Crosby, Penguins enjoy luxury of political indifference at White House: Emma Rose Teitel

2017/10/12 Leave a comment

Great column by Teitel (puts the Globe editorial: Trump, the anthem and your right to not take a stand September 30, 2017 to shame):

Sidney Crosby is a lucky guy. On Monday, the Stanley Cup champion told the CBC that he “grew up under the assumption” that politics “wasn’t something really bred into sports.” From his side of things, he told the broadcaster, “there’s absolutely no politics involved.” And why would there be? He quite literally has no skin in the game.

Like any white person who shares Crosby’s “side of things” and whose government does not devalue his life on account of the colour of his skin, he has the luxury of regarding politics as a force too far away to complicate his day to day.

It was this luxury, presumably, that led the NHL captain to visit Donald Trump’s White House for a photo op on Tuesday alongside his teammates: the Stanley Cup championship-winning Pittsburgh Penguins. It was this luxury that enabled him to smile and shake hands with a U.S. president who recently asserted that “very fine people” existed on both sides of the summertime march in Charlottesville, Va., where neo-Nazis walked unmasked and triumphant down a city street and a 32-year-old woman died at the hands of one of them. (Very fine people indeed.)

It’s this luxury that allows clueless white people to frame political indifference as a virtue akin to modesty. But not everyone has the luxury of standing guilt-free, quiet and “virtuous” behind this president. Among them, Black and brown athletes who are not, contrary to alt-right belief, rendered immune to racism because they are rich. LeBron James (a vocal critic of the president) may live in a mansion, but as he put it to the media shortly after that mansion was defaced with a racist slur in June, “No matter how much money you have, no matter how famous you are, no matter how many people admire you, being Black in America is tough.”

Being Black was tough too for the more than 400 hockey players who comprised the Coloured Hockey League in Crosby’s home province of Nova Scotia from 1895 to 1930. CHL players did not have the privilege of political indifference when their league disbanded due to a number of factors, racism included. Later the government would demolish Africville, the African-Canadian village in Halifax, in which many of the league’s members lived and played.

Apathetic white people who groan when athletes of colour get political, or who suggest as Crosby did that politics and sports do not mix, are in need of a reminder that for most, political activism isn’t a choice or a hobby. People don’t usually consider it fun or interesting to put their jobs on the line to speak out against a bigger power. The marginalized do not go looking for politics. It seeks them out. In this context, it sought them out when the President of the United States openly flirted with a racist ideology that would very much like to destroy them.

There is an argument, quite popular among Sidney Crosby fans at the moment, which alleges that Crosby had no business rejecting an invitation to visit the White House because like many of his teammates, he is Canadian. These fans ask: Why should a Canadian kneel in protest of a foreign leader or refuse to extend a hand to one? But to suggest that the actions of the President of the United States, in this case a volatile president who appears to possess both the maturity of an 8-year-old (he recently challenged Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to an IQ test) and access to nuclear weapons, has no bearing on the life of a Canadian or anybody who lives on this planet is absurd. Trump’s presidency will have bearing on all of us. Therefore the responsibility to speak out against it falls to all of us.

And history will not look kindly on the hockey players who shirked that responsibility when they strolled into the White House on Tuesday in their Sunday best, and grinned behind the 45th president of the United States.

“Everybody wanted to be here today,” Trump said about the Pittsburgh Penguins when the press conference began. Whether or not this is true, they were there. And that’s a shame.

Source: Crosby, Penguins enjoy luxury of political indifference at White House: Teitel | Toronto Star

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MacArthur Fellow Wanted To See If A Radio Soap In Rwanda Could Make People More Tolerant : NPR

2017/10/12 Leave a comment

Another part of the toolkit, using popular culture to affect change:

What will it take for the people of this world to drop their prejudices, to move past intolerance — and just get along?

That’s a question Princeton psychologist Betsy Levy Paluck — one of the 24 MacArthur Fellows announced on Wednesday — has dedicated her career to answering.

Back in 2002, when Paluck was a graduate student at Yale University, her adviser asked: “What does psychology say about how to reduce prejudice and conflict?” She and her adviser were teaching a class about hate speech and political intolerance, and he wanted to give students examples of ways to counteract those things.

Paluck searched and searched. And she drew a blank. “There actually weren’t any rigorous studies looking at solutions.”

So she designed one herself, looking to see if a radio soap opera could help bridge the divides in post-genocide Rwanda.

We asked Paluck about her research, as well as her plans for the $625,000 “genius grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (which is among NPR’s financial supporters).

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Through the course of your research, you’ve worked with some deeply divided societies — including post-genocide Rwanda, where members of the country’s Hutu majority had slaughtered 800,000 minority Tutsis. What did you learn there about how to re-unite such a fragmented society?

Something my adviser and I were teaching in that class at Yale was the Rwandan genocide and particularly the media’s involvement in directing and inciting violence during the genocide. That’s when I came across this radio soap opera that was basically trying to do the flip side.

In other words, to make peace? How did you proceed?

I called them up and I said: Can I help study the effects of your program?

I went to Rwanda interested in just looking at how people understood messages that come through pop culture and mass media.

I set up a study where I randomized exposure — so some people heard [New Dawn], a soap about a divided society that ultimately reconciles. And others listened to a different soap about health and HIV.

People loved New Dawn — people were so engaged. They thought of these characters as representatives of Rwandans like themselves.

What I found was they were aware of the social messages that were coming through this radio program — and they would often disagree with them.

In the soap, there’s an interethnic relationship between a man and a woman from different communities [the story didn’t refer to Hutus and Tutsis directly]. It’s this Romeo and Juliet story, but instead of meeting untimely deaths they start a peaceful revolution.

And people would say, “This is clearly something that Rwandans are into. They’re into this relationship on the soap. I may not personally believe in letting my daughter marry someone from the other ethnicity, but I’m going to let her — because that’s what we as Rwandans are doing now.”

So I found that people’s behavior changed even when their personal beliefs stayed the same.

And that’s what you published in your 2009 study in the American Political Science Review. You found that both groups — those who watched New Dawn and those who watched the other soap — overwhelmingly agreed that there was mistrust in their community. But in discussion groups, those who watched New Dawn were more likely to suggest or support efforts to welcome newcomers and work together to solve local problems.

We’re not lemmings — we’re not conformists. But we really don’t want to seem wrong or odd to other people. When other people’s ideas of what’s right and wrong change, or their rules about how you can be change, that makes a big difference.

I’ve been really interested in this idea: That how we behave is actually much more influenced by what other people think than by our own personal ideas. I think everybody’s had the experience of doing something because they thought it was expected of them.

There’s no more powerful example of this than Rwandans describing what the violence was like. Many of them said, “Before the genocide we didn’t hate our Tutsi neighbors. But after the genocide started, it was like violence was the law.”

In come cases that was literally true. Some people were being recruited by authorities to incite violence. But when people said violence was law, they meant something more. They meant that it was a social law.

Who sets these social norms?

Based on our findings, I think at times mass media and popular culture can do that. Government policies can do that as well. Recently, we studied a U.S. Supreme Court decision on same sex marriage, and we found that after the Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, people were more likely to think that other Americans supported same-sex marriage even if their personal beliefs didn’t change.

Your research looks at how people can use mass media to change how people think. Is there a dark side to that proposition?

I’ve had people say to me, “Aren’t people going to take your findings and use them for evil purposes?” And my response is they’re already doing that. There’s negative media, there’s propaganda. There are people advocating for really negative causes.

I’m interested in whether we can respond to that: Can you use those same tools to diminish conflict?

Is that what you plan to do with your MacArthur grant money?

It’s still early, but I have two goals.

One goal is to find creative ways to promote collaboration between activists, NGOs and social scientists. It’s hard for activists to take a break from what we’re doing to evaluate — are we doing this in the best way? Social scientists are answering those kinds of questions. Perhaps NGOs could have social-scientist-in-residence programs, the same way that many universities have artist in residence programs.

I also want to promote and train the next generation of scholars to do this kind of work.

What got you interested in fighting intolerance in the first place?

I was raised by parents who were deeply interested in social justice. And it never really occurred to me that that shouldn’t play into the kinds of research that I do.

Source: MacArthur Fellow Wanted To See If A Radio Soap In Rwanda Could Make People More Tolerant : Goats and Soda : NPR

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Let’s not dismiss the painful pattern of microaggressions: Adams and Smith

2017/10/12 Leave a comment

Michael Adams and Joseph Smith on their research findings from the Black Experience Project, including micro aggressions:

The resignation of University of Toronto emeritus history professor Michael Marrus from a senior fellowship at Massey College has provoked discussion far beyond the college. In an exchange covered elsewhere, Mr. Marrus made a slavery-related remark to a black junior fellow, in reference to the approach of the college’s head or “Master,” that concerned the graduate student and others nearby.

As word of the incident spread, petitions demanding action from the college attracted hundreds of signatures. The upshot to date, in addition to Mr. Marrus’s resignation, has been an official apology from Massey College and the suspension of the use of the title “Master” for the head of the college, among other commitments.

There has been much public debate over whether the consequences for Mr. Marrus were proportionate to his action, which he described in an apology letter as “a poor effort at jocular humour.” The contours of this debate are familiar: Should a joke that causes offence be shrugged off or taken seriously as a symptom of a larger problem? Are those who don’t laugh along oversensitive, or rightly holding people and institutions to account?

Our goal is not to revisit the specifics of the Marrus incident. We propose to widen the scope of the conversation with some unique and recent empirical evidence drawn from a seven-year study of the experiences of self-identified black people in the Greater Toronto Area.

What is the context into which a joke is launched? How often might black people – especially those in institutions where they’ve been historically underrepresented – find themselves on the receiving end? Is it a rare event or quotidian?

The Black Experience Project (BEP), whose results were released in July, was an unprecedented survey of 1,504 self-identified black people aged 16 and over in the GTA. The focus was their experience of being black in everyday life in our city region: at school, at work, at leisure, in civic and political life, when shopping, or simply moving around the city.

Four in five participants in our study reported experiencing unfair treatment based on race, in one or more forms of microaggressions, on a regular basis. Examples of microaggressions included: general condescension; intuiting that others expected their work to be inferior; or being treated as an intimidating presence. (It’s worth noting that microaggressions were by no means the whole story; other forms of discrimination – for example, involving employers and the police – were also widely reported.)

Some people who aren’t subject to microaggressions view them as small, unimportant experiences that are blown out of proportion. But BEP participants told us their effects are real and cumulative. One respondent called these day-to-day harms a form of “quiet violence.” Another, a member of Parliament, described the relentless experience of subtle discrimination as “death by a thousand cuts.”

Most of us go through life hoping to be judged on our behaviour, not on what others can surmise about us based on our appearance: our gender presentation, the colour of our skin, the clothing we wear, including religious dress. Martin Luther King Jr.’s hope that his children would be judged “not by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character” remains poignant – in part because it remains unrealized.

The Black Experience Project and other surveys show that many Canadians are treated differently because of the face they show the world; anti-black racism is an especially stubborn force. Institutions of learning have an important role to play in helping their members understand and address manifestations of racism, large and small.

Debates about language, codes of conduct and the nuances of social life may seem granular to some who don’t feel at risk of “quiet violence” or “death by a thousand cuts.” But to dismiss microaggressions as unworthy of attention treats each one as a minor, isolated experience with no meaningful consequences instead of as a painful pattern that shapes the landscape many (our survey suggests most) black people navigate in their daily lives right here in the GTA.

Source: Let’s not dismiss the painful pattern of microaggressions – The Globe and Mail

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Calculs politiques déplorables: Francine Pelletier on Quebec’s systemic racism hearings

2017/10/12 Leave a comment

Great column by Francine Pelletier on identity politics being played with respect to the Quebec hearings on systemic racism:

À la suite des piteux résultats dans Louis-Hébert, on presse Philippe Couillard de larguer la commission sur le racisme systémique, une des raisons, dit-on, de la « claque sur la gueule ». Selon l’ex-ministre libérale et animatrice de radio Nathalie Normandeau, les Québécois n’en pourraient plus de se faire dire « qu’on est racistes, xénophobes ».

Mais d’où vient l’idée (farfelue) que nous assistons ici à une « commission d’accablement des francophones »? Par quel tour de passe-passe une consultation sur la discrimination de minorités visibles devient-elle un exercice de discrimination envers la majorité ? Depuis les années 1960, toutes les grandes problématiques de l’heure — éducation, santé, justice, égalité hommes-femmes — sont passées par des consultations publiques. A-t-on crié au « procès des Québécois » au moment de la commission Parent ? Cliche ? Charbonneau ? Pourtant, à chacune de ses grandes dissections de la société québécoise, il y avait de quoi croupir de honte.

Il serait donc possible de contempler un Québec ignare, corrompu, toujours soumis à un patronage éhonté sans grimper dans les rideaux, sans y déceler autre chose qu’une façon d’y voir plus clair ? Mais entendre parler de racisme de la part de ceux et celles qui le vivent serait un affront inimaginable, une « farce », un « procès du nationalisme québécois », la mutilation de « l’âme et [du] coeur d’un peuple entraînant des conséquences irréparables »?

 Nous voici donc plongés dans une autre tragicomédie dont le Québec semble avoir le secret. On retrouve ici le même dialogue de sourds, la même indignation outrée de part et d’autre, la même incrédulité devant les propos de gens qu’on croit pourtant connaître (eh ? il a dit ça ?), amèrement vécus lors du débat sur la charte des valeurs dites québécoises.

Ce n’est pas par hasard si la première salve dans ce nouveau combat identitaire a été lancée par le chef du PQ. Après l’annonce de la commission en mars dernier, Jean-François Lisée a été le premier à dénoncer ce « procès en racisme et en xénophobie que les Québécois vont subir ». Claque sur la gueule oblige. À la suite de la défaite-surprise du PQ et du rejet de sa proposition de charte aux dernières élections, l’occasion était tout indiquée de reprendre l’initiative en peinturant l’adversaire dans le coin honni du multiculturalisme. « Ça suffit de culpabiliser les Québécois qui tiennent à la laïcité ! » de s’indigner M. Lisée. La pelure de banane était lancée. À partir de ce moment-là, nous assistions à un pugilat entre, d’un côté, ceux qui défendent le bon peuple (le « nous ») et, de l’autre, ceux qui défendent, à l’instar d’Ottawa, les pauvres immigrants (le « eux »). Devinez qui risque de l’emporter.

Il y a évidemment toutes sortes de raison de se méfier des intentions du gouvernement Couillard dans cette affaire. En perte de vitesse auprès de l’électorat francophone — qu’il n’a jamais su, c’est vrai, bien défendre —, M. Couillard a intérêt à garder les communautés culturelles solidement dans son coin. La diversité n’est pas une question entièrement neutre pour le PLQ, pas plus que la laïcité l’est pour le PQ — ou encore pour la CAQ, qui, à l’instar de ces gros footballeurs qui s’empilent les uns par-dessus les autres sur le même petit ballon, n’a pas tardé à se jeter dans la mêlée. Dans tous les cas, le pari électoral pue au nez.

 Cela dit, l’enjeu, dans le cas qui nous occupe, n’est pas la laïcité mais bien la diversité. Ce n’est pas exactement le même débat. La laïcité, d’abord, n’a jamais été perçue ici comme problématique. Les 50 dernières années sont un testament à la transformation harmonieuse d’une société archicatholique en une société qui n’est plus du tout guidée aujourd’hui par des considérations religieuses. Applaudissons l’exploit, mais admettons qu’en ce qui concerne la cohabitation gracieuse d’une société multiethnique, nous avons encore quelques croûtes à manger. La série noire de crimes haineux contre la communauté musulmane, pour ne rien dire de la montée de l’extrême droite ici comme ailleurs en Occident, est là pour nous le rappeler.

Au Québec comme ailleurs, le défi de l’heure n’est pas tant celui de la tolérance religieuse que la tolérance tout court. Sommes-nous prêts, non seulement à accepter parmi nous, mais à traiter comme nos vis-à-vis, nos égaux, ceux et celles qui ne nous ressemblent pas ?

Malgré tous ses défauts, une consultation sur la discrimination systémique m’apparaît, au contraire, tout indiquée.

Source: Calculs politiques déplorables | Le Devoir

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Christie Blatchford: Toronto school board declares war on ‘chief’ and all sense 

2017/10/12 Leave a comment

Blatchford has a point (apart from the opening two paras):

If there were any doubt, there is no more: Canada is the stupidest country ever.

The evidence, already all around, is now irrefutable.

The Toronto District School Board, in its efforts to remain ahead of the Ontario government curve on all gender-cultural-political sensitivities, is not only contenting itself with following Education Minister Mitzie Hunter’s directive of early this year to review all potentially indigenous-offensive team names and mascots, but also has declared war on the word “chief.”

“I can confirm that the title ‘chief’ is being phased out in various departments at the TDSB,” board spokesman Ryan Bird told Postmedia in an email Tuesday.

“It’s part of the ongoing work that the school board does through the TDSB’s Aboriginal Education Centre with regards to Truth and Reconciliation (Commission, or the TRC, which produced its massive final report in 2015).”

While apparently some key titles at the board were changed a few years ago, such as chief financial officer, among the recent casualties is the sign on the door to the office of Chief Caretaker Karen Griffith at Glenview Public School in the city’s affluent north end.

There, last week, staff noticed that the word “chief” had been blacked out on the door.

(Apparently, no thought or consideration had been given to how students of colour might react to the notion that a bad sign could be simply blacked out, and whether this is tantamount to cultural erasure.)

Presumably, board chair John Malloy will have to review and correct his C.V., where he is still described as former Chief Student Achievement Officer for the provincial education ministry.

Presumably, the board’s chief technology officer and chief information officer and chief social worker will all have to do the same. Etc., etc.

Attempts to find out precisely where in the TRC’s Calls to Action section there is any cry for the de-chiefing of the language in Canadian schools went unanswered. The board spokesman, Bird, tried hard on Postmedia’s behalf to get someone to respond but to no avail.

The best he could do, he said, was to suggest that the move didn’t necessarily come out of the TRC itself, but was “an aspect of a larger conversation staff have had” since the report was issued. Bird said he consulted with a TDSB elder who told him that probably “every Aboriginal person has been referred to as ‘chief’” in a derogatory way at some point in his or her life.

But the fact of the matter is that the word is Latin in origin and comes from the Latin “caput,” meaning head or leader, via the French, where chef is short for chef de cuisine, or boss of the kitchen.

If many people understand that caricatures such as Chief Wahoo, the mascot of the Cleveland Indians, might be offensive to Indigenous ears and eyes, it’s a struggle to get the notion that a non-Indigenous word such as “chief” is equally insulting.

Bird said the remaining board staff with offensive titles were notified verbally last month. Because there’s no formal motion or document describing corrective action, it’s impossible to know what precisely staff were told to do.

Source: Christie Blatchford: Toronto school board declares war on ‘chief’ and all sense | National Post

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Canadians favour openness, but isolationism brews, [Ekos] poll finds

2017/10/11 Leave a comment

More polling data on the risks of populism in Canada:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau heads to Washington Tuesday to further strengthen the ties between Canada and the U.S. just as a new poll suggests Canadians don’t want this country heading down the same path as its southern neighbour.

But the results of the Ekos-Canadian Press survey don’t necessarily mean Canadians’ points of view are completely at odds with those who voted U.S. President Donald Trump into office, said Ekos president Frank Graves.

Ekos and the Canadian Press surveyed 4,839 Canadians via telephone between Sept. 15 and Oct. 1 as part of an ongoing effort to understand whether the same drivers exist in Canada as those behind populist movements supporting a more isolationist viewpoint around the world.

The results suggest Canada favours a more open approach – 60 per cent of those asked don’t want a “Canada First” foreign policy that mirrors the “America First” rallying cry that put Trump in office. Eighty per cent of those surveyed also disapprove of the way Trump is handling his job, and 52 per cent want to see Canada become less like the U.S.

“Canada is clearly pivoting open, you can make the case with some of the data on that,” said Graves.

“But if you look at more of the data, I’m not so sure. It’s not that clear.”

The data also suggests 22 per cent of those surveyed think Canada ought to become more isolated, a marked increase after years of the number remaining relatively flat.

Also, among those surveyed 37 per cent think Canada’s immigration policy admits too many visible minorities. Twenty-nine per cent said they’ve experienced an incident of racism in the last month, and 33 per cent said they believe racism is becoming more common.

Ekos conducted the survey between Sept. 15 and Oct. 1, and the survey of the entire sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.4 percentage points 19 times out of 20.

Different sample sizes were polled for each question to increase the number of questions researchers were able to ask.

Ekos has been tracking attitudes towards visible minority immigration for 25 years because it serves as a way to test levels of racial intolerance in Canada, said Graves.

The question of whether it is too high was put to 1,154 people during the recent survey, and the margin of error for those findings was 2.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Forty-two per cent believe the right amount are being let in and 15 per cent say too few.

Graves said the incidence of those believing it’s too high peaked before the last federal election and seems to be on the decline. It’s still lower than it was in the 1990s, he said.

The survey also probed for people’s perceptions of their economic future, and the results suggest Canadians are pretty pessimistic about the way things are going, despite economic indicators to the contrary.

That, coupled with the responses on how open this country ought to be, suggests the door can’t be closed on the argument that the same economic and social frustration that’s fuelled populism elsewhere doesn’t exist here, Graves said.

“There’s clearly a significant portion of Canada that’s not going to be convinced by the whole notion that an open welcoming Canada is the right answer to the problems that they see in their lives and the country.”

What that might mean for Canada’s political landscape remains to be seen. Sixty-four per cent of those who say Canada is letting in too many visible minorities identify as Conservative supporters; 62 per cent of those who think the number is just right are Liberal.

But Graves noted that studies done in the U.S. before and after that election revealed that people who were exhibiting racial intolerance and who voted for Trump said they would have voted Democrat if that party had put forward a more progressive platform.

Maintaining support for immigration ranks high on the Liberals’ list of priorities; in the coming weeks, they’re poised to unveil how many newcomers Canada will admit in 2018.

The Liberals are keen on immigration to foster economic growth, but complicating the issue is the ongoing arrival of asylum seekers at the border prompting criticism the government has lost control of the system.

In Britain, a survey after the surprising yes vote in a referendum on leaving the EU found that nearly 73 per cent of those who voted to leave were worried about immigration levels being too high.

The Ekos survey found 41 per cent feel too many immigrants are currently being let in overall. 

Source: Canadians favour openness, but isolationism brews, poll finds – Macleans.ca

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Douglas Todd: Vancouver’s ethnic Chinese irked by inequality, tax avoidance

2017/10/11 Leave a comment

More good reporting on under-reporting of income in Vancouver. Not surprising that Chinese Canadians, likely particularly second generation, are as concerned as any one:

When urban planner Andy Yan spent an hour last week on a Fairchild radio talk show, every Cantonese- and Mandarin-speaking person who called was irate about growing housing inequality and tax avoidance.

“It really surprised me. The biggest lesson out of it was that Chinese-speaking people are as concerned as everyone about fairness and transparency and accountability,” Yan said.

The housing researcher said Chinese-Canadians appear as worked up as others about the growing gap between the house-rich and the rent-poor in this metropolis of 2.4 million people, in which one in five people have Chinese origins.

Yan, director of Simon Fraser University’s City Program, found in a study of the 2016 census that Metro Vancouver led the 10 most-populous cities in Canada in having the highest percentage (16.5 per cent) of residents living in low-income households.

Yan’s study, in addition confirming there are genuinely low-income city neighbourhoods, also added evidence to rising worries about Lower Mainland households that appear to under-report income.

“It’s a total mind-spin,” Yan said. “In Richmond, it seems to be a special concern,” he said, explaining how residents of the municipality, who are 50 per cent ethnic Chinese, are concerned many households may be under-reporting incomes to avoid taxes.

In a large swath of northwest Richmond, centred around Westminster Highway and Gilpin Road, which is replete with new high-end condos, 33 to 50 per cent of residents report living in low-income households. The Canadian average is 14 per cent.

Yan said his study revealed parts of West Vancouver and the west side of Vancouver are also sharp anomalies, with 25 to 33 per cent of individuals in households declaring poverty-like incomes, despite the stratospheric housing prices in those areas.

Yan’s study echoes two reports by veteran real-estate researcher Richard Wozny and UBC geographer Dan Hiebert, which show that residents of core Metro municipalities, where housing is extremely expensive, are often paying less taxes than people in the suburbs, where real-estate values are more modest.

In light of the study by Yan and others, three major factors appear to be contributing to why Metro Vancouver outstripped other major Canadian cities in having the most low-income households.

One factor is the region’s unusually large cohort of poor and working poor, a result in part of tepid wages compared to other Canadian cities.

A second cause relates to neighbourhoods with high-end housing in which some families appear to not be declaring their full worldwide incomes.

A third reason came to light this week, when immigration lawyer Richard Kurland released a Statistics Canada report showing contrasting financial outcomes among foreign-born residents — who make up 45 per cent of Metro’s population.

The report by Garnett Picot and Yuqian Lu showed that immigrants from Asia, who are predominant in Metro, are much more likely to report “chronic low incomes” than the Canadian-born and immigrants from elsewhere.

The disparity was most pronounced among immigrant seniors, who were 15 times more likely than Canadian-born seniors to declare poverty-like conditions.

After Yan pored over the results of his study, he was not surprised to see that more than half the residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside are on low incomes. It is a struggling zone notorious for high rages of drug addiction and mental illness. It is the most extreme example of several low-income zones dotted through Metro, where old rental apartments are the norm.

The unsettling neighbourhoods to Yan, and others, are those dominated by costly houses and highrise condos, but have 25 to 50 per of households claiming low incomes.

In addition to northwest Richmond, such tony neighbourhoods include Ambleside, Sentinel Hill and Cedar Dale in West Vancouver, and Kerrisdale, Arbutus Ridge and Oakridge on the west side of Vancouver.

Detached homes in these neighbourhoods typically sell for $2 million to $6 million, with condos going for $500,000 to $1.3 million.

“It used to be that income was a driver of real-estate values,” said Yan.

But a phenomenon is occurring in which the riches of many rely on heavy borrowing and are buried in assets such as real estate that are not taxed like income. Yan said President Donald Trump, an international real-estate mogul, is a prime example.

Although Yan said “under-reporting of income is hard to measure,” the fact many Metro neighbourhoods with expensive housing are reporting low incomes may relate to “the perils of wealth-based immigration.”

Immigration lawyers and scholars concur. They emphasize it is too easy for many trans-nationals to buy stylish condos or mansions in Metro Vancouver and Toronto, often in the names of their spouses or children, while reporting tiny or non-existent global incomes to the Canada Revenue Agency.

Yan was heartened by Chinese-speaking callers’ reactions to his report on income and housing disparity.

“Many Chinese people are aware of how income inequity has shown up in China through 3,000 years of history. They understand the instability that goes with it,” he said.

“Some Chinese people are not doing that well in Metro Vancouver. And many are concerned about having a real community. So they want to see fairness.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Vancouver’s ethnic Chinese irked by inequality, tax avoidance | Vancouver Sun

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Fonctionnaires autochtones: insatisfaction, discrimination et harcèlement | Maxime Bergeron | Politique canadienne

2017/10/11 Leave a comment

Haven’t seen this covered in English media. Worrisome (although it would be useful to have some comparative data for other groups):

Alors qu’Ottawa multiplie les appels à la «réconciliation» avec les peuples issus des Premières Nations, une enquête menée auprès de 2189 fonctionnaires fédéraux autochtones révèle un pourcentage élevé d’insatisfaction, de même que de nombreux cas de «discrimination» et de «harcèlement» au travail.

L’enquête menée par le groupe-conseil Quorus au profit du ministère de la Sécurité publique, obtenue par La Presse, indique aussi que 40% des employés autochtones songent à quitter leur poste d’ici deux à trois ans. Des conclusions qui ne surprennent pas du tout Magali Picard, vice-présidente exécutive à l’Alliance canadienne de la fonction publique (AFCP) pour le Québec et porte-parole du Cercle national des peuples autochtones.

«Je ne vous ferai pas croire qu’il n’y a pas de discrimination au gouvernement du Canada, ce n’est pas vrai. Ce que ça fait, souvent, c’est que les gens ne restent pas en poste.»

Mme Picard, membre de la nation huronne-wendate, dit avoir elle-même vécu plusieurs situations troublantes alors qu’elle était employée du gouvernement fédéral. Elle entend encore régulièrement les problèmes de fonctionnaires autochtones pendant des «cercles fermés» de discussion, où ils ne craignent pas les représailles.

«Pas plus tard qu’en mai dernier, j’ai entendu des histoires d’horreur, où des gestionnaires venaient juger les us et coutumes qui sont pratiqués dans les réserves ou les familles, en disant que c’était dépassé ou du folklore, que les gens devraient être gênés, raconte la dirigeante syndicale. On entend aussi tous les stéréotypes : vous ne payez pas vos taxes, votre électricité. C’est aberrant.»

«Sentiment de discrimination»

Parmi les conclusions du sondage de Quorus, remis en mai dernier au gouvernement, on apprend que 42% des autochtones jugent l’accès à des possibilités d’apprentissage et de perfectionnement «inégal». Questionnés sur les plus grandes difficultés rencontrées dans leur emploi, 18% ont mentionné un «manque de respect pour la culture autochtone» et 17%, un «sentiment de discrimination».

«Ceux qui ont une expérience négative à l’égard de leur environnement de travail ont abordé les aspects suivants : la discrimination, le harcèlement, l’intimidation et le manque de respect en milieu de travail», peut-on lire dans le rapport de 123 pages.

«Dans certains cas, on a rapporté des attaques insidieuses, et dans d’autres, des situations de discrimination directe.»

Le sondage souligne que 56% des fonctionnaires issus des Premières Nations sont «satisfaits ou très satisfaits» de leur emploi. Mais 40% pensent à quitter leur poste d’ici deux ou trois ans, une proportion plus élevée que pour l’ensemble des employés de la fonction publique fédérale (26%), d’après des données citées dans l’étude.

Amélioration

Selon la syndicaliste Magali Picard, la situation des autochtones se serait dégradée dans la fonction publique pendant la décennie du règne des conservateurs, entre 2006 et 2015. «Oui, on a vu une recrudescence des comportements de harcèlement, d’intimidation, d’abus de pouvoir, de commentaires qui sont vraiment très difficiles à croire dans les années auxquelles nous sommes rendues, et ce, de la part de l’employeur le plus important au pays.»

Les choses auraient toutefois commencé à s’améliorer depuis la passation des pouvoirs à Ottawa, soutient Mme Picard. «Même si ça ne va pas à la vitesse qu’on voudrait, l’attitude est différente, le respect est là, et la volonté de rétablir des liens, on la sent. Ça, ça ne peut que nous aider à améliorer les conditions des employés de la fonction publique.»

Réponse d’Ottawa

Au cabinet de Scott Brison, président du Conseil du Trésor qui chapeaute la fonction publique canadienne, on a souligné hier avoir pris un « engagement fondamental » en vue de « renouveler la relation avec les peuples autochtones ».

«Il nous reste bien du travail en matière de recrutement et de rétention des employés autochtones», affirme Jean-Luc Ferland, attaché de presse du président du Conseil du Trésor Scott Brison.

Pour tenter d’attirer davantage de jeunes autochtones, Ottawa a lancé en 2016 un programme de stages d’été destiné aux étudiants, considéré comme «un pas significatif dans la bonne direction». Le nombre de participants a triplé entre la première et la deuxième année, avance le Conseil du Trésor.

Selon des chiffres de mars 2016, quelque 5,2% des 259 000 employés du gouvernement fédéral sont issus des peuples autochtones. Il s’agit d’une surreprésentation par rapport au taux de disponibilité des autochtones au sein de la population active, qui s’élève à 3,4%, indique une autre étude d’Ottawa.

Source: Fonctionnaires autochtones: insatisfaction, discrimination et harcèlement | Maxime Bergeron | Politique canadienne

Filed under Aboriginal, Government Tagged with ,

Leamington is at the frontlines of the boom in migrant workers. Here’s how it’s changed

2017/10/11 Leave a comment

Good profile on Leamington and its seasonal agricultural workers:

On Friday evening, in the heart of this farming city, the workers arrive by bicycle and private bus.

Hundreds of labourers crowd the sidewalks, restaurants and shops on this municipality 50 kilometres southeast of Windsor, famous for its greenhouses and tomatoes.

It’s payday and at almost every turn the old city core is alive with bodies and chatter.

But these farm labourers are speaking Spanish and Patois.

Like many of Ontario’s downtowns, Leamington’s has seen better days. But the thousands of low-wage temporary farm workers from Mexico and the Caribbean, the work they provide and the money they spend here — Mayor John Paterson figures $15 million a year — has transformed the local economy.

Where Theresa’s Fashion once was is now Chica Linda, catering to workers looking to buy clothes to send home to family. Across the road, Mr. 2 Pizzas is now Crazy Chicken, where the menu is available in Spanish and features a cartoon sombrero-wearing bird rocking maracas, its fridge stocked with bottles of Mexican Jarritos soft drinks. Gino’s Restaurant and Wine Bar next door is now La Hacienda, a Mexican restaurant. Clubs offer salsa music and buckets of Corona and Caribbean vibe.

For the unfamiliar, it is jaw-dropping to behold. Yet transformation, like any change, can be simultaneously embraced, tolerated and loathed.

While these migrant workers and their effects on the community are particularly obvious in Leamington, the racial tension between them and the locals is far from unique in a rural Canada increasingly reliant on the labour provided by the migrant worker program.

This is the story of one migrant worker town and how people are learning to get along. Mostly.

Dubbed the “Greenhouse Capital of North America,” Leamington is located on the 42nd parallel — the same latitude as northern California — and draws its agricultural strength from the amount of sunshine it gets and the fertile soil it’s blessed with.

Everyday, some 200 tractor-trailers leave this municipality to deliver fresh produce — from its famous tomatoes to peppers, cucumbers, mushrooms and flowers — to destinations around the world.

Initially called Gainesville, the community was built by immigrants: first, the Scottish, German and Dutch, followed in the postwar era by Italians, Portuguese and Lebanese.

A shortage of labour has always been an issue for Leamington, as far back as Paterson, 63, who was born and grew up here, can remember.

But what distinguishes the earlier waves of migrants from those coming now is that the former came as permanent residents, while the majority nowadays are guest workers — mostly lonely men separated from their families, with temporary status only.

Leamington has more than 1,500 acres of greenhouses, with another 200 acres waiting for municipal approvals.
Leamington has more than 1,500 acres of greenhouses, with another 200 acres waiting for municipal approvals.  (JIM RANKIN/TORONTO STAR)  

More than 10 per cent of the 54,000 average migrant farm workers to Canada work in Leamington, accounting for one-sixth of the town’s population during the farming season.

The number of migrant farm workers in Leamington has surged in the last decade, mostly because of the exponential growth of the greenhouse operations here. Today, the town has more than 1,500 acres of greenhouses, with another 200 acres waiting for municipal approvals.

South of Hwy. 401, along Hwy. 77 are row after row of greenhouses, with new ones under construction. With a $60 million gas line completed earlier this year, the town hopes to finish its $80 million hydro line next June, along with a $7 million water system and a $40 million sewage system in order to meet the needs of more greenhouses in the next five years. Medical cannabis production companies are knocking on its doors.

Everywhere you go, you see hiring signs for general labour, pickers and packing staff at greenhouses. The jobs promise a minimum 48 hours of work a week.

“We don’t have enough people in Ontario that are willing to do that kind of labour or those kind of hours for that kind of pay,” said Paterson.

“I don’t think the greenhouse industry would exist if it wasn’t for the farm worker program. There just wouldn’t be the manpower to make it happen. The program is of ultimate importance.”

Source: Leamington is at the frontlines of the boom in migrant workers. Here’s how it’s changed | Toronto Star

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Anti-Semitism’s Rise Gives The Forward New Resolve – The New York Times

2017/10/11 Leave a comment

Interesting account of how Trump and the rise of the extreme right and antisemitism has given new life to an old publication (as in the case of the NYTimes and Washington Post):

The Forward has chronicled the experiences of Jews in the United States for 120 years. Initially published as a Yiddish-language lifeline for those who fled hatred and strife in Europe, in recent years it had to work harder to stay relevant to a community now largely assimilated, finding new stories to tell about transgender rabbis, the challenges of interfaith marriage and even the “secret Jewish history of The Who.”

Then came 2016, and a sudden clarification of its mission that would be strikingly familiar to the publication’s founders: covering the rise of public displays of anti-Semitism.

“There’s something different happening now,” Jane Eisner, The Forward’s editor in chief, said in a recent interview in her office, where a photo of the publication’s founder, Abraham Cahan, peered from the wall. “And here I’m speaking not just as a journalist, but as a close observer of the American Jewish scene. I feel it’s my responsibility as a writer and editor to illuminate that for people.”

Since the summer of 2016, about a year before The Forward went from being a weekly newspaper to a monthly magazine, it has beefed up its coverage of the so-called alt-right; assigned a reporter to go to white nationalist rallies like the one in Charlottesville, Va., in August, which featured chants like “Jews will not replace us”; and pursued more investigative reporting.

The latter effort led to The Forward’s report in March that claimed that Sebastian Gorka, a national security spokesman for the Trump administration until resigning in August, was a member of Vitezi Rend, a Hungarian nationalist group with a history of Nazi collaboration. The coverage has helped give The Forward a more than 60 percent lift in both donations and web traffic over the last year, according to Rachel Fishman Feddersen, the publisher and chief executive of The Forward, and Michael Sarid, the chief development officer.

“They bring what no one else can sell, and they can bring it and bring it, day after day,” said Ken Doctor, a news industry analyst. “They delve into things that are really in the background for others.”

According to the Anti-Defamation League, there was a 34 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents in 2016 compared with the year before, and an 86 percent increase in the first quarter of 2017.

The Forward’s staff has firsthand experience. Ms. Eisner said the threats directed toward the staff during the presidential race — often through emails or social media — had invoked Holocaust imagery like gas chambers and included images of the anti-Semitic meme Pepe the Frog.

“These are not creative people,” said Dan Friedman, the executive editor.

Still, “to some staff members, it was a little terrifying,” Ms. Eisner said at the publication’s Financial District headquarters, several blocks from The Forward’s birthplace on the Lower East Side.

The threats were serious enough that Ms. Feddersen decided to add more security measures, including a third door that requires an ID to pass through before reaching the office. When threats are made, The Forward now has a set process on how to report them to the police and the F.B.I.; the whole staff has gone through emergency drills.

“We really took it seriously, and it wasn’t fun,” Ms. Feddersen said. “It was not why anybody gets into this business. But that comes with the job, so we kind of have to do it.”

It was especially jarring for The Forward’s roughly 25-person editorial staff of mostly young journalists, for whom anti-Semitism in the United States had been something on the fringes that could be easily ignored — a generation that, in Ms. Eisner’s words, “grew up in Obama’s America” and took inclusion as a given. But it can be jarring even for Ms. Eisner, 61, who recalled recently walking by a church around the corner from her home on the Upper West Side that rents space to a synagogue, and seeing swastikas drawn on it.

“I’m written about on neo-Nazi blogs. David Duke talks about me on his Twitter feed,” said Sam Kestenbaum, a reporter who focuses on anti-Semitism and the alt-right, the far-right fringe movement that advocates a range of racist positions. “I knew that individuals received email threats, and certainly I did.”

When he tried to interview Andrew Anglin, the founder of the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, Mr. Kestenbaum was told, “I don’t talk to Jews on the phone.” Mr. Kestenbaum emailed Mr. Anglin questions instead.

Mr. Kestenbaum has also written about the white nationalist Richard B. Spencer and tracked a group of Jews who embraced white nationalism.

The Forward also has Ari Feldman and Larry Cohler-Esses, a senior investigative reporter, who wrote the article about Mr. Gorka and recently examined how President Trump’s father was once arrested at a Ku Klux Klan rally. Mr. Feldman’s coverage has included reports about viral moments like students at an all-girls Catholic school who posted on social media about playing swastika beer pong and an analysis of how the line between alt-right and neo-Nazi has thinned.

“What I’m sensing now is the commitment to doing the work,” Ms. Eisner said.

Which was certainly the focus when it came to covering the Charlottesville rally, an event that, in another year, The Forward may not have sent a reporter to.

“We wanted to get what happened across anecdotally but also contextualize it in terms of our experience and, most obviously, the experience of the Holocaust,” Mr. Friedman said.

In addition to articles on the rally and its fallout, there were stories on Jews who were observing the Sabbath during the riot, and on Charlottesville’s Jewish mayor. Nathan Guttman, The Forward’s Washington-based reporter, also wrote a first-person account of what it had been like to cover the rally.

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with

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