From God to monsters – the “new nationalism” of the US right

2022/06/13 Leave a comment

Of interest:

In the New York Times on 1 June, one of the rising stars of the conservative movement, Nate Hochman, articulated what he takes to be the direction and meaning of the American right. The central thesis of his essay is that the religious right has been supplanted by “a new kind of conservatism” more secular in orientation and focused on culture war issues such as gender, identity, and what he ever-so-gently calls “race relations”. For Hochman, this new conservatism is based in a kind of class consciousness, with much of the coalition being comprised of dissatisfied – “exploited” – middle Americans countering the depredations of cultural elites: “Today’s right-wing culture warriors think in distinctly Marxian terms: a class struggle between a proletarian base of traditionalists and a powerful public-private bureaucracy that is actively hostile to the American way of life.”

To bolster his claims, Hochman refers to Don Warren’s 1976 book The Radical Centre: Middle Americans and the Politics of Alienation:

“The right’s new culture war represents the world-view of people the sociologist Donald Warren called “Middle American radicals”, or MARs. This demographic, which makes up the heart of Mr Trump’s electoral base, is composed primarily of non-college-educated middle- and lower-middle-class white people, and it is characterised by a populist hostility to elite pieties that often converges with the old social conservatism. But MARs do not share the same religious moral commitments as their devoutly Christian counterparts, both in their political views and in their lifestyles… These voters are more nationalistic and less amenable to multiculturalism than their religious peers, and they profess a scepticism of the cosmopolitan open-society arguments for free trade and mass immigration that have been made by neoliberals and neoconservatives alike.”

Hochman also draws on the work of the late right-wing American writer Sam Francis, one of the “paleo-conservatives” who in the 1990s augured the rise of Donald Trump, and who is among the best guides to understanding the trajectory of the contemporary right. Far from being a marginal or eccentric figure, he is read by prominent conservatives as both prophet and guide. There are even rumours that Francis is the favoured reading of some Department of Homeland Security officials. That Hochman himself, a fellow at National Review and a key figure of the US intellectual right, leans so heavily on Francis is proof enough of his importance.

“What is occurring on the right,” Hochman argues in his New York Timesessay, “is a partial realisation of the programme that the hard-right writer Sam Francis championed in his 1994 essay ‘Religious Wrong’. He argued that cultural, ethnic and social identities ‘are the principal lines of conflict’ between Middle Americans and progressive elites and that the ‘religious orientation of the Christian right serves to create what Marxists like to call a “false consciousness” for Middle Americans’. In other words, political Christianity prevented the right-wing base from fully understanding the culture war as a class war – a power struggle between Middle America and a hostile federal regime. He saw Christianity’s universalist ideals as at odds with the defence of the American nation, which was being dispossessed by mass immigration and multiculturalism. ‘Organized Christianity today,’ he wrote in 2001, ‘is the enemy of the West and the race that created it.’”

Is Hochman’s argument persuasive? As others have pointed out, there are good empirical reasons to insist on the continued importance of the religious right as a key constituency, from its role in Trump’s election to the assault on Roe vs Wade to the centrality of churches in the political base of the Republican Party. But the religious right is part of a larger whole; a broader right-wing whose central inspiration is not primarily religious.

Other features of Francis’s vision are also instructive when thinking about the contemporary American right. First, the radicalism of the project: Francis was not really a conservative; he felt that the conservative movement had failed and even urged his friend Pat Buchanan to drop the “conservative” label when running for president in 1992 and 1996. His vision of nationalism was as much a call for a new order as a return to the past. In his 1992 essay  “Nationalism, Old and New”, he rejected the “old nationalism” for a “new nationalism” that would replace the individualism and egalitarianism of Hamilton and Lincoln with something else:

“The pseudo-nationalist ethic of the old nationalism that served only as a mask for the pursuit of special interests will be replaced by the social ethic of an authentic nationalism that can summon and harness the genius of a people certain of its identity and its destiny. The myth of the managerial regime that America is merely a philosophical proposition about the equality of all mankind (and therefore includes all mankind) must be replaced by a new myth of the nation as a historically and culturally unique order that commands loyalty, solidarity and discipline and excludes those who do not or cannot assimilate to its norms and interests. This is the real meaning of ‘America First’: America must be first not only among other nations but first also among the other (individual or class or sectional) interests of its people.”

Whereas the “old nationalism” spoke the “abstract” and “alienating” language of universalism, the “new nationalism” is supposedly something rooted in the essence of the “real” American people. Here Francis echoed the “concrete nationalism” of the French far-right authors Charles Maurras and Maurice Barrés that emerged towards the end of the 19th century, which differed from the “old nationalism” of liberté, égalité, fraternité. As the French historian Michel Winock writes, this nationalism would “subordinate everything to the exclusive interests of the nation, that is, the nation-state: to its force, its power, and its greatness”, and was pitched in darker, more pessimistic registers than the old republican patriotism. “This mortuary nationalism,” Winock argues, “called for a resurrection: the restoration of state authority, the strengthening of the army, the protection of the old ways, the dissolution of divisive forces. In varying dosages, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and anti-parliamentarianism were dispensed in the manner appropriate to each of the publics targeted.”

Today, in order to give an accurate picture of the conservative movement Hochman describes, the list of “varying dosages appropriate to the publics targeted” could be altered to include anti-transgenderism, immigration fears, the thinly veiled racism of the anti-critical race theory (CRT) panic, or any of the other demagogic issues the right regularly summons.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that Francis would sound like a 19th-century European reactionary since he was an admirer of the work of Georges Sorel, a heretic socialist and Dreyfusard turned anti-Dreyfusard. The major concept that Francis gets from Sorel concerns the importance of political myth. Myths in this sense are concrete, imaginative embodiments of a group’s self-conception and political aspirations; they are not abstract party programmes or utopias. Francis believed that the Middle American Radicals and their leaders had to develop such a myth to replace the myths of “old nationalism”, all that nonsense about “all men being created equal”.

Well, they have at least one now in the form of the “stolen election”: what better way to embody the entire sentiment of dispossession, be it ideological or explicitly racial, than the idea that political power is being held illegitimately by one’s opponents. Another such myth is QAnon, which imagines an elaborate, evil cabal pulling the strings and then a sudden moment of eschatological deliverance from their machinations. Arguably, anti-vaxx sentiments function this way, too: creating an opposition between a rapacious overclass and the resistance of the people’s “salt of the earth” wisdom. The idea of “the Great Replacement” is another one, too. Hochman is probably embarrassed to speak about the centrality of these lurid myths on the right, but they might help explain the “secularisation” of the GOP: maybe there are just other, more chthonic gods now.

What about the “Marxian” elements of the new right? Hochman is right about its emphasis on class struggle but wrong about on whose behalf it is being fought. One of the characterisations right-wing culture warriors like to make about identity politics or critical race theory is that it replaces the structural role “the proletariat” once had in Marxism with some dispossessed ethnic group: so, instead of the industrial working class, now it’s – to use an extreme formulation – LGBT+ Latinx people with disabilities who are supposed to be the bearers of the revolutionary project, since the proletarian revolution failed.

This sounds like a poor interpretation of Georg Lukacs’ conception of class-consciousness, but it’s also exactly what Hochman and his fellows are doing: their class might not be really working class – Hochman admits it’s really the middle and lower-middle class – but they are somehow still “proletarian”, the revolutionary, or the “counter-revolutionary” – subjects that are achieving class consciousness of their historic mission to Make America Great Again. This is almost exactly “Cultural Marxism”: it simply replaces the material determinations of class struggle with the terms of the “culture war”.

So who is the class that is doing the struggling here? Again, it’s worth returning to Francis. At some points in his writing, Francis calls his Middle American Radicals “post-bourgeois” to emphasise their dispossession and alienation from the old bourgeois traditions and values. But in his mature work Leviathan and its Enemies, which was published posthumously, he opposed the feared and hated managerial class that supposedly runs the state and corporate bureaucracies, through to the plain-old bourgeoisie, that is to say, the class that owns, the proprietors of the “entrepreneurial firm (the partnership, family firm, or individual entrepreneurship)”. Hochman is being too modest when he says it’s just the middle and lower-middle class: the right enjoys the patronage of many great magnates and their families: Thiels, Kochs, Mercers, Uihleins, Princes, DeVoses, and so on. The Republican coalition is simply the alliance of the most reactionary sections of the whole property-owning class, the bourgeoisie from petit to haute. I’d argue their attack on the administrative state and their tax raiding has as much to do with the protection of their interest in this regard than any feeling of “cultural dispossession”. Indeed, the right now seems to be successfully attracting a broader swathe of the entrepreneurial class, as Elon Musk recently signalled his “new” Republican allegiance over labour issues.

Hochman may be interested in another Marxist category: totality, the notion that we have to analyse a social and political situation in its entirety, and that failing to do so will give us a false or incomplete picture. While he is more frank than most, Hochman doesn’t want to look at the right in its totality. Although he seems comfortable with the portions of the right that, despite being demagogic and repressive, remain within the bounds of legal and civic behaviour, like the anti-trans and anti-CRT campaigns, he doesn’t want to talk about the storming of the Capitol on 6 January, or the myth of the stolen election, the great replacement theory, or the cultish worship of Trump, or the Proud Boys, who now have a significant presence in a largely Hispanic Miami-Dade Republican Party. But these things are as much, if not more, emblematic of the modern Republican Party as young Hochman is. As Francis knew and was much more open about, these primal forces were the real right, with the think tank intelligentsia trailing behind or vainly trying to guide the masses.

So now let’s recapitulate the totality of the political situation, with the help of Hochman’s essay. He wants to say this new right is essentially a secular party of the aggrieved Mittelstand that feels the national substance has been undermined by a group of cosmopolitan elites who have infiltrated all the institutions of power; that also believes immigrants threaten to replace the traditional ethnic make-up of the country; that borrows conceptions and tactics from the socialist tradition but retools them for counter-revolutionary ends; that is animated by myths of national decline and renewal; that instrumentalises racial anxieties; that brings together dissatisfied and alienated members of the intelligentsia with the conservative families of the old bourgeoisie and futurist magnates of industry; that alternates a vulgar, sneering desire to provoke and shock with phobic moral prudishness; that is obsessed with a macho masculinity; that looks to a providential figure like Trump for leadership; that has street fighting and militia cadre; and that has even attempted an illegal putsch to give its leader absolute power. If only there was historical precedent and even a word for all that.

Source: From God to monsters – the “new nationalism” of the US right

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Immigration minister says he’s working on a faster path to permanence for temporary residents

2022/06/13 Leave a comment

Of note. Quoted in article as is CERC’s Rupa Banergee:

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser says his government is preparing to reinstate a program that would help to speed up the process of turning newcomers in Canada under temporary permits into permanent residents.

“We are looking right now at the best path forward to create a permanent pathway for temporary residents,” he told CBC’s The House in an interview airing this weekend.

A previous program called the “temporary resident to permanent resident pathway” — or TR to PR — was put in place last year for eight months after COVID-19 lockdowns shut the border to newcomers to prevent the spread of the virus.

It gave 90,000 essential workers, front-line health care workers and international students like Kushdeep Singh an accelerated path to permanent status.

Singh arrived in 2019 to study business administration at Norquest College in Edmonton. The temporary TR to PR program was announced just as he was preparing to write his final exams.

“When I first came to Canada I thought, ‘It’s gonna take almost about four years.’ Two years of my studies then two years of waiting for my PR application,” he said.

Instead, the approval came through in less than a year.

“And I told my mom. She was so, so happy,” he said. “I think she was happy because I know how hard she also worked for me, like all my journey since I came here and … how she also sacrifices, like sending me away from her, so that was a good moment.”

Clock is ticking

Fraser said the new program won’t be identical to the old one. He said he’s working under a tight 120-day timeline established in a motion approved by the Commons last month.

“That actually puts me on a clock to come up with a framework to establish this new permanent residency pathway, not just for international students, but also for temporary foreign workers,” he said.

“We’re in the depths of planning the policy so we can have a policy that’s not driven by a need to respond urgently in the face of an emergency, but actually to have a permanent pathway that provides a clear path for those seeking permanent residency who can enter Canada.”

Rupa Banerjee is a Canada research chair focusing on immigration issues at Toronto Metropolitan University. She said continuing to fast-track some people to permanent resident status is good policy.

“Focusing on individuals who are already in the country, that was an essential move at the time, when we had border closures and a lot of the pandemic restrictions,” she said during a separate panel discussion on The House.

“It also is really beneficial because we know that those who already have Canadian work experience, Canadian education, they do tend to fare better once they become permanent residents relative to those who come in one step straight from abroad.”

The federal government set a goal of accepting 432,000 newcomers this year alone. Fraser said his department is ahead of schedule, despite the pandemic and the unexpected pressures of working to resettle thousands of people fleeing conflict in both Afghanistan and Ukraine.

“This week we actually resettled the 200,000th permanent resident, more than a month and a half ahead of any year on record in Canada,” he said. “We are seeing similar trends across other lines of business like citizenship, like work permits, which in many instances are double the usual rate of processing.”

Too many pathways?

Despite the higher numbers, concerns remain about processing backlogs and what Andrew Griffith — a former senior bureaucrat with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada — calls an overly complicated immigration system with too many programs.

“There are just so many pathways to immigrate to Canada. And I’m not convinced that anybody applying to Canada — or even the people who try to manage the program — that they have a full grip in terms of the program,” he said. “So there’s a real case, I think, to be made for simplification.”

Griffith argued the number of newcomers being accepted is less important than who is coming to Canada — what skills they bring and whether they can help this country improve productivity and economic growth.

Banerjee agreed that the number of newcomers is less important than who they are and whether there are services available to help them adjust to life here.

“The question is, can we actually integrate these individuals so that they can really contribute to the Canadian economy and also to Canadian society, more importantly?” he said.

Source: Immigration minister says he’s working on a faster path to permanence for temporary residents

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Scofield: Canada’s worker shortage has one big upside for employers

2022/06/13 Leave a comment

And employees:

The supertight job market that is bedevilling employers and the Bank of Canada alike has an upside: it has managed to do quickly what employment equity practices and public policy have struggled with for years.

It has drawn in racialized workers, new immigrants, young people, older workers and women in astounding numbers, making history along the way.

Whether that kind of inclusion can last, however, is an open question that will depend on employers and public-policy makers alike.

For one, the current pace of hiring is not likely to last.

In May, the unemployment rate hit a record low of 5.1 per cent, Statistics Canada reported on Friday. Employers created just 39,800 new positions over the course of a month — solid although nothing to write home about.

Still, from the start of the pandemic, the job market is now 497,000 positions larger than it was back then. In other words, after all of the ups and downs, closures and reopenings, illness and fear, that’s half a million more jobs than what we used to have, and it speaks to the resilience of the Canadian labour market.

That resilience has benefited a wide array of people who used to have a hard time getting a fair shake.

Let’s look at workers between the ages of 25 and 54 years old, to start. First Nations women in that age bracket have seen their unemployment rate plunge 9.3 percentage points over the past year to 7.3 per cent. Southeast Asian women have a 4.1 per cent unemployment rate, which is 6.3 percentage points lower than a year ago. Filipino men have a 3.4 per cent unemployment rate, down 4.7 points on the year.

Participation rates — how many people are actively working or looking for work — are also proof of significant progress for some key demographics. The participation rate is at a record high for women aged 25 to 54, at 85 per cent. That’s still lower than men of the same age (91.9 per cent), but after all of the troubles women had at the beginning of the pandemic, it’s remarkable.

The experience of newcomers to Canada is also eye-opening, says Brendon Bernard, senior economist at jobs website Indeed.com. He points out that immigrants who have been in Canada for five years or less are jumping into the job market in leaps and bounds, and they’re landing pretty good jobs.

Before the pandemic, their participation rate was 76.5 per cent. Now, it’s 84.3 per cent. And wage data shows they’re being hired into higher-income areas.

“One of Canada’s longest-standing labour market challenges has been the underemployment of newcomers. And there really has been a noticeable shift,” Bernard said in an interview.

Can it all last? Or will the pending slowdown in the Canadian economy make for “last hired, first fired” and erase the gains for demographics that have been struggling to catch up?

Jean-François Perrault, chief economist at Scotiabank, suggests it can actually last. For sure, hiring is set to slow down as the economy overheats and the central bank moves to cool it off by dramatically raising interest rates. But at the same time, Perrault points out there are about one million vacancies in the job market right now, and they’re not just going to evaporate with a slowing economy.

“There’s this huge backlog of jobs to fill,” he said. For companies hoping to just get by day to day, “these vacancies are massive, and they’re critical.”

He suspects even if the pace of hiring slows down over the next few months, vacancies will remain high. So employers are deeply concerned about long-standing labour shortages and they’ll hang on to their workers for as long as they can. It’s just too hard to ramp back up.

For politicians, this means they can’t really afford to let up on their policy attempts to draw more people into the workforce, even if the job numbers soften.

Even if there’s a downturn, the long-standing trend toward an aging population means Canada will need to encourage older workers and women to join the workforce in greater numbers over the next few years.

Ottawa’s $30-billion child care strategy was supposed to dramatically increase women’s participation in the workforce, but it has been slow to fully gear up. The returns, in terms of labour participation, are likely still years away.

And the federal Liberals are unlikely to reverse their dedication to retiring at 65 to encourage older workers to stay in the workforce longer.

But if employers and policy-makers are wise, they’ll take a look at what the tight job market has accomplished for them, appreciate what the gains to inclusivity have done for their workforce, and then lock them in.

The next slowdown doesn’t have to set us back.

Source: Canada’s worker shortage has one big upside for employers

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Regulator extends deadline for immigration consultants facing new rule

2022/06/13 Leave a comment

Of note:

Immigration consultants have been granted a last-minute reprieve by their regulator from meeting a looming deadline in order to continue their practice before Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board.

On Friday, the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants extended the July 1 deadline for a new licensing requirement by one year to allow current consultants time to enrol in the new specialization course and sit for the qualifying exam.

The move, in consultation with senior officials at the refugee board, avoids operational disruptions at the board and saves consultants’ clients from having to scramble to find new legal counsel to represent their cases.

“In supporting the motion, the Board (of directors) considered that the public interest is served with respect to the need for a vulnerable and at-risk client group to proceed with scheduled hearings before the IRB in a timely fashion,” the college said in a statement to the Star.

“This new date will ensure that all those currently enrolled in one of the program pathways and those who enrol promptly will have the opportunity to complete the program requirements … before the new deadline.”

The deferral of the enforcement of the new rules came after some refugee claimants raised concerns about going before the board without legal representation, or with new representation unfamiliar with their files, because their current consultants would not be able to meet the deadline.

Since the college started offering the 4 1/2-month-long specialization course last August, there have been only two qualifying exams held. Of the 38 specialization courses scheduled — each with 35 spots available — since August, 17 of the cohorts will have completed the classes on or before July 1.

Last week, the college added more exam dates in the coming months to accommodate the needs and said it was in consultation with the refugee board to explore moving the deadline.

IRB data showed 105 consultants who will not meet the new requirement until the fall had “active” cases — some with multiple files — to be heard in July and August.

Kerry Molitor, who has been among a group of consultants raising concerns, said she was grateful the regulator listened to their voices and recognizes the interests of their clients, who are the most vulnerable and desperately need proper legal help.

“Now we can keep our existing clients and help new clients who need representation before the refugee board without worrying about having to abandon them in the middle of their proceedings,” said Molitor.

“The uncertainty was causing everyone a significant amount of stress and now we can move forward together.”

Source: Regulator extends deadline for immigration consultants facing new rule

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USA: Economists hope a rebound in immigration helps curb inflation

2022/06/13 Leave a comment

Of note, temporary workers as a way to both address labour shortages and reduce wage pressures:

When the crowds return to Funland this summer, they’ll find familiar rides like the Fire Engines and the Sea Dragon at this small beachside amusement park.

For the first time since the pandemic began, many of those rides and games will be staffed by student guest workers from around the world.

“They are truly important to the success of our business,” said Chris Darr, the personnel manager at Funland. “We saw last year, we couldn’t fill the positions that we had.”

The number of guest workers and immigrants coming to the United States is slowly climbing again after steep declines during the pandemic. Tens of thousands of international students are back at resort towns and amusement parks. The Biden administration has released more visas for seasonal guest workers, and it’s automatically extending work permits for others.

Economists say that should ease labor shortages — and some, though not all, think it could help calm inflation too.

“Hopefully if this trend continues, and maybe accelerates, we will see the easing of some of the shortages,” said Giovanni Peri, an economics professor at the University of California, Davis.

Businesses in Rehoboth Beach rely on seasonal guest workers

Employers in Rehoboth Beach are clearly glad to have these temporary student workers back. Without them, Darr says, he couldn’t hire enough people to keep Funland open every day.

“Especially at the end of the summer, early August, we lose college students, we lose high school students back to sports and theater programs,” said Darr, a fourth-generation member of the family that owns the park.

For decades, he says, Funland has relied on students coming to the U.S. on J-1 visas. But the program was all but shut down in 2020. The numbers were up last year, though still far short of pre-pandemic levels.

“Without the J-1 visa program, we wouldn’t be able to open half of the stuff that is in the park,” he said.

This summer, Darr is expecting about two dozen student guest workers — including 21-year-old Morgan Bennett, a student from Jamaica.

“There was a listing of all the different places that I could have worked,” Bennett said. “When the person had told me the type of job that I would have encountered, I just said yes!”

The State Department says the number of participants in its summer work travel program is rebounding toward pre-pandemic levels. Roughly 30,000 participants have started the program already this year, according to a State Department official, with about 50,000 more in the pipeline. That would put the program at roughly three-quarters of its enrollment in 2019, when more than 108,000 visas were issued.

More guest workers could help ease labor shortages

Overall, the U.S. economy is about two million working-age immigrants short of where it would have been if not for the pandemic and the Trump administration’s cuts, according to Peri. He says that’s contributed to a tighter labor market, putting pressure on employers to raise wages — and in turn, prices.

“If these shortages loosens up — so if there are more workers — this should also reduce the inflationary pressures,” Peri said. That’s especially true, he says, in industries that depend heavily on immigrant labor, like hospitality.

“We were 32 employees short last summer,” said Susan Wood, who owns the Cultured Pearl Restaurant and Sushi Bar in Rehoboth Beach. “It was torture. I mean all of our staff work six, seven days. They killed themselves.”

“I worked 183 days straight at the front desk, and my husband worked more than that in the kitchen,” she said.

Wood is also participating in the J-1 visa program this year. Without those international student workers, she says, her year-round staff worked a lot of overtime last summer, driving her labor costs way up.

“We had to raise prices,” Wood said. “We raised prices because of payroll, but not nearly as much as we had to raise prices because of food costs.”

Some economists doubt that more immigration will cure inflation

The costs of food and energy are still rising fast. Economists say that’s contributing to inflation across the economy — and some are skeptical that a partial rebound in the number of guest workers and immigrants will have a measurable impact.

“I don’t think it’s going to do much to fix our inflation problem,” said Ramesh Ponnuru, the editor of the National Review, and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank in Washington.

Ponnuru argues that inflation right now is largely caused by problems in the supply chain, and that simply bringing immigration back to pre-COVID levels won’t solve those problems.

“We need an immigration policy designed with our economy’s interests in mind. We don’t have that,” Ponnuru said. “And just toggling that so that you have more of a dysfunctional immigration policy seems to me to be a mistake.”

Temporary guest workers are already making an impact on the bottom line at Thrasher’s French Fries in Rehoboth Beach. General manager Dean Shuttleworth is expecting about a dozen international student workers this summer, which means that he’ll have enough staff to reopen another location across the street that’s been shuttered since the pandemic began.

“[Memorial Day] weekend was the first time we opened our 26 Rehoboth Avenue store up in two years,” Shuttleworth said.

“Last year, we had the volume up. We were extremely busy,” he said. “So I’m in pretty good shape this year.”

Source: Economists hope a rebound in immigration helps curb inflation

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‘Brought down to my knees:’ Restaurateur slams changes to New Brunswick immigration

2022/06/11 Leave a comment

To govern is to choose, and hard to argue that healthcare and more highly skilled international students were not a valid policy choice:

When Michael Petrovici posts a job opening for one of his northern New Brunswick restaurants, he’s lucky if he gets one application.

“It’s very, very challenging to recruit people locally,” said the entrepreneur who owns a fast-food restaurant, a coffee shop and a full-service eatery in Bathurst.

The small city on the Chaleur Bay is quickly becoming the epicentre of Canada’s restaurant industry labour shortage after the province paused a popular immigration stream used by businesses to attract workers to the area.

“We were already struggling before. Now it’s just impossible for us,” Petrovici said. “I’m not sure how we’ll get through the summer.”

At issue is a decision by the New Brunswick government to suspend the province’s express entry stream, part of the provincial nominee program.

Arlene Dunn, the province’s minister responsible for immigration, said the application process was temporarily paused to ensure the needs of all sectors are met after a significant increase in demand.

“If it was allowed to continue, under the current circumstances, the large demand on our existing programming would jeopardize access to immigration for certain sectors … such as internationally educated nurses or international students who are currently in New Brunswick,” she said in a letter to Petrovici in response to his concerns.

The Canadian Press reached out to New Brunswick government departments that oversee immigration, economic development and business for comment but did not receive a response.

Restaurants across the country are confronting a worker shortfall.

The sector was slammed by two years of pandemic shutdowns, repeated layoffs and strict capacity limits. About 13,000 eateries across the country closed permanently and many workers left the industry altogether.

“The food service industry has been the hardest hit in terms of job losses as a result of COVID,” Restaurants Canada’s Atlantic Canada vice-president Richard Alexander said.

“The impact is even more significant in Atlantic Canada because of our unique labour challenges.”

Bathurst, for example, has a median age of 53 — more than a decade older than Canada’s median age of 40.4, according to Statistics Canada.

“The aging demographic makes it tough to find workers,” Petrovici said. “Rural areas are at an ever bigger disadvantage.”

Still, New Brunswick recorded a mini population boom during the pandemic.

The province added 15,000 newcomers in just 12 months — the fastest rate of population growth since 1976 — reaching 800,000 people, the province said in March.

Yet Petrovici, who owns a Pita Pit franchise, the coffee shop Kaffeine and the full-service restaurant Au Bootlegger, said he still can’t find enough workers to staff his eateries.

“We’re in crisis mode and it’s going to get worse,” he said. “The labour shortage is a really dire situation.”

Given the recent changes to the province’s immigration program, he said four of his employees will be leaving New Brunswick.

“I am brought down to my knees,” he said in a letter to Dunn. “We already have a mountain ahead of us in small rural communities just to attract newcomers.”

The changes to the immigration program have paused applications for food service supervisors, food counter attendants and food and beverage services indefinitely, he said.

“It feels like we’re being treated like a second-class business,” said Petrovici.

In her letter to Petrovici, Dunn suggested he consider the federal temporary foreign worker program.

But Petrovici said he doesn’t have the resources required to pursue other immigration streams, which are more complicated to navigate and require labour market assessments.

“Maybe if you’re a big business owner with 20 franchise locations and can afford to pay consultants it could be worth it,” he said. “But we’re just a mom and pop shop.”

Petrovici said he was told one of the issues is a delay with the federal allocation of candidates _ the number of foreign workers the province is able to welcome each year.

Remi Lariviere, a spokesperson for the federal Immigration Department, said allocations for 2022 were delayed due to the 2021 federal election, the conflict in Ukraine and ongoing challenges related to the pandemic.

Still, he said all provinces and territories participating in these immigration programs were told they could expect, at a minimum, the same number of allocations that they received in 2021.

“They’ve sort of passed the buck to the federal immigration (department),” Petrovici said. “I don’t know what the problem really is but we need a solution.”

He added: “All we need and want is to be able to keep our doors open.”

Source: ‘Brought down to my knees:’ Restaurateur slams changes to New Brunswick immigration

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Canada aiming to open online citizenship applications for multiple adults in fall 2022

2022/06/11 Leave a comment

Progress:

Couples and families with multiple adults will soon be able to apply for citizenship online, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).

Currently, only single adult applicants can submit their citizenship applications online. However, IRCC told CIC News in an email that adults may be able to apply together in fall 2022. After that, the online portal will open to minors and families.

“IRCC is working towards an expansion of the e-Application in order to allow Adults (i.e., 18 or older) to apply online together as a family or a group, and is currently targeting a Fall 2022 implementation,” an IRCC spokesperson said. “Planning has commenced for further e-Application expansion to minors under 18 years of age, as well as adults and minors applying together as a family or a group.”

IRCC said following the implementation of the e-application, it will begin to develop “additional functionality for representatives.” Currently, representatives can only help prepare online applications, but cannot submit on a client’s behalf. They can communicate with IRCC on the applicant’s behalf before and after the online application is submitted.

“In November of 2021, IRCC updated the system so clients can submit the IMM 5476 – Use of Representatives form, allowing them to use the services of a representative in preparing their applications. We also updated the screening questions to allow clients working with representatives to submit their application electronically,” IRCC wrote.

“Following the implementation of the e-Application expansion to minors and groups, the Department will begin development of additional functionality for representatives.”

In August 2021, IRCC claimed online citizenship applications would open to families and minors later in the year, and to representatives in 2022.

IRCC opened an online portal to proof of citizenship applicants in November 2021.

Source: Canada aiming to open online citizenship applications for multiple adults in fall 2022

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Douglas Todd: Secularism surges in Cascadia, for good and ill

2022/06/11 Leave a comment

Interesting study cited:

It was not long ago the logo for British Columbia was “The Best Place on Earth,” emblazoned across an idyllic image of mountain peaks.

The “Best Place” slogan outdid even “Beautiful British Columbia” and “Super, Natural British Columbia” for boasting, for linking the evergreen-covered West Coast to a sense of sacred specialness.

Now a highly researched book delves into just how much residents of B.C., Washington, Oregon — a bio-region known as Cascadia — lean toward “reverential naturalism,” in large part because they live in what could also be called “the most secular place on Earth” (or at least in North America.)

Religion at the Edge: Nature, Spirituality and Secularity in the Pacific Northwest (UBC Press) explains that Cascadia is at the forefront of cultural shifts across the continent. The book details how non-religion is more embedded here than anywhere else in North America — and how that powerful secularism comes with sharp political inclinations, to the liberal-left.

The scholarly papers in Religion at the Edge probe the kind of theories that an eclectic team of Canadian and U.S. writers dug into in the book I edited in 2008, titled Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia: Exploring the Spirit of the Pacific Northwest (Ronsdale Press). The upshot is secularism has grown even more intense in Cascadia in the past decade, especially in B.C.

A public-opinion survey done for Religion at the Edge shows half of B.C. residents (49 per cent) now have no religious affiliation, while 44 per cent of the people in Washington and Oregon make the same claim. That contrasts with other polls showing, across North America, only about one in five say they have “no religion.”

Religion at the Edge is edited by professor Paul Bramadat, director of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Victoria (who muses about “The Best Place on Earth” marketing); Pacific Lutheran University religion professor emerita Patricia O’Connell Killen (who contributed to Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia) and University of Waterloo sociologist Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme.

The book’s focus groups show how Cascadia’s non-religious come in many guises — from those who are increasingly hostile to church, mosque and synagogue, to those who still harbour some private spiritual sentiments toward things like yoga and nature reverence.

Religion at the Edge spells out the political implications of a population that is half secular. The non-religious, for instance, are more likely to support access to abortion, same-sex marriage and fervently protecting the natural realm.

However, there can be a darker side to intense secularism, including loneliness, excessive libertarianism and a tendency to “homophily,” which is a technical word for being attracted only to those who are similar to oneself.

Why are Cascadians so non-religious?

I was struck by the insight that the white working-classes of the Pacific Northwest have since the 19th century been passing on: a tradition of irreligiosity, as described by Tina Block of Thompson Rivers University and the University of Victoria’s Lynn Marks.

That captures my upbringing, in which my resolutely atheist Metro Vancouver family taught that religion was for kooks. I like to think I’ve outgrown that world view, with more understanding of philosophy, religion and spirituality.

Even though immigrants are generally more religious than North America’s native born, Trinity College, Hartford, professor Mark Silk (who also contributed to Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia) makes the important point the Pacific Northwest is more secular because certain ethnic subgroups have different attitudes to faith.

Black people are much more religious than the overall U.S. population. But Silk points out that, compared to the rest of the continent, there are far fewer Black people in Cascadia, especially in B.C. (only one per cent).

B.C., compared to the rest of North America, also has far more people of Asian origin (28 per cent versus 15 per cent across Canada and 2.8 per cent in the U.S.). And Pew Research polls show Asian people, particularly East Asians, are more likely to reject formal religion.

When it comes to politics, Wilkins-Laflamme’s confirms Cascadians who are non-religious are far less inclined to support the Canadian Conservative Party or the American Republican party. That helps explain why the Liberals and NDP tend to do well in B.C. and Democrats mostly hold sway in Washington and Oregon, especially in cities.

Along with a fervent libertarianism that sees little use for traditions or institutions, residents of Cascadia have been leading supporters of assisted suicide and many, because they find sacredness in the natural world, have turned into fiery activists against climate change.

Despite Cascadians’ many similarities across the Canada-U.S. border, one stark difference lies in Canadian and American attitudes to Indigenous affairs. First Nations and Metis issues have been near-ubiquitous in Canada for two decades, including in many churches, while in Washington and Oregon interest continues to be negligible.

Key findings of Religion on the Edge are summarized in five points by Bramadat and O’Connell Killen, who observe that in Cascadia:

• A “powerful story” is emerging “that frames the region not just as the best but as the most secular place on Earth”

• Certain forms of Christianity have been “relegated to the periphery”

• Some kinds of spirituality (Indigenous, Buddhist, Hindu) are romanticized

• Practitioners of yoga, evangelicalism and mindfulness are evolving creatively

• There is a “pervasive, distinctive and reverential approach to the natural world”

A lot of this may sound good to many North Americans, particularly those on the liberal-left.

But as the book points out, visitors to the “Best Place on Earth” have been known to remark, “It’s hard to see the sky in the summer because of all the smug.” And Cascadians’ openness to the spiritual, but not religious, could harden into a flat secularism “without any reference to the metaphysical.”

The contributors also found many residents of Cascadia, especially the increasingly non-religious young, feel burdened by consumer culture, high degrees of loneliness, tenuous social bonds, weak institutions, a reluctance to commit and a restless state of “searching.”

Even Cascadians’ emphasis on the sacred wonders of nature may come with ethical blind spots. As some authors ask, “Can the population care as much for people as it cares for orcas, trees and pets?”

Finally, while a highly secular, low-cohesion culture has rapidly become the status quo in the Pacific Northwest, contributors to Religion on the Edge suggest convincingly (as did the writers in Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia) that we are a bellwether for what will happen to the rest of the continent.

Source: Douglas Todd: Secularism surges in Cascadia, for good and ill

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , , ,

Rubin: While the Charter lets us dream, the Access to Information Act is a nightmare

2022/06/11 Leave a comment

Tend to agree, given my much more limited experience from outside government. Of course while in government, I dreaded the extensive vetting I had to do for some files:

Two pieces of once-promising Canadian legislation have turned out very differently 40 years on. One is Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, enacted on April 17, 1982, and the other is Canada’s Access to Information Act, given royal assent on July 7, 1982.

Both claimed to advance and protect individuals from the state’s excesses; one by placing Canadians’ rights in a Supreme Court-guided constitutional framework, and the other a government-controlled law claiming to give Canadians new access to government records –while in reality gatekeeping what Canadians are allowed to know.

Both acts were born under Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal government, one through his leadership and legal beliefs (the Charter); the other (the Access Act) was delegated to his finance minister Mitchell Sharp, secretary of state Francis Fox, and their senior mandarins. These public officials disliked access-to-information legislation (ignoring the public’s demand for it) but needed a legal secrecy code to protect against the growing government leaks.

As part of the access-to-information lobby group, ACCESS, I remember that debate well.

The senior mandarins were the real winners and birth fathers of restrictive public access to government records. An earlier attempt at an Access Act by the Joe Clark government bore their imprint.

The Access to Information Act allowed bureaucrats to run the show. Public officials and corporations gained special privileges and consultation rights, allowing little leeway for the public to gain a glimpse into Ottawa’s information holdings.

Corporations successfully lobbied for special rights to object and to prevent the release of commercial data held by government.

The provinces also had a hand in drafting the secrecy provision in intergovernmental relations affecting them, making those records mandatorily exempt. They agreed with federal authorities that the vast number of federal-provincial agreements and meeting records were outside coverage of any access acts. In 40 years, it has never been suggested that all jurisdictions should agree to regularly work together to adopt more progressive disclosure terms.

Other special interest groups also gained rights. Lawyers were increasingly granted special secrecy for a range of solicitor-client privileges. Crown corporations, both federally and provincially, negotiated more favourable and broader exemption terms. Law enforcement and security agencies, especially after Sept. 11, 2001, successfully pushed for more secrecy.

And at every turn, bureaucrats broadened their policy advice protection terms. They successfully lobbied for excluding immediate release of draft or final unpublished internal government audit reports, thus diminishing the role of their internal watchdogs.

This in contrast to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, where law enforcement agencies were not given freer rein, bureaucrat and PMO plans received no free passes, lawyers had to make public cases of their arguments, and Crown corporations–even Parliament—could not expect special privileges without a challenge.

Judges blossom under Charter, rubber-stamp under Access Act

The Charter let the courts blossom with progressive purpose interpretations and few disappointments. But on the Access Act side, the courts have mainly sided with the secrecy claims of governments and corporations to the public’s disadvantage.

Just look at the Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court which recently ruled the province’s information commissioner has no business in reviewing solicitor-client numerous cases of secrecy (the Newfoundland commissioner is appealing the ruling). Or look at how the Supreme Court of Canada (John Doe v Ontario (Finance), 2014) approved Ontario and other jurisdictions’ application of broader policy advice exceptions. This ruling emboldened provinces like Quebec and British Columbia to amend their Freedom of Information Acts and bring in wider policy advice exemption terms.

Further, in access cases, the courts are unable to review cabinet records or in-camera hearing secret evidence. Even in matters like ministerial mandate letters which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has released for his cabinet, but Ontario Premier Doug Ford wants his kept secret, the courts’ hands are tied. While the Supreme Court recently gave challengers leave to appeal, it is unlikely it will go against the lower courts and buck cabinet confidentiality to order the release of Ford’s mandate letters.

Judges may be seen as too powerful under the Charter, though they mainly take their decisions from precedents, society and from the hope and purpose that the Charter offers. Judges in Access cases have bleak precedents, little leeway and may not even get to see the most key records hived off as cabinet or security-enabled secrets.

What’s also possible in Canadian Access acts aided by the provincial legislatures is the ability of a growing number of laws passed that override access laws. One such act concerns the Canada Infrastructure Bank, whose operations are largely secret.

Passed in 2019, Bill C-58, an Act to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act, neatly hived off whole realms of public information, like records in the PMO, from ever publicly surfacing.

In the early days, the media greeted access legislation as a wonderful tool, giving Canadians legal access to public records. It did not take long, especially once more journalists began using access legislation, to realize that these access laws really did not stand for public disclosures. People like me tried to warn the media that access laws were primarily secrecy laws. Back in September 1975, before joining ACCESS, I presented a brief to the Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations on the federal government’s excessive secrecy. Even then, I realized that legalizing public access to government records would mean officials creating laws very similar to Canada’s vaguely-worded Official Secrets Act.

Over 500 ways to say ‘no’

The dark aspects of the Charter’s notwithstanding clause have rarely come to the forefront, whereas the over 500 ways of saying “no” under access legislation are a daily occurrence. The tools of review under access legislation are kept weak. Access users are considered wards of the state rarely given access to government records. Whereas a litigant under the Charter can use it to challenge prevailing laws and gain greater rights.

The Charter provides a place for sorting out issues that top-down government officials alone cannot handle. Access laws are the exact opposite—they’re an exercise in executive-style government predominating, with only some rights to independent review of record denials.

While the Charter has not brought about, for instance, all Indigenous rights and recognition changes needed, it tries. Canada’s access laws hardly try to allow the public, including Indigenous people, real legislated access or rights. Bureaucrats are in control and do not want access laws being extensively used, even if it is for access to historic data on land claims.

Access laws stifle Canadians’ right to information. Bureaucrats’ daily subversion of public access largely goes on without being penalized and no one effectively challenges their failure to record much government activities.

The Charter is more welcoming and well-regarded. It lets you dream, fight and win better rights that can effect everyday living. In contrast, Access laws only speak of reasonable secrecy and limited service to assist, knowing full well that the public becomes the loser, the state the clear winner.

Rarely have I, in court actions, referred to the Charter. In one case, though, I cited the Charter’s Sec. 15 equality provision in an unsuccessful challenge for gaining equal costs as a lay litigant (Rubin v. Canada (Attorney General), 1990). In another case, in Ontario, I was successful in citing the Charter’s Sec. 2 (b) guarantee of freedom of expression provision in an action that sought to have my filing FOI requests declared as libellous and subject to damages because the commercial party did not like my seeking under municipal FOI his government contracts (Sept. 20, 2019, Ontario Superior Court court ruling, CV-18-595693)).

The Charter protects my right of access to the courts. Most access laws now allow exclusion of users whom they and the information commissioner consider as abusive, frivolous, too-frequent users or as putting in requests in bad faith.

The Charter, in the courts, has been used to challenge governments’ day-to-day controls and has in judgments developed a living doctrine approach to grow and protect individual rights. In contrast, it is government information management directives that limit access, giving marching orders to government agencies to delay, delete and uphold secrecy.

The Treasury Board’s federal directives, for instance, offer dry defensive language designed to say “no” and prevent public employees from serving the public, properly documenting their actions. Daily, I have to contend with getting small morsels of information about the behind-the-scene efforts of hundreds of agencies, third parties and governments.

I would like to see access laws given a constitutional underpinning, an enshrined purpose which would help put Canada on the path to much greater disclosures. Access to information would become a full-fledged public right and a common tool of free expression and inquiry.

While the Access to Information Act and Charter of Rights and Freedoms were born from the same parent a few months apart, they have not acted together as one co-operative friendly force. Forty years have passed and even greater gulfs growing between the two acts.

The Canadian Charter garners international respect as a model to adopt; the Access to Information Act ranks dismally low as a model to avoid.

It’s time to put the two acts on the same page so that Canadians’ rights to know can no longer be ignored, trampled on or based on the state controlling what Canadians get or not get disclosed.

Ken Rubin has followed both the Access to Information Act’s rough 40 years and the Charter’s 40-year evolution. He can be reached at kenrubin.ca

Source: Rubin: While the Charter lets us dream, the Access to Information Act is a nightmare

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105 Iranians say their dreams of coming to Canada were dashed just to clear a processing backlog

2022/06/11 1 Comment

Of note, will be interesting to see how the court rules:

As a toddler, Rokhsar MousaviNezhad was mesmerized by the colourful motifs and designs of the handmade Persian carpets displayed in her grandfather’s studio in Shiraz, a city considered Iran’s cultural capital.

It’s where she fell in love with the craft of carpet-making and designs, and took her first dip into knotting and weaving with loom, combs and a traditional tool called gholab.

“I am proud of myself that I have continued my grandfather’s job,” says the now 41-year-old, who has built a career teaching the craft, displaying her work in shows and running her own carpet business.

It’s these skills and knowledge that she was banking on when she applied in 2016 for permanent residence in Canada under the self-employed immigration program, which aims at luring exemplary athletes, artists and farmers to this country.

Yet MousaviNezhad was rejected in 2018 for failing to demonstrate the ability and intent to become self-employed in Canada. Her refusal is among 105 cases entangled in an appeal to be heard collectively by the Federal Court next week.

At issue is whether the “mass” refusals made in “haste” — according to the applicants’ court submissions — of these Iranians by the Canadian visa post in Poland were the direct result of an effort to clear a backlog, allegedly “at the cost of violation of legal principles.”

The submissions say 479 files in the self-employed category were transferred to Warsaw from the backlogged Ankara post in Turkey on March 7, 2018.

“The Warsaw visa post defied all norms, procedural fairness requirements, and reasonable expectations of outcome in its assessment of the … (cases) transferred to it,” the applicants claimed. “Officers moved straight to refusals thereof.”

Almost all litigants were refused for failing to demonstrate their ability and intent to become self-employed in Canada, despite business plans that, in the past, would have met the expectations of the Ankara visa post, according to litigants’ counsel.

Pantea Jafari, lawyer for the 105 Iranians, said self-employed immigration applications are the most labour-intensive for both officials and applicants, since there are few guidelines to assist the assessment and applicants are left in the dark about what evidence would make their case.

“The document checklist does not provide any indication of what documents to provide for ‘relevant experience,’ it just says ‘relevant experience’ and ‘provide what you think is helpful,’” she told the Star.

“That’s it. There’s no reference whatsoever about the ability and intent to be self-employed in Canada.”

Jafari said officials in Ankara routinely requested further documentation and interviews with applicants in addition to a thorough review of the person’s business plan.

“So there was a stark change in the process once things were switched to Warsaw,” Jafari said in an interview. “Now, it’s saying ‘I’m going to refuse the application without any notice to the client.’ That is fundamentally procedurally unfair.”

In her business plan, MousaviNezhad — currently in Montreal — said she was going to run her own studio based in Newmarket, Ont., to teach design and weaving in handmade Persian carpets while marketing and selling her work domestically and internationally, especially to the huge U.S. market.

She also planned to offer classes at schools and community centres, and work with interior designers to create custom-made carpets.

MousaviNezhad said she applied to come to Canada after then-U.S. president Donald Trump banned Iranian-made rugs from entering from any country and restricted the sale of those already in the country.

“Iran is famed for two things: Persian cat and Persian carpet. My business as a part of the rug community has suffered,” said MousaviNezhad, who has a fine art degree in rug design from the Science and Culture University in Yazd and is a licensed carpet-maker in Iran.

“I want to know how I don’t have the ability to be self-employed while I have an academic education as a rug expert and designer, and worked as a freelance artist since 2007.”

In an affidavit, Thomas Richter, Canada’s migration program manager in Warsaw, said the self-employed class is part of economic immigration, where applicants are assessed “on the basis of their ability to become economically established in Canada.”

Qualified candidates, he stated, must have the relevant experience and be able to be self-employed, and must intend and be able to make a contribution to “specified economic activities” in the country.

“I can state with certainty that I am not aware of any policy that is in place at the Canadian Embassy in Warsaw which would serve to discriminate or result in a bias against the clients,” Richter said in his affidavit.

“Each client is assessed on the basis of their individual attributes and in accordance with the criteria outlined.”

The self-employed immigration program was fine-tuned in 2004 to limit it to artists, athletes and farmers after a review found it had been “compromised” by business applicants unable to meet the skilled-worker criteria and unwilling to move to the more restrictive entrepreneur or immigrant investor programs, both of which require huge capital investments.

“A person may be talented and may even have in-depth knowledge, but that does not necessarily mean that the person has the ability to be self-employed; this must be linked to the intention and ability to create his or her own employment,” the government argued in its submissions in the Iranian case.

“Visa officers do not have a duty to seek to clarify a deficient application, to reach out and make an applicant’s case, to apprise an applicant about concerns arising directly from the legislation or regulations, to provide the applicant with a running score at every step of the application process.”

The government has asked the court to dismiss the applicants’ request, which is to have their cases set aside and sent to the Ankara post for redetermination.

Among the 105 who were refused is Milad Bagheri, a classical tenor and traditional Iranian musician, who has performed extensively in Canada, having toured in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver before applying to the self-employed program in 2018.

In August 2019, the 35-year-old arrived in Toronto with his musician wife, Homa Samiei, on a work permit as a self-employed foreign worker. The duo have been giving vocal and piano lessons, performing online concerts and producing music while collaborating with Canadian composers and musicians.

“Even with COVID’s situation, which you know was tough for artists, we worked and had outstanding achievements. I just had a sold-out show at Toronto’s Meridian Arts Centre and will have another one at Vancouver in September,” said Bagheri after a recent studio recording of a new single.

“They assumed we couldn’t live in Canada as self-employed. As you can see, we are living in Canada as self-employed right now.”

Source: 105 Iranians say their dreams of coming to Canada were dashed just to clear a processing backlog

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