It was one of the more short-sighted decisions of the previous government, more ideological given the small funding provided:
A decade ago John Baird, then Canada’s foreign minister, withdrew the funding for the Canadian Studies Overseas program, then in its 38th year. The reason: it was part of a government-wide squeeze to balance the budget in advance of an election—wherein so called expendable programs were cut. The shock was felt around the world by foreign students, universities, and by the many Canadian diplomatic missions which had benefitted from the link with Canadian studies.
How could this have happened? How could a program be cancelled that provided seed money to over 7,000 international scholars to teach about Canada so that foreign publics, media, and decision makers better understood what modern Canada was about and one that generated impressive financial returns to Canada? And the savings? At the time the program was cut, the cost to the federal treasury was about $5.5-million—peanuts in the context of a federal budget, especially for a program that was regarded as one of Foreign Affairs’ most cost effective small scale programs. And cost effective because the greater part of the financial burden was borne by foreign universities.
How Canada and Canadians are seen from abroad is more than a casual question. A thorough answer embraces our gross national product, our exports, the richness of our scientific and medical research, our commitment to reconciliation with our Indigenous peoples, our governance, the flow of students, immigrants, and much else. These perceptions help define our sense of who we are.
Most developed countries have long recognized that leaving these impressions to conventional media interaction was leaving too much of their well-being to chance. Seventy years ago, the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters, and Sciences (also known as the Massey Commission) characterized our cultural landscape as “bleak,” accepted that the image we projected abroad was critically important for the country, and recommended that the care and improvement of that image be a central function of our foreign policy.
Massey ignited the domestic cultural scene, producing an explosion of the arts and of institutions (like the Canada Council for the Arts and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) that promoted them. Internationally, there were stunning successes and at home there were efforts to erect a “third pillar of foreign policy” comprising arts and science, but there was no sustained pressure to ensure that the new Canadian vitality was understood abroad. Meanwhile our competitors shot past us and continue to do so.
Focusing on this dilemma, in 1994 a Special Joint Committee of Parliament disclosed the annual per capita expenditures on cultural diplomacy (including international education) of four of our major competitors and ourselves: France—$26.50; Germany—$18.49, United Kingdom—$13.37; Japan—$12.60; and Canada—$3.08.
Given the scale of our foreign operations, this may appear to be a mini-crisis. However, it raises a fundamental question about whether we understand the relevance of cultural diplomacy and the consequences of our failure to invest in it. In the case of Canadian Studies, our neglect threatens an invaluable program. Of 28 national associations, only 17 are still more or less operational. Numbers, academic programs and academic outreach are in steep decline. Money for research grants came largely from Ottawa and the absence of that funding has meant that it is almost impossible to replace departing faculty.
Canadians deeply engaged in our cultural trajectory have been appalled. Advancing Canada Coalition, a national campaign to restore funding and update the program is led by Nik Nanos. Included in the campaign’s distinguished leadership team are Margaret Atwood, Daniel Beland, Robert Bothwell, Progressive Senator Patricia Bovey, Independent Senator Peter Boehm, former prime minister Joe Clark, John English, Louise Fréchette, Lawrence Hill, Jane Urquhart, Munroe Eagles, and Alain G. Gagnon.
For too long this has been a bad news story and few observers who have followed the saga over the years would disagree. Certainly not the Senate, whose Foreign Affairs Committee deplored Canada’s lack of interest in its own culture, concluding in its 2019 study that “cultural diplomacy should be a pillar of Canada’s foreign policy,” and urging unanimously that Global Affairs Canada “support the creation of a modernized Canadian Studies program that would contribute to knowledge about Canada in the world”—along with other basic components of cultural diplomacy.
The opportunity for change recommended by the Senate committee lies just ahead—in the budget, now in preparation for the new Parliament.
John Graham is a former Canadian diplomat, including as High Commissioner to Guyana, minister at the Canadian High Commission in the United Kingdom, Director General of the Caribbean and Central America, and Ambassador to Venezuela.
Of note (passport has been using facial recognition technology for some time) as does NEXUS:
The Government of Canada has issued a tender notice inviting industry engagement to improve its biometric immigration system.
The document was published by Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) on behalf of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).
The Invitation to Qualify (ITQ) is the first phase of a two-phase procurement process, which will initially see suppliers of facial recognition technologies invited to pre-qualify in accordance with the terms and conditions of the ITQ.
Qualified Respondents will then be permitted to submit bids on any subsequent Request for Proposals (RFP) issued as part of the procurement process.
According to IRCC, the biometric system’s requirements should be a “reliable and accurate system for establishing and confirming a person’s identity throughout the passport program continuum,” considered as “an integral component of immigration and border decision-making processes.”
Furthermore, the facial recognition system should also include both a front-end component with a user interface and a back-end component. The former will be used by IRCC to collect, enter, and view biographical and biometric data, as well as passport and potential passport clients, while the latter should store databases, tables, algorithms, permissions, code, IT and security rules, and infrastructures.
The back-end system will be also responsible to perform the validation, transformation, and dissemination and integration of face biometrics data in alignment with Government of Canada IT guidelines.
The first phase of the tender notice will end on 9 November. The full text of the document is available in both English and French.
Unlikely that it will happen given current polarization but agree with the potential:
As attention turns from the evacuation of Afghanistan to the arrival of refugees, U.S. President Joe Biden has an opportunity for large-scale engagement of the American public in a deeply personal fashion.
If Canada’s history is any indicator, the capacity of private American citizens to resettle refugees is large and untapped. It may even bridge the divide over immigration in the United States.
In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Saigon in 1975, some 130,000 Vietnamese refugees were lifted by sea and air to Guam and military bases in the southern United States. They were quickly resettled in the U.S., Canada and other countries, and were soon followed by an even larger exodus of refugees from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.
On the eve of a United Nations conference in Geneva to discuss the issue, Canada announced its intention to resettle 50,000 refugees by the end of 1980, which was just 18 months away. This would later be revised to 60,000.
Just as astounding was its intention resettle half of these through its new private refugee sponsorship program. Canadians from all walks of life, from rural Manitoba to urban Toronto, could respond to the situation by volunteering their homes, funds and time to receive and resettle Indochinese refugees.
This announcement coincided with swelling Canadian support for refugee resettlement. In February 1979, 89 per cent of Canadians were opposed to inviting more refugees; only seven per cent wanted more. Within months, opposition had tumbled to 38 per cent, while 52 per cent supported increased resettlement.
Groups ranging from churches to bowling clubs signed up to sponsor individuals and families, while kids sold lemonade at $50 a glass ($175 in 2021 dollars) to fund new arrivals. Rural townships called into Ottawa to ask when they would receive their family, and townhalls that had been convened to debate the topic of refugees turned into spontaneous sponsorship drives.
Pairing sponsors with refugees
In Ottawa, the government was busy matching sponsors to refugees. An enterprising policy officer drew inspiration from the Berlin Airlift to avoid overcrowding at arrival points. In the late 1940s during a Soviet blockade of Berlin, western allies flew continuous supplies to airports in Berlin.
Thirty years later, the policy officer obtained one of Ottawa’s first computers that matched refugees to sponsors or immediately placed them in a government-assisted stream. This was aimed at ensuring the smooth transition of Indochinese refugees to their new homes.
Despite some hiccups, more than 80 per cent of eligible refugees were matched with sponsors before the planes landed, and by the end of 1980, all 60,000 had arrived. Adjusted to 2020 U.S. population terms, that’s an equivalent of almost 890,000 people resettled in just 18 months.
Subsequent generations of Canadians have responded with equal enthusiasm to new arrivals from the former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Ethiopia and Syria, among others. Private sponsorship continues at a steady, moderate level during years between crises, spurred by cultural groups and family members of refugees, but when sudden large displacements capture public attention a large pool of first-time sponsors step forward.
Roughlyfive per cent of the Canadian population has sponsored a refugee, while millions more have donated couches, cash or labour.
Bridging American divides
Perhaps this large constituency of people with experience resettling refugees is one explanation for positive Canadian attitudes towards immigration. If so, private refugee resettlement is a policy that could bridge American divides on migration.
It would also fill the gap left by drastic cuts to the government-funded resettlement sector under the previous Donald Trump administration. Evidence suggests that those sponsored under a private resettlement program do just as well, if not better.
Contrary to their perceptions, polling suggests the answer is yes — support for resettling Afghan interpreters and other allies sits at around 81 per cent and is unusually consistent across party affiliation.
Sixty-five per cent support expanding resettlement to other Afghans, and 61 per cent are in favour of hosting refugees in their home state.
While the U.S. State Department has announced its intention to start a private sponsorship program, its size or scope isn’t clear yet. Lessons from history teach us that a limited pilot program risks drastically under-utilizing the American capacity for resettlement.
Now is the time for Biden to ask the American people to invite homeless and war-ravaged Afghan refugees into their homes and their communities. Experience has taught us that, like the Statue of Liberty, many will raise their hand in enthusiastic response.
IRCC is well on the way to meeting its 2021 target of some 400,000 Permanent Residents: To date 221,360 Jan-Aug 2021 compared to 228,410 in 2019, with close to 40,000 in July and August. The vast majority are transitioning from temporary residency, primarily the PGWP and IMP.
Great percentage increase is, not surprisingly, with respect to Afghans, both in terms of applications (from an average of 200 in the first six months of the year to close to 8,000 in August) and admissions (from an average of 170 to over 1,000).
The number of Temporary Residents/IMP continues to increase, particularly with respect to “Canadian interests” (post-graduate employment accounting for more than half, spouses of skilled workers accounting for 9 percent, and intra-corporate transferees 3 percent). On the other hand, the number of Temporary Foreign Workers Program decreased, reflecting lower demand in the agriculture sector.
Applications for study permits have largely recovered from pre-pandemic levels (down only 5 percent), as have the number of study permits issued albeit to a lessor extent (down 13 percent).
Asylum Claimants slightly increased but still more than three-quarters down from pre-pandemic levels.
The number of new citizens seems to be stuck around 9-10,000 per month, compared to pre-pandemic numbers of about 20,000.
Visitor Visas issued increased sharply from monthly average of 4,200 in the first six months of the year to close to 40,000 in August, likely reflecting increased vaccinations and reduced travel restrictions.
I am an immigrant – a proud Canadian and a proud Muslim. I have built a restaurant business and raised a family in this country. If there is such a thing as a “Canadian Dream,” I have lived it.
But I have also been exposed to the hate that is growing in the dark corners of our society. And so, when an Ontario judge sentenced a man named Kevin Johnston to 18 months in prison for contempt of court this week, the decision was, to me, critical in ensuring that Canada remains a diverse, inclusive and welcoming country.
In 2017, Mr. Johnston made a series of vile and false accusations against me. He used hateful language at rallies and online. He followed and harassed me and my children in public. He refused to back down. To protect my family, my reputation and my livelihood, I took him to court for defamation. Ultimately, in 2019, I won a financial judgment against him.
In that case, Ontario Superior Court Justice Jane Ferguson described Mr. Johnston’s behaviour as “a loathsome example of hate speech at its worst, targeting people solely because of their religion. Left unchallenged, it poisons the integrity of our democracy.”
Unsurprisingly, however, Mr. Johnston refused to pay a penny of what she said he owed. But even worse, he continued to use the same hateful language against me.
I felt powerless and unsafe. I was afraid for my family and my employees. I was also frustrated about why this was allowed to happen.
I had won my court case; the law was on my side. So why had nothing changed? In an online video, Mr. Johnston was heard to boast: “Eleven times I’ve been arrested just for talking, and I’m still smiling. And all they’ve done is make me more popular than ever before.”
Was this really justice?
Part of me wished that I could ignore the man and be done with him, but I thought about Mr. Johnston and what he represented every day. I couldn’t stop asking myself: Is this the kind of Canada we want to live in? A Canada where hatemongers show no fear of being held responsible for their dangerous words?
I decided to once more put my faith in our justice system. And this week, Ontario Superior Court Justice Frederick Myers sentenced Mr. Johnston to prison on six counts of contempt. As he wrote in his decision: “There is a need in this case for a sentence that makes the public sit up and take notice.”
Justice Myers’s wider point was what’s truly important. “The thin veneer of civility represented by the rule of law requires protection,” he wrote. “Our society only continues if people voluntarily respect the law. Canada is not a society with soldiers on street corners policing the population with machine guns at every turn. It is our shared values, including our commitment to the rule of law, that differentiates our democracy from so many other cultures.”
Free speech is the foundation of strong democratic society. Hate speech is a perversion and violation of that right. It is, for good reason, against the law. It is a threat to the safety of many in our country, and a threat to the values and ideals that our country strives to represent.
To combat hate in Canada, we need action and accountability. Law enforcement must act against those who promote hate; the courts must hold these people accountable and make them pay a price. That’s the path to Canadians having the confidence that the law can protect them, and to meaningful deterrence. The thin veneer must be protected. Those who willfully violate the law – and ignore its sanctions – must be punished.
“Perhaps jail is a blunt tool and risks making Mr. Johnston a martyr to his cause,” Justice Myers acknowledged. “But at some point, society simply needs to protect its members and itself from those who would use our democratic freedoms to deliberately hurt others and strike at the democratic and Charter values and the democratic institutions that are Canada.”
The sentence against Mr. Johnston isn’t a solution to the broader problem. There are too many others who echo and amplify his hateful words. But it’s a start. After four long years, I can tell you that this Canadian was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief that a measure of justice had at last been served. It should not have required this years-long ordeal, but I am grateful to be able to live in a country where, finally, its institutions have said: Enough.
Mohamad Fakih is the founder and CEO of Paramount Fine Foods.
Belle Jarniewski leaned back from her computer, seething with anger after she finished watching a video on Reddit showing a Winnipeg restaurateur accosting public health enforcement officers.
“I’m still shaking after listening to that rant. That was unbelievable,” she said.
The video shows Shea Ritchie, the owner of Chaise Lounge locations on Corydon Avenue and Provencher Boulevard, speaking with officers giving him tickets on Sept. 24 for allowing diners who choose not to be vaccinated to dine inside his restaurant.
“If they’re so dangerous, shouldn’t we be identifying them with something bright, like a yellow star?” Ritchie says in the video, which he filmed and posted to his personal Facebook page and that has since been circulating on social media.
“Why don’t you put them in a camp until they finally comply?”
Jarniewski, the executive director of the Jewish Heritage Centre and a member of the Canadian delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, said this type of rhetoric has become more rampant during the pandemic.
“We’ve seen these anti-vaxxer protests that are trying to compare the restrictions for COVID to the Holocaust,” she said. “I have to say, he’s gone much further than anyone I personally have seen or heard about.”
Jarniewski is the daughter of two Holocaust survivors. Her mother survived the Auschwitz concentration camp, Jarniewski said, and her father was taken to six different concentration camps.
“To suggest that these restrictions in any way, shape or form are comparable to the suffering of what happened to the Jews during the Holocaust is unconscionable. It’s also a distortion of history,” she said.
Antisemitic rhetoric surfaced at pandemic protests
Though Jarniewski found Ritchie’s comments to be a particularly extreme version, they are representative of what seems to be a shared belief among a fringe of those vehemently opposed to COVID-19 restrictions: that vaccine mandates and passports and other rules to curb the spread of the coronavirus are similar to the ways the Nazis mistreated Jews and other ethnic groups.
CBC News spoke with Ritchie via text message about the video and what happened in his restaurant. When asked about being fined for breaking public health orders, he said it was done in an effort to “honour [those who died in the Holocaust] by taking personal responsibility to ensure never again.”
“We have suspended charter rights, and it very well could happen again.”
Conspiracy narratives share similarities
Some of the most vocal protesters against vaccine passports and other pandemic measures have used or have a history of using antisemitic rhetoric.
Toronto’s Chris (Sky) Saccoccia, for example, who’s been arrested in Winnipeg for breaking public health orders, has a record of doing so, says retired sociologist and hate group scholar Helmut-Harry Loewen.
“Those who accept aspects of one conspiracist narrative tend to gravitate to other conspiracy theories,” Loewen said in an email.
“In the case of the COVID-19 conspiracy movement, some of the most prominent leaders — in particular, Chris Sky — have a record of claiming that the number of Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide are inaccurate.”
He has also quoted from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf on his Facebook page, calling parts of it “bang on, like he had a crystal ball into the future” in one 2014 post, according to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, an agency that monitors and researches hate groups.
Saccoccia again questioned the number of people who died during the Holocaust in a July interview with Rebel News, storming out midway through after accusing the host of implying he’s a Holocaust denier and “feeding every narrative that they’re using to attack me.”
CBC News reached out to Saccoccia for comment on this story but has yet to receive a response.
Yellow vest, anti-Muslim movements shifted focus to COVID
The Canadian Anti-Hate Network said the kind of rhetoric now on display didn’t start 18 months ago when the pandemic was declared.
Executive director Evan Balgord argues it’s an evolution from previous movements associated with various causes seen as fighting against the erosion of individual rights and liberties.
Some, he said, have been affiliated with the far right, which has been sowing discord for years.
The network says some anti-Muslim groups, for example, started pushing a narrative of encroaching “Shariah law,” the influx of foreign terrorists into Canada and a number of other unfounded fears after a motion to address Islamophobia and other forms of systemic racism, known as M-103, was brought forward in the House of Commons in 2016.
“There was no Shariah law and Shariah courts, and all the things they were fear mongering about didn’t come to pass, so they needed a new issue,” he said.
That’s when some in the far-right movement shifted their attention to the yellow vest movement. It began in France as a populist protest against economic inequality and rising gas prices but spread to Canada and other countries, eventually encompassing a wide variety of grievances, including opposition to illegal immigration.
Balgord says the anti-hate network’s monitoring of different groups suggests that at least one organization, Action4Canada, and numerous individuals with large social media followings who helped spearhead protests against M-103 became involved in yellow-vest protests and are now among the most influential opponents of pandemic restrictions.
Saccoccia, for example, was involved in the yellow-vest movement and is now against lockdowns and other pandemic restrictions, he said.
“They really set the agenda,” he said. “The far right already had an established propaganda machine. It has its podcasts; it has its shows online; it has its online groups. It knows how to do this.”
Balgord acknowledges most people who are against COVID-19 restrictions are not part of the far right but may simply share some concerns about pandemic measures and got inadvertently caught up in a web of misinformation.
Political messaging not immune
Some of the rhetoric around pandemic measures has also crept into political messaging promoted by candidates of the populist People’s Party of Canada during the federal election campaign.
PPC candidates in Manitoba and B.C. compared vaccine mandates to violations of the Nuremburg Code, a set of ethical research principles developed in response to unethical medical experimentation and atrocities of the Nazi era.
The party’s leader, Maxime Bernier, also drew criticism from anti-hate groups when he used the phrase “When tyranny becomes law, revolution becomes our duty” in the context of pandemic restrictions and the rise of what he calls an “authoritarian” government.
That phrase is similar to one used by members of the Three Percenters militia group — some of whom participated in the storming of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6.
A spokesperson for Bernier told CBC News in an email to “get lost” when reached for comment.
‘I’m glad that they didn’t have to experience this’
Jarniewski’s parents died decades ago, but she says they would have denounced any comparisons between the pandemic and the Holocaust.
She’s doing what she can to counter it by educating people about the Holocaust and pushing for stricter anti-hate laws in Canada.
“I’ve often said that, you know, as difficult as it is to have lost my parents so long ago, I’m glad that they didn’t have to experience this, to hear this kind of hate again.”
Don’t envy those responsible for reviewing the wording and developing new wording that provides a more balanced view of “the good, the bad and the ugly” of previous PMs (or other historical figures), as well as the historical context that shaped their actions:
It was in late January that vandals so badly scratched out the face of Mackenzie King on an awareness panel by the former prime minister’s final resting place in Toronto that a federal agency decided the panel had to be replaced.
For more than two decades, the commemorative panel didn’t receive a revamp, just like others at prime ministerial gravesites overseen by federal officials.
Those officials, however, are rethinking what the panels should say and reflect how the country views its past, specifically in light of historical mistreatment of Indigenous Peoples.
Inevitably, experts say, that will cause tension about how to mark these sites.
The plaques are among a suite of issues that Parks Canada and the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada have to deal with in the coming years at the 16 gravesites, the details of which are outlined in inspection reports released to The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.
The program first launched in 1999, hoping to prevent the final resting spots of prime ministers from becoming irreparably damaged.
All but one of the graves are in Canada — R.B. Bennett is buried at a church in Mickelham, U.K., a town of 600 people about a one-hour train ride southwest of London. His sarcophagus needs repairs to cracks and breaks, not to mention a good cleaning of moss.
Over its more than 20 years of existence, the program has spent about $1 million on inspections, repairs, commemorative plaques and flagpoles at gravesites. Annual spending is based on yearly needs, and Parks Canada said it anticipates average annual expenses to increase slightly over the next five years.
Some of that has to do with the addition last year of John Turner’s gravesite in Toronto. The documents say an awareness panel was supposed to be installed this fall; Parks Canada would only say that “planning continues” for a commemoration ceremony.
New panels are set to be installed at each remaining gravesite that would identify the former prime minister’s time in office, and the reasons that they, and the graves, carry national historic significance.
Cecilia Morgan, a social and cultural historian from the University of Toronto, said the usual tension that surrounds commemorations can be exacerbated when the focus is on a historical figure who has taken on a larger symbolism in the public’s mind, and whose actions or achievements are thrown under a more critical light.
“Commemoration is so often contested,” said Morgan, who studies the history of commemoration in Canada.
“What I see often is the kind of deep emotional attachment that people have, to their sense of the past and to the symbols that we create of that past that is often solidified in those particular individuals or organizations.”
Parks Canada in an email said wording on the revamped plaques would “recognize the enormous shifts in historical understanding” and “reflect on the past in the context of the present.”
Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, chair of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in Winnipeg, said a diverse panel should debate wording on the plaques to mark a prime minister’s contributions to the country’s history, both positive and negative.
She pointed to Sir John A. Macdonald as an example: He made a contribution as the country’s first prime minister, but was also an author of the government-funded, church-run residential school system where Indigenous children were torn from their families and subjected to widespread sexual, emotional and physical abuse.
Any wording, she said, should make everyone a guardian and witness to these realities and work to ensure the negatives never happen again.
“It will not be easy. It will be very uncomfortable,” said Wesley-Esquimaux, who is also Chair for Truth and Reconciliation at Lakehead University.
“But I think you cannot get to reconciliation, or better relations, without having that conversation and without acknowledging the kinds of things that have happened because people … made decisions that had a very tragic impact.”
Aside from the plaques, the gravesite inspection reports also flag issues with rust from metal ties seeping through stones at multiple graves, and writing on markers disappearing at others because of the elements and years of problematic maintenance.
The biggest work order appears at the final resting place of Pierre Trudeau.
The grey stone, concrete and brick mausoleum has taken a beating from increasing freeze-thaw cycles during winter months, as well as stronger and heavier rainfalls becoming more frequent, which federal inspectors chalked up to climate change.
The sheet metal roof and flashing are well past their lifespan and can’t stop water from seeping in, requiring a complete replacement. Parts of the outer wall need to be carefully dismantled to repair water damage, including one load-bearing wall at the crypt of the former prime minister.
The 2020 inspection report calls for work to start no later than this fall. Parks Canada said it is developing a work plan that includes “detailed investigations (that) are ongoing with planning and design work to follow.”
Parks Canada said more severe weather related to climate change has had an impact on gravestones, sarcophagi and mausoleums it oversees. The agency added that it has increased the frequency of inspections hoping to better “recognize and mitigate damage or deterioration caused by climate change and a variety of other factors.”
Good explainer for those in Quebec who continue to deny:
Nous connaissons bien le racismecomme source dediscrimination.Pourquoi ajouter à cela le qualificatif« systémique » ? En quoi est-ce utile ?
Voilà une question à laquelle plusieurs spécialistes ont essayé de répondre. Dans mon esprit (et peut-être dans celui d’autres personnes ?), un besoin de clarification subsiste. Dans son émission du 1er octobre dernier, le journaliste de Radio-Canada Sébastien Bovet l’a posée à quelques reprises, mais sans obtenir de réponse claire (toujours à mon avis). Je m’y essaie donc à mon tour.
Le racisme est bien connu. C’est une vision négative de l’Autre qui prend prétexte de traits biologiques ou culturels pour violer ses droits. La façon de le traiter nous est familière : la victime porte plainte, le coupable est identifié et condamné.
Dans les cas de ce genre, les instances autorisées recourent aux moyens conventionnels en réprimant les manifestations individuelles, apparemment aléatoires, du racisme. Elles prennent aussi des dispositions ad hoc pour les prévenir (augmentation de la surveillance policière, tribunaux plus expéditifs, peines plus sévères…). Mais en réalité, elles agissent à la surface des choses. Car ces comportements discriminatoires récurrents découlent d’une structure sous-jacente, d’un système dont les racines sont anciennes et bien intégrées dans des institutions.
C’est clair quand on pense aux Autochtones : la mise en place, surtout depuis la Conquête anglaise, d’un régime colonial qui a établi des règles et des pratiques progressivement institutionnalisées dans différents domaines de la vie collective et perpétuées jusqu’à aujourd’hui — comme l’évoquait ici Brian Myles dans son éditorial des 2-3 octobre. C’est net aussi dans le cas des Noirs américains : un héritage du régime esclavagiste depuis longtemps disparu, mais qui a laissé bien des survivances.
Il y a donc deux niveaux à considérer, celui des comportements individuels et celui des structures. Cette distinction importe pour ce qui concerne la lutte contre le racisme. Dans le premier cas, on s’en tient à la surface des choses et la répression est sans cesse à recommencer ; elle est certes nécessaire, mais peu efficace à long terme. Dans le deuxième cas, on s’en prend à la racine du mal.
Pour combattre le racisme à ce niveau, il faut recourir à des moyens différents. Le racisme systémique s’appuie sur de vieux arrangements institutionnels (politiques, juridiques et autres). En plus, il se prolonge dans la culture, plus précisément dans des stéréotypes qui infériorisent. Il s’infiltre ainsi dans l’imaginaire collectif, ce bassin de conceptions, de visions premières, tenaces, profondément ancrées dans l’inconscient et donc difficiles à déloger.
Les stéréotypes jouent un rôle déterminant en justifiant la discrimination : les victimes sont décrites sous des traits peu enviables, elles sont vouées à la délinquance et à la dépendance. En somme, on leur attribue les traits que le régime lui-même a produits. On les rend responsables de leurs maux.
À cause des arrangements institutionnels et des images stéréotypées, leracisme systémique ne se laisse paséradiquer aisément. La façon de le combattre, c’est de s’attaquer à ses fondements structurels, en donnant à voir leur genèse, les étapes de leur institutionnalisation. Et de cette façon : a) mettre à nu l’arbitraire, l’inanité de leurs fondements, les injustices qui les ont inspirés, b) bousculer les stéréotypes, c) faire le procès des vieux arrangements institutionnels avec tous leurs tentacules.
Pour remplir son rôle essentiel, la reconstitution historique peut emprunter deux voies complémentaires : d’abord le travail indispensable des historiens, et surtout, les témoignages des victimes (les histoires de vie), tout cela devant être amplement répercuté principalement par le biais de l’éducation et des médias.
Il y a une quinzaine d’années, j’ai conduit de nombreuses entrevues au sein des communautés innues et j’y ai appris une leçon capitale. Entendre une victime des pensionnats raconter dans ses mots son expérience, pouvoir observer ses émotions, sa souffrance toujours bien vivante, se pénétrer de ce vécu tragique, tout cela est d’une éloquence, d’une « efficacité » inégalable. Et donne le goût d’en savoir plus — c’est ici que les historiens prennent le relais.
J’ai donné en exemple les pensionnats, je pourrais en évoquer bien d’autres. Je songe, entre autres, aux récits d’anciens chasseurs décrivant la façon dont ils ont été brutalement évincés de leurs territoires de chasse (et du genre de vie millénaire qui leur était associé) pour être placés dans des réserves sous la gestion autoritaire d’un fonctionnaire fédéral ordinairement ignorant et insouciant des réalités autochtones.
Le premier ministre a raison d’affirmer que l’existence du racisme systémique ne signifie pas que les Québécois soient racistes. Mais il faut ajouter un élément : cette forme de racisme étant par définition inconsciente, insidieuse, il peut nous arriver néanmoins de contribuer à en perpétuer la structure dans notre vie quotidienne par des mots qu’on emploie, une opinion qu’on exprime, un geste que nous posons — ou que nous ne posons pas.
En ce sens, une prise de conscience s’impose à laquelle tout le monde est convié. Mais donnons d’abord la parole aux Autochtones ; ils ont beaucoup à nous dire.
Historien, sociologue, écrivain, Gérard Bouchard enseigne à l’Université du Québec à Chicoutimi dans les programmes d’histoire, de sociologie/anthropologie, de science politique et de coopération internationale. Il est titulaire de la Chaire de recherche du Canada sur les imaginaires collectifs.
PM statement. No statement by Conservatives (not surprising given silence in platform) or NDP (more surprising given extensive section in platform):
The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today issued the following statement on the 50th anniversary of Canada’s multiculturalism policy:
“On this day in 1971, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau announced multiculturalism as an official government policy – the first of its kind in the world – to recognize the contribution of cultural diversity and multicultural citizenship to the Canadian social fabric.
“The diversity of Canadians is a fundamental characteristic of our heritage and identity. For generations, newcomers from all over the world, of all backgrounds, ethnicities, faiths, cultures, and languages, have been coming to Canada with the hopes of making it their home. Today, in addition to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples, people from more than 250 ethnic groups call Canada home and celebrate their cultural heritage with pride – they are at the heart of our success as a vibrant, prosperous, and progressive country.
“Canada’s multiculturalism policy was implemented based on the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. These recommendations were made upon the urging of diverse ethnocultural groups throughout Canada, a reminder of the lengthy and ongoing struggle for equality in this country. The policy promotes respect for cultural diversity, acknowledges the freedom of all members of Canadian society to preserve, enhance, and share their own cultural heritage, and considers their cultural contributions throughout the country as essential to Canada. The policy received constitutional sanction in 1982, with an explicit recognition that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms should be interpreted in a manner consistent with the multicultural heritage of Canadians. Multiculturalism was then further enshrined into law in 1988 through the passing of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act,which was adopted unanimously by Parliament. This was an important step toward promoting the full and equitable participation of individuals of all backgrounds in shaping a strong, diverse, and inclusive society.
“While the policy continues to give vitality to Canadian society, reflect its multicultural reality, and inspire people and countries around the world, we still have work to do to make Canada inclusive, fair, and equitable for all. This year, several disturbing and divisive incidents motivated by hate have reminded us that prejudice, systemic racism, and discrimination continue to be a lived reality for many Indigenous and Black peoples, religious minorities, and racialized communities. Many also continue to face barriers to social and economic participation, which have only gotten worse during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Today, Canada strives to be a respectful, prosperous, and compassionate country thanks to the tremendous contributions of people of all backgrounds who call it home. As we continue to build a more inclusive and open country, we recognize that a multicultural society is a work in progress. We must continue to promote the values of respect and inclusion that the Canadian Multiculturalism Act, the Charter, human rights legislation, and many other commitments have sought to promote. Along with Canada’s strong multiculturalism policy, we must also recognize the rich cultures of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples, and our commitments to respecting their Aboriginal, treaty, and human rights and advancing reconciliation. This requires us to confront painful truths about our history and society, learn from them, and take meaningful action together to address systemic discrimination and ensure everyone is treated with respect and able to participate equitably in economic, social, cultural, and political life in Canada.
“On behalf of the Government of Canada, I invite all Canadians to find out more about multiculturalism in Canada, celebrate the cultural diversity that makes us who we are, and continue to learn from one another. By appreciating our differences as the source of our strength and resilience, we can build a truly inclusive, vibrant, and multicultural society.”
Facebook’s civic-integrity team was always different from all the other teams that the social media company employed to combat misinformation and hate speech. For starters, every team member subscribed to an informal oath, vowing to “serve the people’s interest first, not Facebook’s.”
The “civic oath,” according to five former employees, charged team members to understand Facebook’s impact on the world, keep people safe and defuse angry polarization. Samidh Chakrabarti, the team’s leader, regularly referred to this oath—which has not been previously reported—as a set of guiding principles behind the team’s work, according to the sources.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
Chakrabarti’s team was effective in fixing some of the problems endemic to the platform, former employees and Facebook itself have said.
But, just a month after the 2020 U.S. election, Facebook dissolved the civic-integrity team, and Chakrabarti took a leave of absence. Facebook said employees were assigned to other teams to help share the group’s experience across the company. But for many of the Facebook employees who had worked on the team, including a veteran product manager from Iowa named Frances Haugen, the message was clear: Facebook no longer wanted to concentrate power in a team whose priority was to put people ahead of profits.
Five weeks later, supporters of Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol—after some of them organized on Facebook and used the platform to spread the lie that the election had been stolen. The civic-integrity team’s dissolution made it harder for the platform to respond effectively to Jan. 6, one former team member, who left Facebook this year, told TIME. “A lot of people left the company. The teams that did remain had significantly less power to implement change, and that loss of focus was a pretty big deal,” said the person. “Facebook did take its eye off the ball in dissolving the team, in terms of being able to actually respond to what happened on Jan. 6.” The former employee, along with several others TIME interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity, for fear that being named would ruin their career.
Enter Frances Haugen
Haugen revealed her identity on Oct. 3 as the whistle-blower behind the most significant leak of internal research in the company’s 17-year history. In a bombshell testimony to the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security two days later, Haugen said the civic-integrity team’s dissolution was the final event in a long series that convinced her of the need to blow the whistle. “I think the moment which I realized we needed to get help from the outside—that the only way these problems would be solved is by solving them together, not solving them alone—was when civic-integrity was dissolved following the 2020 election,” she said. “It really felt like a betrayal of the promises Facebook had made to people who had sacrificed a great deal to keep the election safe, by basically dissolving our community.”
In a statement provided to TIME, Facebook’s vice president for integrity Guy Rosen denied the civic-integrity team had been disbanded. “We did not disband Civic Integrity,” Rosen said. “We integrated it into a larger Central Integrity team so that the incredible work pioneered for elections could be applied even further, for example, across health-related issues. Their work continues to this day.” (Facebook did not make Rosen available for an interview for this story.)
Impacts of Civic Technology Conference 2016The defining values of the civic-integrity team, as described in a 2016 presentation given by Samidh Chakrabarti and Winter Mason. Civic-integrity team members were expected to adhere to this list of values, which was referred to internally as the “civic oath”.
Haugen left the company in May. Before she departed, she trawled Facebook’s internal employee forum for documents posted by integrity researchers about their work. Much of the research was not related to her job, but was accessible to all Facebook employees. What she found surprised her.
Some of the documents detailed an internal study that found that Instagram, its photo-sharing app, made 32% of teen girls feel worse about their bodies. Others showed how a change to Facebook’s algorithm in 2018, touted as a way to increase “meaningful social interactions” on the platform, actually incentivized divisive posts and misinformation. They also revealed that Facebook spends almost all of its budget for keeping the platform safe only on English-language content. In September, the Wall Street Journal published a damning series of articles based on some of the documents that Haugen had leaked to the paper. Haugen also gave copies of the documents to Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The documents, Haugen testified Oct. 5, “prove that Facebook has repeatedly misled the public about what its own research reveals about the safety of children, the efficacy of its artificial intelligence systems, and its role in spreading divisive and extreme messages.” She told Senators that the failings revealed by the documents were all linked by one deep, underlying truth about how the company operates. “This is not simply a matter of certain social media users being angry or unstable, or about one side being radicalized against the other; it is about Facebook choosing to grow at all costs, becoming an almost trillion-dollar company by buying its profits with our safety,” she said.
Facebook’s focus on increasing user engagement, which ultimately drives ad revenue and staves off competition, she argued, may keep users coming back to the site day after day—but also systematically boosts content that is polarizing, misinformative and angry, and which can send users down dark rabbit holes of political extremism or, in the case of teen girls, body dysmorphia and eating disorders. “The company’s leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer, but won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people,” Haugen said. (In 2020, the company reported $29 billion in net income—up 58% from a year earlier. This year, it briefly surpassed $1 trillion in total market value, though Haugen’s leaks have since knocked the company down to around $940 billion.)
Asked if executives adhered to the same set of values as the civic-integrity team, including putting the public’s interests before Facebook’s, a company spokesperson told TIME it was “safe to say everyone at Facebook is committed to understanding our impact, keeping people safe and reducing polarization.”
In the same week that an unrelated systems outage took Facebook’s services offline for hours and revealed just how much the world relies on the company’s suite of products—including WhatsApp and Instagram—the revelations sparked a new round of national soul-searching. It led some to question how one company can have such a profound impact on both democracy and the mental health of hundreds of millions of people. Haugen’s documents are the basis for at least eight new SEC investigations into the company for potentially misleading its investors. And they have prompted senior lawmakers from both parties to call for stringent new regulations.
Haugen urged Congress to pass laws that would make Facebook and other social media platforms legally liable for decisions about how they choose to rank content in users’ feeds, and force companies to make their internal data available to independent researchers. She also urged lawmakers to find ways to loosen CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s iron grip on Facebook; he controls more than half of voting shares on its board, meaning he can veto any proposals for change from within. “I came forward at great personal risk because I believe we still have time to act,” Haugen told lawmakers. “But we must act now.”
Potentially even more worryingly for Facebook, other experts it hired to keep the platform safe, now alienated by the company’s actions, are growing increasingly critical of their former employer. They experienced first hand Facebook’s unwillingness to change, and they know where the bodies are buried. Now, on the outside, some of them are still honoring their pledge to put the public’s interests ahead of Facebook’s.
Inside Facebook’s civic-integrity team
Chakrabarti, the head of the civic-integrity team, was hired by Facebook in 2015 from Google, where he had worked on improving how the search engine communicated information about lawmakers and elections to its users. A polymath described by one person who worked under him as a “Renaissance man,” Chakrabarti holds master’s degrees from MIT, Oxford and Cambridge, in artificial intelligence engineering, modern history and public policy, respectively, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Although he was not in charge of Facebook’s company-wide “integrity” efforts (led by Rosen), Chakrabarti, who did not respond to requests to comment for this article, was widely seen by employees as the spiritual leader of the push to make sure the platform had a positive influence on democracy and user safety, according to multiple former employees. “He was a very inspirational figure to us, and he really embodied those values [enshrined in the civic oath] and took them quite seriously,” a former member of the team told TIME. “The team prioritized societal good over Facebook good. It was a team that really cared about the ways to address societal problems first and foremost. It was not a team that was dedicated to contributing to Facebook’s bottom line.”
Chakrabarti began work on the team by questioning how Facebook could encourage people to be more engaged with their elected representatives on the platform, several of his former team members said. An early move was to suggest tweaks to Facebook’s “more pages you may like” feature that the team hoped might make users feel more like they could have an impact on politics.
After the chaos of the 2016 election, which prompted Zuckerberg himself to admit that Facebook didn’t do enough to stop misinformation, the team evolved. It moved into Facebook’s wider “integrity” product group, which employs thousands of researchers and engineers to focus on fixing Facebook’s problems of misinformation, hate speech, foreign interference and harassment. It changed its name from “civic engagement” to “civic integrity,” and began tackling the platform’s most difficult problems head-on.
Shortly before the midterm elections in 2018, Chakrabarti gave a talk at a conference in which he said he had “never been told to sacrifice people’s safety in order to chase a profit.” His team was hard at work making sure the midterm elections did not suffer the same failures as in 2016, in an effort that was generally seen as a success, both inside the company and externally. “To see the way that the company has mobilized to make this happen has made me feel very good about what we’re doing here,” Chakrabarti told reporters at the time. But behind closed doors, integrity employees on Chakrabarti’s team and others were increasingly getting into disagreements with Facebook leadership, former employees said. It was the beginning of the process that would eventually motivate Haugen to blow the whistle.
In 2019, the year Haugen joined the company, researchers on the civic-integrity team proposed ending the use of an approved list of thousands of political accounts that were exempt from Facebook’s fact-checking program, according to tech news site The Information. Their research had found that the exemptions worsened the site’s misinformation problem because users were more likely to believe false information if it were shared by a politician. But Facebook executives rejected the proposal.
The pattern repeated time and time again, as proposals to tweak the platform to down-rank misinformation or abuse were rejected or watered down by executives concerned with engagement or worried that changes might disproportionately impact one political party more than another, according to multiple reports in the press and several former employees. One cynical joke among members of the civic-integrity team was that they spent 10% of their time coding and the other 90% arguing that the code they wrote should be allowed to run, one former employee told TIME. “You write code that does exactly what it’s supposed to do, and then you had to argue with execs who didn’t want to think about integrity, had no training in it and were mad that you were hurting their product, so they shut you down,” the person said.
Sometimes the civic-integrity team would also come into conflict with Facebook’s policy teams, which share the dual role of setting the rules of the platform while also lobbying politicians on Facebook’s behalf. “I found many times that there were tensions [in meetings] because the civic-integrity team was like, ‘We’re operating off this oath; this is our mission and our goal,’” says Katie Harbath, a long-serving public-policy director at the company’s Washington, D.C., office who quit in March 2021. “And then you get into decisionmaking meetings, and all of a sudden things are going another way, because the rest of the company and leadership are not basing their decisions off those principles.”
Harbath admitted not always seeing eye to eye with Chakrabarti on matters of company policy, but praised his character. “Samidh is a man of integrity, to use the word,” she told TIME. “I personally saw times when he was like, ‘How can I run an integrity team if I’m not upholding integrity as a person?’”
Years before the 2020 election, research by integrity teams had shownFacebook’s group recommendations feature was radicalizing users by driving them toward polarizing political groups, according to the Journal. The company declined integrity teams’ requests to turn off the feature, BuzzFeed News reported. Then, just weeks before the vote, Facebook executives changed their minds and agreed to freeze political group recommendations. The company also tweaked its News Feed to make it less likely that users would see content that algorithms flagged as potential misinformation, part of temporary emergency “break glass” measures designed by integrity teams in the run-up to the vote. “Facebook changed those safety defaults in the run-up to the election because they knew they were dangerous,” Haugen testified to Senators on Tuesday. But they didn’t keep those safety measures in place long, she added. “Because they wanted that growth back, they wanted the acceleration on the platform back after the election, they returned to their original defaults. And the fact that they had to break the glass on Jan. 6, and turn them back on, I think that’s deeply problematic.”
In a statement, Facebook spokesperson Tom Reynolds rejected the idea that the company’s actions contributed to the events of Jan. 6. “In phasing in and then adjusting additional measures before, during and after the election, we took into account specific on-platforms signals and information from our ongoing, regular engagement with law enforcement,” he said. “When those signals changed, so did the measures. It is wrong to claim that these steps were the reason for Jan. 6—the measures we did need remained in place through February, and some like not recommending new, civic or political groups remain in place to this day. These were all part of a much longer and larger strategy to protect the election on our platform—and we are proud of that work.”
Soon after the civic-integrity team was dissolved in December 2020, Chakrabarti took a leave of absence from Facebook. In August, he announced he was leaving for good. Other employees who had spent years working on platform-safety issues had begun leaving, too. In her testimony, Haugen said that several of her colleagues from civic integrity left Facebook in the same six-week period as her, after losing faith in the company’s pledge to spread their influence around the company. “Six months after the reorganization, we had clearly lost faith that those changes were coming,” she said.
After Haugen’s Senate testimony, Facebook’s director of policy communications Lena Pietsch suggested that Haugen’s criticisms were invalid because she “worked at the company for less than two years, had no direct reports, never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level executives—and testified more than six times to not working on the subject matter in question.” On Twitter, Chakrabarti said he was not supportive of company leaks but spoke out in support of the points Haugen raised at the hearing. “I was there for over 6 years, had numerous direct reports, and led many decision meetings with C-level execs, and I find the perspectives shared on the need for algorithmic regulation, research transparency, and independent oversight to be entirely valid for debate,” he wrote. “The public deserves better.”
Can Facebook’s latest moves protect the company?
Two months after disbanding the civic-integrity team, Facebook announced a sharp directional shift: it would begin testing ways to reduce the amount of political content in users’ News Feeds altogether. In August, the company said early testing of such a change among a small percentage of U.S. users was successful, and that it would expand the tests to several other countries. Facebook declined to provide TIME with further information about how its proposed down-ranking system for political content would work.
Many former employees who worked on integrity issues at the company are skeptical of the idea. “You’re saying that you’re going to define for people what political content is, and what it isn’t,” James Barnes, a former product manager on the civic-integrity team, said in an interview. “I cannot even begin to imagine all of the downstream consequences that nobody understands from doing that.”
Another former civic-integrity team member said that the amount of work required to design algorithms that could detect any political content in all the languages and countries in the world—and keeping those algorithms updated to accurately map the shifting tides of political debate—would be a task that even Facebook does not have the resources to achieve fairly and equitably. Attempting to do so would almost certainly result in some content deemed political being demoted while other posts thrived, the former employee cautioned. It could also incentivize certain groups to try to game those algorithms by talking about politics in nonpolitical language, creating an arms race for engagement that would privilege the actors with enough resources to work out how to win, the same person added.
When Zuckerberg was hauled to testify in front of lawmakers after the Cambridge Analytica data scandal in 2018, Senators were roundly mocked on social media for asking basic questions such as how Facebook makes money if its services are free to users. (“Senator, we run ads” was Zuckerberg’s reply.) In 2021, that dynamic has changed. “The questions asked are a lot more informed,” says Sophie Zhang, a former Facebook employee who was fired in 2020 after she criticized Facebook for turning a blind eye to platform manipulation by political actors around the world.
“The sentiment is increasingly bipartisan” in Congress, Zhang adds. In the past, Facebook hearings have been used by lawmakers to grandstand on polarizing subjects like whether social media platforms are censoring conservatives, but this week they were united in their condemnation of the company. “Facebook has to stop covering up what it knows, and must change its practices, but there has to be government accountability because Facebook can no longer be trusted,” Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, chair of the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, told TIME ahead of the hearing. His Republican counterpart Marsha Blackburn agreed, saying during the hearing that regulation was coming “sooner rather than later” and that lawmakers were “close to bipartisan agreement.”
As Facebook reels from the revelations of the past few days, it already appears to be reassessing product decisions. It has begun conducting reputational reviewsof new products to assess whether the company could be criticized or its features could negatively affect children, the Journal reported Wednesday. It last week paused its Instagram Kids product amid the furor.
Whatever the future direction of Facebook, it is clear that discontent has been brewing internally. Haugen’s document leak and testimony have already sparked calls for stricter regulation and improved the quality of public debate about social media’s influence. In a post addressing Facebook staff on Wednesday, Zuckerberg put the onus on lawmakers to update Internet regulations, particularly relating to “elections, harmful content, privacy and competition.” But the real drivers of change may be current and former employees, who have a better understanding of the inner workings of the company than anyone—and the most potential to damage the business.
Multicultural Meanderings 