Public service needs better data to measure diversity, says task force

2018/01/29 Leave a comment

I have a mixed reaction to the task force report and its 44 recommendations.

On the one hand, I sympathize with the members in trying to provide practical and implementable recommendations on how to increase inclusion in the public service; on the other, I find so many of the recommendations either ignore or downplay the significant overall progress to date with the employment equity groups, advocate new structures rather than fixing the existing mechanisms, and proposes adding layers onto a public service already having difficulties managing existing obligations.

After all, historic and current numbers suggest self-identification and annual reporting have largely worked for the existing groups, particularly women and visible minorities.

The list itself reads more like a laundry list than a carefully thought out list of priorities.

Of the recommendations (and sub-recommendations), the following strike me as more important:

  1. preparing demographic and WFA (workforce availability) projections to reflect Canada’s diversity;
  2. collecting Census data on LGBTQ2 (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans(gender), queer, and two-spirit)+ people to determine;
  3. the proposed D&I (Diversity and inclusion) lens be developed further as the tool that the public service will adopt to (but the issue of possible duplication with  GBA+ needs to be addressed):a. support cultural transformation in the public service
    b. inform program design
    c. support policy development
    d. design and evaluate practices for people management
  4. the focus on unconscious or implicit bias in training, even if the pilot showed no evidence of bias in hiring, is nevertheless helpful across any number of areas;

The most questionable ones, IMO, are:

  1. reviewing the lexicon for identifying groups to modernize terminology for visible minorities and Indigenous peoples (allow public servants to spend endless amounts of time debating words rather than focussing on practical issues)
  2. developing a methodology to update employment equity WFA (workforce availability) estimates between censuses (too costly and not needed – we can live with the lag);
  3. including in WFA (workforce availability) estimates citizens and non-citizens who are living in Canada (hiring preference is granted to Canadian citizens and why should we set up a system that essentially suggests a greater representation problem than there is);
  4. Greater emphasis on departmental champions (how effective have existing champion networks been at effecting change, are we just adding another layer of talk shops?)

Unsure:

  1. establish a Commissioner for Employment Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, modelled after the Commissioner of Official Languages (more thought needed given the potential high cost – $20 million for OL – against other priorities as well as how it would interact with existing albeit imperfect reporting and mechanisms such as EE,  multiculturalism, disability)

Hill Times article below:

Planning the future of diversity in the public service is not possible with out-of-date data, leaving certain groups unintentionally sidelined, a joint task force studying equity initiatives found, after a months-long examination of inclusion and diversity in the public service.

In its final report released Dec. 11—Building a Diverse and Inclusive Public Service—the joint union-management task force on diversity and inclusion made 44 recommendations surrounding four themes: people management, leadership and accountability, education and awareness, and the consideration of diversity and inclusion.

The demographics of Canada’s population are drastically shifting, but the workforce availability (WFA) estimates, which compare the percentage of minorities in the Canadian population to their percentage in the public service, use data from the census, which is only completed every five years.

Waheed Khan, a member of the Professional Institute of the Public Service (PIPSC) and a co-chair of the task force’s technical committee, said because of the old data, diversity goals could often be drastically skewed.

“Right now, the [estimates say there is] about 12 or 14 per cent visible minorities [in Canada]… but if you look at the current data it is over 22 per cent,” he said, adding that this means deputy ministers may think they’re doing fine if their department is 13.5 per cent, for example.

Projections say the visible-minority population could reach 37 per cent in the future, he said, meaning suddenly 13.5 per cent doesn’t cut it.

The workforce availability estimates also don’t track LGBTQ Canadians or permanent residents working as bureaucrats.

Outside studies indicate that between five and 13 per cent of the population identifies as LGBTQ, but 54 per cent prefer not to disclose their sexual orientation in the workplace for fear of retribution or rejection from their colleagues.

Therefore, the report recommends having WFA estimates updated between the censuses, collect census data on LGBTQ people, track the WFA for non-citizen bureaucrats, and prepare demographic and WFA projections to reflect Canada’s diversity. Departments should then establish diversity goals based on that data.

The task force was created in November 2016 and included representatives from PIPSC, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers (PAFSO), as well as Treasury Board, Health Canada, and Justice Canada, among others. It had a one-year mandate to study ways to “strengthen diversity and inclusion in the government,” according to the Treasury Board’s website.

Diversity and inclusion policies “enable the public service to leverage the range of perspectives of our country’s people to help address today’s complex challenges,” reads the report, and creativity, problem solving, and innovation are improved with varied perspectives.

Treasury Board is reviewing the report and determining how it wants to move forward with implementation. It did not respond to requests for comment by deadline.

Put people who understand diversity in top roles: report

Leadership and the way people are managed is the start of the shift, said Mr. Khan. The task force spoke to public servants through 20 focus group interviews, as well as an online survey that garnered over 12,000 responses. It also did research on provincial equity initiatives, as well as the Australian and British bureaucracies. There are about 262,000 public servants in Canada.

Establishing a Centre of Expertise on Diversity and Inclusion will help senior management implement policies to foster a healthier work environment, recommended the task force. It would determine better ways to communicate about equity issues; outline possible challenges or barriers; and work with other related groups to ensure consistency within the bureaucracy.

Mr. Khan said those who can manage diverse teams, such as those consisting of men and women, or different racial groups or cultures, encourages equity and so the bureaucracy needs to value that skill. This could be implemented by making it a job requirement, for example.

Equity groups—which include women, LGBTQ sexual orientations, Indigenous populations, those with disabilities, and visible minorities—are often expected to conform with the majority, he said, but good management can reduce the harassment and discrimination they face, allowing them to speak up more often.

“You should also have this intercultural effectiveness as a competency for people who want to move on to managerial positions,” he said, so that power dynamics begin to shift in an office.

Those who are included in the definition of equity groups often face more discrimination, he said.

Along with valuing the management of diverse teams as a skill set, the task force recommended hiring boards and other sources of authority be staffed with people from diverse backgrounds. As well, it recommends the creation of a Commissioner for Employment Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, modelled after the Commissioner of Official Languages. Accountability ensures action, Mr. Khan said.

Hiring practices were a big focus for the task force, said PSAC human rights officer Seema Lamba, who was also on the technical committee, as equity group members often feel they are included or excluded because of their status.

“Respondents don’t necessarily feel that the staffing process that they’ve experienced has been fair or transparent,” she said. “There needs to be more accountability around the staffing process, as well as oversight and monitoring.”

She added that since 2005, Treasury Board has increasingly delegated its authority in overseeing diversity programs, and what PSAC has seen is inconsistency across departments. One department may do a decent job around accommodation, said Ms. Lamba, but others might not.

Blind hiring practices—where any details about a person’s identity are removed—were recommended in the report. The Treasury Board Secretariat began testing name-blind recruitment between April and October in six federal departments, including National Defence and Global Affairs Canada, although 17 departments ended up participating. In a blog post Jan. 23, Treasury Board President Scott Brison (Kings-Hants, N.S.) said the experiment did not uncover bias, but the report notes that participants were aware they were participating in a name-blind recruitment project, which could have affected their assessment.

Diversity and inclusion lens, mandatory training recommended

When someone wants to develop an infrastructure project, such as a bridge, they have to do an environmental impact assessment, said Mr. Khan. It allows stakeholders to understand the effect of their actions and put mitigation strategies in place, if necessary.

A diversity and inclusion lens would do much the same thing for government policies, programs, and people management strategies. That way they can understand how these policies affect different groups.

The lens is an education tool, but the report also recommends mandatory diversity and inclusion training for all new employees and managers, and for equity conversations to be meaningful discussed in other training. Often it’s not that people are trying to be discriminatory toward equity groups, said Mr. Khan, it’s just that they haven’t been educated to understand other perspectives.

via Public service needs better data to measure diversity, says task force – The Hill Times – The Hill Times

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Europe’s multicultural fears hide an integration success story: Doug Saunders

2018/01/29 Leave a comment

While I haven’t read the Bertelsmann report yet, I am familiar with the OECD integration report as it is the best source of international comparisons. The above chart highlights some of the more significant indicators, showing overall a less positive picture for European countries than portrayed by Saunders:

It has become commonplace, in some circles, to seal an argument with a reference to “what is happening in Europe.” Many things are happening in Europe, but you know it isn’t a reference to the Eurovision Song Contest or the Swedish gender-equality laws or full employment in Germany.

No, “what is happening in Europe” implies that whatever collection of bad-news headlines you’ve seen involving bombs and riots and crime gangs and far-out political parties shouting about the collapse of Western civilization, are caused by the presence of darker-skinned Europeans with minority religious beliefs.

That was the non-subtle suggestion when the U.S. President deployed the phrase in one of his tweets last year: “Our country needs strong borders and extreme vetting, NOW. Look what is happening all over Europe.” It’s the subject of popular books such as The Strange Death of Europe by the right-wing British author Douglas Murray, which uses random anecdotes and factoids to persuade the reader that everything was grand and harmonious in Europe – during some non-conflict-dominated era that is hard to find in history books – until those Muslims arrived, at which point “the culture” fell apart. Many of his arguments resemble German author Thilo Sarrazin’s Germany Abolishes Itself, which additionally used long-discredited racial-science concepts to claim that Turks had lowered his country’s IQ.

A version has seeped into more moderate conversations. Many people now believe what British author David Goodhart coined the “Progressive’s Dilemma” – the notion that growing ethnic diversity inevitably erodes civic trust and support for social programs, because we don’t want our tax money going to people not like us. Of course, you have to believe that darker-skinned Europeans are “not like us.”

This all ignores what is actually happening in Western Europe – which is one of the most successful and rapid stories of cultural and economic integration the world has seen.

There certainly are many white Europeans who think their brown-hued neighbours are poorly integrated aliens. The migrant influx of 2015 and 2016 didn’t help – those hundreds of thousands of lost souls stole attention from Europe’s tens of millions of immigrants and minorities, whose stories are entirely different.

We now have very comprehensive data showing just how well-integrated Europe’s minority groups are becoming. Most recent, published late last year, is a big study of Muslim populations by Germany-based Bertelsmann Foundation. It was preceded by an even larger-scale study of integration by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The German study found that “religious affiliation does not impede integration” in European countries. Not only that, but, as the OECD observed, “integration challenges do not increase with the share of immigrants in the population” – in fact, the countries with the largest immigrant populations tend to have the most total cultural and economic integration.

Immigrants and their offspring in Europe almost exclusively feel loyal to – and connected to – the country where they live; only 3 per cent of German and French Muslims and 8 per cent of British Muslims identify with their countries of ancestry (this is a lower rate than, say, European immigrants in Canada).

And they’re not forming “parallel societies”: Three-quarters of European Muslims spend their free time daily with European Christians, Jews and atheists – and that rate of contact increases with each generation.

Education is where Europe has often lagged: Its school systems often contain built-in incentives for minority children to fall behind or drop out. The Bertelsmann study found that the best educational integration is in France, where only 11 per cent of Muslims leave school before turning 18 (not much more than the ethnic-French population).

Germany and Switzerland, with their rigid and old-fashioned systems, have higher dropout rates – but they make up for this in employment, as immigrant-descended citizens in those booming economies have employment rates identical to the established population. Across Europe, the OECD says, immigrant employment is only three points lower than among the native-born.

Both studies found gaps and shortcomings in some places, especially educational success – but those are caused by European failures in policies and tolerance, not in lack of immigrant ambition.

Notably, both studies found populations who urgently want to be European, not “multicultural.” That’s a big difference: As historian Rita Chin observes in her book The Crisis of Multiculturalism in Europe, multiculturalism has largely been opposed by Europe’s minorities because of its “surprisingly undemocratic effects” – they’ve seen it as a barrier to integration; as a result, she writes, we now see “former colonials, guest workers, refugees and their descendants … woven into virtually every aspect of European public life.”

That – more than anything else – is what is happening in Europe.

via Europe’s multicultural fears hide an integration success story – The Globe and Mail

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Canada Confronts Growing Tensions Between Its Ethnic Communities | US News

2018/01/29 Leave a comment

Always interested to see how Canada is portrayed in the international media.

While this piece is refreshing in that it provide a more critical look than most, it presents a limited range of views (no matter how much I value the work of the Mosaic Institute).

And could reporters be less lazy in their reporting of hate crimes by looking at trends, not just one year results – the overall numbers have been relatively flat with some variation among groups:

During this past season’s observation of Hanukkah, at least a dozen synagogues and Jewish centers across Canada received the same letter — a sheet of paper bearing the depiction of a blood-soaked Star of David with a swastika in the middle. The message, written in bold black letters, was explicit: “Jews must perish.”

The incidents triggered police investigations across the country and critical declarations by Jewish leaders. But it also revealed blemishes on the social fabric of a country known for its harmony. “… this isn’t something that should upset just the Jewish community, it has to upset every Canadian because that’s not what we stand for, ” Judy Shapiro, associate executive director of the Calgary Jewish Federation, told reporters.

Canadians today find themselves grappling with issues that, from outside of the country, may appear very un-Canadian: reported hate crimes are increasing, some ethnic populations in the country increasingly are critical of how they’re treated by authorities and lawmakers are debating minority protections versus free speech rights.

“We like to hold on to the notion that Canadians value something called multiculturalism or pluralism,” says Pamela Divinsky, executive director of the Mosaic Institute, a Canadian think tank that promotes dialogue within diverse communities. “But there is growing discomfort with differences.”

To be sure, Canada is celebrated for its diversity and multiculturalism. In the 2015 Prosperity Index, put out by Legatum Institute, a London-based think tank, Canada finished first in the personal freedom category thanks to high scores in tolerance and civil liberties. Indeed, most Canadians would agree with the results of this week’s Best Countries survey results that for three consecutive years has ranked Canada as the country offering the greatest quality of life among the assessed nations.

But prominent social justice advocate Bernie Farber summed up today’s Canada by noting recently that relations between the country’s various communities “are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.”

Statistics Canada recently reported a 3 percent increase in hate crimes from 2015 to 2016, when 1,409 such crimes were reported to police. Jews were the most targeted group (221 incidents), followed by blacks (214 incidents) and members of the LGBT community (176 incidents). While hate crimes account for less than 0.1 percent of overall crime in Canada, government statisticians suspect that two-thirds of such crimes are not reported. They add that reporting rates might vary by population; some targeted groups might be more willing to report hate crimes than others.

Months before the letters addressed to synagogues and Jewish centers were put in the mail, members of the Jewish community reported a handful of other anti-Semitic incidents in the Toronto area, including the appearance of swastikas on the walls of a university classroom and the phrase “Hitler was right!” painted on highway infrastructure.

A year ago, meanwhile, a gunman burst into a Quebec City mosque during evening prayers and opened fire. Six men were shot and killed and 19 others were wounded. The alleged shooter, identified as 27-year-old French-Canadian Alexandre Bissonnette, will stand trial on charges of first-degree murder and attempted murder.

 Vigils across the country expressed support for the Muslim community, but that groundswell was soon overshadowed by heated debate over a proposal in the House of Commons to pass a non-binding motion condemning Islamophobia and religious discrimination. Opponents argue that it will limit free speech or single out Islam for special treatment in Canadian law. Thousands of Canadians signed petitions against the motion and some took part in organized protests, where they clashed with supporters of the motion. It was passed in late March.

The Muslim community, which was the target of 139 hate crimes in 2016, was at the center of controversy again last October, when Quebec lawmakers passed legislation requiring people in that province to uncover their faces when giving or receiving public service. Many Muslims see the law as an attack on women who wear the niqab.

Muslims are not the only Canadians who take issue with how they’re treated by authorities. Many members of the black community believe police discriminate against them. In March 2016, Black Lives Matters members staged a protest outside police headquarters in Toronto, spurred to action by police shootings of black men in two separate incidents. One victim was shot while wielding a hammer and the other was killed while holding a BB gun.

Three months after that protest, the organization’s members brought Toronto’s annual Pride parade to a halt by staging a sit-in on the parade route. Organizers said they were protesting “anti-blackness” by parade organizers and police. Today, blacks are the target of more reported hate crimes in Canada than any group except for Jews.

“There’s an unacceptable gap between the promises we project to the world [as a country] and the realities African-Canadians get to experience every day,” says Canadian human rights lawyer Anthony Morgan. He has written about various attacks on black Canadians, including one in which several nooses were placed in the work area of an assembly plant worker in Windsor, Ontario.

A Hard-Right History in Canada

“There has always been a ripple of hard-right activity in Canada,” says social activist Farber, who is the former CEO of the Mosaic Institute, a Canadian nonprofit organization that promotes diversity. He points to Heritage Front, a Canadian white nationalist organization founded in 1989 and disbanded 15 years later, as an example. But he says that, for the first time in recent history, Canadians who hold such views feel emboldened to act on them and to share them with others. Farber attributes that development, in large part, to Donald Trump.

“When the president of the United Statesmakes common cause with Neo-Nazis, bigots and racists, it gives those people permission to climb out of garbage cans and pursue their hateful business,” he explains. “Unfortunately, it is no longer just street kids who are attracted to white nationalism. We now see articulate university students creating closed Facebook pages and organizing through social media.”

He notes that Bissonnette, the accused Quebec City mosque shooter, was a political science and anthropology major at a nearby university and had reportedly made online statements inspired by extreme right-wing nationalists. He “liked” Facebook pages of several politicians including Trump and far-right French politician Marine Le Pen.

Bissonnette denounced refugees in online posts, and he is not the only Canadian who has expressed antipathy toward newcomers. Last fall, ultranationalists staged a protest at the U.S.-Canada border.

Politicians have condemned attacks against minorities and some community groups have requested more funding and resources for police forces to combat hate crimes. But that won’t fix the problem, says Divinsky of the Mosaic Institute.

“We continue to look at differences as a problem, as something that needs to be managed, controlled, contained and silenced,” says Divinsky. “But we need to shift out mindset and see differences as our best asset. Our country is great place to live. For the most part, we live pretty damn well with our differences,” she adds. “But we must improve on that.”

via Canada Confronts Growing Tensions Between Its Ethnic Communities | Best Countries | US News

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‘One cannot change history’: Israel slams bill that would send people to prison for blaming Poles for Holocaust

2018/01/29 Leave a comment

Rightfully so. Poland continues to decline in recognizing its past and antisemitism. Those who do not acknowledge their history …:

Israeli leaders angrily criticized pending legislation in Poland that would outlaw blaming Poles for the crimes of the Holocaust, with some accusing the Polish government of outright denial Saturday as the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the proposed law “baseless” and ordered his country’s ambassador to Poland to meet with Polish leaders to express his strong opposition.

“One cannot change history, and the Holocaust cannot be denied,” he said.

The lower house of the Polish parliament on Friday passed the bill, which prescribes prison time for using phrases such as “Polish death camps” to refer to the killing sites Nazi Germany operated in occupied Poland during World War II.

A group of children at the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp on Jan. 27, 1945, just after the liberation by the Soviet army.

Many Poles fear such phrasing makes some people incorrectly conclude that Poles had a role in running the camps. But critics say the legislation could have a chilling effect on debating history, harming freedom of expression and opening a window to Holocaust denial.

The bill still needs approval from Poland’s Senate and president. However, it marks a dramatic step by the country’s current nationalist government to target anyone who tries to undermine its official stance that Poles only were heroes during the war, not Nazi collaborators who committed heinous crimes.

Netanyahu’s government generally has had good relations with Poland, which has been recently voting with Israel in international organizations.

At Auschwitz on Saturday evening, Israel’s ambassador to Poland, Anna Azari, abandoned a prepared speech to criticize the bill, saying that “everyone in Israel was revolted at this news.”

In Israel, which was established three years after the Holocaust and is home to the world’s largest community of survivors, the legislation provoked outrage.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, noting that exactly 73 years had passed since the Auschwitz death camp on Polish soil was liberated, cited the words of a former Polish president about how history could not be faked and the truth could not be hidden.

“The Jewish people, the State of Israel, and the entire world must ensure that the Holocaust is recognized for its horrors and atrocities,” Rivlin said. “Also among the Polish people, there were those who aided the Nazis in their crimes. Every crime, every offence, must be condemned. They must be examined and revealed.”

Today’s Poles have been raised on stories of their people’s wartime suffering and heroism. Many react viscerally when confronted with the growing body of scholarship about Polish involvement in the killing of Jews.

In a sign of the sensitivities on both sides, Yair Lapid, head of Israel’s centrist Yesh Atid party and the son of a survivor, got into a heated Twitter spat Saturday with the Polish Embassy in Israel.

“I utterly condemn the new Polish law which tries to deny Polish complicity in the Holocaust. It was conceived in Germany but hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered without ever meeting a German soldier. There were Polish death camps and no law can ever change that,” Lapid wrote.

That sparked the Embassy to respond: “Your unsupportable claims show how badly Holocaust education is needed, even here in Israel.”

“My grandmother was murdered in Poland by Germans and Poles,” Lapid responded. “I don’t need Holocaust education from you. We live with the consequences every day in our collective memory. Your embassy should offer an immediate apology.”

To which the embassy retorted: “Shameless.”

Israel’s foreign ministry said the deputy Polish ambassador to Israel had been summoned for a clarification.

For decades, Polish society avoided discussing the killing of Jews by civilians or denied that anti-Semitism motivated the slayings, blaming all atrocities on the Germans.

In this photo provided by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, people walk on a commercial street in the Lublin ghetto near a sign forbidding entry, in Warsaw, Poland.

A turning point was the publication in 2000 of a book, “Neighbours,” by Polish-American sociologist Jan Tomasz Gross, which explored the murder of Jews by their Polish neighbours in the village of Jedwabne. The book resulted in widespread soul-searching and official state apologies.

But since the conservative and nationalistic Law and Justice party consolidated power in 2015, it has sought to stamp out discussions and research on the topic. It demonized Gross and investigated whether he had slandered Poland by asserting that Poles killed more Jews than they killed Germans during the war.

Holocaust researchers have collected ample evidence of Polish villagers who murdered Jews fleeing the Nazis. According to one scholar at Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, of the 160,000-250,000 Jews who escaped and sought help from fellow Poles, about 10 per cent to 20 per cent survived. The rest were rejected, informed upon or killed by rural Poles, according to the Tel Aviv University scholar, Havi Dreifuss.

The memorial issued a statement Saturday night opposing the Polish legislation and trying to put into historical context the “complex truth” regarding the Polish population’s attitude toward its Jews.

“There is no doubt that the term ‘Polish death camps’ is a historical misrepresentation,” the Yad Vashem memorial said. “However, restrictions on statements by scholars and others regarding the Polish people’s direct or indirect complicity with the crimes committed on their land during the Holocaust are a serious distortion.”

Source: ‘One cannot change history’: Israel slams bill that would send people to prison for blaming Poles for Holocaust

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Canadians don’t want an anti-Islamophobia day: [Forum] poll

2018/01/29 Leave a comment

Not surprising given other polling showing anti-Muslim attitudes or fears but in the end, not an issue that should necessarily be decided by public opinion. Demographics also not surprising:

Should Jan. 29 be set aside to combat Islamophobia?

That day — tomorrow —  is the first anniversary of the mass murder at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Quebec City. Six Muslims were killed in this hate crime.

Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders in Canada would like to take a stand against intolerance and see Jan. 29th declared a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Islamophobia.

A recent Forum Poll suggests that many Canadians are against this.

Forum Research polled 1,408 Canadian voters and found half (49%) disapproved of designating such a day. Almost 40% disapproved strongly.

Approval came from only 17% of those polled; strong approval was noted among 7%.

The same number — 7% — say they don’t know, while fully a quarter (26%) neither approve nor disapprove.

So who is on the nay side? That would be older, wealthier men living in the Prairies or Alberta, half with university degrees and 69% of whom support the Conservative party.

Those who approve a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Islamophobia are aged 34 or younger and support the Liberals or the NDP. They are also the least wealthy (26%).

The question asked was: Would you approve or disapprove of a national day of remembrance and action on Islamophobia?

Results based on the total sample are considered accurate +/- 3%, 19 times out of 20.

Source: Canadians don’t want an anti-Islamophobia day: poll

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Shree Paradkar: Census vastly undercounts Indigenous population in Toronto, study says

2018/01/27 Leave a comment

One of the harder groups for StatsCan to count despite their ongoing efforts, with this alternative study being instructive in terms of the possible gap:

For decades, Indigenous communities have said their numbers are far higher than reported by government agencies.

Not so, according to officialdom.

“Always our studies in the past have been critiqued or undermined as not having a scientifically sound approach,” says Sara Wolfe, founding partner of Seventh Generation Midwives Toronto, which caters to Indigenous mothers and babies.

“Or there’s been concerns about bias or questioning of the relevance… of the study that’s been done.”

The tables were turned recently.

The census released in October pegged Toronto’s Indigenous population at 23,065, up from the 19,270 census estimate in 2011.

Not so, says a new study that confirms what Indigenous people have been saying all along.

The study by researchers from York University and St. Michael’s Hospital, in collaboration with Indigenous agencies, was published in the British Medical Journal Open.

It says the census — that gold standard in population counting — vastly underestimated the Indigenous population in Toronto. The study’s most conservative assumption places it between 45,000 and 73,000 people, or two to four times the 2011 census estimate.

This finding has major implications, particularly in funding for health care and community services.

Statistics Canada is receptive to the study. The agency’s chief priority is accuracy and precision, said Marc Hamel, director-general of the census program.

When there are reports of discrepancies, “we review all the processes we have internally. We also try to work with these groups to better understand the way the study was conducted,” he said. “We always have to be careful when we compare results from different studies because different methodologies are being used, different concepts.”

Lead scientist Janet Smylie, from St. Michael’s Hospital, and lead author of the study Michael Rotondi, a York University professor, employed a statistical method called respondent-driven sampling, which leveraged the inherently strong social networking of Indigenous populations.

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Specifically, 20 people called “seeds” completed the survey and were given five uniquely coded coupons. They gave these to other Aboriginal people who then filled the survey, and those people gave out coupons to others in their social networks, and so on.It allowed Indigenous community members to recruit each other for the study which then reached a large sample of more than 900 adults.

“This helps better track Indigenous community members who might be homeless and otherwise unstably housed,” says Rotondi.

They partnered with Wolfe’s midwifery clinic, which led a multi-agency collaboration to plan the questions, recruit trained Indigenous interviewers and disseminate the survey that took more than an hour to complete.

The census, on the other hand, uses the concept of usual residence and is based on private dwellings.

“It doesn’t measure, for example, where people would be temporarily residing for whatever purpose, whether it be work, school or receive certain types of services,” says Hamel.

“The census is never perfect, like any study. We know we have unaccounted populations. We have measures to identify and account and to make adjustments to the population estimation programs that are used by the government to make decisions.”

The survey included a question of whether or not the respondents had completed the 2011 census.

“Even under a conservative model we were able to say only about 19 per cent (of individuals) had even completed the census,” Rotondi says.

“One of the big reasons is people don’t trust governments, long forms and mandatory surveys,” says Wolfe, who is Ojibwe from Brunswick House First Nation and was the community lead for the study.

“We might be afraid to tell someone on the phone that says they’re from the government that we’re Indigenous,” says Smylie, who is Métis. “We might purposely not want to participate. We might be opting out because we feel socially excluded or frustrated with the government. Or, it’s not on our priority list ’cause we’re too busy trying to get enough groceries on our shelf and we’re running around and didn’t even know the census was happening. Or (we’re) renting a room somewhere or couch surfing.”

These were some of the barriers the respondent-driven sampling broke down.

The impact of this study will be tremendous and long-term, the researchers say.

“It doesn’t mean that just because there are more Indigenous people everyone’s going to have to pay more taxes. It could mean if we’re counting properly (and allocating correctly) we’re paying less taxes,” said Smylie.

“This is irrefutable evidence,” said Wolfe. “There’s no way you can say the population is not this big any more.”

This is relevant because, “Indigenous people are not getting asked for input and consulted on the decisions being made… because there’s a presumption that we are not a significant or substantial portion of the population,” says Wolfe.

Why does it matter if the people accessing care are Indigenous as long as they have access to it? Two reasons: to counter ongoing racism and to redress intergenerational trauma produced by historic wrongs.

In a report titled First Peoples, Second Class Treatment, Smylie says she wrote that if you’re a First Nation person living in the province of Alberta having a heart attack, “you’re less likely to get a picture of your heart, called a coronary angiogram, and more likely to die just because you’re First Nation. It doesn’t matter if you live in the city or a rural area or if you’re rich or poor.”

Residential schools, the last of which closed 20 years ago, left Indigenous people with a painful legacy. Abuses that are only just being seriously documented have left a community history of complex trauma.

“That might be something you’d need specialized services and responses,” said Smylie. “We also know that some Indigenous people benefit greatly from access to traditional healing and traditional counseling and a revitalization of Indigenous culture.”

Says Wolfe: “Everyone needs to make a concerted effort to work together to close these (health) gaps so we can have as good a chance as everyone else in society to reach our full potential.”

Source: Shree Paradkar: Census vastly undercounts Indigenous population in Toronto, study says

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Le débat identitaire entraîne des dérapages, dit Couillard

2018/01/27 Leave a comment

Indeed:

Messages haineux, auto incendiée, manifestations de La Meute; les incidents à connotation raciste semblent plus fréquents au Québec qu’ailleurs dans un passé récent. Pour le premier ministre Philippe Couillard, cela pourrait être la conséquence d’un débat identitaire plus passionné au Québec que dans le reste du Canada.

On voit des excès de ce type dans le reste du monde. Ils semblent moins fréquents dans le reste du Canada convient M. Couillard. Le débat politique autour de la question identitaire nourrit peut-être cette tension, convient-il.

«On a chez nous un sentiment un peu exacerbé, sur les questions d’identité. C’est toujours un débat important et passionné. Cela a peut-être au Québec un niveau plus élevé» a souligné M. Couillard en marge d’une mission économique en Chine, à la veille du premier anniversaire de la fusillade à la Grande Mosquée de Québec.

Il insiste toutefois : «Le Québec n’est pas une société plus raciste que d’autres. On fait face aux mêmes défis que toutes les sociétés qui ont à gérer la diversité». La montée des crimes haineux «n’est pas uniquement au Québec. Il ne faudrait pas singulariser le Québec comme le foyer de ces activités-là».

La fréquence plus grande de ces dérapages à connotation raciste «est malheureusement le résultat de plus grandes polarisations qu’on voit dans nos sociétés. Polarisations de tous types : économique avec les inégalités, géographique entre les régions urbaines et les autres régions, et identitaire, où chacun se réfugie dans son coin et craint l’autre. Et ce n’est pas unique au Québec», affirme M. Couillard.

Source: Le débat identitaire entraîne des dérapages, dit Couillard

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The cautionary tale of Kellie Leitch: Stephen Maher on populism

2018/01/27 Leave a comment

Good reporting and analysis by Maher:

Still, there is no reason to be complacent.

Pollster Frank Graves, who recently completed a polling project for the Canadian Press to explore the prospects for northern populism, sees a shift in Canadian attitudes about the economy, immigration and trade that could provide an opening for someone like Leitch.

“I think Kouvalis was likely onto something in that this was a more resonant strategy,” Graves said Wednesday. “I think Kellie Leitch was mining a vein of this new ordered-populist outlook, which is expressing itself in the United Kingdom with Brexit and with Trump in the United States.”

Graves polled thousands of Canadians, putting them on a spectrum from open—pro-trade, with positive views on immigration—to ordered. He found a growing group of Canadians—particularly in southern Ontario—who are anxious about their economic prospects, hostile to the elite policy consensus, anxious about immigration and skeptical about the benefits of trade.

The highest scores were in Oshawa, Barrie, London, Hamilton and Windsor, places where many workers have had to leave traditional industrial jobs, much like the rust-belt voters who made Trump president.

The trend has reversed somewhat since 2015, when Justin Trudeau was elected, but Graves believes there is a significant constituency for a populist message, based mostly on economic pessimism. “It begins with economic despair but then mutates into fear of others, nativism, racism,” he says.

In 2002, 68 per cent of Canadians described themselves as middle class. By 2017, it had fallen as low as 43 per cent. Many people feel they are losing ground, and they are not convinced that the elites are looking out for their best interests.
“They say, quite rightly, this didn’t work for us,” says Graves. “We’re pissed off.”

But I don’t think that this means we can expect a Trump-style figure to arise in Canada. It’s hard to put together an anti-trade message that works in a country as dependent on exports as Canada is, and we are likely better at smoothly managing immigration than any other country in the world.

Ford, the most successful populist in recent Canadian history, was politically incorrect but he succeeded politically because he connected with non-white voters.

The Reform Party, which once flirted with anti-immigrant messages, abandoned those ideas and, after merging with the Progressive Conservatives, sent Jason Kenney around the country to connect with ethnic Canadians, a key part of their winning election strategy.

Conservatives who watched the party lose in 2015 after playing with divisive anti-Muslim rhetoric, do not think it is a winner at the ballot box. “For every vote you win that way, how many do you lose?” said one strategist.

There may come a day when anti-immigrant messages help someone like Leitch get ahead in Canadian politics, but her political career is a cautionary tale that ambitious would-be Trumps will ignore at their peril. In that sense, we should be grateful to her for her public service.

Source: The cautionary tale of Kellie Leitch

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Pope Francis vs Donald Trump: Each one has a guide to fake news — and they couldn’t be more different

2018/01/26 Leave a comment

Pope Francis captures the essence of fake news:

So finally, here is the pope’s solution. “We can recognize the truth of statements from their fruits,” he wrote, “whether they provoke quarrels, foment division, encourage resignation; or, on the other hand, they promote informed and mature reflection leading to constructive dialogue and fruitful results.”

Full text below:

A writer in the New York Times once called Pope Francis “the anti-Trump,” which we guess would make President Donald Trump something like the antipope.

The essay’s premise was that the two often agreed on the same world problems but proposed antithetical solutions. Example: “Both pope and president are critics of a neoliberal globalism” – but while Francis wants people to help desperate migrants who are the victims of capitalist greed, Trump wants to wall out immigrants so Americans can get richer.

But that’s the New York Times, which Trump has accused of peddling “fake news.” Actually he’s applied that label to almost all mainstream outlets by now, and went so far as to rank them according to fakeness.

Lo and behold, on Wednesday, Francis released a papal message titled “Fake news and journalism for peace.” And while, like Trump, he think it’s a big problem, his take on it could hardly be more different.

Whereas the president would tell you what is fake news (CNN is, he says; Fox News is not), the pope would rather you figure it out. In fact, his message is more or less a how-to guide.

Francis gives only one example of fake news in his treatise. He is the pope, so no surprise, it’s from the Bible.

“This was the strategy employed by the ‘crafty serpent’ in the Book of Genesis, who, at the dawn of humanity, created the first fake news,” Francis wrote. He means the serpent in the Garden of Eden, who tricked Eve and Adam into eating forbidden fruit by making up a story about how great it would turn out.

“The tempter approaches the woman by pretending to be her friend, concerned only for her welfare, and begins by saying something only partly true,” Francis wrote. ” ‘Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?’ ”

False premise. “In fact,” Francis wrote, “God never told Adam not to eat from any tree, but only from the one tree.”

Eve tries to correct the serpent, and in doing so, falls for his trap. It’s a bit like when you argue with a Facebook troll and get sucked into a long comment thread, eventually saying things you never meant to.

“Of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, ‘You must not eat it nor touch it, under pain of death,’ ” Eve tells the serpent, very specifically.

“Her answer is couched in legalistic and negative terms,” Francis wrote, “After listening to the deceiver and letting herself be taken in by his version of the facts, the woman is misled. So she heeds his words of reassurance: ‘You will not die!’ ”

And then, like with a chain email, Eve shares the serpent’s news with Adam, who turns out to be just as gullible. And while they don’t die when they eat the fruit, they do get the human race kicked out of paradise forever.

That’s how fake news worked back in Genesis, Francis wrote, and it’s not much different and no less dangerous in the internet age.

So, he asked, “How can we recognize fake news?”

He listed a few characteristics of the genre: Fake news is malicious. It plays off rash emotions like anger and anxiety. “It grasps people’s attention by appealing to stereotypes and common social prejudices,” Francis wrote.

But in most respects, fake mimics truth. On the surface, they can be hard to tell apart. For example Trump once retweeted a video titled “Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!” The video was real, but police said the attacker wasn’t even a migrant.

So finally, here is the pope’s solution. “We can recognize the truth of statements from their fruits,” he wrote, “whether they provoke quarrels, foment division, encourage resignation; or, on the other hand, they promote informed and mature reflection leading to constructive dialogue and fruitful results.”

Fake news is as fake news does, in other words. It “leads only to the spread of arrogance and hatred,” Francis wrote.

So if you’re feeling those things while browsing Facebook, or find yourself in a flame war, be especially wary of what you just read. Ask yourself if there might be another side. Listen to those who disagree with you, instead of yelling at them.

“The best antidotes to falsehoods are not strategies, but people,” the pope wrote. “People who are not greedy but ready to listen, people who make the effort to engage in sincere dialogue so that the truth can emerge; people who are attracted by goodness and take responsibility for how they use language.”

If you’re wondering, no, the pope does not mention Trump in this message. Not that Francis mentioned him by name either during the 2016 campaign, when he told reporters, “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”

But the contrast between these two men’s notions of fake news is glaring. If Trump’s appeals, you can find it on his Twitter account. If what Francis wrote makes sense to you, you might try it out the next time your scroll through Twitter.

Ask yourself if what you read makes you feel hateful, or like quarreling. Ask if the pope might find it fake.

And you could ask the same of everything you read, including this article, which brought Trump into the pope’s message, even though the pope did not.

Indeed, Francis wrote toward the end of his essay, “If responsibility is the answer to the spread of fake news, then a weighty responsibility rests on the shoulders of those whose job is to provide information, namely, journalists, the protectors of news.”

Just as everyone should check their emotions against the news, he wrote, the news should avoid inciting them.

Source: Pope Francis vs Donald Trump: Each one has a guide to fake news — and they couldn’t be more different

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How to fix Canada’s ‘Ghost Immigrant’ fraud problem: David Lesperance

2018/01/26 Leave a comment

Worth considering and more analysis: replacing the physical presence residency requirement with a tax residence requirement.

In a more globalized world, where people are more mobile and where Canada tries to attract highly skilled and thus mobile immigrants, this may be appropriate test.

Look forward to reader reactions.:

As has been widely reported, Canada is experiencing an influx of wealthy “Ghost Immigrants” who are securing permanent residence, purchasing properties in Canada, and then returning to their home countries. Unfortunately, a large number of them are not paying anywhere near their legal worldwide tax obligation to Canada, yet are fraudulently claiming to meet the physical presence requirement of maintaining permanent residence and qualifying for citizenship as well as reaping the many other benefits of Canadian life.

There are a number of lessons that Canadians and their government can learn from the Fu v. Zhu case:

1. The problem is widespread

Dodging taxes is not an uncommon thing for people to try to do. What’s unusual in this case is that these individuals chose to expose themselves rather than having been uncovered by an investigation. This is the dumb end of the spectrum of fraudulent behaviour. This same dumb end is occupied by dozens of applicants who used the same address or hundreds of immigrants who hired the same notorious firm to engage in assembly line, cookie cutter fraud.

2. It’s not a new problem

Fraudulently claiming to be physically present in Canada is a scam dating back decades. In 1991 I presented a “Scoundrel’s Guide to Circumventing the Canadian Immigration and Citizenship Act,” to the Federal Parliamentary Immigration Subcommittee. This guide described many of these very same methods to circumvent the physical presence requirements of maintaining permanent residence and qualifying for citizenship. In our current social media world, these same techniques would work just as effectively. At the same time I presented my guide, the newspapers were focused on a high profile case regarding Toronto lawyer Martin Pilzmaker who promoted these same schemes during the 1980’s.

3. Tighter border controls aren’t the answer

Canada Border Service investigations require enormous resources. Investigations to date uncovered only the most unsophisticated and lazy offenders, with the consequences usually being only a minor fine and a suspended sentence. In reality it would take massive investigative resources to even attempt to catch the smarter physical presence frauds. If there were an increased investigative push, rest assured that all would migrate to the more sophisticated hard-to-detect techniques. Therefore, throwing ever greater sums of money at CBS investigations of the current physical presence law is a waste of time and not in Canadian taxpayers’ best interest.

4. Audits would work better

Successful audits by CRA are revenue generators. The reality is that the CRA has not been enforcing worldwide taxation and this news has spread throughout the immigrant community. In a 1996 report, the CRA claimed that it was simply too difficult to audit these cases in the first place and to collect the taxes owed.

However over the last two decades there have been some significant changes which render this viewpoint obsolete:

  1. Data-mining techniques that allow cross-referencing of employment/business and asset information that the immigrant supplied to Canadian immigration officials when applying for status with their later claimed worldwide income;
  2. Canada signing a tax treaty (with an exchange of information clause) with Hong Kong in 2012;
  3. Even though Canada has had a tax treaty with China since 1986, the recent anti-corruption movement within China means that this treaty has gained significant potential usefulness to the CRA in the last few years;
  4. CRA introducing a Whistleblower program in 2013  in response to the dramatically increased international importance of whistleblowers to tax evasion collections starting in the mid 2000’s. This means that there are now a multitude of potential informants (in banks, accounting, real estate firms etc.) who can and will supply financial information on tax evasion;
  5. Social media and on-line information make lifestyle audits easier and more accurate, especially with today’s computing power compared to 1996; and
  6. Canadian assets (namely highly inflated real estate in Canada) have increased significantly, which means that there are now significant seizable assets within the easy reach of the CRA.

Given these changes it is now in the Canadian taxpayers’ best interest to increase tax audits in this area. This would send shock waves through the hearts of those engaging in fraudulent behaviour. This effort does not require any legislative change… simply a refocus by the CRA of its resources.

The second equally important action would be to replace the current unenforceable physical presence requirement in Canadian immigration and citizenship law. In the future, “tax residence” should be the criteria for maintaining permanent residence and fulfilling naturalization requirements for citizenship.  This action can possibly be done at the Ministerial level under the power granted under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, as opposed to requiring a parliamentary vote.

The immediate impact of these combined efforts would mean that current (and future) immigrants will be forced to make a clear choice. If they wish to maintain their permanent residence status or qualify for citizenship, they will need to declare themselves Canadian tax residents and pay full Canadian tax on their worldwide income. If they try to under-report the amount of their worldwide income, then their case will immediately be audited by CRA. If CRA finds they have engaged in tax evasion, they will suffer the double whammy of tax evasion and also being stripped of their immigration status or denied citizenship, because of fraud. All family members who engaged or assisted in this fraud would suffer a similar fate.

As a result of these changes a large number of people who are currently gaming the system will realize that there will be a real chance that they will be exposed to the full brunt of Canadian taxation. They will then decide that permanent residence status or citizenship is not worth that price and voluntarily relinquish immigration status. Furthermore, under Canadian law they will be required to sell their Canadian residential property to an unrelated arms length party, in order to make themselves clearly non-resident in Canada for tax purposes. This will have a significant impact on an over-inflated real estate market when these properties go up for sale.

If this is so logical, why hasn’t Canada done this before? This same proposal is basically the same one I made over a quarter of a century ago in that hearing room on Parliament Hill. The reason that it was not adopted then, and hasn’t been adopted since, is that Canadian politicians and voters have a lovely but unrealistic sentiment that new immigrants and new citizens should be physically present in Canada, rubbing elbows at Canadian Tire and Tim Hortons. According to this mythology, in this way these newcomers magically become “Canadianized.”

In reality, becoming “Canadianized” is a choice people make, not an automatic natural result of being physically present in Canada. There are plenty of immigrants who are long-time Canadian residents who are not much engaged with their neighbours; there are plenty of others who do not live within Canada’s borders but who maintain deep connections to broader Canadian society. (I still vividly remember greeting a client and his family when they landed in Canada for the first time after moving from Dubai. Their 8 year old son immediately started quizzing me about the Toronto Maple Leafs, as he had spent the last two years watching every game and reading about Toronto sports teams. He was quite disappointed to discover that, having grown up in Windsor, I was a Red Wings fan.) Being physically located within Canada’s borders has, in reality, remarkably little to do with genuine citizenship.

Furthermore, it has always been, and will continue to be, extremely expensive and intrusive to enforce physical presence rules, with little actual benefit. At a minimum, increased enforcement would mean massive disruption for all Canadians, since measures such as exit controls would be required. This would further inconvenience the Canadian traveling public, while having no appreciable impact on fraud reduction.

Another benefit of replacing physical presence with a tax residency regime is that Canada will suddenly become attractive to a large number of international entrepreneurs who, as a result of their normal business travel, would never meet the current physical presence requirements and are not willing to engage in fraudulent behaviour. However, they would be willing to trade their current tax situation for the favourable one that Canada offers. Canada’s lack of estate, gift or wealth taxes makes us very attractive to American and European businesspeople who are currently exposed to these taxes in their home country.

Without a doubt, becoming “Canadianized” is a worthwhile requirement to maintain immigrant status and qualify for citizenship. However, I would argue that making sure that a) the individual pays their fair share of taxes; and b) knows the history, culture, social norms and legal obligations of Canadians (through a more rigorous Citizenship test) are more effective and efficient ways of ensuring that they fulfill this requirement than the current, easily-circumvented and ineffective physical presence regime.

Source: How to fix Canada’s ‘Ghost Immigrant’ fraud problem

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