Antisemitic incidents in UK at all-time high

2018/02/03 Leave a comment

Latest UK data – not police-reported but CST plays a similar role as B’nai Brith does here:

Antisemitic hate incidents have reached a record level in the UK, with the Jewish community targeted at a rate of nearly four times a day last year, figures indicate.

There were 1,382 antisemitic incidents recorded nationwide in 2017 by the Community Security Trust.

This was the highest tally that the trust, a charity that monitors antisemitism, has registered for a calendar year since it began gathering such data in 1984. The figure rose by 3%, compared with a total, in 2016, of 1,346 incidents – a tally that itself was a record annual total.

There was no obvious single cause behind the trend, the trust said. “Often increases in antisemitic incidents have been attributable to reactions to specific trigger events that cause identifiable, short-term, spikes in incident levels. However, this was not the case in 2017. Instead, it appears that the factors that led to a general, sustained, high level of antisemitic incidents in 2016 continued throughout much of 2017.”

The report pointed to a rise in all forms of hate crime following the EU referendum as well as publicity surrounding alleged antisemitism in the Labour party. These factors may have caused higher levels of incidents as well as encouraged more reporting of antisemitic incidents from victims and witnesses in the Jewish community, the trust said.

The trust’s figures showed a 34% increase in the number of violent antisemitic assaults, from 108 in 2016 to 145 in 2017. The most common single type of incident in 2017 involved verbal abuse randomly directed at Jewish people in public.

There was a fall in the number of incidents that involved social media, from 289 in 2016 to 247 last year. Three-quarters of all the antisemitic incidents were recorded in Greater London and Greater Manchester, home to the two largest Jewish communities in the UK.

The trust’s chief executive, David Delew, said: “Hatred is rising and Jewish people are suffering as a result. This should concern everybody because it shows anger and division that threaten all of society. We have the support of government and police, but prosecutions need to be more visible and more frequent.”

The home secretary, Amber Rudd, said antisemitism was a “despicable form of abuse” which had “absolutely no place in British society”.

She said: “I welcome this report’s findings that the rise in reported incidents partly reflects the improving response to these horrendous attacks and better information sharing between the CST and police forces around the UK. But even one incident is one too many, and any rise in incidents is clearly concerning, which is why this government will continue its work protecting the Jewish community and other groups from antisemitism and hate crime.”

The shadow communities secretary, Andrew Gwynne, said the findings were extremely concerning and emphasised “just how important it is that we all make a conscious effort to call out and confront antisemitism”.

A spokesperson for advocacy group Hope Not Hate said the levels of antisemitism remained unacceptably high and it was concerning to see that incidents had not declined.

Stephen Silverman, director of investigations and enforcement at the Campaign Against Antisemitism, said the trust figures were indicative of official 2017 police statistics. “Antisemitic crime has been rising dramatically since 2014 and that rise is not explained by an increase in reporting, and we have seen no noticeable impact from Brexit,” he said.

Silverman added: “We believe that Jews are being singled out disproportionately and with increasing violence due to the spread of antisemitic conspiracy myths originating from Islamists, the far-left and far-right, which society is failing to address, as evidenced by the ongoing disgraceful situation in the Labour party, and because the Crown Prosecution Service declines to prosecute so often that antisemites no longer fear any consequences to their actions.”

Until the criminal justice system and political parties stopped “paying lip service to antisemitism,” he said, “the threat to the security of British Jews was at risk of reaching crisis point”.New data this week revealed that hundreds of hate crimes have been committed at or near schools and colleges in the last two years, most linked to race and ethnicity.

Source: Antisemitic incidents in UK at all-time high

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

The rise of Indigenous members of the Baha’i faith

2018/02/03 Leave a comment

Interesting (the 2011 NHS shows that over three-quarters of Indigenous peoples are Christian, with most of the balance responding “no religious affiliation” – Aboriginal spirituality being under five percent):

As Canadian members of the Baha’i faith continue to bask in the glow of the 200th anniversary of the birth of their Persian founder, Baha’u’llah, they take particular pride in the many Indigenous people among their faith, which emphasizes the divine origins of all religions.

To that end one of Canada’s most prominent Baha’i, Bob Watts, former chief of staff to the Assembly of First Nations, will be taking part in festivities and discussions on Thursday, Feb. 2, at the Aboriginal Friendship Centre in East Vancouver.

Hailing from the Mohawk and Ojibway Nations, and residing at Ontario’s Six Nations Reserve, Watts recently completed his duties with the AFN. Before that he was the interim executive director of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which makes recommendations regarding the Indian Residential School era and its legacy.

The invitational event with Watts in Vancouver will include remarks from Chief Robert Joseph, one of the most truly reconciling voices in Canada’s truth and reconciliation process, which sometimes descends into politics and division.

Baha’i followers emphasize the ethnic diversity of their membership. When Metro Vancouver’s Baha’is marked their founder’s birthday last October, there was significant participation by large numbers of Baha’i who are Indigenous. (See drumming photo above.)

via The rise of Indigenous members of the Baha’i faith | Vancouver Sun

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Israel’s Immigration Crisis Is a Lesson for Trump – Bloomberg

2018/02/03 Leave a comment

Interesting take on Israel’s experience with walls:

In his first State of the Union message on Tuesday, President Donald Trump again made his controversial case for building a wall along the southern border of the U.S. Back in 2016, his opponents scoffed at the feasibility of such a grandiose project, he had. But when asked about it by Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto he was ready for the question. “Look at Israel,” was his response, “Bibi Netanyahu told me the wall works.”

It does. In 2006, thousands of penniless, undocumented Sudanese and Eritreans, most of them young men, began crossing Israel’s border with Egypt. Bedouin coyotes led them on a harrowing journey through the Sinai desert and dropped them off. The migrants made their way to the working class neighborhoods of Tel Aviv, where they found cheap housing and off-the-books jobs.
Work was plentiful. Word spread. Soon Israel found itself facing what looked like an unstoppable flow of undocumented migrants. Employers were happy to hire cheap manual workers. Slumlords made a killing from renting overcrowded apartments. But most citizens, especially in Tel Aviv’s working-class neighborhoods, were unhappy with the influx of rootless foreign migrants.

Bringing the Jewish diaspora back to the Holy Land is the essence of Zionism. In Israel’s 70 years of independence it has welcomed Holocaust refugees, embattled Jewish communities from the Muslim Middle East and, more recently, over a million immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia.

But these latest newcomers from Sudan and Eritrea were different. They were, to put it simply, not Jews. They fell outside Israel’s mission statement. Increasingly, the public came to see them as a problem.

Israel is a problem-solving country. In the fall of 2010, it began building a wall along its 152-mile border with Egypt. It was completed within four years. Built mostly of steel, the wall reaches a height of 25 feet in some places, and is equipped with state-of-the-art electronic sensors, cameras and detection technologies. The whole project came in at less than half a billion dollars. The border is now virtually impassable to undocumented workers as well as smugglers and drug traffickers.

But, once you have sealed off the border, Israelis learned, you are still left with the illegal immigrants who are already on your side of it. This is an issue the U.S. will have to contend with if and when it builds its wall. Israel is dealing with it now.

There are an estimated 35,000 to 40,000 Sudanese and Eritreans in the country, mostly in the Tel Aviv area. Until now they have been allowed to stay on renewable two-month visas. But they are now being notified that these permits will not be renewed. On April 1, they will face three choices: They can return to their countries of origin. They can go to prison. Or they can accept resettlement in a third country.

Those who take option number three will receive a $3,500 stipend and a one-way ticket. In the past, most voluntary deportees have been gone to Ghana or Rwanda. So far those countries — which are paid $5,000 per capita by Israel — have not publicly agreed to take more migrants. Still, some Israeli officials are confident that Rwanda, at least, is on board.

Not everyone will be deported. About 10,000 children and their parents will be exempt. They are the Israeli version of the U.S. Dreamers, although their future status is unclear. Some 2,000 bona fide humanitarian refugees from Darfur are also staying. But single men of working age who are presumed to be economic migrants — an estimated 65 percent to 70 percent of the Sudanese and Eritrean community — have two months to decide their next destination.

Those two months promise to be turbulent. Left-wing political parties and activists — with the moral and financial support of “progressive” American Jewish organizations — have been mobilizing. Demonstrations are already taking place. Some of the protestors have deployed the “hands-up-don’t-shoot” gesture, an American import. Others have been clad in chains. This is a campaign designed for television.

The pictures won’t look good, especially if the police use force to disperse angry crowds. Israel — which has long been accused of apartheid by Palestinian propagandists — is sensitive to charges of racism. In their defense, officials cite the fact that in recent years, Israel has deported more illegals from the former Soviet Union than from Eritrea and Sudan. They argue that Rwanda is a safe destination where the United Nations is active in overseeing refugees.  And they contend that the $3,500 stipend the deportees receive is generous enough to cover two years of living expenses.

This rebuttal may be true, but it doesn’t change the likelihood that Israel’s image will take a hit. Prime Minister Netanyahu is highly attuned to foreign public relations, but his first concern is the opinion of voters, who strongly support Israel’s right to control its own borders and to remove illegals. This sentiment is not limited to members of his Likud party or religious nationalists. Last month, Tel Aviv University released the results of a two-year survey on the willingness of Europeans to give asylum to foreign refugees. Israel (counted as a European country in the survey) placed second-to-last, above only the Czech Republic.

American opinion seems to be hardening as well. In Tuesday’s speech, Trump proposed allowing Dreamers to remain in the US, but insisted on ending the visa lottery and closing down so-called chain immigration — positions that have strong public support according to a Harvard-Harris pollpublished in late January (That poll also revealed a majority want to decrease legal immigration and give preference to those with qualifications that can contribute to the economy.) Significantly, the president did not tell Congress what he proposes to do with the many millions of undocumented non-Dreamers in the U.S.

Some will be deported, as they have been all along. In 2017, federal immigration officers removed 226,000 people in the country illegally, down slightly from the last year of the Barack Obama administration. Israel’s planned operation pales in comparison, but it will provide a real-life example of a post-wall removal policy. The scale, sensitivities and complexities are completely different, of course, but Trump has proven to be a close student of all things Bibi. Presumably he will be watching.

via Israel’s Immigration Crisis Is a Lesson for Trump – Bloomberg

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Identifying radical content online: Ryan Scrivens

2018/02/02 Leave a comment

I only wish we could use some of these analytical tools to better understand overall integration and the role that social networks play in either increasing integration or allowing individuals and groups to remain within their own community or group?

Violent extremists and those who subscribe to radical beliefs have left their digital footprints online since the inception of the World Wide Web. Notable examples include Anders Breivik, the Norwegian far-right terrorist convicted of killing 77 people in 2011, who was a registered member of a white supremacy web forum and had ties to a far-right wing social media site; Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old who murdered nine Black parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, and who allegedly posted messages on a white power website; and Aaron Driver, the Canadian suspected of planning a terrorist attack in 2016, who showed outright support for the so-called Islamic State on several social media platforms.

It should come as little surprise that, in an increasingly digital world, identifying signs of extremism online sits at the top of the priority list for counter-extremist agencies. Within this context, researchers have argued that successfully identifying radical content online, on a large scale, is the first step in reacting to it. Yet in the last 10 years alone, it is estimated that the number of individuals with access to the Internet has increased threefold, from over 1 billion users in 2005 to more than 3.8 billion as of 2018. With all of these new users, more information has been generated, leading to a flood of data.

It is becoming increasingly difficult, nearly impossible really, to manually search for violent extremists, potentially violent extremists or even users who post radical content online because the Internet contains an overwhelming amount of information. These new conditions have necessitated the creation of guided data filtering methods, which may replace the laborious manual methods that traditionally have been used to identify relevant information.

Governments in Canada and around the globe have engaged researchers to develop advanced information technologies, machine-learning algorithms and risk-assessment tools to identify and counter extremism through the collection and analysis of big data available online. Whether this work involves finding radical users of interest, measuring digital pathways of radicalization or detecting virtual indicators that may prevent future terrorist attacks, the urgent need to pinpoint radical content online is one of the most significant policy challenges faced by law enforcement agencies and security officials worldwide.

We have been part of this growing field of research at the International CyberCrime Research Centre, hosted at Simon Fraser University’s School of Criminology. Our work has ranged from identifying radical authors in online discussion forums to understanding terrorist organizations’ online recruitment efforts on various online platforms. These experiences have provided us with insights we can offer regarding the policy implications of conducting large-scale data analyses of extremist content online.

First, there is much that practitioners and policy-makers can learn about extremist movements by studying their online activities. Online discussion forums of the radical right or social media accounts of radical Islamists, for example, are rich with information about how members of a particular movement communicate, how they construct their radical identities, and who they are targeting — discussions, behaviours and actions that can spill over into the offline realm. Exploring the dark corners of the Internet can be helpful in understanding or perhaps even predicting trends in activity or behaviour before they happen in the offline world. If, for example, analysts can track an author’s online activity or identify an online trend that is becoming more radical over time, analysts may be in a better position to assist law enforcement officials and the intelligence community. At the same time, it is important to note that online behaviour often does not translate into offline behaviour; authorities must proceed with caution to ascertain the specific nature of an instance of online activity and the potential threat it poses.

Second, practitioners and policy-makers can gain valuable information about extremist movements by utilizing computational tools to study radical online activities. Our research suggests that it is possible to identify radical topics, authors or even behaviours in online spaces that contain an overwhelming amount of information. Signs of extremism can be found by drawing upon keyword-retrieval software that identifies and counts a specific set of words, or sentiment analysis programs that classify and categorize opinions in a piece of text. Large-scale, semi-automated analyses can provide practitioners and policy-makers with a macro-level understanding of extremist movements online, ranging from their radical ideology to their actual activities. This understanding, in turn, can assist in the development of counter-narratives or deradicalization and disengagement programs to counter violent extremism.

We must caution practitioners and policy-makers that our work suggests there is no simple typology or behaviour that best describes radical online activity or what constitutes radical content online. Instead, extremism comes in many shapes and sizes and varies with the online platform: some radical platforms, for example, promote blatant forms of extremism while other platforms encourage their subscribers to tone down the rhetoric and present their extremist views in a subtler manner. Nonetheless, a useful starting point in identifying signs of extremism online is to go directly to the source: identifying topics of discussion that are indeed radical at the core — with language that describes the “enemies” of the extreme right, for example, such as derogatory terms about Jews, Blacks, Muslims or LGBTQ communities.

Lastly, in order to gain a broader understanding of online extremism or to improve the means by which researchers and practitioners “search for a needle in a haystack,” social scientists and computer scientists should collaborate with one another. Historically, large-scale data analyses have been conducted by computer scientists and technical experts, which can be problematic in the field of terrorism and extremism research. These experts tend to take a high-level methodological perspective, measuring levels of — or propensity toward — radicalization or ways of identifying violent extremists or predicting the next terrorist attack. But searching for radical material online without a fundamental understanding of the radicalization process or how extremists and terrorists use the Internet can be counterproductive. Social scientists, on the other hand, may be well-versed in terrorism and extremism research, but most tend to be ill-equipped to manage big data — from collecting to formatting to archiving large volumes of information. Bridging the computer science and social science approaches to build on the strengths of each discipline offers perhaps the best chance to construct a useful framework for assisting authorities in addressing the threat of violent extremism as it evolves in the online milieu.

via Identifying radical content online

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John Ivison: Senate amendments to gender diversity bill set to test Trudeau’s feminist principles

2018/02/02 Leave a comment

Find Ivison overly alarmist here. Requiring companies to have diversity plans but allowing them to set their own targets, with annual reporting, is a reasonable balance between doing virtually nothing and moving the yardstick.

There are likely some changes that may be needed (e.g., size of companies that are covered).

Bu is meritocracy really at risk as Ivison argues? Seem to recall same argument being used each time organizations want to increase diversity:

Are there any limits to how far Justin Trudeau will go to foster diversity and inclusion? We may be about to find out.

While he was in Davos, the prime minister made a big deal about the representation of women on corporate boards.

“Companies should have a formal policy on gender diversity and make the recruitment of women candidates a priority,” he said in his speech to the World Economic Forum.

To this end, the Liberal government has introduced a bill (C-25) to amend the Canada Business Corporations Act, which (among other things) requires companies to place their diversity policy before their shareholders, and if they fail to do so, to explain why (the widely adopted “comply or explain” approach).

Even that level of intervention has some free marketers wondering what business it is of the government to interfere in the running of private corporations.

But the current proposal is tame compared to amendments being proposed by a group of influential senators that will have many executives choking on their Porterhouse steak.

The six senators — Serge Joyal, Frances Lankin, Paul Massicotte, Lucie Moncion, Ratna Omidvar and André Pratte — have written to their colleagues saying they believe the current bill “lacks teeth.”

They would like to add amendments that would force the 270,000 companies incorporated under the CBCA to adopt diversity policies that set numerical goals and timetables on female, indigenous, disabled and visible minority board representation. Companies would have to report their progress not just to their shareholders but, “for the purposes of monitoring,” to the government. Ministers would be required to prepare and publish a report on the data – a clear indication that further corrective action could one day be taken.

“To be clear: our amendment would not set quotas,” the senators say.

Nonetheless, quotas would be set, even if, at this stage, by the companies themselves.

The senators are now rallying their colleagues and if they have the votes, bill C-25 will be sent back to the House of Commons. One source said there appears to be a critical mass of senators in favour of the amendments, which will likely be introduced next week.

At that point, Trudeau will have a decision to make. While the government has not looked kindly on Senate amendments, Trudeau charged senators to use their independent judgment to improve government legislation. He is unlikely to want to shirk what he sees as his moral duty to promote diversity and inclusion.

Carol Hansell, senior partner at the Toronto law firm Hansell LLP, is critical of the bill in its existing form for a number of reasons, principally because it will force companies to hold annual elections of individual directors — the concept of majority voting. She said she believes governance should flow from securities regulation, not corporate statute, which she deems too rigid to respond to changing circumstances.

Hansell thinks the same is true of the diversity issue and that many people would find the imposition of government oversight “objectionable.”

“I think everyone is uncomfortable with quotas. It’s too blunt a tool,” she said.

Even Trudeau shied away from anything that resembled a quota in the legislation. When Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains introduced the bill, he said it would “contribute to an inclusive economic growth agenda” but would not unduly burden business.

The bill was deemed sufficiently benign by the Conservatives that they supported it – pointing out much of it was based on their economic action plan.

The “comply or explain” model has already been adopted by the Canadian Securities Administrators, covering most of Canada’s publicly traded companies.

The dissenting senators point out the results have been unspectacular over the past few years — 14 per cent of board seats are now occupied by women, up from 11 per cent in 2015.

Only 1.1 per cent of board members are Indigenous, 3.2 per cent have disabilities and 4.3 per cent belong to visible minorities.

As a share of the population, all four groups are under-represented (women and girls make up 50.4 per cent of the Canadian population; three per cent are Indigenous; 19.9 per cent are visible minorities and 13.7 per cent report some kind of disability).

Smart companies are moving toward board representation that more accurately reflects their shareholders and customers.

But we are veering into dangerous territory when we reject the notion of meritocracy as a mechanism that merely re-inforces male privilege.

Change is happening before our eyes, even if it is not as rapid as some might like.

But it is simply not the role of government to dictate who should be running the nation’s businesses.

Source: John Ivison: Senate amendments to gender diversity bill set to test Trudeau’s feminist principles

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Refugees crossing into B.C. on the rise, immigrant group says

2018/02/02 Leave a comment

Numbers small compared to Quebec but likely to increase:

On Nov. 18, 2017, Ribwar Omar, a 38-year-old Iraqi Kurd, arrived in Blaine, Wash., by bus. He stopped at a coffee shop, bought a hot chocolate and then, using the GPS on his phone, he made his way through a forest near the Peace Arch and crossed the border into Canada.

Omar is awaiting a refugee hearing, one of 1,277 new refugee claimants that made their way on foot from Washington state to B.C. in 2017. New numbers released by the Immigrant Services Society of B.C. (ISS) show their group has tracked a 76-per-cent increase in individuals accessing their services that have applied for refugee status, and 90 per cent of those arrive the same way Omar did: by walking across the U.S./Canada border between Blaine and Surrey through Peace Arch Park.

Chris Friesen of the ISS calls it “the underground railroad.”

“We have seen single men, families of 12, 13, people in wheelchairs, pregnant women,” said Friesen, with the majority originating from Afghanistan, Iraq, Mexico, Iran and Colombia.

Friesen and other advocates are concerned that the spike in the number of asylum seekers could increase as the weather warms-up. Last summer, over 7,000 asylum seekers entered Quebec through irregular border crossings.

The reason many asylum seekers are using irregular border crossings — through farmers fields or border parks — is because of the Safe Third Country agreement between Canada and the U.S.

Under the deal, signed during the Harper government regime, refugee claimants are required to request refugee protection in the first safe country they arrive in, unless they qualify for an exception.

“This means that a refugee claimant who came from the United States to Canada through an official border crossing could be detained and deported, or kept in the United States, forcibly impinging their ability to seek asylum in this country,” said Friesen.

Many of the refugee claimants are well-informed about their rights, and will phone the RCMP to be picked up once they arrive in Canada. “The RCMP will drive them to Hornby Street to file their refugee claim,” said Friesen.

“With the numbers that are coming in it is pushing us to the breaking point,” said Friesen, who called the situation “a bloody mess.”

Friesen said ISS is tracking two clear waves of refugee claimants. The first includes those, like Omar, who are able to obtain a legal visitor’s visa to the U.S., and use the United States as a transit point into Canada.

“This is quite new,” said Friesen.

The second stream of new asylum seekers is comprised of individuals who may have been in the U.S. for years, but are vulnerable to the Trump administration’s new policies, including accelerated deportations, the suspension of temporary protection agreements for Haitian and El Salvadoran immigrants, as well as Dreamers.

Friesen said he has been in contact with provincial officials who are planning consultations next month on contingency plans to deal with the continued influx of asylum seekers.

via Refugees crossing into B.C. on the rise, immigrant group says | Vancouver Sun

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Le Conseil des arts du Canada partage plus d’argent, selon des critères d’inclusion

2018/02/02 Leave a comment

More implementation of the diversity and inclusion agenda:

Inclusion de la relève, des arts autochtones et de la diversité. Augmentation générale des « subventions de base » — celles qui assurent, pour un cycle de quatre ans, le fonctionnement des compagnies artistiques. Le Conseil des arts du Canada (CAC) passe aux actes : ses nouvelles valeurs se reflètent dans l’attribution de ses subventions. En dévoilant les premiers bénéficiaires d’une subvention de base depuis qu’il a adopté, en 2015, son nouveau modèle, le CAC incarne sa nouvelle manière, et affirme son désir de moduler le paysage artistique.

Les changements sont nombreux dans la liste des « Bénéficiaires d’une subvention de base », dont Le Devoir a obtenu copie. À travers le pays, 1154 organismes ont reçu une subvention de base, ventilant quelque 117 millions en 2017-2018, comparativement à 92 millions en 2016-2017. Cent dix organismes reçoivent cette subvention pour première fois — soit 10 % des organismes — et accèdent ainsi à une possible pérennité. Environ trois organismes sur cinq voient leurs subventions augmenter pour ce cycle. Les arts autochtones, des artistes de la diversité, des sourds et handicapés, ou des communautés des langues officielles en situation de minorité sont fort encouragés. Quelque 62 % des organismes axés sur ces pratiques ont reçu des subventions à la hausse ; 24 nouveaux organismes en reçoivent pour la première fois.

Le CAC « vient d’attribuer à peu près 60 % de l’argent frais aux organismes », explique Simon Brault, directeur. « En ce moment, il reste encore 57 millions à dépenser d’ici le 31 mars. Ça va avoir beaucoup d’effets. Dans les prochaines semaines vont sortir les résultats par projet — par exemple, ceux du Fonds numérique, très importants sur le plan des investissements. » C’est donc seulement l’automne prochain, après une année entière, qu’un premier bilan pourra se faire de manière éclairée.

« Les compagnies les plus augmentées sont en général les plus pointues dans leur discipline », estime M. Brault, citant la compagnie Marie Chouinard et le Centre canadien d’architecture. « On voit apparaître de nouvelles disciplines : le cirque contemporain, avec le Cirque Éloize, qui entre pour la première fois au fonctionnement, ou des compagnies spécialisées en arts et handicap », telles Corpuscule Danse et Des pieds et des mains. Art Souterrain, qui propose des expositions temporaires en des lieux inusités, comme le métro, est aussi un des nouveaux financés. « De nouvelles pratiques sont soutenues. On fait des choses surprenantes ! » se réjouit le directeur. « Il y a une capacité de renouvellement importante. J’ai hâte de voir ce que va produire ce signal dans le soutien des autres conseils des arts, ce qu’ils vont donner ou pas à ces compagnies, au Québec et à Montréal. Le CAC a eu la chance de vraiment aligner ses investissements avec les principes annoncés. C’est rare qu’un conseil des arts qui reçoit de l’argent frais ces temps-ci, peu importe où dans le monde, décide de le distribuer autrement que de façon égale à tout le monde. Nous, on a choisi une voie différente. »

Pics et plateaux

David Lavoie, coprésident du Conseil québécois du théâtre, a salué « l’avancée des investissements : il y a dix ans, on ne l’imaginait même plus. Oui, il y a des attentes importantes des milieux artistiques, nourries par les crises de la succession, par la pression sur la nécessaire inclusion de la diversité et de la réalité autochtone. Il reste des investissements à venir. Il y a des gagnants ; présentement, on ne semble pas voir grand perdants, mais je pense qu’il est trop tôt pour faire un bilan. Il peut y avoir rééquilibrage des forces ».

Quelque 34 % des organismes n’ont pas reçu d’augmentation. En théâtre, l’Espace Go et le Nouveau Théâtre Expérimental sont de ceux dont les sous stagnent. Isabelle Gingras, directrice administrative de ce dernier, ne se l’explique pas. « On est extrêmement déçu. On revendique la création, la recherche, et ça veut dire parfois que les résultats ne sont pas artistiquement parfaits. Peut-être. Mais vraiment, je ne sais pas pourquoi on n’est pas augmenté. »

À l’inverse, le Théâtre de Quat’Sous voit sa subvention de base augmenter de plus de 100 000 $ par an. « Il y avait dans les critères le souci de représenter davantage la mosaïque culturelle de notre société », note Olivier Kemeid, directeur artistique, parlant de l’inclusion de la diversité. « Dans notre cas, ça n’a pas demandé d’effort particulier, c’est au coeur de notre démarche. Comme rayonner dans la cité, prendre des risques. Alors, on est choyé d’avoir un montant semblable pour les trois prochaines années. »

Au Regroupement québécois de la danse, on demandait plus de temps d’analyse avant de commenter. Les premiers calculs effectués laissent entendre, pour la danse, une augmentation en 2017-2018 de 22 % du financement et de 18 % du nombre d’organismes admis, a avancé Virginie Desloges, responsable des finances.

Alors que Québec attend la version définitive de sa nouvelle politique culturelle, son plan d’action et l’argent qui devrait permettre d’en appliquer les mesures, certains s’inquiètent que la province ne s’appuie trop sur l’investissement supplémentaire du fédéral en arts. « Si le Québec sait si bien tirer son épingle du jeu, c’est aussi parce que c’est la province qui investit le plus en arts, répond M. Brault. Quand je parle avec les ministres de la Culture, je rappelle que si le Québec fléchit dans son investissement, il n’ira pas ensuite chercher la même part au CAC, plus haute que la proportion de sa population. J’espère l’effet contraire : que nos investissements incitent le Québec à maintenir ses choix, et à continuer à investir dans les arts, au lieu de se retirer pour un même montant. »

via Le Conseil des arts du Canada partage plus d’argent, selon des critères d’inclusion | Le Devoir

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Extremists use schools to pervert education, says Ofsted head Amanda Spielman | The Times

2018/02/02 Leave a comment

Increasing muscular language by Ofsted. It would be helpful if she could cite some examples of other religions rather just highlighting legitimate concerns with some Muslim schools:

Religious extremists are “perverting” education by using schools to narrow children’s horizons and cut them off from wider society, the head of Ofsted is warning.

Parents and community leaders see schools as vehicles to “indoctrinate impressionable minds with extremist ideology” in the worst cases, Amanda Spielman says. In a speech today, she will call on head teachers to “tackle those who actively undermine fundamental British values”, facing them down using “muscular liberalism” rather than being afraid of causing offence.

Ms Spielman will also throw her weight behind Neena Lall, the head of St Stephen’s primary school in east London, who has tried to stop girls under eight from wearing the hijab in class and to prevent younger pupils taking part in Ramadan fasting during school hours.

Ms Lall was compared to Adolf Hitler in a video circulated by a group of parents and community leaders. Councillors also protested, accusing the head teacher of undermining the freedom to practise faith and insisting that it was up to parents to decide how to dress and bring up their children. The school, a secular state primary in a largely Pakistani and Bangladeshi community, was forced to reverse the decision.

In an unusual move, Ofsted inspectors arrived at the school yesterday to check on the welfare of staff and pupils and to show solidarity with the head. In a speech to be made today at a Church of England schools conference, Ms Spielman attacks those who opposed the stance taken by St Stephen’s, saying it is a matter of “deep regret” that the school, considered one of the best in the country, has been subjected to “a campaign of abuse by some elements within the community”.

Head teachers must have the right to set uniform policies as they see fit to promote cohesion, Ms Spielman says. “Rather than adopting a passive liberalism, that says ‘anything goes’ for fear of causing offence, school leaders should be promoting a muscular liberalism,” she says. “It means not assuming that the most conservative voices in a particular faith speak for everyone — imagine if people thought the Christian Institute were the sole voice of Anglicanism. And it means schools must not be afraid to call out practices, whatever their justification, that limit young people’s experiences and learning.”

Since starting the job as Ofsted’s chief inspector a year ago, Ms Spielman, 56, has made tackling religious extremism one of her main goals. Her speech is her most outspoken attack yet on religious communities who seek to limit the education and opportunities of youngsters in the name of faith.

“Ofsted inspectors are increasingly brought into contact with those who want to actively pervert the purpose of education. Under the pretext of religious belief, they use education institutions, legal and illegal, to narrow young people’s horizons, to isolate and segregate, and in the worst cases to indoctrinate impressionable minds with extremist ideology. Freedom of belief in the private sphere is paramount, but in our schools it is our responsibility to tackle those who actively undermine fundamental British values or equalities law.”

Ms Spielman has confronted unregistered faith schools when she believes they are not serving communities well. She also took legal action against Al-Hijrah, a state-funded faith school in Birmingham, to stop it segregating girls and boys on religious grounds. Another 25 mixed-faith schools will have to follow suit as a result of the ruling by judges in the Court of Appeal.

The Ofsted chief has challenged primaries that allow girls to wear a hijab or similar headscarf, saying that it could be seen as sexualising those as young as five or six. The practice of head covering is usually associated with modesty only after the onset of puberty. She said that inspectors would question girls seen wearing headscarves in primary schools to establish why they did so. As a result of her stance, she and other inspectors have received threats. Last year she told The Times that security measures had been put in place for herself and some Ofsted staff.

Ofsted says that zealous parents and community leaders dictating school policies is not widespread but happens “enough to be a cause of concern”. Its inspectors have identified at least 170 unregistered faith schools, attended by up to 3,000 children.

via Extremists use schools to pervert education, says Ofsted head Amanda Spielman | News | The Times & The Sunday Times

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Senate proposal would force companies to set diversity targets for board of directors

2018/02/01 Leave a comment

Clear from current data that a nudge needed, with annual reporting to provide accountability:

In an effort to bolster the number of women, Indigenous people and racial minorities sitting on corporate boards, a group of senators is poised to amend government legislation that would force companies to set internal diversity targets.

Independent Ontario Sen. Ratna Omidvar, one of six members of the Red Chamber backing the amendment, said the Liberal government’s current approach in Bill C-25, which would simply encourage companies to boost gender diversity without applying any sort of target, is too timid.

The amendment would compel all publicly traded Canadian companies — roughly 600 on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) — to set targets for increasing underrepresented groups, but would leave it up to each company to decide on what the target should be.

“The bill, as it currently stands, is just a tap on the shoulder, whereas our amendment turns the tap into more of an intentional nudge in the right direction,” Omidvar, an expert in diversity, said in an interview with CBC News. The amendment is expected to be introduced by Independent Sen. Paul Massicotte on Thursday, some 18 months after the bill was first tabled in the House of Commons.

Voluntary approach not good enough: senator

Under the government’s bill, a diversity policy is not mandatory. If a company does not develop one, they would simply have to tell their shareholders why, the so-called “comply or explain” approach adopted by other regulators in Canada.

“For us, that’s too soft a nudge,” Omidvar said. “What we may well get, as a result of this bill, is corporations developing diversity policies and putting them on the shelf and no action.”

Omidvar points to research from the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), an umbrella group of provincial securities regulators, which suggests a voluntary approach to diversity has led to little improvement.

Only 14 per cent of board seats are occupied by women, a three-percentage-point progress from 11 per cent in 2015. Forty-five per cent of all publicly listed companies do not have a single woman sitting on their board of directors. As for senior management, only 15 per cent of positions are filled by women, a proportion that has not progressed at all since 2015.

The research found that 1.1 per cent of board members are Indigenous, 3.2 per cent are persons with a disability and 4.3 per cent are members of a visible minority.

CSA also found that only 9 per cent of companies have internal targets for women on their boards, with a mere 2 per cent having targets for women in executive positions.

Omidvar said targets are not “quotas” per se as each company would be able to decide how many diverse candidates should be added to a board, but, at the very at least, they will have to commit to doing more.

Those targets, and a company’s success in meeting them, would then have to be reported to the federal government on an annual basis.

In turn, the minister responsible, the innovation minister, would prepare a public report documenting how well companies in Canada, writ large, have done in adding women and minorities to the seats of power at these companies. The company would also have to disclose progress to shareholders at their annual meetings.

Importantly, the amendment would actually define what exactly “diversity” is as the government’s bill, as currently written, is vague on that question.

If passed, the amended bill would compel companies to replicate definitions used by the federal government, namely that “diverse” candidates would include women, visible minorities, Indigenous people and those with disabilities. Notably, LGBTQ people would be excluded under such a definition.

Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains is unconvinced amendments are necessary and will not support this move to alter his bill.

“The minister has been clear that the act and the forthcoming regulations are an appropriate and balanced approach that will facilitate a conversation on diversity between shareholders and the management and boards,” a spokesperson said in a statement to CBC News.

The spokesperson pointed to the success of the “comply or explain” model in the United Kingdom and Australia, where the number of women on boards stands at more than 20 per cent in both jurisdictions.

“Given this, we believe Bill C-25 is a good bill for corporations, stakeholders, shareholders, and all Canadians, and hope for its quick passage through the Senate,” he said.

Opposition to quotas

There is a reluctance from some in the business community to set hard quotas — as has been done in Norway, for example, where 40 per cent of all seats must be occupied by a woman.

Paul Schneider, a senior executive at the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, one of the largest institutional investors in the country, told the Senate committee studying Bill C-25 last month that he’d like to see a culture shift rather than the imposition of quotas.

“To be truly impactful, boards must take ownership of diversity. With a quota, they can abdicate ownership to the government,” he said.

“In the short run, quotas can indeed lead to greater diversity, but we fear that while establishing a quota incents boards to hit a specific number, it may hinder any progress over and above that target … Diversity should be achieved because it is good, sound business, not because it is a rule,” he said.

Omidvar said many companies are naturally sceptical of more regulation. “Generally, this is not particular to this bill, business leaders feel the less encumbered they are, the more capacity they will have to succeed in their business goals … but, as I’ve pointed out, [the amendment] just takes the bill from a tap to a nudge.”

And yet the proposed reporting regulations have the potential to be onerous as the more than 600 companies would have to take stock of how each of their board members (some have more than 20) identify, and then report that information to the government where the data would then be analyzed and catalogued, taking up time, money, and other resources.

Others, including Conservative Sen. Betty Unger, have said appointments should simply be based on who is best for the business.

“People invest in corporations to get a return on their investment, and this is best accomplished by appointing merit-based people to boards … As a woman — and, as you can see, I am not young — I could never feel good about myself if I knew that I got a position simply because I am a woman,” she said at a Nov. 30 committee meeting on the bill.

via Senate proposal would force companies to set diversity targets for board of directors – Politics – CBC News

 

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In immigration debate, what constitutes ‘merit’? – CSMonitor.com

2018/02/01 Leave a comment

Not a bad overview regarding definitions of merit (Canada uses its points, frequently tweaked, for its definition for economic immigrants), and a reminder, given the different interests at play, that different definitions are needed:

When President Trump talks about immigration in his first State of The Union speech tonight, people are likely to hear him use one phrase in particular: “merit-based immigration.”

As part of his offer to put 1.8 million young, unauthorized immigrant “Dreamers” on a path to citizenship, Mr. Trump also wants to shift legal immigration away from prioritizing family reunification to a system based on individual qualifications. It would be a significant change – if lawmakers could agree on what constitutes “merit.”

The president and his supporters in Congress appear to be defining merit as highly skilled, well-educated immigrants who speak English and can support themselves. But what about strawberry pickers or hotel workers? Those jobs are commonly performed by low-skilled immigrants. And then there’s the brother or sister of a legal resident who comes to America and starts a business, whose family helps him or her adjust to a new culture.

“Nobody has a set definition of ‘merit.’ Everyone uses it for his own purpose,” says Theresa Cardinal Brown, the director of immigration policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. The term sounds positive, she says, while a phrase like “chain migration” – or family-based immigration, which the president wants to stop – sounds negative, like a weight.

These terms – and their political shadings – are meant to sway public opinion, Ms. Brown says. And they hide a legitimate question: “When you are talking about a merit-based system in the US context, are you looking to decrease the overall number of immigrants, or are you looking to adjust the criteria of who comes in?”

Today, America’s legal immigration is demand-oriented – it relies on the demand of families in the US to sponsor relatives and American employers to sponsor foreign workers. It also includes a relatively small visa diversity program to allot slots to underrepresented countries (the “visa lottery,” which the president wants to end) and a humanitarian component for refugees and asylum seekers, which the administration is radically scaling back.

The system heavily favors families, which advocates describe as consistent with American values. About two-thirds of the slightly more than 1 million people granted legal status (known as green cards) in 2015 were family-based, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Only 14 percent were employer-sponsored.

This is a problem, the administration and many Republicans in Congress maintain. Low-skilled immigrants are low taxpayers – a burden on public services, oversaturating the job market, and stagnating wages, in their view. And family-based immigration poses a security threat, says Attorney General Jeff Sessions. In an opinion piece published Jan. 21 in The Washington Times, he cites a report from the Department of Justice and DHS that since Sept. 11, 2001, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has removed more than 1,700 unauthorized immigrants with “national security concerns.”

“The American people have known for more than 30 years that our immigration system is broken. It’s intentionally designed to be blind to merit,” Mr. Sessions said in a speech Friday. “It doesn’t favor education or skills. It just favors anybody who has a relative in America – and not necessarily a close relative.”

Sessions and others in the administration point to countries such as Canada and Australia that have supply-oriented policies. These countries have long used point systems to qualify applicants, assigning them points for education, working age, employment, language, and other skills that determine their likelihood of assimilation and contribution to the economy.

As a result, these countries’ intake is the reverse of the US: About two-thirds of their legal immigrants are employment-based, rather than family-based, writes immigration expert Daniel Griswold in a recent op-ed in The Hill.

But these countries also have family components, and they adjusted their programs when they saw that their criteria did not automatically mean immigrants could easily adjust or work in their fields. Their systems are also more flexible to changing economies, while immigration policy in the US is heavily dependent on a gridlock-plagued Congress.

‘Green cards just for computer engineers’

“I don’t want green cards just for computer engineers,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina told reporters during the recent three-day government shutdown. Senator Graham has been in the thick of working on a bipartisan deal for Dreamers. “If you are out there working in the fields, if you are a construction worker, I want some of those people to have a way to stay here. If you are running a business, I want them to have a chance to get a green card.”

He blasted the president’s immigration policy expert, Stephen Miller, for wanting to restrict legal immigration at a time of a worker shortage. Demographers also point to an aging US population and warn about turning into a Russia or Japan without enough immigrants to support their seniors.

Indeed, the president’s immigration framework, released last week, echoes a bill by Sens. Tom Cotton (R) of Arkansas and David Perdue (R) of Georgia that would end “extended-family chain migration” and only sponsor spouses and minor children. The bill would cut in half the number of legal immigrants by eliminating many family-sponsored categories and significantly cutting the cap on such family-based visas.

Evelyn Huron, the director of Caritas Legal Services with Catholic Charities in San Antonio, Texas, says the president’s one-page immigration policy framework is vague. But the apparent emphasis on a merit-based system that rewards high-skilled and more affluent immigrants has her worried.

Even if the path to legal residency in the US narrows for poorer and less-skilled workers, Huron doubts that those workers will stop coming into the country looking for work.

“There are always going to be jobs for unskilled workers,” she says. “Are you going to have less people come? No. More people leave? No. You are just going to have less applying” for legal status.

Getting in the harvest

Take Dixondale Farms in Carrizo Springs, Texas, the largest and oldest onion plant farm in the country.

Bruce Frasier, the fourth-generation president of the family farm about 45 minutes from the US-Mexico border, has seen his workforce shrink by half in his time running the farm. He has been calling for the government to streamline the H-2A visa program – the main tool for foreign agricultural workers to gain seasonal access to the country – for years to supplement his dwindling workforce of legal residents.

“The number of [farm owner H-2A] applications are going up each year because more and more people are realizing they can’t get local [legal] workers, or even illegal workers, to do this,” says Mr. Frasier.

Last summer, with relatively little fanfare, the US Department of Homeland Security raised the cap on H-2B visas for foreign guest workers, a program favored by the hospitality industry, but not on H-2A and H-1B visas, programs favored by the agriculture and technology industries, respectively.

With fewer US residents looking for agricultural work, and an unreliable foreign guest worker program, many farmers – particularly in the interior of the country – turn to illegal workers to make sure they harvest their whole crop in time, Frasier continues.

The US food supply “is going to be harvested eventually by more foreign workers,” he says, because so few US residents want to do the work. “It’s whether you want to grow it in Mexico or want to grow it in the United States.”

Congress has grappled with the merit issue before. The bipartisan 2013 immigration reform bill that passed the Senate and wilted for lack of interest in the GOP-controlled House included a point-based merit system. It also eliminated the diversity visa lottery and restricted family-based immigration.

But that was part of a comprehensive immigration reform bill that not only had a path to citizenship for Dreamers, but also for millions of other unauthorized immigrants who arrived in the US before 2011. What Trump is offering is not this grand bargain, and has drawn many critics on the left – and on the right, including those who object to Dreamer “amnesty,” and his costly $25 billion trust fund for a border wall and other enhancements.

“I am forever looking for that thing that can break through the noise and make progress on a deal,” says Brown. At the end of the day, she says, everybody – but most especially the Dreamers – have to figure out how important it is to get their protections back.

“What is the price that everyone is willing to pay for them to feel safe? That debate is ongoing.”

via In immigration debate, what constitutes ‘merit’? – CSMonitor.com

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