How Newfoundlanders are taking a remarkable stand against Islamophobia

2017/11/08 1 Comment

Interesting vignette:

Islamophobia haunts the nation, slinking into hearts and minds and laws, and some say if we could just learn from the ethnic diversity of Newfoundland—Newfoundland?—we could become more tolerant, too.

“We wanted to present Newfoundland as a role model,” says Mahmoud Haddara, president of the Muslim Association of Newfoundland and Labrador, who feels he lives on an anomalous island of peace. “This is what we wanted to tell, the story of Newfoundland.”

Haddara flew to Ottawa in October to testify before the standing committee on systemic racism and religious discrimination, part of the federal government’s attempt to stem bigotry. While Quebec’s Bill 62 proposes to ban people wearing face coverings from using public services, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have instead stood in solidarity with Muslims who live in villages as remote as Nain. They have become so curious about Islam that the one-mosque province must move its overflowing holiday prayers into a hockey arena. Hate crimes still happen, but when other provinces wonder how to promote interfaith understanding, the answer may be blowing in the brisk, Atlantic wind.

“We don’t want this bubble to be contaminated,” says Ayse Akinturk, a colleague of Haddara. “Our only worry is how long are we going to be able to preserve this beautiful experience, whether [or not] it will be spoiled by the outsider negative experience.”

The 3,000 Muslims in the province say they are the only congregation in North America to include both Sunnis and Shias, the two largest sects of Islam. In 1990, St. John’s simply didn’t have the Muslim population to support two mosques, so they created a uniquely diverse hub on Logy Bay Road, where neighbours include a carpet factory and a liquor store.

“I was reared up by my grandparents pretty good,” Ashley Smith of Norman’s Cove told CBC when the local station did an entire series on Islam in the province. Smith has converted to Islam and wears a hijab; and though she still cooks a traditional Jiggs’ dinner, and fish and brewis, she said after her conversion, “I finally feel at peace.”

Muslim immigrants are some of the best-educated citizens in the province. They serve as much-needed doctors in rural areas, engineers for oil rigs, and teachers. Although some Muslims arrived in the 1960s, immigration increased when Newfoundland ended its denominational school system in 1998, the last province to do so. There are now Muslims in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador City, Nain—“they are everywhere,” says Haddara. The RCMP in St. John’s has requested Islam 101 sessions from the Muslim association, which also considers itself a friend of the clergy.

On 9/11, Newfoundland refreshed its code of hospitality as the town of Gander hosted about 6,200 airline passengers from around the world. And when six worshippers were shot and killed in Quebec last year, Newfoundlanders created a human shield around their own mosque in solidarity. “We were praying inside, and all these 1,500 Newfoundlanders were surrounding the mosque and waiting until our prayer was over,” recalls Haddara. “We live in complete confidence and harmony with each other.”

However, the mosque recently received $46,000 from the government for requested security equipment, including surveillance cameras, and research by Jennifer Selby*, an associate professor of religious studies at Newfoundland’s Memorial University, has documented hate crimes including graffiti of racist slurs. Islamophobia does exist.

“We see many narratives of positive navigation and negotiation related to religious difference,” says Selby. “At the same time, micro-aggressions are pervasive and we must become more attuned to the institutional and structural Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racisms within daily life” in Newfoundland and Labrador. There is also discrimination in employment in St. John’s, she notes.

The province is still 97 per cent white and 90 per cent Christian. Among the Muslims Selby talked to, one student from Kuwait was referred to as  “Osama,” and said a professor assumed he would be a devout Muslim and arranged a prayer room for him. Another person arrived for dinner at a local’s house and was served bacon bits.

Locals have also complained that Muslim refugees are draining resources, although one refugee, 14-year-old Mohammad Maarouf, reports an unwavering welcome. He spends time with his friend Connor and by the sea: “We catch herring and catfish and sometimes we catch something called sturgeon,” he says.

Muslims in Newfoundland are not excluded from the tradition of getting screeched in. Instead of drinking rum, Haddara explains, they kiss the obligatory fish, paired with a glass of apple or orange juice.

via Macleans

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Goal of equity report is ‘high expectations … all students being served,’ says TDSB’s John Malloy

2017/11/08 Leave a comment

Always interesting to observe the Toronto District School Board, given the diversity of the city’s population and that it has often been at the forefront of these issues:

It may be uncomfortable. It will be tough. And it requires “asking the hard questions” and listening to difficult truths from people who don’t usually have the floor.

But in the end, that’s the only way forward in trying to ensure that all students at the Toronto District School Board, regardless of race, socioeconomic class or special needs, have equal access to the kinds of schools and classes that will help them succeed, says director of education John Malloy.

That means Toronto parents need to be prepared for changes to the status quo, Malloy said Friday in an interview with the Star — though not necessarily the ones outlined in a draft report that sparked backlash late last month.

“Our data is saying that some of our students aren’t doing as well,” Malloy said.

“So the challenge is how do we provide for those students who aren’t doing as well, while still holding the bar really high for all of the other families in our community that are quite pleased with what’s going on in their schools.”

He was speaking about the sweeping equity review underway at Canada’s largest school board, aimed at better serving all 245,000 students in its nearly 600 schools — and particularly minority groups too often overlooked.

Extensive community consultations over the past year by the TDSB’s enhancing equity task force have revealed the current system is failing many of the most marginalized students, says Malloy.

“We don’t always hear from people who need to tell us some pretty tough things, like ‘I didn’t feel my school believed in me,’ or ‘I really wanted a certain kind of program and was told I wasn’t capable enough,’ or ‘I really wanted to do something but I couldn’t figure out how to get there,’ ” he said.

But those messages, along with accounts of discrimination and low expectations, came through loud and clear and were reflected in the task force’s draft report released last month. They’ve also emerged in the 10 years that the TDSB has led boards in Ontario by regularly collecting race-based data through its student census.

The challenges of tampering with the status quo, however, were quickly apparent after the draft, written by a consultant and not approved by staff, was quietly posted online. It provoked a swift and loud outcry and an online petition over a recommendation to reorganize the way enriched learning such as specialty arts-based programs are delivered and eventually phase out specialized schools.

Irate parents and worried teenagers took it to mean that everything from the TDSB’s handful of arts-based schools to its specialized programs ranging from science to cyber arts were under threat.

The furor prompted Malloy to issue a public statement days later promising the board has no intention of closing its six stand-alone specialized schools, and will instead work on improving access to them and to other specialty programs for kids from all neighbourhoods and backgrounds.

While it wasn’t a rollout any public relations expert would have designed, the uproar over the draft report — which Malloy stresses is only a starting point that will be followed by a final report in December — has had an upside, he said.

Suddenly, people unaware that equity had anything to do with them have started to pay attention and weigh in on the many proposals overshadowed by the fuss over specialty schools. The public can provide feedback to the report through online submissions until Nov. 20.

The final report and recommendations will be presented to the December board meeting of TDSB trustees, who will decide whether to approve it and next steps. The task force has been managed by consultant Meta Strategies and cost the board $164,000.

Other recommendations include the practice of streaming students into academic and applied courses in grades 9 and 10; increased integration of children with special needs into regular classrooms with supports; and redistributing funding so that higher-needs schools get more resources.

The draft calls for a curriculum that reflects the TDSB’s diverse student body; hiring and promotion policies aimed at creating a more diverse workforce and leadership and anti-racism training for staff. It also wants changes to such disciplinary issues as suspension and expulsion that disproportionately affect Black students and those in special education.

Some moves such as destreaming, are already underway at the board, which also recently created a new position, appointing Jeewan Chanicka as superintendent of equity, anti-racism, anti-oppression, a role that includes advising staff and overseeing training and policy.

A major thrust of the report is to create strong neighbourhood schools that students “want to go to” with enriched options available in different clusters of schools, rather than only a few select locations that a lot of kids don’t know about or can’t travel to.

And Malloy said critics who have claimed the net result will be compromising quality or lowering standards are wrong.

The goal is “high expectations, effective programs, all students being served — which means that some changes must happen,” he says.

“Lots of things are working . . . but some things aren’t.”

Some in the community complain the board is paying more attention to being politically correct than to making sure kids are better at reading, writing and math.

But Malloy said classroom learning is connected to the complex world outside the school, in a city of myriad cultures that grapples with urban density and a gulf between rich and poor.

“It isn’t political correctness to be sure that no one is left behind.”

via Goal of equity report is ‘high expectations … all students being served,’ says TDSB’s John Malloy | Toronto Star

Filed under Multiculturalism

Toronto could welcome almost 170,000 immigrants over the next 3 years — are we ready?

2017/11/08 Leave a comment

The impact of increased levels on Toronto:

Nearly one million immigrants will be coming to Canada over the next three years, and tens of thousands of them will wind up in Toronto — but is the city ready for an influx of newcomers?

On the heels of the Liberal government’s newly-announced strategy to boost immigration levels in the years ahead, Toronto immigration experts are raising questions about whether there is adequate support for the rising tide of economic migrants, family reunifications and refugees, in a city where both stable work and housing can be hard to find.

Canada to admit nearly 1 million immigrants over next 3 years
“The rate of unemployment for racialized immigrant women is very, very high,” says Catherine McNeely, the executive director of Newcomer Women’s Services, a non-profit settlement organization.

The latest census data shows more than 55 per cent of visible minority residents in Toronto are living on less than $30,000 a year, she adds.

“When they do get work, it’s minimum wage, it’s precarious, it’s shift work,” she says. “We serve a huge number of women who live just north of the Danforth, where … 57 per cent of the households have incomes under $40,000.”

Margaret Eaton agrees. As executive director of the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council, she stresses how most immigrants are highly educated, yet an economic divide persists.

Employers, she says, need to step up and give newcomers a shot. “The heads of these big corporations have to cascade down that message to their hiring managers, and then you have to hire someone.”

via Toronto could welcome almost 170,000 immigrants over the next 3 years — are we ready? – Toronto – CBC News

Filed under Multiculturalism

What happened to respectful debate in Canada? Erna Paris

2017/11/07 Leave a comment

Great commentary by Erna Paris, notably regarding the Writers Union of Canada and the more recent Dalhousie controversies:

Will Trumpism come to Canada? When asked over the past year, I’ve said no. Canadian respect for diversity, an economy that has stayed afloat and our reputed politeness have made such an evolution improbable – at least in the near term.

That’s still true, but we’re seeing ground-level challenges.

Yes, Ezra Levant’s hateful website, The Rebel, fell into disrepute after its coverage of the white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., last August. Yes, the federal NDP has elected a Sikh man as its leader. And yes, the recent outing of men with a history of predation may actually kick-start change to the oldest status quo in history: the demeaning of uppity women who think they’re equal.

But, starting with the kerfuffle at The Writers’ Union of Canada last May, there have been troubling signs – not because the concerns being raised are inappropriate, but because of the way they’re being handled.

In an issue devoted to Indigenous writing, the editor of the house magazine, Write, said provocatively that he believed in cultural appropriation. Writers must be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities, he explained, before flippantly calling for an “appropriation prize.”

Those of us who hope to build a new relationship with First Nations peoples recoiled at his insensitivity, but the brouhaha that followed, including his immediate firing and a public apology on the part of the union erased his central point: that it is the work of writers to imagine and interpret the world.

This used to be self-evident. Was E.M. Forster appropriating Indian culture when he wrote A Passage to India? Did this year’s Nobel Prize winner, Kazuo Ishiguro, appropriate British culture in The Remains of the Day because he happened to be born in Japan? Was I wrong to circle the globe to write Long Shadows, a comparative look at how different cultures re-imagine their history after times of crisis? Limitless vision used to be the hallmark of good writing. If this is now being contested, the editor’s remarks ought to have triggered a serious public discussion about the nature of writing itself. This didn’t happen. The Writers’ Union correctly took action, but it simultaneously curtailed the conversation.

Another distracting development has been the self-serving effort to redefine common words, such as the term “racist.” According to a teenager of my acquaintance, some Ontario teachers are using the word to apply uniquely to those who are presumed to hold power, meaning that only white people can exhibit the flaw. It has been a near-universal understanding that anyone, regardless of skin colour, can harbour hatred and hold racist views. How will children learn to think with nuance about difficult questions if their teachers eschew history, context and moral complexity?

Last month, another indication of the emerging zeitgeist took place at Dalhousie University when its student union condemned Canada 150 celebrations because of the country’s exploitative history with Indigenous people. After a student launched an obscenity-laden tweet in support, engendering a complaint, the university decided to investigate, but withdrew when mounting anger seemed to preclude a mediated solution.

There was much that was disturbing about the Dalhousie affair. The student motion was certainly open to debate, but the tweet was not. It was, on the contrary, an attempt to silence speech in the name of free speech. The second problem was the capitulation of authority when faced with intimidation. The retreat of the university leadership sent a message that balanced discourse on a sensitive matter would not be possible, leaving everyone without recourse. The third concern was gross incivility in the public sphere. How many will risk engaging publicly if their interlocutors are more likely to hurl insults rather than debate the issue?

Because Canada is a diverse society largely sustained by historical compromise and the goodwill of its citizens, it will always be a fragile place, one that needs vigilant oversight. We must accept the anger that has been released by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and listen with respect to unpleasant truths. We must also have a respectful national debate on the complex historical issues being brought to light. At the same time, we cannot lose sight of the larger picture – the flawed beneficent country that sustains us.

via What happened to respectful debate in Canada? – The Globe and Mail

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Losing a war criminal in Canada’s access to information system

2017/11/07 Leave a comment

Telling account of ATIP failure by Michael Friscolanti – ATIP took longer to respond than locating a fugitive:

Nearly four years ago, Maclean’s tracked down a fugitive: Dragan Djuric, a suspected Serbian war criminal. At the time, his mug shot was one of dozens featured on an FBI-style “Wanted” list launched by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA)—a Stephen Harper-era initiative aimed at flushing out illegal immigrants who vanished before they could be deported.

A failed refugee claimant who supposedly disappeared in the early 2000s, Djuric’s trail had gone cold after the border agency said it exhausted every last lead in his file. Maclean’s managed to find him in a matter of a few weeks, thanks to some obvious clues left behind in his Federal Court records. Living in Slovenia—not somewhere in Canada, as Ottawa believed—Djuric was actually quite happy to talk to a reporter, anxious to prove he wasn’t hiding at all.

After the article was published, Maclean’s went looking for something else via the Access to Information Act: internal CBSA records discussing Djuric’s case. Only now, two and a half years after filing that ATIP request, has the agency handed over the documents.

Although the records contain some newsworthy revelations—including the fact that the Harper Conservatives quietly removed 15 other names from the Wanted list after the article appeared—the disclosure says a lot more about the dysfunctional state of Canada’s access to information system than it does about missing war criminals. Simply put, Maclean’s had a much easier time locating a fugitive than it did obtaining government documents about said fugitive.

“The access system is clearly broken,” says Fred Vallance-Jones, a journalism professor at the University of King’s College in Halifax, and project leader of an annual freedom-of-information audit. “If you don’t have the ability to get information reasonably promptly, then all we know about our government is what the government is willing to tell us in press releases and news conferences. And we all know that the government doesn’t always give the full picture.”

via Losing a war criminal in Canada’s access to information system – Macleans.ca

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Big Oil Has A Diversity Problem : NPR

2017/11/07 Leave a comment

Good profile of US oil patch and diversity. Assume similar in Canada but I welcome Canadian oil patch reader comment and insight:

Oil industry leaders say they want be more welcoming to women and minorities. Both groups are underrepresented across much of the oil industry, compared with the U.S. workforce as a whole.

One example is the category “oil and gas extraction,” where Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers show only 20.2 percent of workers are women, compared with 46.8 percent in the overall workforce. African-Americans make up only 6.2 percent in the same category, compared with 11.9 percent overall.

At oil companies, “for both women and for African-Americans, they tend to be among the worst performing in terms of both pay gaps and employment representation,” says sociologist Don Tomaskovic-Devey. He directs the Center for Employment Equity at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and wrote a report about these federal labor statistics.

Tomaskovic-Devey says some firms probably do a better job than others. He says it’s difficult to know because those numbers aren’t available. “The key thing to understand is when diversity is a managerial priority, it happens,” he says.

The great crew change

A few people at the top of the oil business do want to make diversity a priority. One reason is something the industry calls “The Great Crew Change.” After the oil bust in the 1980s, a lot of companies stopped hiring. That has left the industry with an aging workforce that includes many who are headed toward retirement.

Winkel co-authored a 2016 American Petroleum Institute research report detailing how many women and minorities work in the oil and gas business now and how that could change in the future. It projects the industry needs to attract 1.9 million new workers by 2035 to make up for retirements and growth in the oil business.

“We know from the Census Bureau that we will be a majority-minority country by 2044 … Those changing demographics demand that we pay more attention to diversity than, perhaps, we have in the past,” says Winkel.

You can see evidence of the industry’s desire to at least appear as if it’s changing in advertisements for big oil companies. One from ExxonMobil shows a string of mostly women and minority workers wearing hard hats and holding signs that tout the benefits of the industry.

This ExxonMobil advertisement features a string of female and minority workers that are much more diverse than the oil industry’s actual workforce.
ExxonMobil YouTube
Chevron’s Twitter posts highlight the company’s commitment to diversity in its suppliers.

The company has made diversity and inclusion one of the core principles highlighted in its mission statement called “The Chevron Way.”

“Staffing our workforce for the future is a priority and we actually start focusing on our talent pipeline with kids as young as 5 years old,” says Rhonda Morris, vice president of human resources at Chevron.

Big oil companies like Chevron and ExxonMobil spend millions promoting science and math to children around the world — in part hoping that it will lead to a more diverse workforce. At colleges, those companies recruit women and minorities and then offer them mentors. And for existing employees, there are programs such as unconscious bias training.

Ray Dempsey, the chief diversity officer at BP America, says this is good for business. “There’s data that you can find from many, many sources that talk about how much difference a more diverse and a more inclusive workforce can make on your fundamental business outcomes.”

Dempsey says executives already embrace diversity. The focus these days is on middle managers where the hiring and firing happens.

But he says there are other things about the oil industry that are difficult to change, like where the oil or gas is located. Dempsey says it’s often in remote places, “versus the urban centers where minorities — communities of color — tend to be and, frankly, where people from those communities tend to want to live and to work.”

Dempsey says the industry needs to do more to make rural places welcoming to women and minorities.

via Big Oil Has A Diversity Problem : NPR

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Josh Dehaas: Government should provide information on fate of failed asylum seekers

2017/11/07 Leave a comment

Valid points raised by Dehaas and Richard Kurland:

So what’s the truth? Are fake refugees really being encouraged to cross into Canada where they can sign up for welfare or a work permit, knowing they can ride off the backs of Canadian taxpayers for months or years? Or, as the Liberals make it sound, will they be put on a plane and sent packing?

The government is failing to provide basic answers

The truth is, we don’t know. It’s difficult to answer these types of questions because the government won’t provide basic answers about what’s happened to failed asylum seekers. Their failure to provide this data leaves Canadians to fill in the blanks. That’s dangerous, because it could lead to irrational public demands to close the door.

Right now, what little the government does report about failed asylum seekers doesn’t instil confidence. The Canada Border Services Agency’s goal in the 2015-16 fiscal year was to remove 80 per cent of failed asylum seekers within a year of a rejection of their claim, including appeals. In fact, they managed to remove just 47 per cent. In 2016-17 (year ended March 31), CBSA claims they did better, at 63 per cent. Either way, these figures suggest a large number of failed asylum seekers have decided to stick around indefinitely.

One would assume CBSA knows where they are and is trying to track them down. But neither Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale nor the the CBSA’s Jacques Cloutier would answer that question when it was put to them in a parliamentary committee in October by Conservative MP Larry Maguire.

The CBSA will not say how many warrants have been issued

One might also assume there are warrants out for their arrests; they’re supposed to be issued whenever removal orders come into effect. But the CBSA won’t say how many warrants there are. They did tell the Toronto Sun in March that there were 44,773 outstanding warrants for individuals who are supposed to be deported, but claimed they couldn’t say how many were failed refugees.

Richard Kurland, a veteran immigration lawyer, says he has been asking the CBSA for years to release data showing how many people have been removed, which countries they’re from, and how many warrants are active. Last year, he used the Access to Information Act to try to get details out of the CBSA, but the response arrived approximately nine months later and incomplete. It showed that there were 9,724 failed refugee claimants in the “removals working inventory” in September 2016, but didn’t really answer his questions.

“CBSA is just not providing basic reporting information, even though it’s instantly accessible literally at the push of a button,” Kurland says. Without such details, he adds, “it’s hard for us to have an intelligent, evidence-based discussion on policy.”

How are we supposed to get ahead of new challenges without basic information?

Kurland, for the record, says he believes most asylum seekers are coming here “in good faith” and that, even if they’re rejected, most are willing to self-deport. He also believes that the refugee system is working well compared to a decade ago when he says there were large numbers of illegitimate asylum seekers from eastern Europe coming to Canada to take advantage of our generous social assistance. Back then, he says, the wait for a refugee hearing was as long as four years, with another two or three for appeals. The Conservative fixed that problem, in part by speeding up the process for people from countries that don’t normally produce legitimate refugees.

But how are we supposed to get ahead of new challenges with the system, if we can’t even access the numbers needed to assess how well the CBSA is doing its job?

The government shouldn’t be leaving Canadians to fill in the blanks, because it will only generate suspicion. The people who will suffer most if Canadians lose faith in our immigration system are legitimate refugees.

via Josh Dehaas: Government should provide information on fate of failed asylum seekers | National Post

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ICYMI – New immigration quotas: Too low and no long-range plan: Saunders

2017/11/07 Leave a comment

Saunders critiques the modest increase in levels against the perspective of his Maximum Canada:

Two shocking facts about the Liberals’ new immigration targets: First, they’re not high. Not by any measure. And second, they’re not well-planned.

Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen’s announcement of a gradual increase in immigration numbers drew the usual mix of alarmist and exultant headlines: More than a million newcomers by 2020! Saved from the devastation of an aging population! But Mr. Hussen was proceeding with the sort of tiptoe-step caution that has come to characterize his government. His plan is to raise skilled and family immigration by far less than 1950s, 1980s or 2000s increases, while letting refugee numbers fall back to their usual tiny slice of the immigration pie (after a 2016 peak caused by the Syrian emergency). It’s not out of line with the immigration and population-growth thinking of every Tory and Liberal government of the past half century.

Indeed, the initial response from the Conservatives, via immigration critic Michelle Rempel, was not to criticize the numbers as too high but to predict that the Liberals will be incapable of meeting their economic-immigrant targets and filling the labour shortages that both parties complain about. The NDP response, also reasonable, was that more of those immigrants need to be less-skilled, because that’s also where our economy needs people.

Both Mr. Hussen’s proposal and the opposition responses are based on the most short-term vision of immigration: filling jobs now and meeting demographic challenges a decade from now. What is missing is the longer view of a larger, more sustainably populated Canada – one that concentrates rather than sprawls, one that uses population growth for ecological efficiency rather than waste. (This also happens to be the subject of my new book, Maximum Canada). We can hope that some such plan is in the works.

In the meantime, it’s best to think of Mr. Hussen’s targets as a temporary holding pattern. Since the late 1980s, Canadian immigration rates have remained fairly consistent, hovering around 0.8 per cent of the population each year (that is, around eight immigrants per 1,000 people). Rates declined somewhat in the 1990s – not out of policy desire (Prime Minister Jean Chrétien wanted that rate to increase to 1 per cent annually), but because the economy was poor, and when that happens, immigrants don’t come. Then they rose again at the turn of the century, and have held at around 0.8.

Canada’s new level of 300,000 makes for an immigration rate of 8.3 per thousand. Mr. Hussen’s gradual increase, to 340,000 per year by 2020, would be a far smaller increase than we saw in one year alone under Brian Mulroney (who raised it by 50,000 in 1986-7) and identical to the one-year rise we experienced in 2000. It would give Canada a rate of 9 immigrants per 1,000 citizens.

That’s not high by Canadian standards, and it sure isn’t by world standards: It’s less than the 2015 immigration rates in Britain (9.7), the Netherlands (9.9), Sweden (13.7) or Switzerland (18.5). This is not mass immigration by any stretch. We tried that a century ago: If we were to have the immigration rate of 1913, we’d have to take in 1.75 million immigrants a year. Nobody is returning to those times.

But we’re stuck with a way of thinking about immigrants that’s often rooted in the previous century.

Canadians, and often their government, still think of immigrants as units of labour to be plugged into factories and labs. But the typical immigrant to Canada today is not an employee; she’s someone setting out to employ people, or at least manage them.

Six out of 10 male immigrants and five out of 10 female immigrants today arrive with university degrees – twice the rate of Canadian-born people. More than half of them own a house within four years of arriving – despite the very high costs of housing in the big cities and their suburbs where immigrants settle.

In other words, we should no longer think of immigrants as sources of (or competition for) jobs, but as primary sources of new economic activity.

On the other hand, we remain mired in another legacy of 20th-century thought: that immigrants will find their way into the middle class on their own.

Children of immigrants do succeed, to an enormous degree. But the first generation tends to get lost, its members often unable to realize their potential as creators of employment. A generation ago, immigrants saw their incomes converge with Canadian averages within 15 years. Today, immigrants are 1.5 times more likely than average Canadians to live in poverty, and twice as likely to earn less than $30,000 a year, after 15 years. Only 24 per cent of immigrants with professional degrees ever get work in that field. We waste talented people.

We need to invest ahead of population growth, so it delivers benefits rather than trapping people in isolation and low incomes. We should not talk about population growth without a significant new cross-government, cross-jurisdiction program to plan and invest for it.

via New immigration quotas: Too low and no long-range plan – The Globe and Mail

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In the era of extreme immigration vetting, Canada remains a noble outlier: John Ivison

2017/11/04 Leave a comment

Ivison’s take on my MPI article Building a Mosaic: The Evolution of Canada’s Approach to Immigrant Integration):

While Donald Trump used Tuesday’s deadly attack in New York to promote immigration restrictions, a remarkable consensus continues to hold in Canada, evident in the response to the government’s announcement that nearly 1 million newcomers will be welcomed over the next three years.

Immigration minister Ahmed Hussen said late Wednesday 310,000 new entrants will arrive next year, 330,000 in 2019 and 340,000 in 2020.

In response, Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel complained about the Liberals over-promising and under-delivering on the immigration file, pointing to a backlog at the Immigration and Refugee Board, a lack of mental health services for Yazidi women, wait times for permanent residency for caregivers, and an uneven spread of immigrants across the country. But crucially, those complaints were about management of the system by the Liberals, not the significant uptick in numbers.

In a world where the U.S. president is pushing to step up “extreme vetting,” where even countries like Germany and Denmark with a reputation for being havens are turning against immigrants, Canada is a notable, noble outlier.

As Andrew Griffith, a former senior bureaucrat at the department of Citizenship and Immigration, notes in a new paper for the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, Canada’s successful immigration policy has its roots in the country’s history and geography.

“The ongoing creative tension between groups (English, French and Indigenous peoples) produced a culture of accommodation central to Canada’s ability to absorb and integrate newcomers. Further, the widely held perception among Canadians that immigrants are an economic boon and cultural asset to the country has made public opinion on the subject generally resilient, even as sharp backlashes have unfolded in the United States and Europe,” he wrote.

The polling bears that out. In fact, fewer people are concerned about immigrants not adopting “Canadian values” than at any time in the past 20 years, according to a major study carried out last year by the Environics Institute.

The study said 58 per cent of Canadians disagree with the statement that immigration levels are too high, compared with 37 per cent who agree. Views on the issue in Quebec reflected the national average.

It said 80 per cent believe the economic impact of immigration is positive, compared to just 16 per cent who disagree.

And it found 65 per cent think immigration controls are effective in keeping out criminals, up from just 39 per cent in 2008.

Since the major liberalization of immigration in the 1960s, when Canada abandoned race-based selection criteria and paved the way for the country’s current diversity, there has been a consistency about the broad parameters of immigration policy, regardless of which party has been in power.

Since 1995, immigrants admitted under economic preferences have consistently accounted for half or more of newly arrived immigrants.

The OECD’s migration outlook survey suggests the Canadian system is successful at attracting some of the world’s best and brightest. In 2014, 260,400 permanent residents were admitted, and more than half of the 25-to-64 year olds in that group had completed post-secondary degrees. The employment rate for foreign-born men was higher than for native-born men.

None of that is to suggest that the system is not used as a source of electoral fodder — particularly by the Liberal Party.

While the Conservatives reduced family-class immigration and increased economic immigration when they were in power, new programs introduced by the Liberals threaten to reverse some of that progress.

In the last election, the Liberals campaigned on prioritizing family reunification, granting points under the Express Entry system to applicants with siblings in Canada and doubling the number of applications allowed for parents and grandparents.

There was plenty more political pandering — watering down language requirements, lifting Mexican visa requirements and reducing the residency requirement for citizenship from four years to three.

The Trudeau Liberals’ emphasis on rights over the responsibilities promoted by the Harper government — and the prioritization of diversity over Harper’s insistence on shared Canadian values and history — paid electoral dividends, shifting the allegiance of a number of visible minority communities toward the Liberals.

Yet the changes were at the margins.

Both governments adhered to the distinctly Canadian model of integration, based on broad agreement about the way immigrants are selected, settled and melded into society.

The demographics defy partisanship and both Conservatives and Liberals have tried to offset the effect of an ageing population, where the working age to retired ratio is set to fall from 6.6:1 in 1971 to 2:1 by 2036.

Beyond the economics, there is a common approach to integration.

Griffiths notes that as far back as 1959 in Statistics Canada’s Canada Year Book, integration was defined as being clearly distinct from assimilation — it provided for the retention of cultural identity.

The niqab ban in Quebec suggests the debate on accommodation is not resolved.

But it is easy to lose sight of the fact that Canadians are broadly at ease with mass immigration to this country, even as it has resulted in a country with one of the largest foreign-born populations in the world.

Source: John Ivison: In the era of extreme immigration vetting, Canada remains a noble outlier | National Post

Filed under Citizenship, Immigration, Integration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

More than half of Canada’s Jews are missing: Robert Brym

2017/11/04 Leave a comment

My understanding of the Census methodology is that the examples chosen for ethnic origin reflect the top 20 single responses in the previous census with the exception of  specific groups being used instead of “North American Indian.” Moreover, new groups are added that represent representing recent immigrants (e.g., Iranian). So Jewish dropped off the examples, explaining the drop in responses (in general, people respond to a specific prompt more than an open-ended one).

Arguably, the religious affiliation question, rather than being asked ever 10 years at present, should become part of regular Census given the increased importance of religious diversity in Canada:

Many Canadians recall what happened when the former Harper government cancelled the compulsory 2011 census and replaced it with the voluntary 2011 National Household Survey (NHS). The head of Statistics Canada resigned in protest. Ethnic, business, health, social service, academic and other organizations protested. As feared, low-income and Indigenous Canadians were underrepresented in the NHS. Data from some census districts in Saskatchewan were never reported because the response rate was so low it rendered the data unreliable.

All was supposed to return to normal when the Trudeau government came to power. Just one day after taking office, it announced that the 2016 census would revert to its traditional, compulsory form, once again providing Canadians with reliable data about their economic, demographic, housing and ethnic status. But at least one category of the population – Canada’s Jews – may be miffed to learn that more than half their number went missing between 2011 and 2016. Statistics Canada reported this “fact” in a recent 2016 census release.

The 2011 NHS reported 309,650 Canadian Jews by ethnic ancestry, which is believable because it is in line with 2006 census data. In contrast, the 2016 census reports just 143,665 Jews by ethnic ancestry – a decline of nearly 54 per cent in five years. That number defies reason.

The problem is that Statistics Canada mucked around with the wording of its ethnic question in a way that renders at least one of its findings highly suspect. In 2011 and 2016, respondents were asked about the “ethnic or cultural origins” of their ancestors. On both occasions they were asked to “specify as many origins as applicable.” On both occasions they were presented with 28 examples of ethnic or cultural origins. But only in 2011 was one of the examples “Jewish.”

In the 2016 census, all of the suggested responses are national or Indigenous groups. But Jews are neither. They are a cultural group, members of which come from many nations. Accordingly, it seems that the responses suggested by Statistics Canada in 2016 led many Canadian Jews to indicate their ethnic or cultural origin as Canadian or Polish or Tunisian or French, not Jewish. And so more than half the Jewish population was not counted.

Of course, no survey is perfect. The purveyors of the Canadian census may be excused for reporting that in 1971 the language most often spoken at home by 25 members of the “Indian and Eskimo” group was Yiddish. (Another 25 reported Chinese and fully 125 reported Gaelic and Welsh.) But it is unacceptable when more than half of a sizable cultural group suddenly disappears because of poorly thought-through question-wording.

No one could reasonably suggest that more than half of Canada’s Jews were removed from the census intentionally. However, the Jewish community has every right to be upset that its educational and social-service planning will be imperilled by the vagaries of Statistics Canada’s work and that the community is less likely to be recognized for its contribution to Canadian society now that its numbers have dropped so precipitously in the official population count.

Source: More than half of Canada’s Jews are missing – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

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