Doctors and Racial Bias: Still a Long Way to Go

2019/02/28 Leave a comment

Of note:

The racist photo in the medical school yearbook page of Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia has probably caused many physicians to re-examine their past.

We hope we are better today, but the research is not as encouraging as you might think: There is still a long way to go in how the medical field treats minority patients, especially African-Americans.

A systematic review published in Academic Emergency Medicinegathered all the research on physicians that measured implicit bias with the Implicit Association Test and included some assessment of clinical decision making. Most of the nine studies used vignettes to test what physicians would do in certain situations.

The majority of studies found an implicit preference for white patients, especially among white physicians. Two found a relationship between this bias and clinical decision making. One found that this bias was associated with a greater chance that whites would be treated for myocardial infarction than African-Americans.

This study was published in 2017.

The Implicit Association Test has its flaws. Although its authors maintain that it measures external influences, it’s not clear how well it predicts individual behavior. Another, bigger systematic review of implicit bias in health care professionals was published in BMC Ethics, also in 2017. The researchers gathered 42 studies, only 15 of which used the Implicit Association Test, and concluded that physicians are just like everyone else. Their biases are consistent with those of the general population.

The researchers also cautioned that these biases are likely to affect diagnosis and care.

A study published three years earlier in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine surveyed 543 internal medicine and family physicians who had been presented with vignettes of patients with severe osteoarthritis. The survey asked the doctors about the medical cooperativeness of the patients, and whether they would recommend a total knee replacement.

Even though the descriptions of the cases were identical except for the race of the patients (African-Americans and whites), participants reported that they believed the white patients were being more medically cooperative than the African-American ones. These beliefs did not translate into different treatment recommendations in this study, but they were clearly there.

In 2003, the Institute of Medicine released a landmark report on disparities in health care. The evidence for their existence was enormous. The research available at that time showed that even after controlling for socioeconomic factors, disparities remained.

There’s significant literature documenting that African-American patients are treated differently than white patients when it comes to cardiovascular procedures. There were differences in whether they received optimal care with respect to a cancer diagnosis and treatment. African-Americans were less likely to receive appropriate care when they were infected with H.I.V. They were also more likely to die from these illnesses even after adjusting for age, sex, insurance, education and the severity of the disease.

Disparities existed for patients with diabetes, kidney disease, mental health problems, and for those who were pregnant or were children.

The report cited some systems-level factors that contributed to this problem. Good care may be unavailable in some poor neighborhoods, and easily obtained in others. Differences in insurance access and coverage can also vary by race.

But the report’s authors spent much more time on issues at the level of care, in which some physicians treated patients differently based on their race.

Physicians sometimes had a harder time making accurate diagnoses because they seemed to be worse at reading the signals from minority patients, perhaps because of cultural or language barriers. Then there were beliefs that physicians already held about the behavior of minorities. You could call these stereotypes, like believing that minority patients wouldn’t comply with recommended changes.

Of course, there’s the issue of mistrust on the patient side. African-American patients have good reason to mistrust the health care system; the infamous Tuskegee Study is just one example.

In its report, the Institute of Medicine recommended strengthening health plans so that minorities were not disproportionately denied access. It urged that more underrepresented minorities be trained as health care professionals, and that more resources be directed toward enforcing civil rights laws.

In practice, it endorsed more evidence-based care across the board. It noted the importance of interpreters, community health workers, patient education programs and cross-cultural education for those who care for patients.

All of this has met with limited success.

In 2017, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality issued its 15th yearly report on health care quality and disparities, as called for by the medical institute in 2002. It found that while some disparities had gotten better, many remained. The most recent data available showed that 40 percent of the quality measures were still worse for blacks than whites. Other groups fared worse as well. Measures were worse for 20 percent of Asian-Americans, 30 percent of Native Americans, and one third of Pacific Islanders and Hispanics.

Of the 21 access measures tracked from 2000 to 2016, nine were improving. Nine were unchanged. Three were worsening.

It would be easy to look at a racist photo from the 1980s and conclude that it was a different time and that things have changed. Many things have not. We know that racism, explicit and implicit, was pervasive in medical care back then. Many studies show that it’s still pervasive today. The recommendations from the medical institute in 2003 still hold. Any fair assessment of the evidence suggests much work remains to be done.

 

Source: Doctors and Racial Bias: Still a Long Way to Go

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Diversity of the Black population in Canada: An overview

2019/02/28 Leave a comment

A really good an in-depth of the diversity in the Canadian Black population. Look forward to the next in the series, contrasting socio-economic outcomes. Important work:

There were almost 1.2 million Black people living in Canada in 2016. The Black population is diverse and has a long and rich history in the country. More than 4 in 10 Black people were born in Canada.

Among the Black population born outside of Canada, the source countries of immigration have changed over time. More than half of this population who immigrated before 1981 were born in Jamaica and Haiti. Black newcomers now come from about 125 different countries, mainly from Africa.

The vast majority of the Black population live in large urban areas. In 2016, 94.3% of Black people lived in Canada’s census metropolitan areas, compared with 71.2% of the country’s total population. Toronto had the largest Black population in the country, with 442,015 people or 36.9% of Canada’s Black population. It was followed by Montréal, Ottawa–Gatineau, Edmonton and Calgary, each home to at least 50,000 Black people.

To illustrate the growth and the diversity of the Black population, a first infographic was released on February 6, 2019. A booklet is now available to provide more information about the richness of diversity among the Black population in Canada. A number of topics are covered in this booklet including population growth, age and sex structure, place of birth, generation status, immigration, ethnic and cultural origins, languages and a few geographical highlights.

….

Conclusion

This portrait of Canada’s Black population from the Centre for Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Statistics is based mainly on 2016 Census data. It provides a demographic overview of the Black population, as well as key statistics related to their ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity and a few geographical highlights. However, this portrait is not meant to be exhaustive.

Although it highlights the great diversity within the Black population, it does not present any result related to the several challenges and issues faced by many members of Black communities in Canada.

Challenges and issues such as those related to labour market integration, income inequalities, differential access to resources, health conditions, discrimination, school dropout, etc., may impact differently various groups within the Black population. Moreover, although the Black population generally has similar characteristics compared to the overall population, they often present different socio-economic outcomes. For example, the unemployment rate for the Black population is higher than for Canada’s total population.

Disaggregated 2016 Census data tables with selected demographic, cultural, labour market and income characteristics are available on Statistics Canada’s Census program website which can provide insights on similarities and differences within the Black population as well as between the Black population and other populations in Canada.

New analytical products will be released later which will describe in more detail the characteristics of Canada’s Black population, as well as their socio-economic outcomes.

Source: Diversity of the Black population in Canada: An overview 

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To truly modernize social programs, it will take big data and analytics

2019/02/28 Leave a comment

I may be biased given some of the obstacles I faced when working on “citizen-centred service” in the early days of Service Canada, where even conceptual work regarding integrating disparate programs and services from a pathfinder perspective faced resistance.

The complexity and coordination required, the organizational and even program stovepipes, and the sheer difficulty in developing and implementing such a change agenda make me a sceptic. After all, the government wasn’t even able to integrate pay services for its own employees with Phoenix, and has had less visible problems and challenges with Shared Services Canada.

But of course, better use of big data, and better capacity to analyse the data, offer considerable potential to assess the effectiveness of current programs, identify gaps and improve outcomes:

Finding better ways of wiring for e-government is important and necessary. Nobody would disagree with the need for better computing, electronic communications and information management.

However, digital improvements will bring about only modest gains if they are applied to programs that, at core, are based on pre-computer technologies, as is the case with most of today’s social and health programs. Transformative changes in program objectives and designs based on big data and micro-analytic tools must be brought into the picture. We need to create a trove of “what works” data that will lead to individually tailored social programming.

Most of today’s social programs were designed decades ago and, reflecting the limits of the technology of the day, provide eligible individuals with standard services, products or income supports that are designed to address specific problems.

For example, an unemployed person might be assigned to a training course with a fixed duration and curriculum. A low-income senior will be provided with a top-up pension in an amount that is predetermined based on the individual’s annual income in the previous year. Someone diagnosed with a particular disease will receive a prescription for specific drugs. These benefits are provided by a variety of independent programs funded by different orders of government — and are often delivered by staff in the social work, education or health disciplines. It is difficult to coordinate or even communicate across these programs, which is why they are often referred to as program silos. Individuals who receive benefits are seen as recipients, clients, patients or students, not as citizens or partners.

It’s a reasonably efficient system that works reasonably well for most people most of the time. On balance, the results are positive, near the average of other OECD countries.

However, the system is seriously showing its age.

The underlying weakness shows up most starkly in the way the system deals with the most vulnerable. People who are most in need of health and social services or income support often face multiple obstacles in life. They might lack several types of skills, have inadequate housing and poor jobs, have differing degrees of family support and financial assets, and face a variety of health, disability and addiction issues. People with multiple needs can face an almost impenetrable array of separate programs, each with different terms and conditions and offering solutions that are partial at best. Even with the help of experts and case managers, it is often impossible to create sensible combined packages of benefits to meet individual needs.

For decades, service providers and groups representing the vulnerable have pointed out the problem of trying to shoehorn people into this complex system of fractured supports and benefits.

And for many years, policy documents relating to education, health and social policy have called for a more holistic approach, with benefits directly tailored to the diverse needs of individuals. These have been referred to as student-centred, citizen-centric and, more recently, individually driven approaches. In health, related aspirations are often referred to as precision medicine or personalized medicine, where medical treatments, practices or products are tailored to the individual patient.

However, the called-for changes have not occurred. Experiments, demonstrations and other initiatives that have attempted to cut across the boundaries of the program silos have proven difficult to sustain and have typically had little impact on the design of mainstream programming.

There are good reasons for the lack of success in moving outside traditional silos:

  • Traditional programming makes it relatively easy to provide ongoing funding, to ensure ministerial accountability and to provide the high professional standards that can ensure, for example, the quality of health and educational interventions.
  • No organization has a mandate to develop interventions that cross these traditional program boundaries.
  • The empirical data needed to assess the effectiveness of tailor-made, holistic interventions are underdeveloped and are certainly not yet strong enough to create the needed accountability arrangements. Strong accountability regimes — the monitoring and evaluation activities that ensure that money is spent effectively, transparently and in line with intended objectives — are essential if reform is to be sustained.

But the solution is on the near horizon: big data and predictive analytics. They offer the opportunity for all citizens to become real partners in the design and implementation of the social and health programs that affect their lives. They can provide transformative gains, particularly for people who are most vulnerable.

This technology is in use in other applications and can be applied to social policy. I discussed it in an IRPP essay I wrote in 2015, The Enabling Society. At its core, individuals would have access to information at the very time they need to make big social and health decisions, to make well-informed choices about which combination of training, social services, housing, income supports and health interventions is likely to work best for them. This information would be calculated from large data sets that record the experience of people who have been in similar circumstances and had similar aspirations in the past. This technology produces information that allows all dimensions of the system to work in harmony:

  • The “what works” information would also be available to case workers, teachers, health professionals and other front-line staff so they can become partners in helping individuals put together flexible packages of interventions that are most likely to meet an individual’s particular needs and aspirations, including benefits provided by programs originating in different disciplines and orders of government.
  • The same information would provide the designers and administrators of the many independent traditional programs with the tools to make improvements steadily and automatically over time based on feedback loops that routinely describe which features of the program are working best and for whom — and at what cost.
  • The same information would also support rigorous accountability regimes both for existing program silos and for the flexible arrangements that provide individually tailored packages of interventions.

Such a system would result in huge gains on multiple fronts: in individual and social well-being, in effectiveness, in reduced cost, in the openness and accountability of public programs and in the ability of different orders of government to work together more harmoniously and in a way that treats citizens as main partners in shaping and delivering social programs.

A radically different approach along these lines, one that so dramatically changes the relationship between government and citizen, obviously cannot be attained overnight.

We should start small, in areas where mechanisms already exist to allow cooperation across jurisdictional and program borders and where the needed “what works” information is already well developed. There are a number of possible starting points.

For example, Employment and Social Development Canada could work with one or more provinces in introducing “what works” information into the daily operation of training and other employment programs on an experimental or demonstration basis under the authority of existing labour market agreements, which provide federal funding to support provincial and territorial employability initiatives. These agreements already allow considerable flexibility in the funding and development of innovative employment programs. As well, the needed “what works” data have already been developed and are already routinely used in the evaluation of these projects.

Once their practicality and effectiveness have been clearly demonstrated, these small initiatives could extend naturally and gradually to other areas and would, eventually, become the normal way we do business.

At the same time, the government of Canada should undertake a large-scale exercise to develop big data from administrative sources, such as anonymized information from tax files, employment insurance records and provincial training and social assistance files. It should also develop the associated analytic tools that will allow us to use these rich data to better understand individual behaviour and the kinds of social interventions that are likely to work best at the level of particular individuals.

Such fundamental but gradual changes in the purpose and design of programs need to go hand in hand with the deep reforms in digital processes that have been discussed in this Policy Options series, including a stronger capacity throughout all parts of government in the use of computers, electronic communications and information management. Process reforms could, in some cases, increase efficiency and improve service delivery and customer satisfaction. They could also provide somewhat better information about what programs and benefits are available and allow greater access to administrative data that have been collected. However, if such reforms are made in isolation, divorced from deep “what works” changes in program goals and designs, they risk creating expectations for change that cannot be met.

Those in the e-government community are not directly responsible for changing basic social policy directions or reforming the structure of social programs, but they can nevertheless play a pivotal role in the development and use of big data and predictive analytics. This might at minimum involve active support for reforms along the lines laid out in a paper by the Experts Panel on Income Security of the Council on Aging of Ottawa that describes the kind of micro-level data and microanalytic tools that are needed. Such support, along with process reform, could go a long way in finally enabling the real transition to the digital world.

Source: To truly modernize social programs, it will take big data and analytics

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Sajid Javid: difficult to strip Shamima Begum of UK citizenship

2019/02/28 Leave a comment

An important nuance to the UK’s citizenship revocation policy – must already have another citizenship, not just (theoretically) be able to obtain one:

Sajid Javid has indicated it could prove hugely difficult to strip Shamima Begum of her UK citizenship, telling MPs such action would not normally be taken against someone without another nationality and who was born in Britain.

Answering questions before the home affairs committee, Javid refused to discuss specifically the case of the 19-year-old, who travelled from east London to Syria to join Islamic State in 2015, but wants to return with her newborn baby.

But speaking more generally about the policy of stripping citizenship from UK nationals who are deemed a danger to the country, the home secretary said this action had never been taken if it would have left someone stateless.

“If an individual only has one citizenship, then generally the power cannot be used because by definition if you took away their British citizenship they would be stateless,” Javid said in answer to a question from the former Labour MP John Woodcock.

“I certainly haven’t done that and I am not aware that one of my predecessors has done that in a case where they know an individual only has one citizenship, as that would be breaking international law as we understand it.”

Last week, it emerged that the Home Office had written to Begum’s family to inform them an order was being made under the 1981 British Nationality Act, which allows the home secretary to remove someone’s citizenship if they are “satisfied that deprivation is conducive to the public good”.

A 2014 amendment to the Nationality Act allows UK citizenship to be removed if there are “reasonable grounds for believing” the person would be able to become a citizen of another country.

Asked about this by Woodcock, Javid stressed this could happen only if the person involved was a naturalised UK citizen originally from another country.

Javid said: “I have not deployed the power on the basis that someone could have citizenship to a second country. I’ve always applied it on the strict advice of legal advisers in the Home Office and more broadly in the government that when the power is deployed, with respect to that individual, they already have more than one citizenship.”

This measure had never seemingly been used, he added: “I have not used that power, and to the best of my knowledge none of my predecessors have used the power that was given in 2014.”

Begum’s family has stressed she does not have Bangladeshi citizenship, while Bangladesh has also said she does not, and will not be allowed into the country.

Assuming she does not have Bangladeshi nationality, it appears hard to see how Javid could enforce the order set out in the letter, which has prompted criticism that he was seeking to exploit populist feeling without proper attention to the law.

Javid was asked by the Labour MP Kate Green whether it was “morally right to export the problem” to Bangladesh, rather than deal with Begum through UK courts.

The home secretary argued that his priority had to be to protect the UK. Asked again if he thought this was morally suspect, he added: “I’m afraid I just don’t see it like that.”

He also confirmed that Begum’s baby would be a UK national, saying that children of British-born mothers had that right. However, he added, it would be “incredibly difficult” to assist the infant, as Begum was in a refugee camp in northern Syria.

Begum left the UK along with two schoolfriends. Her case was thrust back into the spotlight last week when she declared her wish to return for the sake of her child in an interview with the Times.

Source: Sajid Javid: difficult to strip Shamima Begum of UK citizenship

Filed under Citizenship, Dual Citizenship, Revocation Tagged with ,

Switzerland: Mistrust of Islam nearly three times higher than negative views of muslims

2019/02/28 Leave a comment

Interesting trend and distinction between Islam the faith and Muslims the people:

Every two years, Switzerland’s Federal Statistical Office compiles a survey of attitudes towards people of different race, religion and nationality. The survey entitled: living together in Switzerland, asks a wide range of questions covering attitudes held towards different people and experiences associated with those differences.

More than 3,000 permanent residents of Switzerland between the ages of 15 and 88, selected at random across Switzerland’s main regions, were asked a series of questions. Those questioned included Swiss citizens and foreign nationals.

One group of questions, which looks at attitudes towards muslims, shows a large difference between how the population views the faith compared to it’s followers. In 2018, 29% said they mistrusted Islam, while 11% said they held a negative view of its followers.

The survey also looked at attitudes towards the jewish community. 9% said they held a negative view of this group. There was no separate question on attitudes towards the jewish faith.

Negativity towards muslims in Switzerland has declined since 2016. In 2016, 14% said they held a negative view of them. In 2018, the figure was 11%.

On the other hand the percentage declaring negativity towards the jewish community increased from 8% in 2016 to 9% in 2018.

In line with these trends, support for negative stereotypes of jewish people rose between 2016 and 2018 while it fell for muslims. The percentage saying the negative stereotype of muslim people, defined as fanaticism, aggressivity, oppression of women and non-respect of human rights, applied strongly and systematically fell from 16.8% to 13.7%, while the percentage saying the stereotype of jewish people, defined as greed, being too exclusive, thirst for power and political radicality, applied strongly and systematically rose from 11.9% to 12.5% – the report cautions against reading too much into the stereotype figures because of the limited number of characteristics included and the high percentage of respondents not answering the question.

Religious discrimination was ranked the fifth most frequent form of discrimination in Switzerland. First was discrimination based on nationality. 58% said they’d experienced this. Next were language or accent (27%), gender (19%), professional status (18%) and religion (15%). Skin colour (15%), socio-economic group (14%), age (13%), political opinion (12%) and ethnicity (11%) completed the top ten.

Source: Mistrust of Islam nearly three times higher than negative views of muslims

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Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party posts mixed-bag results after its first byelection test

2019/02/27 Leave a comment

Of all the results of Monday’s by-elections, I found this to be the most interesting, given the role that Chinese Canadians appear to have played in the strong PPC result of 11 percent (39 percent of Burnaby South are Chinese origin).

If this pattern of relatively stronger support among Chinese Canadians prevails in the general election, there are six ridings with 40 percent or more Chinese origin (visible minority group) and 12 more with between 20-40 percent, all in BC’s lower mainland or the suburbs surrounding Toronto (the 905):

The fledgling People’s Party of Canada got off to an uneven start in its first electoral test Monday in a trio of federal byelections.

The party, founded last fall by former Conservative leadership contender Maxime Bernier, captured some 11 per cent of the vote in the Vancouver-area riding of Burnaby South but failed to make much of a splash among voters in the rural Ontario riding of York—Simcoe or the urban Montreal-area riding of Outremont where the party had less than 2 per cent of the final tally.

Bernier tweeted early Tuesday that the poor Ontario and Quebec numbers were “disappointing” and said he “expected more” from those ridings while praising the more favourable Burnaby result as “great.”

“Our party was born only 5 months ago!” Bernier wrote. “This is only the beginning of our journey. We are in it for the long haul … Let’s work even harder now to find the best candidates and be ready for the general election.”

Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson, a former Christian talk show host who had some name recognition before launching her candidacy, was tapped by Bernier to represent the People’s Party in Burnaby South. She delivered the best result of the night for the new political outfit.

While she was a source of controversy because of some past remarks, Thompson peeled away enough votes from the more established parties to place fourth overall.

Thompson, whose slogan was of “Canada for Canadians,” ran a decidedly populist campaign for Parliament. Thompson has said her base was heavily comprised of evangelical Chinese-Canadian churchgoers in the diverse B.C. riding.

The comparatively strong showing by Thompson — in a riding ultimately won by NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh — appeared to cut in to the Conservative party’s results in that riding.

Conservative Burnaby candidate, Jay Shin, captured about 23 per cent of the vote — five points less than what the previous Conservative candidate there managed to achieve in the 2015 federal election. Shin placed third behind Singh and Liberal candidate Richard T. Lee.

In central Canada, meanwhile, the People’s Party proved to be a marginal political force.

For example, in York—Simcoe, Ont., People’s Party candidate Robert Geurts, a criminal defence lawyer, placed a distant sixth out of nine candidates.

Geurts, best known for his past role as a prosecutor during the Paul Bernardo trial, was even outpaced by Dorian Baxter a candidate for the minor centre-right PC Party, an entity with a name similar to the now-defunct Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.

Scot Davidson ultimately held the rural seat for the Conservative party with a 20-point margin over Liberal Shaun Tanaka.

Fewer than 20 per cent of registered voters in York—Simcoe bothered to vote in Monday’s contest.

Even before the results were finalized, Bernier tweeted Monday that volunteers should be proud of what they accomplished so soon after the party was founded.

“The hundreds of volunteers who helped our candidates in Burnaby South, York–Simcoe and Outremont can be proud of what they achieved. They blazed a trail that thousands of others will follow across the country in October,” he said.

In Outremont, People’s Party candidate James Seale, a Canadian Army veteran, also failed to post a result better than 2 per cent of the vote.

Seale was a member of the armed forces for more than 30 years, and served overseas stints in Israel, Germany, Haiti and Bosnia before later becoming a military instructor and civil servant.

He said he was attracted to the party because of Bernier’s promise to increase investment in Canada’s defence.

While Bernier’s party disappointed in the Quebec riding, Green party candidate Daniel Green placed third — among the party’s best ever showing in la belle province.

Green, the deputy leader of the Green Party of Canada, posted better numbers than Bloc Québécois candidate Michel Duchesne and Conservative candidate Jasmine Louras who placed fourth and fifth respectively in the riding that was last held by former NDP leader Tom Mulcair.

“The GPC has always been underestimated. But just watch us in October,” Green tweeted Monday in reference to the forthcoming federal election.

While Mulcair won the riding by more than 11 points in the 2015 federal election, Liberal Rachel Bendayan easily captured the seat Monday outpacing NDP candidate Julia Sánchez by more than 15 points.

Source: Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party posts mixed-bag results after its first byelection test

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British Columbians Troubled by Birth Tourism, Call for Change

2019/02/27 Leave a comment

Although a less than reliable online survey, overall concerns among all British Columbia residents, whatever their origins, sounds about right:

Many residents of British Columbia are concerned about the practice of “birth tourism”, a new Research Co. poll has found.

In the online survey of a representative provincial sample, 82% of British Columbians believe “birth tourism” can be unfairly used to gain access to Canada’s education, health care and social programs.

“Birth tourism” is the practice of traveling to a specific country for the purpose of giving birth there and securing citizenship for the child in a country that has birthright citizenship.

Canada allows expectant mothers who are foreign nationals to gain automatic citizenship for their children born in Canada.

There have been reports of unregulated “for profit” businesses that have facilitated the practice of “birth tourism”  in Canada. Across British Columbia, 49% of residents say they have followed this issue “very closely” or “moderately closely” over the past year.

More than three-in-five British Columbians say “birth tourism” can degrade the value of Canadian citizenship (66%) and can displace Canadians from hospitals (63%).

An e-petitionendorsed by Joe Peschisolido, the Member of Parliament for the Steveston—Richmond East constituency, is calling on the federal government to commit public resources to determine the full extent of “birth tourism” across Canada. A considerable majority of British Columbians (85%) agree with this proposal.

Seven-in-ten British Columbians (73%) believe Canada should “definitely” or “probably” consider establishing new guidelines for birthright citizenship, while 18% would keep the existing standards.

“There is no substantial variation on these questions when the ethnicity of respondents is considered,” says Mario Canseco, President of Research Co. “We find that 71% of British Columbians of East Asian descent and 75% of those of European descent would like to see some modifications to the current rules for birthright citizenship.”

Source: view the release on our website

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Increasing Anti-Semitism: Macron Struggles to Contain Rising Hate Crimes

2019/02/27 Leave a comment

Worth noting:

He had hoped, said French President Emmanuel Macron with a heavy voice last Wednesday evening, that “this dinner would take place in a cheerful context.” Wearing a dark suit and a serious expression, he stood in front of a podium in the Carrousel du Louvre, an underground shopping mall near the Louvre museum.

CRIF, the umbrella association of Jewish organizations in France, had invited Macron for their annual dinner. It could have been just one event among many for the French president, whose agenda is always packed. But it didn’t turn out that way. Quite the contrary.

That has to do with a situation that is anything but cheerful. Anti-Semitic attacks increased by fully 74 percent in 2018, an unfathomable spike. Last year, 541 incidents were registered, compared to 311 the previous year.

And then there are the recent events: Only a few days before the event near the Louvre, a man shouted at philosopher Alain Finkielkraut on the street, saying that he was a “filthy Jew,” that he belonged to a “filthy race” and that he should “go back to Tel Aviv.” The man who yelled at Finkielkraut was wearing a yellow vest.

Then a Jewish cemetery in Alsace was desecrated as was, though it wasn’t yet known by the time of the dinner, another cemetery near Lyon, where someone wrote “Shoa blabla” on a memorial. Meanwhile, the portrait on the 13th Arrondissement town hall of Simone Veil, the Holocaust survivor and former European Parliament president, was daubed with black swastikas. And someone sprayed “Jews” on the window of a bagel shop.

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In his speech to the members of the Jewish organizations, Emmanuel Macron said: “For the last several years, anti-Semitism has once again been killing people in France.” Then he listed, one after the other, the names of the people who had been murdered in France in recent years because they were Jewish.

Neither anti-Semitism nor anti-Semitic violence are new phenomena in France or in the rest of Europe. Both have a long history, with a few tragic nadirs: In France, these include the Dreyfus Affair in the late 19th century, the desecration of the Jewish cemetery in Carpentras in 1990, the torture-killing of Ilan Halimi in 2006 in a Parisian suburb and the murder of Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, about a year ago.

The current displays of anti-Semitism, though, are the crest of an almost all-encompassing wave of hatred and violence crashing over the country. Anti-Semitic attacks can be recognized for what they are; unlike other acts of violence, they can be categorized and geographically pinpointed. As such, the hatred of Jews can be identified even against the backdrop of broadly rising violence.

And here, too, there is a problem specific to France, as the terror attacks of the past few years have shown: The failed integration of younger Muslims and their increasing radicalization.

But a debate has emerged about whether the yellow vests are per se anti-Semitic, whether they are responsible for this new wave of violence. And the likely answer to that question is: They aren’t any more responsible nor are they any more anti-Semitic than the rest of the French. Or, for that matter, than the Germans or the Austrians.

The so-called yellow vests, after all, are not a homogenous collection of people that fall into a specific sociological category. Rather, they are a disparate movement united by only one thing: indignation. And when indignation escalates, hate is ultimately the result.

Rising to the Surface

“I am shocked how much hatred there currently is in our country,” says Denis Peschanski, a historian who researches historical commemoration. In his view, French anti-Semitism is always in the background, but in pushes its way forward in times of crisis. And it thrives, he says, in an environment where conspiracy theories are plentiful.

And this is where the yellow vests play a role, because, no matter how diverse they may be, the movement’s combined force has paved the way, both verbally and physically, for these acts of violence. What is new, though, is the unrestrained nature of the hatred.

There is a hatred of taxes and of tax increases. Hatred for the president, who some would like to see guillotined in the traffic circles in rural France where the yellow vests camp.

And then there’s the lawmaker who threatened Macron by saying the president would end up like Kennedy if he didn’t change his policies. We are essentially witnessing a collective breaking of taboos. “A Clockwork Orange” in French.

These newly blurred boundaries are also palpable within the yellow vest movement. After nurse Ingrid Levavasseur, a kind of figurehead for the movement, wanted to run in the European Parliament elections with her own list of candidates, she was so harshly insulted and threatened that she withdrew her candidacy. “Dirty whore!” one person yelled at her. “Go get raped!”

All constraints seem to have disappeared. Anyone can be whatever they want to be: racist, anti-Semitic, misogynist. Freedom of speech is showing its dark side.

And it isn’t just insults and complaints. The Arc de Triomphe was graffitied. Someone peed on the barrier protecting the French National Assembly. Hatred of the bank on the corner leads to its windows being shattered, and the same happens to the shoe store across the street.

Peschanski, the historian, connects these transgressions to two things: the presidential election in 2017 — which Emmanuel Macron won against all expectations, making him quasi-illegitimate in the eyes of many — and to the populism that has become rampant across Europe.

The more powerful the populists become, the more they spread their ideas, their rhetoric, and their hate. The question is now whether the situation can be reset, and whether this spiral of physical and verbal violence can be ended.

Emmanuel Macron is trying in his own way, by travelling to remote corners of the country and talking to people, whether they are local politicians, students or retirees. He has decreed a “great debate” for the country, which sometimes seems akin to national group therapy. He listens to the complaints, takes down criticisms and then responds to them.

An Attempt at Dialogue

To those who are angry, he argues that politicians are not fundamentally corrupt. To those who are afraid, he declares that democracy can protect them. Most of the time, he cuts quite a good form at such appearances because he tends towards the pedagogical. Having spent the first year of his administration focused on establishing his authority, he is now showing his Montessori qualities.

But Macron can’t be everywhere, and he has no alternative to offer the senseless, those who believe that nothing can be accomplished without violence. Many in France, including people who don’t take part in the yellow vest protests, believe that these weaker elements of France never would have heard from him had the yellow vests not revolted.

French President Emmanuel Macron, center, visiting the Shoah Memorial in Paris.

This is partly Macron’s fault. He didn’t respond until quite late, when the violence had boiled over. Now, he is trying to calm down the situation and to pursue reconciliation.

On Wednesday evening, in his speech to CRIF, he said he wanted to punish hate more decisively. He said this push would include laws that, for example, would keep a closer eye social networks. A form of anti-hate law is to be passed banning openly racist or anti-Semitic groups like Blood & Honour Hexagone and Combat 18. Anti-Zionist views are to be considered a form of anti-Semitism, a position which Macron had resisted until recently.

In his talk at the dinner, he said that he had been “ashamed” when he visited the desecrated Jewish cemetery in Alsace. Anti-Semitism, Macron said, isn’t a problem for the Jews, but a problem for the republic.

When his speech ended, the audience applauded. The group’s chairman, Francis Kalifat, strode on stage to thank him. First, he shook the president’s hand, then suddenly took his arm, grabbed it and held it up, like a boxing champion. It was a gesture of desperation.

Source: Increasing Anti-Semitism: Macron Struggles to Contain Rising Hate Crimes

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Ensaf Haidar dit être injustement «diabolisée»

2019/02/27 Leave a comment

Please. As Thomas Juneau notes, not a good idea and one that undermines her credibility. One is judged by the company one keeps:

Ensaf Haidar estime avoir été injustement « diabolisée » en raison des liens amicaux qu’elle a établis avec un auteur américain dénoncé comme un « extrémiste » par plusieurs organisations luttant contre la propagande haineuse.

La femme du dissident saoudien Raif Badawi soutient qu’un texte de La Presse paru hier au sujet de son amitié avec Robert Spencer était un « message lancé aux islamistes pour s’attaquer » à sa personne.

Elle a prévenu qu’elle tiendrait le quotidien responsable de « toute atteinte » à sa sécurité, à celle de ses enfants ou à celle de son mari, qui est détenu depuis 2012 en Arabie saoudite.

La résidante de Sherbrooke a critiqué du même souffle la crédibilité et les conclusions du Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), qui accuse Robert Spencer d’attiser la haine envers les musulmans par ses travaux.

Elle a aussi retweeté les écrits de l’auteure et activiste Djemila Benhabib, qui a accusé une autre organisation critique de M. Spencer, le Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), d’être à la solde d’intégristes. Mme Benhabib agit comme vice-présidente de la Fondation Raif Badawi.

Refoulé par le gouvernement anglais

Mme Haidar a refusé encore une fois hier de répondre aux questions de La Presseau sujet de son amitié avec M. Spencer, qu’elle a rencontré notamment lors d’une visite à Washington il y a quelques semaines.

L’Américain avait été refoulé par le gouvernement anglais en 2013 sous prétexte qu’il tenait un discours sur l’islam susceptible de perturber la « paix intercommunautaire ».

Le SPLC relève qu’il a passé une bonne partie de sa vie à produire des livres et des articles qui ont pour objet de « démoniser et de malmener les musulmans et la foi islamique ».

M. Spencer affirme pour sa part qu’il dénonce « la terreur djihadiste et l’oppression par la charia » et qu’il n’a jamais rien écrit qui encourage la haine « contre qui que ce soit ».

La coordonnatrice de la section d’Amnistie internationale de l’Estrie, Mireille Elchacar, qui travaille depuis longtemps auprès de Mme Haidar, a indiqué hier que son organisation n’avait pas de conseil à lui donner relativement à son association avec l’auteur américain.

« Ensaf est très contente de pouvoir utiliser sa citoyenneté canadienne et sa liberté d’expression » pour mettre de l’avant ses convictions, a relevé Mme Elchacar.

Après que Radio-Canada eut cité Amnistie internationale à ce sujet dans un article en après-midi, Mme Haidar s’est indignée en ligne.

« Qu’est-ce qu’ils essaient de faire ? Pourquoi questionnent-ils Amnistie à ce sujet ? Je vais aussi revoir ma relation avec Radio-Canada ! », a-t-elle écrit.

« Pas une bonne idée »

Thomas Juneau, spécialiste du Moyen-Orient rattaché à l’Université d’Ottawa, pense que l’amitié de Mme Haidar avec M. Spencer n’est « pas une bonne idée ».

L’auteur américain est méconnu au Québec, mais « occupe un espace médiatique assez important dans l’extrême droite islamophobe » au sud de la frontière, dit M. Juneau.

« Au niveau intellectuel, il ne doit pas du tout être pris au sérieux. Mais il doit être pris au sérieux au niveau politique », relève M. Juneau, qui s’inquiète que des individus comme M. Spencer trouvent en ligne « un puissant mégaphone » pour faire diffuser leurs idées.

« Comme les islamophobes en général, il tend à amalgamer les extrémistes avec la pratique quotidienne, modérée, de la grande majorité des musulmans », relève-t-il.

Source: Ensaf Haidar dit être injustement «diabolisée»

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

‘Not Canadian enough:’ Edmonton woman’s girls denied citizenship under 2009 law

2019/02/27 Leave a comment

As expected, the introduction of a first generation limit results in children of Canadian citizens born outside of Canada cannot pass on their citizenship to their children.

The previous retention provisions were difficult to administer consistently and resulted in situations where citizens with minimal to no connection to Canada could pass on their citizenship to their children as the 2006 Lebanese Canadian evacuation demonstrated.

And the solution of applying for permanent residency has the advantage of starting the clock again for the child and his or her children.

IRCC should, of course, process such Permanent Residents applications quickly:

A woman in Alberta says she feels like she’s not Canadian enough after her daughters were denied citizenship.

Victoria Maruyama was born in Hong Kong and, because her father was Canadian, has been a Canadian citizen since she was a baby. When she was a year old, the family moved to Edmonton where she grew up.

At the age of 22, she went to Japan to teach English.

“I met my kids’ dad,” Maruyama said in an interview with The Canadian Press. “The plan was just to teach English throughout Asia, move around from one country to the next, but he kind of scotched my plans.”

She was seven months pregnant with their first daughter, Akari, in 2009 when Conservative government amendments to the citizenship laws took away her right to pass on citizenship to her children unless they were born in Canada.

By that time, it was too late in her pregnancy to fly back to Canada. Her second daughter, Arisa, was also born in Japan.

The girls are now seven and nine years old and, despite moving back to Edmonton almost two years ago, Maruyama is still fighting for them to become Canadian.

“We had to struggle to get my kids in school. We had to fight to get them health care. They had no health care for months. Then they had it for six months and then they were stripped of it again,” she said.

“It should be my right to come home with my children and for them to be educated and … have health care and vaccinations and all those basic things.”

A January letter from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada notes Akari and Arisa were rejected because “they are not stateless, will not face special and unusual hardship if you are not granted Canadian citizenship and you have not provided services of exceptional value to Canada.”

Officials with the federal department said in a statement that decision-makers determined that criteria for citizenship have not been met.

“As part of the determination, the best interests of the child were considered,” they said in an email. “However, sufficient evidence was not provided to demonstrate that the children have been denied access to basic services in Canada.”

Maruyama’s lawyer, Charles Gibson, has filed an application for a judicial review in Federal Court. He argues that the rejection is unlawful and that the Citizenship Act is discriminatory.

“It creates two classes of Canadian citizens,” he says in court documents. “One class that can perpetually pass on or inherit Canadian citizenship and one that cannot. The Citizenship Act precludes the applicant’s mother from passing … on her Canadian citizenship to the applicant.

“As a result, the applicant has suffered a great deal of hardship.”

Don Chapman, an advocate for “lost” Canadians, said the law also goes against the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Canada signed in 1990.

“You have the right to live in the country with your parents. You have the right to an education. You have a right to medical. You have a right to seek legal guidance if the country won’t do this,” he said.

Chapman said there are many expat Canadians who could find themselves in the same situation.

“It’s a problem that’s going to explode.”

When Justin Trudeau was citizenship and immigration critic, he promised in a March 2011 news release to change the “anachronistic” law.

But Morgan said the Liberal government still hasn’t addressed the loophole for second-generation Canadians born abroad.

“It means there’s only one group of Canadian citizens that have a litmus test to get their kids in,” he said. “If the kids had been abandoned, the kids would be Canadian. If you or me or any other Canadian adopts the children, they have a right of citizenship. If Vicki had been an immigrant Canadian and then naturalized, her kids would be Canadian.”

He said the Maruyama family is caught in the middle of the 2009 legal changes.

“There’s Trudeau going a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian, and no, no and no,” said Chapman, who noted the Conservative Opposition has also been silent on the issue. “They all talk about refugees and immigrants, but no one is talking about this.”

Maruyama said if they aren’t able to get citizenship, her girls could apply for permanent residence status as immigrants — a possibility confirmed by the federal Immigration Department.

“They would have a higher level of citizenship than me because they (could) … pass on citizenship to their children,” she said. “But me living here 20-some years is not enough.

“Not Canadian enough.”

Source: https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/not-canadian-enough-edmonton-womans-girls-denied-citizenship-under-2009-law

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with ,

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