sees the role of faith communities in Canada as “a mix of good and bad.” Certainly, the interactions of faith communities with Indigenous peoples are widely perceived to be a black mark on the Canadian faith story. At the same time, the most religious respondents are also the most likely (84 per cent) to believe in the importance of reconciliation.

Consistent with the findings of April’s poll conducted by Angus Reid Institute, Canadians seem to respond more negatively when asked about religious institutions or religion in general. However, when it comes to the specifics, their attitudes and behaviours tell a different story. They recognize that faith communities have been an important part of delivering the Canadian social safety net historically, and continue to play that role today. There is a minority negative perspective, dominated by younger males who profess no faith and express hostility to religion. But for more than two-thirds of Canadians who are quite certain that God or a higher power exists, it is clear that faith communities are doing either “very good” or “more good than bad” in their neighbourhoods.

Source: Ray Pennings: Don’t overlook the contribution faith has made to Canada’s first 150 years | National Post

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High number of women failing citizenship test reflects barriers they face, advocates say

2017/07/04 Leave a comment

Some good analysis of the effects on gender from some of the earlier policy and program changes to the citizenship program.

Not surprising but now data and evidence-based (disclosure: I have shared my citizenship data and talked with Neighbourhood Legal Services). IRCC does not publish a gender breakdown for citizenship unlike other programs:

According to data obtained under a freedom of information request, far more women than men have their citizenship applications rejected because they are unable to meet the knowledge or language requirements.

Although the Liberal government passed a bill this month to relax some of the more stringent citizenship requirements imposed by its Conservative predecessor, critics say the changes fail to address the barriers faced by immigrant women hoping to acquire Canadian citizenship.

Between 2007 and March 2017, more than 56,000 people had their citizenship applications refused, the majority of them for failing the language and knowledge requirements, said Jennifer Stone of the Neighbourhood Legal Services, who requested the data after spotting a rising number of women coming to her office for help with their applications.

“Women and refugees are disproportionately affected by the language and knowledge requirements. Now we have data that could bear that out,” Stone said. “For them, it’s not a matter of won’t. It’s a matter of can’t.”

Stone said that in recent years the number citizenship cases received by her clinic has skyrocketed and the majority of clients having difficulty obtaining citizenship are refugee women or sponsored spouses.

A gender breakdown of the refusals showed that 24,286 or 60 per cent of the 41,071 who failed the citizenship knowledge test were women. Of the 14,779 who failed the language requirement, 66 per cent or 9,754 of them were female, according to the data.

Refugees appear to be disproportionally affected by the tightened citizenship requirements introduced by the former Conservative government: raising the passing mark for the citizenship exam, demanding proof of language proficiency and drastically increasing the non-refundable citizenship application fee to $530 from $100.

The number refugees who obtained their citizenship dropped by 25 per cent to 20,059 between 2010 and 2015 from 26,725 between 2005 and 2009.

By comparison, the citizenship conversion rate for those who came under family reunification declined by 19.6 per cent while the number of new citizens who immigrated under the economic class went up by 0.9 per cent.

Tenzin Tekan, a community legal worker with Parkdale legal clinic, said she was not surprised by the statistics.

“For someone with no formal education, it’s hard,” Tekan said. “We welcome the news about the changes (by the Liberals), but it’s not going to help everyone.”

Although there is a provision in the Citizenship Act that waives the knowledge requirement based on medical opinions that applicants will “never” pass the exam, it’s a long, tedious process.

Source: High number of women failing citizenship test reflects barriers they face, advocates say | Toronto Star

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Order of Canada marks 50 years of honouring Canadian contributions – Diversity analysis

2017/07/04 Leave a comment


Two charts contrasting the 2013-16 baseline with the latest appointments, which should start reflecting some of the changes and additional funding announced in Budget 2015 to improve under-represented sectors, understood as Western Canadian and business-related appointments (see my earlier article in Policy Options The Order of Canada and diversity).

Given that these are only part-year appointments, full-year numbers may or may not confirm these apparent changes in diversity and provincial representation:

The Order of Canada marks its 50th anniversary this year with 99 new appointments on its Canada Day honours list, including renowned figures from the fields of law, government, entertainment and sport, as well as Canadians whose contributions are less widely known.

The list includes soccer star Christine Sinclair, television host Alex Trebek, actor Catherine O’Hara and Globe and Mail editorial cartoonist Brian Gable.

Three people were named to the highest rank, Companion of the Order of Canada: former Supreme Court Justice Marshall Rothstein, National Arts Centre president Peter Herrndorf and The Prince of Wales.

Nineeteen people were named Officers of the Order of Canada, including former spymaster Richard Fadden, hockey player Mark Messier and actor Michael Myers. There were 77 people named as members of the Order, including opera singer Tracy Dahl, historian Bill Waiser, public health nurse Cathy Crowe and Indigenous leader Terrance Paul.

The Order of Canada is considered one of the country’s highest civilian honours. It was created in the centennial year of 1967 to recognize outstanding achievement and service to the community. More than 6,700 people have been named to the Order in its 50 years.

Source: Order of Canada marks 50 years of honouring Canadian contributions – The Globe and Mail

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Godwin’s Law: What the Creator Thinks of Hitler Comparisons | Time.com

2017/07/04 Leave a comment

Excerpt from an interview with Mike Godwin, the inventor of Godwin’s law (invoking Hitler means losing an argument):

It’s obvious you have a pulse on social media where the Hitler comparisons you predicted are rampant. You can’t just chalk that up to Trump right?
As far as I know, every President who has been President from the time I got on the internet has been compared by someone to Hitler. People compared President Obama to Hitler. People have forgotten there were pictures of Obama with a Hitler moustache. That talk was crazy.

I’m not going to tell people whether to compare Obama or Trump to Hitler. It’s the government of the United States, and that’s very hard to destroy with a cult of personality because we have a lot of institutional inertia by design.

Would you say Trump’s impact makes the comparisons to fascism online more frequent?
I think so. There’s always been a general upward trend, peaking at election times. I think President Trump’s campaign was so populist and so outside the political establishment that it inspired people to reach for the comparisons because we’ve never had a President like this come in as a media personality outsider.

Isn’t it lazy to go there?
Of course it is. If you want to say something more powerful than the last person who disagreed with you said, people volunteer the rhetorical comparisons because they haven’t thought hard about history and what’s different between now and Germany in the 1930s or Cambodia in the 1970s.

When do you believe it’s a fair shake?
I urge people to develop enough perspective to do it thoughtfully. If you think the comparison is valid, and you’ve given it some thought, do it. All I ask you to do is think about the human beings capable of acting very badly. We have to keep the magnitude of those events in mind, and not be glib. Our society needs to be more humane, more civilized and to grow up.

Any idea how to stop the glib references?
A lot of education reform. If I ran the world, I would strengthen both history and scientific education in the United States. If we fostered more self-criticism and self-skepticism, I think that would do much to prevent rhetorical meanness and mean spiritedness on the internet, of which Hitler comparisons are only a tiny part.

We are in mid-adolescence culturally. When you reach adolescence, you’re not fully socialized. If we’re more self-aware, we can use social media with newfound growth and muscles.

Source: Godwin’s Law: What the Creator Thinks of Hitler Comparisons | Time.com

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