Not surprising that language attachment stronger in Quebec and among Indigenous peoples. The margin of 3 percent among all Canadians not significant given online poll:
A new survey finds more Canadians report a strong attachment to their primary language than to other markers of identity, including the country they call home.
The survey, which was conducted by Leger for the Association for Canadian Studies, found 88 per cent of respondents reported a strong sense of attachment to their primary language, whereas 85 per cent reported the same for Canada.
The greater importance of language was especially notable among francophones and Indigenous Peoples.
Reports of strong attachment to primary language exceeded all other markers of identity, including geography, ethnic group, racialized identity and religious affiliation.
Of the markers of identity considered in the survey, Canadians were the least likely to report a strong sense of attachment to a religious group.
Association for Canadian Studies president Jack Jedwab said the survey’s findings highlight the important role language plays in people’s identities.
“I think many Canadians may be surprised by it, who may not think intuitively that language is as important as other expressions of identity that get attention,” he said.
Jedwab said people should be mindful of not downplaying the importance of language given how significant language can be to a community. He said language has a dual function of facilitating communication and being an expression of culture.
“There can be a tendency for people to diminish the importance of other languages,” he said.
“We’ve not paid historically sufficient attention to Indigenous languages, which we’re now seeing our federal government invest considerably in, trying to help sustain and revive Indigenous languages,” he added.
The online survey was completed by 1,764 Canadians between July 8 and 10. It cannot be assigned a margin of error because online polls are not considered truly random samples.
For Canadians whose primary language is French, 91 per cent reported a strong sense of attachment to their language, in comparison to 67 per cent who reported the same sentiment for Canada.
In Quebec, more people reported a strong sense of attachment to their primary language than to the province.
Only 37 per cent of Canadians reported a strong sense of attachment to a religious group.
The findings come ahead of Statistics Canada’s latest census release on languages in the country, which is set to be published on Wednesday.
Jedwab said the census release will be especially important to Quebec, where there’s a close monitoring of the state of the French language in comparison to other languages.
The Leger survey also found more than half of francophone Quebecers say they know English well enough to hold a conversation. That’s in contrast to less than one in 10 English respondents in all provinces except Quebec and New Brunswick who say they can hold a conversation in French.
According to the last census, English-French bilingualism rose from 17.5 per cent in 2011 to 17.9 per cent in 2016, reaching the highest rate of bilingualism in Canadian history. Over 60 per cent of that growth in bilingualism was attributable to Quebec.
Last week, independent MP Andrew Wilkie reintroduced to federal parliament the Ending Indefinite and Arbitrary Immigration Detention Bill 2022. This bill gives Australia the chance to bring its immigration detention regime in line with basic international law requirements for the first time since 1992.Wilkie’s bill presents a timely opportunity for the new federal government to reform a regime that leading legal and human rights organisations have called “inhumane, unnecessary, and unlawful”.
Australia’s human rights commitment
Australia has committed to uphold human rights and protect refugees, including committing to not arbitrarily or indefinitely detain adults or children. Despite this, under Australia’s current mandatory detention regime, non-citizens without a valid visa must be detained as a first resort for potentially indefinite periods and without access to review by a court.Australia’s commitments under international law are not enforceable under Australian law unless they are implemented through legislation. This means that in the absence of legislation that fully protects the right to liberty, the Australian High Court has consistently held that indefinite immigration detention is lawful under Australian law.
International criticism
The UN has repeatedly condemned Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers and refugees as contrary to Australia’s international obligations and “an affront to the protection of human rights”. This includes statements and decisions from:
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet in 2018
the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, François Crépeau, in 2017
the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Juan E. Méndez, in 2015 and 2017
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in 2017
International criticisms have largely focused on Australia’s failure to respect the rights of individuals to not be detained arbitrarily or indefinitely; subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; or returned to a place where they will face a real risk of harm.Despite widespread condemnation of Australia’s system of mandatory and indefinite detention, over 1400 people remain in onshore immigration detention facilities today. A further 217 people remain on Nauru and Manus.In April 2022, the average period of time people were held in immigration detention facilities in Australia was 726 days. Of those in onshore detention, 136 have been detained for more than five years.
“Detention without charge or guilt”
Wilkie’s bill proposes abolishing the existing system of mandatory detention. Under the bill, detention of non-citizens without valid visas could only be ordered where it is necessary and proportionate to the circumstances. This would require an individual assessment.Detention would be authorised in Australia only (not offshore) for certain purposes, and only as a measure of last resort after all alternatives have been considered. Adults could only be detained for a maximum of three months and children for seven days. While extensions may be necessary in certain circumstances, detention would be subject to independent oversight and judicial review by the courts.When introducing the bill, Wilkie argued this legislation was urgently needed as
we face the bizarre and outrageous situation in this country where someone, in some circumstances, can be detained indefinitely, without charge and without having been found guilty of anything.
He described this as a punitive arrangement that is immoral and shows “a terrible indifference and arrogance to international law”.In seconding the bill, independent MP Kylea Tink said“Australia’s immigration regime is unique in the world. It is uniquely cruel.” Tink also noted Wilkie’s point that the regime came with a vast financial and human toll, costing Australian taxpayers between $360,000 – $460,000 per year to hold a person in immigration detention in Australia.Independent MP Monique Ryan recognised that
Australia’s immigration detention regime causes severe and widespread mental and physical health impacts on people seeking refuge.
Australia’s negative human rights record also affects its ability to hold other countries to account for human rights violations. China accused Australia of human rights hypocrisy after it criticised China’s repression of the Uyghur ethnic minority. And China is certainly not alone in its criticisms.While legislation alone is not enough, it could provide a significant first step in bringing Australia’s immigration detention regime in line with its human rights obligations.Both major political parties in Australia have historically supported onshore and offshore mandatory detention of non-citizens.However, with the current make-up of the parliament and a new government committed to uniting Australians around “our shared values of fairness and opportunity” and “kindness to those in need”, this is an opportunity for Australia to demonstrate a renewed commitment to international law and the fundamental principles on which the UN system is based.
Sigh… As always, apart from the substance, lack of transparency and predictability on timelines cross-cut virtually all IRCC administrative problems:
A former Canadian military legal officer says a group of Afghan lawyers and other staff who helped his mission in Afghanistan have been “left in the dark,” and is urging Canada’s Immigration Ministry to act quickly to help them escape the Taliban.
It’s been one year since Canada began accepting fleeing Afghans through its one-year special immigration program for Afghans who helped the Canadian government, set up a few weeks before Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021.
To date, roughly 17,170 Afghans have arrived in Canada. Last month, the Liberal government closed its immigration program to new applicants, less than halfway toward its goal of bringing 40,000 Afghans to Canada.
“If [Canada] would not act upon my request and as soon as possible, I could lose my life,” said Popal, one of the Afghan military prosecutors who applied for this program, and whom CBC has agreed not to identify.
“When Popal called me for help, it was very heart-wrenching,” said retired major Cory Moore, a former military legal officer with the Canadian Armed Forces who was deployed three times to Afghanistan.
Moore is helping 12 applicants and their families apply for this program, and is still waiting for word from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) on the fate of these 66 people. Their applications were filed between September and December 2021.
The group includes military prosecutors, criminal investigators, security staff, recruitment video participants, a doctor and a journalist.
All 12 Afghans were involved in various capacities during Moore’s mission to help bolster the Afghan National Army’s legal branch. He created a project to recruit Afghan law grads, making a recruitment video which aired nationally from 2012 to 2021.
As a result, eight female military lawyers were hired as prosecutors and criminal investigators with the military, in what Moore calls a “historical precedent.”
“During the period in time in which we were doing the video shooting, it was a particularly dangerous time in Kabul when I had a target on my back,” he said.
“They never left my side. They never cut and run…. It’s why Canada can’t turn its back on them now.”
‘We are getting hopeless’
Popal, who appeared in that recruitment video, was an Afghan army prosecutor for 10 years.
Through WhatsApp video chat, Popal said he and his family are in “extreme danger” because of his involvement with the recruitment project.
“We are getting hopeless and … we are just waiting for our death,” he said in Dari, through an interpreter.
Popal, who was reduced to tears during the conversation, said it’s been a year of hardship for his family. His kids can’t go to school or appear in public spaces, and he’s unable to work so it’s been difficult to put food on the table. The family is facing “serious threats,” he said.
“The danger we are facing is because we helped Canadians.”
Maryam, whose identity CBC has also agreed to protect because she’s also in hiding, is the first of the eight female lawyers hired as a result of Moore’s project. (Three of the lawyers have not yet been accounted for, Moore said.)
She prosecuted Taliban members accused of infiltrating the Afghan National Army. She also criminally investigated sexual assault cases involving Afghan military members who committed offences against army nurses.
“I’m in danger because of that position,” she said in Dari, through an interpreter.
Maryam spoke about the mental health impact the wait has had on her and her family.
“We’ve all got kind of psychological issues, psychological problems,” she said, pleading through tears: “Justin Trudeau … please get us out of here. Please, evacuate us from here…. We cannot live here anymore.”
Silence from department
Moore contacted IRCC several times this spring about the status of the 12 applications.
“I wasn’t hearing anything,” he said. “They explained that none of the 12 applicants … were coming up in their system.”
After seeking clarity from other agents, Moore said one of them told him this: “She explained that if you had been screened out at the initial review stage, you’re not invited formally to make [an] application … and if you don’t receive an email like that, then your case just disappears.”
To date, none of the 12 Afghans received an email from IRCC about their application status. The government website instructs applicants to “wait for us to contact you” once an application has been submitted.
“They don’t receive anything. They’re just left in the dark,” said Moore.
“[For Canada] to shut the door on a group of people who were so intimately involved in helping me succeed with my project, it’s unfathomable.”
By speaking publicly, Moore wants to stress how each applicant played a critical role in helping him and the Canadian military.
“There’s no question that Afghanistan was made better by their work with me,” said Moore. “And quite honestly, I think Canada is a better place with this fine group of people in it.”
Tight timeline a ‘slap in the face’
Tamar Boghossian, an immigration lawyer with Boghossian Morais LLP, is helping Moore with the case. Last week, she refiled and updated all 12 applications.
Boghossian said all 12 applicants meet the government’s eligibility requirements, which she called “very vague.” The government lists just two examples of who can apply — Afghan nationals who worked at the Canadian embassy, or interpreters — but adds the program “is not limited to” those professions.
The issue, Boghossian said, is that the program has “no transparency.” The short timeline is also problematic, as the one-year program has already expired, she added.
“It’s a slap in the face … to those who actually helped the Canadian government,” said Boghossian. “Why can’t we help these individuals in return?”
She explained that most individuals who’ve applied to this special program don’t have proper documentation or passports, and are having difficulty obtaining them because they’re in hiding.
She’s urging the Trudeau government to not only extend the deadline for applications, but to also expand the number of people Canada will receive.
“40,000 applicants is not a lot for, you know, Canada being in Afghanistan for almost 15 years,” Boghossian said.
Government decision ‘shameful,’ says MP
During a news conference last month, Conservative MP and IRCC shadow minister Jasraj Singh Hallan called the Liberal government’s decision to wind down its one-year program “shameful.”
The Conservatives are among those calling on the government to reopen the special immigration program, and Hallan said it’s Canada’s “moral responsibility to help those who served alongside our country.”
“The government’s decision to shut down the [special program] is unconscionable,” Hallan said.
NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan has said the government’s claim that other immigration avenues remain open to Afghans is “deceptive.”
“That is just a rejection,” she said.
Ministry working ‘as quickly as possible’
On behalf of IRCC, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser’s office said it could not comment on the 12 applicants’ cases for privacy reasons.
The ministry said it’s received 15,210 applications under the special program, and has approved about two-thirds of them so far.
“We are working to process applications as quickly as possible,” wrote Aidan Strickland, the minister’s spokesperson, noting the resettlement initiative for Afghans is uniquely challenging.
Strickland said the eligibility requirements are meant “to be as inclusive as possible,” and can include cooks, drivers and other staff who helped Canada’s military.
“We have accomplished much, but there is still more work to be done,” she wrote.
The office did not say whether it will reopen the program.
Would be interesting to see the breakdown between Montreal and the rest of Quebec, where immigration is low as is the number of visible and religious minorities:
New research shows that three years after Quebec’s secularism law — commonly known as Bill 21 — was adopted, religious minorities in the province are feeling increasingly alienated and hopeless.
“Religious minority communities are encountering — at levels that are disturbing — a reflection of disdain, hate, mistrust and aggression,” Miriam Taylor, lead researcher and the director of publications and partnerships at the Association for Canadian Studies, told CBC in an interview.
“We even saw threats and physical violence,” Taylor said.
Bill 21, which passed in 2019, bars public school teachers, police officers, judges and government lawyers, among other civil servants in positions of authority, from wearing religious symbols — such as hijabs, crucifixes or turbans — while at work.
Taylor and her colleagues at the association worked with polling firm Leger to gather a unique portrait of attitudes toward Bill 21 in Quebec.
The association surveyed members of certain religious minority communities including 632 Muslims, 165 Jews and 56 Sikhs.
Those results were folded into a Leger survey of the Quebec population as whole, and then weighted to ensure the sample was representative of the entire population.
That allowed Taylor to compare and contrast the attitudes toward Bill 21 of Quebecers who are religious minorities with the attitudes of Quebecers as a whole.
In total 1,828 people were questioned in the online survey.
Taylor shared an advance copy of her final report, which is being released today, with CBC.
Muslim women most affected
Although all three religious minority groups surveyed said they’ve experienced negative impacts due to Bill 21, the effects are being most acutely felt by Muslims and, in particular, Muslim women.
“We saw severe social stigmatisation of Muslim women, marginalization of Muslim women and very disturbing declines in their sense of well-being, their ability to fulfil their aspirations, sense of safety, but also hope for the future,” Taylor said.
Of the Muslim women surveyed, 78 per cent said their feeling of being accepted as a full-fledged member of Quebec society had worsened over the last three years.
Fifty-three per cent said they’d heard prejudicial remarks about Muslims from family, friends or colleagues.
People surveyed were given the opportunity to share examples of comments they’d heard or behaviours they’d experienced.
One reported hearing: ”These Muslim women with rags on their heads, if they are not able to integrate, let them return to their country.”
Forty-seven per cent of Muslim women said they’d been treated unfairly by a person in a position of authority.
One person reported being called a “dirty immigrant” by a police officer in Quebec City. Another reported that a teacher told disparaging anecdotes about Islam in class.
Two thirds of Muslim women said they’d been a victim of and/or a witness to a hate crime. Seventy-three per cent said their feeling of being safe in public had worsened.
Taylor found that nearly three quarters of Muslim women surveyed felt their comfort about safety in public had worsened in the three years since Bill 21 was adopted. (Association for Canadian Studies)
People surveyed offered examples ranging from racist remarks to death threats, having hijabs ripped off and being spat on. One person reported that a man deliberately tried to run over them and their three-year-old daughter with a pickup truck.
A majority of Muslims also reported feeling less hopeful, less free to express themselves in public and less likely to participate in social and political life.
“For a law that’s supposed to be very moderate and only touch a very small number of people, we were shocked at the responses,” Taylor said.
She said the response she found most upsetting was that 83 per cent of Muslim women surveyed said their confidence in their children’s future had worsened since Bill 21 passed.
Taylor said the figure that most upset her was the lack of hope Quebec Muslims have for their children’s future. (Association for Canadian Studies)
“It’s one thing to say: ‘you know what, I’m experiencing a lot of unfair treatment because I’m not understood,'” Taylor said. “It’s another thing to project forward and have no hope for your children.”
Law reinforces existing prejudices
Taylor believes Bill 21 alone isn’t responsible for the feelings of alienation and insecurity Quebec Muslims and other religious minorities feel.
She said prejudicial attitudes have been gestating in Quebec for nearly 20 years, when the debate over so-called “reasonable accommodations” for religious minorities first took hold.
“Malaise, fear and anxieties get provoked over time,” Taylor said.
She said often those anxieties are based on ignorance.
“By their own admission, Quebecers in general have very little contact with members of religious minorities,” Taylor said. “All of these negative opinions are based on lack of knowledge.”
Taylor said Bill 21 has enabled those prejudices — rooted in ignorance — to become the norm.
“We end up with a situation where the malaise of the observer trumps the deep convictions of the person actually wearing the religious symbols,” Taylor said.
“We’re validating and reinforcing those opinions, and then we’re politicizing the symbols. Those symbols are lightning rods,” she said.
“And so we end up dehumanizing the people wearing the symbols,” Taylor said.
Women generally less supportive of Bill 21
Taylor said that Bill 21 has consistently maintained the support of about two thirds of Quebecers since it was adopted, with a dip last January after the high-profile case of a hijab-wearing teacher in Chelsea who was removed from the classroom and reassigned.
But she said that support is nuanced and full of contradictions.
Women in Quebec, for example, are generally less supportive of Bill 21 than men. Sixty-eight per cent of men support the law compared to 58 per cent of women.
Taylor said the research showed that women, and in particular young women, are less supportive of Bill 21 than men. (Association for Canadian Studies)
And the younger women are, the less likely they are to support the law. Just 31 per cent of women aged 18-24 support Bill 21.
Taylor said that raised questions for her.
“It’s touted as a feminist law by the people who support it. So why is it that particularly the younger women of Quebec are so much less in favour of it when one would expect the reverse proportion?” she said.
Support for the law but not for enforcement
Another statistic that surprised Taylor: even Quebecers who support the law don’t necessarily want to see it enforced.
Only 40 per cent of people surveyed believe a public servant who does not comply with the law should lose their job.
“The law is supported and liked by Quebecers. But they seem much less keen to see it actually applied,” Taylor said.
“I think that we’re a human society and we care about people. We all need income to survive and I think people are aware of what a heavy price that would be to pay,” she said.
Quebecers care about what courts say about Bill 21
Taylor was also surprised that the survey showed that Quebecers care deeply about what courts have to say about Bill 21.
When drafting the law, the Quebec government, recognizing that it would likely violate both the Canadian and the Quebec charters of rights, pre-emptively invoked the constitutional notwithstanding clause, and altered the Quebec charter to try to shut down court challenges.
But those challenges came anyway, and now both the government and groups that oppose the bill are challenging a 2021 Quebec Superior Court ruling that upheld most of the law before the Quebec Court of Appeal.
It’s widely expected the law will eventually be challenged in the Supreme Court of Canada.
The bill’s architect, Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette, has argued that it’s up to elected politicians in the National Assembly — and not the courts — to decide how they want to organize relations between the state and religion.
But Quebecers seem to feel differently.
Sixty-four per cent, roughly the same percentage that support the bill, also feel it’s important for the Supreme Court to issue an opinion on whether Bill 21 is discriminatory.
And if the courts were to confirm the law is discriminatory, support for the bill would plummet.
Only 46 per cent of people surveyed — less than half — said they would continue to support the law if the courts confirmed it violates the Charter of Rights.
Debate not over
Jolin-Barrette has portrayed Quebecers as united in support of the bill, and has accused detractors of trying to divide Quebecers.
But Taylor’s survey shows that a majority of Quebecers — 56 per cent — believe the law itself is divisive.
When Bill 21 was adopted, Jolin-Barrette said it would “permit a harmonious transition toward secularism” for Quebec.
Taylor said that clearly hasn’t been the case.
“The debate is very far from closed,” she said. “Bill 21 is having devastating impacts on citizens in our province. It’s tearing apart our social fabric and I think it’s undermining our democracy.”
“If national unity is achieved at the expense of labelling minorities as in some way harmful or a threat, these are signs of the degeneration of democracy,” she said.
Taylor said as a Quebecer, she finds this distressing.
“We live in a very distinct province. We’re different. It’s an experiment that on some level should never have succeeded: a thriving French society on an English continent,” she said.
“In all my years, I associate that distinct nature with a humanity, with understanding how important identity is,” Taylor said.
She said Bill 21 threatens that.
“I feel like we’re doing major harm to those values that we hold dear and that make us special,” Taylor said.
Companies that are underperforming in comparison to their competitors or to their goals are more likely to experience a decrease in racial and gender diversity rates on their boards, a newly released study has found.
Researchers at Imperial College Business School in London tracked data from more than 700 U.S. firms from 1996 to 2013 to make the assessment.
Dr. HeeJung Jung, Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at Imperial College Business School, and lead researcher of the study, tells TIME that this phenomenon is not deliberate, but rather a result of the pressure firms face to better adapt and begin performing well. Leaders search for a quick solution, but boards can become less inclusive as executives minimize their boards, or unconsciously seek directors that have similar ascriptive backgrounds.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
“The board deliberately seeks new expertise and new perspectives among a variety of industries and backgrounds in the belief that it might rescue the company. But while this expertise came from a range of sectors, that’s as far as the diversity goes, in terms of race and gender,” Jung says.
Despite ongoing conversations about racial equity becoming more prevalent across the U.S., particularly after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, when companies made public pledges to better address racial inequality, Jung says that there is still a lot of fluctuation when looking at racial and gender diversity rates across corporate America.
In 2021, women comprised just 27% of board seats among the 3,000 largest publicly traded companies incorporated in the U.S., and only 6% of those seats were held by women of color, according to a report by the Women Business Collaborative. Men of color held 9% of board seats in the same year. Black board membership increased by nearly a third in 2021, but accounted for only 6.4% of directors overall.
Jung notes that companies will always experience periods of growth and decline, making more consistent strides for diversity and inclusion among the workforce difficult. The problem is, diversity is not a priority for companies when profits decrease, Jung says. “In their view, diversity efforts or DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] matters last, it becomes a second matter or a second goal.”
Some countries in Europe have safeguards in place that would prevent progress on board diversity being rolled back. Gender diversity quotas are common in nations like France, Norway, Spain and Iceland, where women must make up at least 40% of boards at publicly traded companies, according to the Harvard Business Review.
While research about the benefits of gender-based diversity in the U.S. has shown mixed results, Jung says this may be because, despite great strides in female leadership, American corporate culture has not yet normalized it. One of the roadblocks to progress that female CEOs often face is pushback from teams, including constant cross-checking of their decisions to verify that they are acting “correctly,” Jung says.
“That causes an efficiency problem, and in a time of crisis where speed is important for any corporation, having this is a delay in decisions [and] makes directors [from underrepresented backgrounds] doubt their leadership too,” Jung told TIME.
Diversity efforts in corporate America
Currently, the U.S. has no federal policy that mandates inclusivity, though that has not stopped local governments from attempting to implement changes. States like Washington, for instance, require at least a quarter of a public company’s board to be women. In California, a law, passed in 2020, requiring public companies to have greater racial and gender diversity on their boards, was struck down in April, according to the New York Times, but the state still has a 2018 law in effect that forces companies to have at least one woman on their board.
In some cases, business leaders have created their own solutions. Last year, Nasdaq secured regulatory approval for plans to require listed companies to share diversity data about their boards of directors. Companies without at least two diverse directors, including one who self-identifies as a woman and one who identifies as an underrepresented minority or LGBTQ+, are required to explain their lack of diversity.
Having executives from underrepresented backgrounds in positions of leadership helps too. Jung’s study found that when board member chairs come from underrepresented groups, they are less likely to sacrifice the gender and racial diversity of their board in response to a downturn.
But, as Jung states, retaining diverse talent requires companies to take the important first step of creating corporate norms that recognize the value of having diverse teams. “It’s not only about bringing [diverse candidates] in but also making them play an important role in the board and change the norms,” she says. “There’s a lot of positive benefits and corporations have to be very sensitive about and must pay attention to make a better strategy for their boardroom structures and who they are going to appoint.”
Sigh… The usual over-reaction over what should be a non-issue:
Une publicité de HEC Montréal montrant une femme qui porte le hidjab et dénoncée par l’ex-politicien Jean-François Lisée a continué de susciter de nombreuses réactions mardi.
Alors que deux avocates de confession musulmane témoignaient dans nos pages de leur désaccord avec la position de M. Lisée, qui considère que la publicité présente un « signe religieux misogyne », la présidente du Rassemblement pour la laïcité, Nadia El-Mabrouk, abonde plutôt dans le sens de l’ex-politicien et dénonce la publicité.
[Montrer le voile dans la publicité], c’est un point de vue favorable à l’islam intégriste, c’est mettre de l’avant des pratiques intégristes
« Ce n’est pas neutre de faire ça. Ça vient avec une vision de la diversité et de la représentativité des signes religieux », plaide-t-elle en entrevue téléphonique. La Québécoise d’origine tunisienne, qui est aussi professeure au Département d’informatique et de recherche opérationnelle à l’Université de Montréal, croit qu’« on n’a pas à représenter toutes les idées » dans des campagnes publicitaires. « [Montrer le voile dans la publicité], c’est un point de vue favorable à l’islam intégriste, c’est mettre de l’avant des pratiques intégristes, assène-t-elle. Quand les femmes disent “c’est mon choix” [de porter le voile], ça ne répond pas à la question “pourquoi c’est mon choix ?” »
En entrevue avec Le Devoir la veille, l’avocate de formation et autrice Dania Suleman a soutenu que « certaines femmes portent le hidjab par choix, et ça leur permet de se sentir beaucoup plus libres ». Elle a également estimé la position de M. Lisée « désolante », jugeant qu’elle « continue à aliéner les femmes qui portent le voile ».
Mme El-Mabrouk, autrice du livre Notre laïcité, paru en 2019, est fortement en désaccord. « On ne peut pas prendre un symbole clair de l’islamisme et prétendre que ça dit exactement le contraire », soutient-elle.
Sur les réseaux sociaux
De nombreux citoyens se sont indignés du tweet de Jean-François Lisée, tandis que plusieurs lui ont apporté leur appui, dont notamment Ensaf Haidar, ex-candidate du Bloc québécois dans Sherbrooke et femme du blogueur Raif Badawi. « En tant que musulmane pacifique, j’insiste sur le fait que le voile ne vient pas de l’Islam et qu’il est un symbole de l’esclavage et de l’oppression des femmes. Arrêtez d’abuser des femmes avec des publicités aussi stupides », a-t-elle écrit sur Twitter.
Le député néodémocrate de Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie, Alexandre Boulerice, s’est néanmoins montré très critique de la position de M. Lisée. « Donc science et islam seraient incompatibles ? Alors que science et pas de signe religieux apparent de christianisme serait correct ? » a-t-il questionné. M. Lisée a répondu : « Tu crois que le Coran est fondé sur la science? La Bible? La Torah? Qu’une institution de haut savoir scientifique doit promouvoir leurs symboles ? »
Par courriel, la conseillère principale en relation avec les médias de HEC Montréal, Émilie Novales, a confirmé que la femme dans la publicité est une « étudiante au parcours international » et que l’institution accueille « un nombre croissant d’étudiants internationaux » chaque année. « Nous tenons à ce que tous les membres de notre communauté étudiante puissent être mis en valeur sur nos plateformes, reflétant toute notre diversité », ajoute-t-elle.
Yet another pathway. Could this not be better handled by H&C rather than adding further complexity and multiplicity of pathways when IRCC has large backlogs?
The new permanent residency pathway applies to those who wish to come to Canada to settle and support members of their family who lost their spouse, common-law partner or parent, according to a government media release.
To ensure that extended family members have close ties to the surviving family member, the family member who is in Canada will need to provide a statutory declaration. There is a limit of two extended family members per family unit.
The victim of the air disasters must have been a Canadian citizen, permanent resident, or foreign national who had been approved for permanent residence. In the Ethiopia Airlines crash, 22 victims were Canadian, and the Ukraine International Airlines aircraft had 85 victims who were Canadian citizens or permanent residents.
This new measure follows IRCC’s May 2021 policy, which offered a pathway to permanent residence for family members of these air disaster victims who were already in Canada. That policy ended on May 11, 2022. Eligible immediate and extended family members can now apply even if they are outside Canada.
The public policy for families outside Canada is in effect from August 3, 2022, until August 2, 2023.
Eligibility criteria
To be eligible to apply, you must be outside Canada. You and your family members must also not be inadmissible to Canada.
You must be related to either a Canadian victim or their spouse or common-law partner who passed away on flights Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 or Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752. You must provide a complete and signed statutory declaration (IMM 0171) from a surviving family member in Canada. Family members can only sign a statutory declaration for a maximum of two principal applicants.
Eligible relatives of the victim include the following:
spouse or common-law partner
child (of any age)
parent
grandparent
grandchild
sibling (including half siblings)
aunt or uncle (their mother or father’s sibling)
nephew or niece (the child of their sibling)
Eligible relatives of a victims’ spouse or common-law partner include:
child
parent
grandparent
grandchild
sibling (including half-siblings)
aunt or uncle (the sibling of a victim’s parent)
nephew or niece (the child of a victim’s sibling)
You can include members of your family in your application if they meet all the admissibility requirements to become Canadian permanent residents.
Even if your family members do not plan to come to Canada, you must declare them on your application. Otherwise, you will not be able to sponsor them later.
For better or worse (as in these cases), all countries exercise sovereignty over who is admitted and who is not. Not “offloading responsibility” to the USA, just a reflection of reality:
Amir Abolhassani sold his house in Saskatoon when his U.S.-based employer asked him to relocate to North Carolina. But at the Calgary airport this January, his family was not allowed to cross the border.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer told Abolhassani, who is a Canadian citizen, that it was because of time he spent as a conscript in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) more than a decade ago. The family was subjected to a secondary screening involving a long interview and an extensive search of their belongings, cellphones and social media.
“It’s like we are not Canadians and our lives, our suffering is not important to anyone,” Abolhassani said.
“Am I not Canadian enough? The stress to be linked to a terrorist organization is the worst thing.”
The Trump administration labelled the IRGC as a terrorist organization in 2019. Abolhassani said all men in Iran above the age of 18 have to do mandatory service with one of the arms of the military.
“One in every three Iranians will be assigned to IRGC because it is one of the biggest branches of the military.”
Abolhassani said refusing conscription would prevent a man from getting a passport or accessing civic amenities, and can sometimes lead to further punishment.
“I know around 500 cases, almost 150 are Iranian-Canadians and others are Iranians that are facing the same situation.”
CBC News spoke with 15 Iranian-Canadians, all of them Canadian citizens, who continue to be stopped and detained while crossing into other countries due to their names being flagged as people who have helped a terrorist organization. All say they feel they are treated as second-class citizens.
“The officer said my wife can’t go to the U.S. either because she may have received military training from me. It’s disastrous,” Abolhassani said. “In two months of training, I held a weapon for three days. I have just fired four bullets in my life. A typical American teenager may have fired more.”
‘We’re not real Canadians yet’
Worried about losing his job, the 41-year-old applied for a visa to the U.S., but he is worried because he knows some people have been waiting for U.S. visas since 2019.
“We’re not real Canadians yet. Once you are flagged at the U.S. border, your name enters a list that when you are travelling to or from Canada and any other ally of the U.S., you will be flagged,” he said.
Maryam Ghasemi, a research assistant professor at the University of Waterloo, was supposed to begin a new research position at Augusta University in Georgia on Aug. 1. When Ghasemi went to the Rainbow Bridge border office in Niagara Falls, Ont., in May to apply for a TN Visa, she was denied.
Ghasemi said officers from Homeland Security searched through her family’s social media then escorted them to their car without giving any reasons.
“A CBP officer told me having a passport of the country doesn’t give me the nationality. She said my background is something else and that I’m not Canadian. That was really rude,” she said.
The family was given a letter of inadmissibility to the U.S. with no further explanation and was asked to consult the consulate in Toronto to get approved. An officer later told her it was because her husband had served in the IRGC.
“The university has decided to postpone my position until next semester. But if the visa process doesn’t work out, I will lose the position. The future is not clear to us.”
Canada offloading responsibility to the U.S.
Ghasemi, like many others, contacted members of Parliament and the Prime Minister’s Office, only to be told that it is not Canada’s responsibility.
The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) told CBC News in an email statement that though it is aware of instances of Iranian-Canadians being denied entry to the U.S. and other countries, there is not an internal mechanism for tracking them.
“The CBSA does not possess any power or authority to intervene in the immigration decisions made by other nations,” the statement said.
Global Affairs Canada shared a similar response.
“As a sovereign state, the U.S. retains the prerogative to determine the admissibility and the screening procedures for the entry of foreign nationals,” a spokesperson said.
But Iranian-Canadians like Abolhassani and Ghasemi say it is very much a Canadian problem.
“We feel we are second-class citizens. I thought Canada would support us, but we are not very important. This is shameful,” Ghasemi said.
“We want the government to stand up for us because they can solve it if they want to as they did with the Muslim ban. No one is taking action.”
CBC News reached out to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and CBP for a comment, but did not receive a response before publication.
4S on boarding pass
Iranian-Canadians with past conscription with IRGC often receive a “4S” designation, which stands for Secondary Security Screening Selection, on their boarding passes.
Javad Mokhtarzadeh, a business owner in Montreal, said that on a recent trip to Europe his family was screened upon arrival and when they returned to Canada, their boarding passes had 4S on them.
“Officers talk to us as if we aren’t Canadian citizens. You granted me citizenship [and] my daughter was born here. I told my five-year-old daughter, it’s part of the game when passing airports,” Mokhtarzadeh said.
“It was so frustrating and infuriating they asked my little girl to raise hands for body inspection and remove her shoes. In my own country, I’m treated this way and asked whether I have something to hide.”
Calgary resident Kamran Farzamfar said the problem affects even Canadian-Iranians, those born in Canada but of Iranian descent.
Farzamfar’s family of four visited the U.S. multiple times before 2019, for both leisure and work. But when they went to the airport for their first vacation since the pandemic this past February, they were denied entry.
“I tried to ask the officer if they can let my sons go for holiday at least, but [they] refused us entry that day,” Farzamfar said.
A few days later, the family tried again to have their sons allowed in for the trip.
“My son, who was born here, was denied entry. This issue is not only affecting Iranian-Canadians but also Canadian-Iranians,” he said.
On another occasion, when coming back from Frankfurt, a friend accompanying Farzamfar was also given a 4S designation, as they were on the same booking reference.
‘Zero rights as a Canadian’
Toronto resident Samin Kalhor tried to drive into the U.S. with his girlfriend, who had newly obtained Canadian citizenship, her mother and two little dogs. They were planning on celebrating Thanksgiving with family.
All three were stopped at the Buffalo border.
“They took my phone, credit cards, searched the car thoroughly and even the dogs. For five hours, they collected biometrics, fingerprints, retina scans and copied all the data from my phone including social media,” he said.
“My girlfriend, who I’d known for two months, was also denied entry.”
The couple met the same fate when travelling to Mexico for the new year holiday.
Kalhor said he was interrogated for seven hours in Cancun, in a room with glass walls with other “bad guys.”
“All the passengers passing by could see me sitting there as if I did something wrong. They asked questions about my religion, sexuality, and everything you can imagine,” he said. “It was probably one of the worst days of my life. I’m a very self-confident person but it crushed me.”
Kalhor said he came to Canada to make a better life for himself, but feels stuck. He said the issue will affect more Iranian-Canadians as travel picks up.
“If I want to plan my honeymoon, where should I go? Wherever I’ll go, I’ll get flagged. This is forever,” Kalhor said.
“I have zero rights as a Canadian. If other countries put IRGC on their lists, we’re doomed.”
A reminder that immigration levels and mix should factor in trends in automation. Current high levels do not do so, nor do relaxed requirements for Temporary Foreign Workers. Neither approach will improve productivity and GDP per capita, nor will these approaches encourage Canadian firms to invest more in technology and automation:
A precursor to our automated future sits inconspicuously off Baldwin Street in Toronto’s busy Kensington Market.
The RC Coffee Robo Cafe, which juts out slightly from the brick wall by the sidewalk, bills itself as Canada’s first robotic café.
As opposed to a vending-machine brew that dispenses coffee from hand-filled urns, the robotic barista makes each cup of coffee, espresso, latte and more by request, ready in just a few moments.
For Jasmine Arnold, visiting Toronto from Providence, R.I., the iced matcha prepared at RC Coffee topped drinks dispensed by a vending machine and was on par with coffee served at a chain.
While the drink went down smooth, she told Global News the experience was unique if a little jarring.
“I have mixed feelings about a robot, from a jobs perspective,” she said, expressing some discomfort about what this means for the prospects of human baristas.
After trying his own robo-poured beverage, Arnold’s partner Eric echoed her sentiments but noted that with the pandemic changing our expectations of what work can be done from where, it seemed to align with recent shifts in work.
“I think this is kind of where we’re going as a society,” he said.
Workforce shifts driven by a tight labour market and the COVID-19 pandemicare opening the door to a faster adoption of automated solutions, but at least one expert is warning that Canada might not be prepared for how quickly robotic workers are set to transform the economy.
Robots in demand in tight labour markets
Statistics Canada said Friday that though Canada shed some 31,000 jobs in July, the country’s unemployment rate remained at its lowest ever at 4.9 per cent last month. The labour market is even hotter in the U.S., with unemployment falling to 3.5 per cent in July.
This tight North American job market is driving up interest in automated solutions, says Brad Ford, vice-president of sales for KioCafé in Canada, the company that operates RC Coffee.
The company had just one RC Coffee kiosk in Toronto in the fall of 2020, which it had launched as an “experiment,” he recalls. But in the past two and a half years, it’s scaled up to five locations across the Greater Toronto Area with three more on the way.
Most storefront locations are in high-traffic neighbourhoods, but there’s also a standalone RC Coffee kiosk in the Toronto General Hospital.
Hospitals, universities and airports have been among Kio Cafe’s most interested customers, Ford says, as these locations have been unable to staff their coffee shops quickly enough to accommodate the surge in demand from the pandemic recovery.
“People have been knocking at our door trying to buy the equipment from us, especially in the U.S., where they just cannot get the staff to open up the locations,” he says.
Companies in other sectors are also increasingly embracing automation. Beyond just installing self-checkout systems, grocers like Loblaw and Sobeys are turning to robotics to speed up fulfilment. The company announced plans in June to open an automated distribution centre in the GTA by early 2024.
The Association for Advancing Automation said that U.S. workplace orders for robots were up 40 per cent in the first quarter of 2022. That followed a record 2021 that saw a 28 per cent jump in orders fueled by non-automotive sectors.
Pandemic accelerated automated future
While it was “coincidental” that RC Coffee offered a touch-free experience just as the pandemic was getting underway, Ford notes this has also been an in-demand upside.
The pace of automation has only been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, says Dan Ciuriak, senior fellow with the Center for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Ont.
He points to the 2020 Beijing Olympics (held in 2021), when China ramped up development of contactless services to reduce opportunities for COVID transmission, as a hint at what to expect our post-pandemic realities to become.
Looking at hospitals specifically, Ciuriak says there’s an opportunity to automate work beyond just the food court.
Amid a widely reported health-care staffing shortage, more than one in five Canadian nurses worked paid overtime shifts in July, Statistics Canada reported Friday. Some 11.2 per cent of nurses were meanwhile off sick for part of the week when the labour force survey was conducted.
Ciuriak says that there’s an opportunity for increasingly intelligent robots to support or even replace some nursing jobs as Canada’s ageing population threatens to overwhelm an already stressed health system.
“That is going to be a great boon and will enable us to actually get through this demographic transition,” he says.
This is largely what futurists — Ciuriak included, he notes — had long expected our automated future to look like: robots working side-by-side with humans, streamlining simple tasks and making us more productive.
But developments in artificial intelligence are seeing more powerful chips accelerate the pace of automation, he says. Each time a machine surpasses a human in a knowledge-based field, such as Google’s DeepMind AI mastering chess, Ciuriak says we should consider the implications for work we long assumed was solely meant for humans.
“You’re seeing just tremendous scaling up of the power of these networks. And that is being reflected in how many artificial intelligence systems are breaking through human benchmarks. This is now a regular phenomenon,” he says.
“We’re at the dawn of a new era, and that’s going to have massive implications for the labour market.”
Service-sector jobs at risk
The services sector in particular is rife for disruption, Ciuriak says, and it’s not just entry-level positions at risk.
He argues, for example, that skills a person might gain from years of investment and studying toward a law degree could be largely replicated — and mass-produced — on a computer chip within the next decade.
When these services, typically constrained by human limits, become scaled up through automation, the implications for income generation and distribution will be immense. The owners of these machines would become new centres for wealth concentration, he argues, warranting a shift in thinking about how we tax the products of this work.
“We are embarking into a new type of economy that we’re not prepared to regulate or manage,” Ciuriak says.
While he doesn’t believe that RC Coffee Robo Cafes will ever replace the traditional barista or communal feel of the local coffee shop, Ford does acknowledge some “front-line” jobs could be at risk in our automated future.
He argues, however, that the machines themselves are “job creators.” Each cafe requires an extensive development and maintenance team behind them, and the machines themselves require the same material inputs as your typical Starbucks or Tim Hortons.
By enabling more coffee shop locations to open today rather than shuttering due to staff shortages, Ford argues that java producers are able to keep their businesses running and maintain employment throughout the coffee supply chain.
“The more that we can roll these things out and get great coffee out there, I think it’s great for everybody.”
My experience over a comparable period has been much less negative than that of Kaczorowski. And underlying his viewpoint is a certain arrogance within the public service, one that I learned to confront when working on citizenship and multiculturalism issues under the Conservatives and then Minister Kenney, as they forced me to become more aware of my biases and assumptions.To a certain extent, some “institutional timidity” is necessary for the public service, given its stewardship role and the risks involved in change. Service Canada offered the potential of citizen-centred service in the mid-2000s but such a major transformation was deemed to be too risky and thus its objectives became more modest.That being said, a deeper outside look of the public service than yet another internal review has merit:
Real public service reform requires an independent examination. It can’t be left to government ‘insiders’In his recent Ottawa Citizen essay, Kevin Lynch provides a blunt but necessary critique of the federal public service. The time for root-and-branch reform is long overdue to save the public service from itself.In recent months, we have had ample evidence of a public service seemingly floundering and failing at its most basic task: providing professional, timely and accurate service to Canadians. Stories of airport and passport office chaos abound. The legacy of the Phoenix pay system fiasco remains with us to this day. Whether it is procurement or IT services, the federal government appears incapable of delivering goods and services on time and on budget.
As Lynch notes, some of the problems are of the current government’s own making. Rather than focusing on a few core initiatives, the Trudeau government has too often sought to be all things to all people, trying to appease every constituency seeking attention and resources. As a consequence, the government has too often appeared scattered and unfocused, offering myriad initiatives while failing at implementation and follow-up.
Other issues, such as the predominant role of the Prime Minister’s Office and the influence — not to mention interference — of political staff in departmental business are longstanding problems that predate the current administration but that have grown worse over time. The primary concern of political staffers is optics: how will this or that initiative play to party supporters? How can I position my minister to maximum political effect? Political staffers are seldom, if ever, substantive experts, and are naturally resented by professional public servants who have spent years in a particular policy field.
Policy expertise, however, is not an excuse for complacency, and here the public service of today is found wanting. I began my own public service career as a university summer student in 1983. I fully subscribed to the ideal of public service as a noble vocation. I had hopes of following in the footsteps of the great public servants of the past, such as Gordon Robertson. After 30 years of toil, I retired from the public service in 2018, exhausted and dispirited. I left not because I had to, but because I simply could not continue shouting into the wind.
Over the years, I witnessed a public service in which innovative thinking gave way to institutional timidity and a culture where contrary thinking was too often deemed unhelpful and unwelcome. This is how public service goes from being an honourable calling to a debilitating grind.
I saw a number of public service “renewal” exercises come and go. Yet each of these — whether it was La Releve in the 1990s, Public Service 2000 or Beyond 2020 — suffered from the same fatal flaw. They were all internal reviews led by the senior managers most invested in the status quo and therefore highly unlikely to challenge that status quo. These “in-house” initiatives produced little that was new or innovative on key issues such as recruitment, the loss of corporate memory, the political-public service relationship, accountability, or the role of the public service as a generator of innovative policy initiatives and advice.
Favouring the familiar over the new breeds inertia and decay.Take the single issue of remote work. I well remember the roadblocks, not to mention the paperwork, senior managers put before staff when it came to what we then called “teleworking.” Too many managers came with the mindset that they could not be seen as effective unless their “minions” were within easy reach. The COVID-19 pandemic put an end to the excuses associated with remote work, as well as the idea that public servants would not be working as hard as in the office. Indeed, public servants working remotely have had to juggle work and family responsibilities, all the while labouring under the assumption that they are available around the clock.
Remote working was a success, yet we already see efforts under the guise of federal “Return to Work” directives which imply a desperate effort to put public servants back in their cubicles.
In the first instance, the “return to work” moniker is insulting. Public servants have not been on holiday during the pandemic. They have been working harder and longer, in makeshift offices (a kitchen counter, a spare bedroom) and with often-outdated and unreliable IT. The notion that pushing public servants back into the downtown core is required to “grow the economy” would be laughable if it were not so bereft of reason.
What is to be done? The federal public service has historically been the subject of royal commissions. The Royal Commission on Government Organization — known as the Glassco Commission — was appointed in 1960 and chaired by businessman J. Grant Glassco. The commission issued a five-volume report in 1962 and 1963. It recommended that government departments be managed on a decentralized basis, that the Treasury Board be reorganized, and that senior management should rotate among departments.
More far-reaching was the Royal Commission on Financial Management and Accountability, established in 1976 and which issued its final report in 1979. Known as the Lambert Commission, it was in part a response to the dire warning issued by the Auditor General of Canada in his 1975-76 Report that “Parliament — and indeed the government — has lost or is close to losing, effective control of the public purse.” The Commission, led by TD Bank Executive Allan Lambert, concluded that a breakdown had occurred in the accountability regime in government, resulting in a lack of coordination in planning, haphazard budgeting and accountability. Many might argue that the situation has not changed.
The common denominator in both of these royal commissions is that they were led by outsiders and so provided sweeping inquiries into key public service reform issues that cannot be done solely by those within the system. Such an independent and wide-ranging examination of the federal public service is long overdue. Indeed, it is critical in the face of institutional timidity and paralysis.
As the former clerk notes, good government is about “turning worthy intentions into reality for Canadians through effective and efficient delivery of government programs and services.” If the public service of today cannot fulfil these responsibilities, then public confidence is lost. The time for reform is now. I hope the current Clerk is listening.
Multicultural Meanderings 