How a town famous for xenophobia fell in love with immigrants

2022/12/19 Leave a comment

Significant change. The original code of conduct was issued when I was DG of Multiculturalism at Canadian Heritage along with the Bouchard-Taylor hearings.

May be a harbinger of change in rural Quebec:

For years, the small town of Hérouxville in rural Quebec was the embodiment in the province of deep, nativist hostility toward immigrants.

The town didn’t have any immigrants, but it once adopted a code of conduct that left no doubt that they, and their perceived customs, were unwelcome.

Hérouxville, the code warned, did not tolerate “stoning women to death in the town square” or “burning them alive” or “treating them as slaves.” The people of Hérouxville, it cautioned, celebrated Christmas and didn’t cover their faces, except maybe for Halloween.

The code tapped into a pervasive fear in Canada’s only French-speaking province that immigration would dilute its culture and also triggered a landmark provincial government commission that sought to build a consensus on the “reasonable accommodation” of ethnic minorities.

So it may come as a surprise that Hérouxville is now embracing immigrants and is eager to accommodate them.

“We’ve had a break from our past,” said Bernard Thompson, Hérouxville’s mayor and a onetime supporter of the code. “We now want as many immigrants as possible.”

The sharp shift in this small town’s attitude comes as Canada is seeking to open its doors even wider to immigrants as a crucial strategy for its economic vitality.

Canada’s federal government has announced plans to welcome record numbers of new immigrants over the next three years, with the goal of adding 1.45 million immigrants to the country’s population of 39 million. In contrast to other Western nations, where immigration has cleaved societies and fueled the rise of political extremism, there is a broad consensus in Canada over the value of immigration.

The only outlier has been Quebec, where politicians have fanned anti-immigrant sentiments by seizing on French Québécois voters’ fears of losing their cultural identity.

But even in Quebec, against the backdrop of demographic imperatives and changing social attitudes, there are signs of change in places like Hérouxville.

Hérouxville’s reversal on immigration stemmed from a combination of factors, including an aging population, a low birthrate, the need to fill an acute labor shortage, but also profound shifts in views among younger generations and the personal journeys of individuals like Thompson.

If asked, the mayor said, he would even allow Muslim immigrants to use a vacant office in the City Hall building as a prayer room — although he was not legally bound to do so.

“If we’re unable to respect each other’s culture, whether it’s religious or not, I think that’s a mistake,” the mayor said. “We have to show an openness.”

Thompson is also the top elected official of the county of Mékinac — which includes Hérouxville and its population of 1,336 as well as nine other small towns, some of which once supported Hérouxville’s code of conduct. In a sharp departure from the past, when perhaps one or no immigrant settled in the county in a given year, Mékinac attracted a record number of immigrants in the past two years — 60 — from South America, Africa, Europe and elsewhere.

One of them, Habiba Hmadi, 40, arrived in the county over a year ago from Tunisia, along with her husband and their elementary school-age son and daughter. Both French speakers who speak Arabic at home, Hmadi works as an insurance agent and her husband as a welder.

Being away from their families was hardest during Ramadan and other holidays, Hmadi said. Hmadi said she had never heard of Hérouxville’s code of conduct and had been welcomed warmly by locals.

“We got many phone calls or even people knocking on our door to ask if we needed anything,” Hmadi said. “One of our neighbors knocked on our door with a big bag of toys for our kids. We didn’t even know her. We were still moving in.”

The influx of immigrants was the result of a sweeping pro-immigration policy adopted by the county in 2017 — a decade after Hérouxville passed its code of conduct in 2007.

The code’s main author was a councilor at the time, André Drouin, who died in 2017. Drouin and Thompson, the current mayor, lived across the street from each other. They regularly got together and, over glasses of wine, discussed to what extent Quebec’s French Québécois majority should accommodate immigrants and other minorities.

The town of Hérouxville’s webmaster at the time, Thompson said he edited Drouin’s draft of the code, correcting spelling and grammatical mistakes, as well as cutting what seemed to him excessive references to Christmas trees. He watched Drouin, a charismatic individual, lead the council in unanimously ratifying the code and rally locals behind it.

“André could have sold a fridge to an Eskimo, as we say here,” Thompson recalled.

But Thompson — who had worked in telecommunications for decades in Montreal — said he grew increasingly uncomfortable with the code’s most fiery passages. He couldn’t deny that nearly everyone in Quebec was “the son of immigrants,” he said. He “adored” his brother’s longtime partner, a Muslim woman.

Eventually, Thompson broke with his neighbor and, after being elected mayor, led a push to jettison the code into the town archives. The mayor said he wanted to restore the town’s reputation, and the urgency to attract immigrants grew with the worsening labor shortage afflicting Mékinac county’s agricultural, forestry, industrial and service industries.

“We need immigration to survive,” Thompson said. “We don’t have a choice.”Still, politicians tapped into anti-immigrant feelings among older, rural voters in the recent provincial election. Jean Boulet — who served as provincial immigration minister until recently and who is from the town next to Hérouxville — said falsely that “80% of immigrants go to Montreal, don’t work, don’t speak French and don’t adhere to the values of Quebec society.”

Outside a convenience store in Hérouxville, a woman and a man smoking cigarettes said they still supported the code of conduct.

They said that a group of Muslim cyclists was once seen crossing the main road, not at a traffic light, but at a spot where one of them stopped oncoming cars“Look, they’re not in their country,” said the man, Jean-Claude Leblanc, 72.

They were still seething about widely reported stories of sugar shacks — establishments that serve traditional food from Quebec and where maple syrup is produced — that had removed pork to draw Muslim patrons. They had even heard of Muslims patrons praying inside some sugar shacks.

“Inside our sugar shacks,” said the woman, who declined to give her name. “Ours.”

For Eva-Marie Nagy-Cloutier, 32, a resident of Hérouxville, however, the code was a relic of the past.

“We’re of the generation where you can be who you want to be and with whom you want to be,” said Nagy-Cloutier, who works in human relations at Pronovost, a local snowblower maker, and recruits immigrant workers.

Abdelkarim Othmani, 33, left his home in southern Tunisia nearly two years ago and has been working the evening shift at Pronovost as a machinist. During the last Ramadan, he was allowed to take his meal break early so that he could break his fast after sunset.

Othmani said he socialized and worked out at a local gym with co-workers on weekends.

“I love the atmosphere,” said Othmani, who is planning to marry and eventually bring to Quebec his Tunisian girlfriend — or his “blonde,” one of the several Québécois slang words he slipped into his French.

His best friend is Alex Béland-Ricard, 29, with whom he carpools to work every day. A French Québécois born and raised in the county, Béland-Ricard said he was impressed by the newcomer’s strong commitment to friendship, family and hard work.

“Karim’s the first immigrant I ever met,” Béland-Ricard said. “I hope many more come here.

Source: How a town famous for xenophobia fell in love with immigrants

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Here’s how Syrian refugees who came to Canada say they’re doing — seven years later

2022/12/19 Leave a comment

Encouraging study:

Seven years after Canada opened its doors to Syrian refugees, that first cohort of newcomers say they feel good about their new lives, have remained friends with their sponsors and are hopeful for a better future.

However, many still struggle with finding gainful employment, according to a two-year research project by the Environics Institute.

For the newcomers and Canadians, the time between 2015 and 2016 was a defining moment of their lives and in this country’s history, as communities banded together and welcomed 25,000 Syrians within months during a national resettlement project.

“It was a feel-good thing. These people were coming over to Canada from a crisis. We were giving them a home. The government and private citizens were stepping up. They were settling in,” says Keith Neuman, research director of the study released Saturday.

“It was something that made a lot of Canadians feel good about their country, if you will. It’s kind of faded now in memory, but it hasn’t really soured.”

Researchers interviewed 305 Syrian refugees who came during that period about their lived experience and where they are today, seven years later. Participants, who responded to a callout, answered 125 questions in Arabic, English or French during in-depth interviews.

Almost nine in 10 described their current life in Canada in positive light, most particularly feeling safe and secure and being accepted by their local community in spite of different degrees of financial insecurity and challenges with employment.

While many said they appreciated the country’s rule of law and respect for human rights, the things they liked least in Canada included: the harsh weather (32 per cent), the initial challenges in adapting to a new culture and lifestyle (19 per cent), and being separated from families and friends (14 per cent).

An overwhelming 93 per cent of respondents said moving to Canada was the right thing to do, though six per cent expressed mixed feelings about the decision, while the remainder expressed clear regret or did not respond to the question.

“Canada is not a perfect country, but it’s a good country,” one participant told researchers. “You can do what you want in life; but you need to work hard, like anywhere, but here you have the tools for success.”

“I felt something I never felt back home. You’re free,” another was quoted as saying in the report. “Back in Syria, I had to iron my husband’s shirt every day, since I landed here, I never ironed a shirt once! People are all the same, there is no separation of classes.”

Although few arrived with a functional fluency in English or French, more than 60 per cent of those surveyed now rated their language fluency as excellent or good.

Half of the refugees interviewed were currently working, including three per cent reporting to be doing multiple jobs and seven per cent who were self-employed. Fifty-one per cent said their jobs fully or somewhat matched their past education, skills and experience.

Most people were employed in transportation, warehousing, retail, construction and accommodation and food services. Some were in professional, scientific and technical services.

Fourteen per cent of respondents reported their household income was “good enough and they were able to save from it,” while 63 per cent indicated it was “just enough.” The remaining quarter said they felt stretched or were having a rough time.

More than half of the survey participants said they feel a very strong sense of belonging to Canada, with most of the rest describing it as somewhat strong (35 per cent).

Those who were privately sponsored by community organizations and church groups have developed enduring relationships with their supporters, with three quarters of those surveyed saying they remain in touch years later.

Among the many aspirations of the Syrian immigrants were: owning a home (42 per cent); completing more education and training to improve their lives (39 per cent); sponsoring other family members to Canada (24 per cent) and ensuring their children finish higher education (22 per cent).

Canada’s Syrian refugee resettlement project was unique and there have been many takeaways for similar operations in the future, says Jobran Khanji, the research project’s community outreach lead.

“Different governments mobilized. Community agencies mobilized and the civic society mobilized. Your average Canadians came together in a crisis situation within weeks and months to support the families who were the first to arrive in Canada,” said Khanji, himself a Syrian immigrant from Damascus.

“It’s a great demonstration of what can be done when everybody mobilizes.”

Nabiha Atallah of the Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia said she was not surprised by the survey findings but said she was encouraged most Syrians felt welcomed and that they belonged.

Nova Scotia welcomed about 1,500 of the Syrian refugees. Most of them were among the most vulnerable, with many children, sponsored by the government. Yet, they were eager to start working right away.

“It has taken the five or six years. Language is not an easy thing to learn as an adult when some of the people did not even have much of formal education,” Atallah said.

“One of the important things of this report is for the community to see that their response was really effective, because we see that most of the people in this study said they felt they belong and they’re part of the community. That’s great confirmation for the general population.”

Chris Friesen of Immigrant Services Society of B.C. says the report was reflective of the experience of the clients served in the province that resettled more than 3,000 Syrians.

It’s important to track the well-being of the Syrians over time to identify areas of needs and take those lessons to other humanitarian operations, he said.

“We’ve really taken some of the approaches and experiences in Operation Syrian refugees forward,” said Friesen, referring to the resettlement of displaced Afghans and Ukrainians. “That’s encouraging. We’re not repeating it, but we’re building upon it.”

Source: Here’s how Syrian refugees who came to Canada say they’re doing — seven years later

Link to report: Final Report

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with ,

Pierre Poilievre thinks he can win over new Canadians. Here’s how he plans to do it.

2022/12/19 Leave a comment

Reasonable take and strategy and familiar to someone who worked in the Kenney years. Expect that the party has learned some lessons from its use of “barbaric cultural practices” in the citizenship guide and in the 2015 tippling. Minister Fraser’s comment is a bit ingenuous given the liberal record of responding (some would say pandering) to new Canadian voters:

A young Pierre Poilievre sits in front of a room of Conservative faithful and explains their party’s strategy for winning a majority mandate. 

That hasn’t happened yet. It’s 2009 and while the Tories have won two federal elections, they’ve remained in minority territory for three years. 

“We will win a majority if we appeal to naturally conservative-inclined voters and get them out to vote, and we turn small-c conservative immigrants into big-C Conservative voters,” the MP says in a video posted to the website of the Cable Public Affairs Channel.

“That’s the formula.”

More than a decade after former prime minister Stephen Harper pulled off that majority in 2011, Poilievre is the party’s leader. 

Since Harper’s four-year term, Conservatives have lost three straight elections to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, with losses stacking up in Toronto- and Vancouver-area suburban seats, home to many visible minorities and new Canadians. 

If there’s one thing many in the party agree on, it’s the need for Conservatives to build support in such communities. But can Poilievre do it? 

Enter Arpan Khanna. This week, Poilievre tapped the Greater Toronto Area lawyer, who served as one of the co-chairs on his leadership campaign in Ontario, to co-ordinate outreach efforts.

Khanna was a political staffer for the man federal Conservatives credit most for making the inroads with immigrant communities that helped Harper along to a majority: Jason Kenney. 

Colleagues had nicknamed the former federal cabinet minister and Alberta premier the “minister of curry in a hurry” for spending his weekends darting to dozens of cultural events around Toronto and Vancouver.

Khanna said he sees the same drive in Poilievre, who visited the Toronto area multiple times, plus Vancouver in his first three months as leader, sometimes attending up to 15 events a day. He is planning visits with Chinese community groups in Markham, Scarborough, Vancouver and Burnaby to mark the Lunar New Year. 

The new leader has taken the idea of “building a Jason Kenney style of outreach” to heart, Khanna said. “He’s all into this. He understands the importance of it.”

The first step is showing up, he said.

“We recently were at someone’s backyard for a barbecue party with about 100 people from the Tamil community, just having a conversation about their issues.”

Poilievre has been hitting the road nearly every weekend. 

Often travelling with him are his two deputy leaders. Melissa Lantsman, who is Jewish and the party’s first openly lesbian member of Parliament, hails from Thornhill, just north of Toronto. Longtime Edmonton MP Tim Uppal, who is Sikh, became Canada’s first minister to wear a turban when Harper appointed him to cabinet in 2011. 

For the high-profile finance critic role, Poilievre picked former small business owner Jasraj Singh Hallan, who had been considered an at-risk youth after immigrating to Canada as a child. 

It’s stories like Hallan’s that Poilievre promotes, touting the promise of the Canadian dream. 

“It doesn’t matter if your name is Poilievre or Patel … Martin or Mohamed,” a video posted online shows Poilievre saying at a Diwali event in October. “If you’re prepared to work hard, contribute, follow the rules, raise your family, you can achieve your dreams in this country.”

Poilievre often points out that he married an immigrant Canadian. His wife Ana and her family were refugees from Venezuela. 

Tenzin Khangsar, who worked in Kenney’s office when he was immigration minister and assisted with the Tories’ outreach strategy, said Poilievre is setting an example for his caucus and the entire party. “And frankly shows to all Canadians that look, ‘this is a priority for me. This is not just something I’ll do during an election campaign.’”

Khangsar said that if step one is showing up, step two is following up with policy. 

Poilievre has promised to get provinces to speed up recognizing foreign credentials, one of his first policy announcements as a leadership candidate. He’s also railed against “gatekeepers” at the federal immigration department.

During a roundtable with ethnic community media convened during the race, Poilievre said immigrant and Conservative values are the same: “hard work, family, freedom, tradition.”

“Values upon which we need to build a future Conservative party.”

A roughly 50-minute video from the event shared on Facebook shows Poilievre offering more detail on his immigration policy ideas: expanding express entry, making it easier for temporary foreign workers to become permanent residents, improving immigrants’ ability to bring their parents to Canada to help with child care and expanding private sponsorship of refugees. 

He was emphatic in an interview with a Punjabi radio show last month: “The Conservative party is pro-immigration.” 

But the NDP’s immigration critic, Jenny Kwan, threw water on the idea, saying in a statement that the Harper government cut settlement services for newcomers and made family reunifications more difficult. 

Liberal Immigration Minister Sean Fraser didn’t wade into the Tories’ past, but in a statement said speaking to newcomers is the job of any political leader. 

“Newcomers are not a voting block to pander to. They are Canadians, and soon-to-be Canadians.”

But many Conservatives believe that the party’s approach to immigration issues lost them the 2015 election, as Tories pushed policies such as banning niqabs at citizenship ceremonies and establishing a tip line for so-called barbaric cultural practices. 

Lantsman and Uppal both publicly apologized for supporting what became known as the “niqab ban.” But Poilievre has defended the policy as simply requiring “that a person’s face be visible while giving oaths at citizenship ceremonies.” 

An internal review of the Tories’ 2021 election loss found the party’s image remained damaged among immigrant communities. 

Poilievre’s immigration critic, Tom Kmiec, said Conservatives believe in an “employer-driven immigration system.”

Asked whether they support the Liberal government’s plan to welcome a record-high number of permanent residents in the coming years, which includes a target of 500,000 by 2025, Kmiec said “the number is not as important as the customer-service experience.”

Kmiec, a Polish immigrant, said the federal immigration department is dealing with massive backlogs and out of control processing times. “It’s a total lack of compassion to over-promise what you can actually deliver.”

Andrew Griffith, a former director of multiculturalism policy for the federal government, predicted Conservatives will avoid attacking the targets for fear of being labelled xenophobic.

Griffith said he doesn’t perceive the party is skeptical about immigration, despite such views being historically present in its base. 

Source: Pierre Poilievre thinks he can win over new Canadians. Here’s how he plans to do it.

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with , , , , ,

COVID-19 Immigration Effects – October 2022 update

2022/12/19 Leave a comment

The government continues to make progress on backlogs but the significant not-meeting service standards: temporary residence 60 percent, permanent residence 54 percent, citizenship 30 percent, visitor visas 55 percent in backlog.

PRs: Decrease compared to September. YTD 386,000,  2021 same period 313,000. Of note, an ongoing and dramatic drop in TR2PR transitions.

TRs/IMP: Stable compared to September. YTD 393,000, 2021 same period, 282,000.

TRs/TFWP: Slight decrease compared to September. YTD 123,000, 2021 same period 100,000.

Students: Large seasonal decrease compared to September. YTD 456,000, 2021 same period 394,000.

Asylum claimants: Small increase compared to September. YTD 70,000, 2021 same period 15,000.

Settlement Services (July): Decrease compared to June. YTD 1,031,000, 2021 same period 918,000.

Citizenship: Slight increase compared to September. YTD 311,000, 2021 same period 88,000.

Visitor Visas. Increase compared to September. YTD 959,000, 2021 same period 144,000.

Filed under Citizenship, Immigration Tagged with ,

Andrew Potter: Trudeau is risking our pro-immigration consensus

2022/12/17 Leave a comment

Indeed. Encouraging to see more articles focusses on the impact (my first article questioning the government’s approach and Canada’s ability to address these and other externalities dates from May 2021):

Justin Trudeau’s strong desire to push his unique brand of progressive cosmopolitanism onto audiences domestic and foreign has always stood uneasily beside his equally strong obsession with keeping the peace with Quebec, which is led by the increasingly nationalistic François Legault. Indeed, when these two goals have come in conflict, his tendency has been to either take Quebec’s side (such as the application of Bill 101 to companies under federal jurisdiction) or largely ignore it (Bill 21). But things are coming to a head now over immigration, and this is one area where it is hard not to think that Legault has a point. 

Last month, the federal government announced that Canada would be trying to bring in 500,000 immigrants a year by 2025, an almost 25 per cent increase over last year’s target. Thanks to current immigration levels, Canada’s population growth rate is already considerably higher than that of the U.S., the U.K., and Australia. As Statistics Canada reported this fall, immigrants currently make up almost a quarter of the population, the highest level since Confederation, and one of the highest levels in the world. 

Quebec seems to think things have gone just about far enough. The recent provincial election, which saw Legault’s CAQ re-elected in a landslide, was fought largely over questions of Quebec identity and the status of the French language, with the debate over appropriate levels of immigration serving as a flashpoint. The Liberals bid highest,  suggesting the province could accommodate 70,000 newcomers a year, while the PQ came in with a lowball pledge of a maximum of 35,000. The governing CAQ set the limit at 50,000, with Legault saying anything higher would be “suicidal” for the province. 

Given this all-party Quebec consensus around relatively low levels of immigration, it was surprising to see Trudeau assert in a year-end interview that Quebec has “all the tools” it needs to bring in as many as 112 000 immigrants a year, which would be its per-capita share of the 500,000 national target. In response, Legault’s immigration minister Christine Fréchette called Trudeau “insensitive” and said that Canada could bring in as many people as it likes but no more than 50,000 are coming to Quebec. 

The fact is, Quebec’s concerns over its ability to successfully integrate tens of thousands of newcomers are not frivolous, and it would be helpful if the federal government would recognize that these concerns apply as much in the rest of the country as they do in Quebec, if for different reasons. 

Ottawa’s rationale for ever-increasing levels of immigration is overwhelmingly economic. We are told that immigration leads to higher economic growth, will help alleviate labour shortages, and will mitigate the effects of an aging population. But even if this were true (the evidence is mixed on all of these), it is striking how little attention is paid to our capacity to successfully integrate a steadily increasing number of new Canadians. 

For starters, where are they all going to live? Housing in Canada is notoriously expensive, especially in the major cities where the majority of newcomers tend to settle. And we’re not adding anywhere close to the number of new houses that we need; as a recent Globe and Mail featureabout the challenges of immigration noted, the basic mismatch between the demand for housing and its supply is getting worse, not better. 

Then there is health care. The system, as anyone paying attention can see, is in a major crisis. There is a widespread shortage of nurses, and somewhere around six million Canadians can’t even find a family doctor. Ottawa will argue that the solution is to bring in more foreign-trained medical professionals, but the problems they have getting their credentials recognized in Canada are long-standing. 

And all of this assumes the prospective immigrants can even get into the country in the first place: The federal government is currently facing a surge of lawsuits over the backlog of 1.2 million unprocessed immigration applications, with some applicants waiting years for a decision. 

In short: We make people wait an unconscionable long time while we decide if we will admit them; once they are here we have no plan for providing them with affordable housing or accessible health care; and then we make it exceedingly difficult for them to practice the professions for which they are trained. And all of this comes at a time when the wave of right-wing populism that has swept across the West over the past half decade has made itself at home in Canada. 

It is easy to forget just how recent it was that Canadians became comfortable with high levels of immigration. When Brian Mulroney basically doubled Canada’s immigration targets overnight in the late 1980s, it sparked a substantial backlash, and was in part responsible for the rise of the Reform Party. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw a great deal of national anxiety over immigration, with many critics worried that growing numbers of “hyphenated Canadians” would lead to cultural balkanization and social disintegration. It was only at the end of the 1990s that popular opinion switched from being predominantly anti-immigration to generally in favour. 

Canada’s great multicultural experiment over the past quarter century is largely a success story, with a healthy majority of Canadians continuing to support current levels of immigration. Most of us probably have personal stories about how and why immigration has made our lives better, and, thankfully, there aren’t yet loud calls for less immigration. 

But it wasn’t always this way, and it is important to remember that the current consensus around immigration (and multiculturalism more generally) was a hard-won achievement. With what appears to be a single-minded push to get immigration levels up to half a million a year, with no plan for dealing with the increasing number of obstacles to successfully integrating them, one worries if the Liberals are taking that achievement for granted.

Source: Andrew Potter: Trudeau is risking our pro-immigration consensus

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CRTC overstepped in response to use of N-word on Radio-Canada program, attorney general says

2022/12/17 Leave a comment

Of note. Right call IMO but will see what the Federal Court rules:

The office of the attorney general of Canada has concluded that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) overstepped its authority when it imposed requirements on CBC/Radio-Canada in response to the repeated use of the N-word on-air.

The attorney general’s motion, which ran to more than 100 pages, recommended the Federal Court of Appeal set aside the CRTC’s decision. Although the final decision rests with the court, a lawyer who spoke to Radio-Canada said it is unlikely the court will disagree with the attorney general’s position.

CBC/Radio-Canada disputed the CRTC’s June 29 decision, which required Société Radio-Canada to provide a written apology to the complainant and to report to the CRTC on internal measures and programming practices to address similar issues in the future.

Radio-Canada apologized to the complainant but appealed the CRTC decision regardless, saying the regulator had overstepped its authority.

The CRTC’s decision

The CRTC’s decision came in response to a complaint from Ricardo Lamour, a Black Montreal resident who heard the segment while waiting to appear as a guest on the radio show.

During the roughly six-and-a-half minute segment, which aired on the 15-18 afternoon radio program on Aug. 17, 2020, host Annie Desrochers and columnist Simon Jodoin said the N-word three times in French and once in English.

Desrochers and Jodoin used the word in the context of an on-air discussion about a petition that demanded the dismissal of a Concordia University professor who had quoted the title of a well-known book by Pierre Vallières that includes the N-word.

In its ruling on the complaint, the CRTC found that Radio-Canada did not implement all the necessary measures to mitigate the impact of the word on its audience.

It also said broadcasting the segment “did not provide high-standard programming and did not contribute to the strengthening of the cultural and social fabric and the reflection of the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada.”

In response, roughly 50 Radio-Canada personalities signed an open letter that appeared in La Presse claiming the decision threatened journalistic freedom and independence while opening the door to censorship and self-censorship.

In a statement, CBC/Radio-Canada apologized to the complainant and other listeners who may have been hurt by the use of the word, while maintaining that the CRTC’s decision represented an attempt “to give itself the power to interfere with journalistic independence.”

Martine Valois, a law professor at the University of Montréal, said the attorney general rarely publishes such an extensive motion. Speaking in French, Valois told Radio-Canada that the importance of the case required a more comprehensive response.

The office of the attorney general of Canada represents the Crown and therefore often defends federal organizations and agencies, such as the CRTC.

Valois said its foremost responsibility, however, is to defend Canadian laws.

The final decision will rest with the Federal Court of Appeal

Source: CRTC overstepped in response to use of N-word on Radio-Canada program, attorney general says

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Douglas Todd: Why some Canadians born in Iran and China watch their backs

2022/12/17 Leave a comment

Of note:

Many of the thousands of demonstrators who lined Lions Gate Bridge last month to oppose Iran’s brutal regime expressed anxiety in the presence of photographers and videographers.

Some Iranian Canadians in Vancouver’s Human Life Chain, who were joining worldwide protests against the death of teenager Mahsa Amini after she was detained by Iran’s morality police, pointed fingers at strangers recording their public defiance.

“People were very brave to come out and show their unity,” said Farid Rohani, a leader in the Iranian Canadian community. “But many were fearful of people taking photos. They were pointing and saying, ‘You’re an agent of the regime.’ Some fights broke out.”

Rohani, a member of the B.C. government’s committee on diversity and policing, has himself been subjected to slander by people aligned with Iran’s regime. And an acquaintance was detained last year at Tehran airport, shown a photo of him sitting beside “Iran-hating, Israel-loving” Rohani, and warned to stay away from him.

Rohani feels relatively safe speaking out because he came to Canada in the 1970s and no longer has family in his theocratic homeland. But there is always a risk for Canadian opponents, including Soushiant Zanganehpour, organizer of the Vancouver protest. He called on Ottawa to do more to prevent Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards and affiliates from threatening Iranians who protest.

“There are a lot of regime officials and their families who systematically come here, some are even citizens,” said Zanganehpour. “We are facing threats against our families, our lives, with people that drive by our houses at nighttime. I’m calling for stricter immigration policies, not just sanctions, but more investigations into who is here and why.”

Similar concerns arise from Persian podcaster Ramin Seyed-Emami of Vancouver, who was recently informed by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service that Iran maintains a list of Iranians abroad who it deems a threat. The officer suggested Seyed-Emami take safety precautions, including being wary of “honey traps” — attractive female spies.

And these are just stories of pressure applied to Canadians born in Iran, of which there are more than 213,000.

Also being intimidated are Chinese Canadians, of which there are 1.7 million, including 820,000 born in the People’s Republic of China.

Last week, Amnesty International Canada reported its computer system was hacked after it had raised alarms about China’s harassment of people in Canada with Uyghur and Tibetan roots, as well as those connected to Hong Kong and the spiritual group Falun Gong. Their events are often recorded by suspected agents of China.

There are countless stories. The parents of Vancouver-raised human rights activist Anastasia Lin, Canada’s former Miss World, have been hounded by security agents and others who demand they make their daughter stop accusing the leaders of China of being a danger.

And when Cherie Wong came to Vancouver in 2020 to start Alliance Canada Hong Kong, a pro-democracy group, she received threats by phone in her hotel room, despite checking in under another name. The person said, “We know where you are. We’re coming to get you.”

What Lin and Wong undergo echo new reports by the Spanish human rights organization, Safeguard Defenders, which says China has set up 103 unofficial “police stations” around the world, including in Toronto and Vancouver, to monitor the Chinese diaspora. The regime, it says, has already put the squeeze on 220,000 “fugitives” to return to China.

“These reports are scary. The Chinese Canadian community has known the overreaching claws of the Chinese Communist Party for decades. We have witnessed their agents of influence,” said Fenella Sung, a Vancouver-based pro-democracy activist. 

Sung describes so-called “Little Pinkies” (jingoistic nationalists) in Vancouver “disrupting Tiananmen Massacre candle vigils, shouting down protesters at public areas such as SkyTrain stations, taking photos of church-goers who prayed for Hong Kong, and the like.”

Further, pro-democracy activists from Hong Kong have “even noticed the signal of their cellphones cut off when they were around Chinese consulates. Their ability at surveillance and infringement of our freedoms have been much strengthened in recent years. It severely violates rights on Canadian soil.”

Such chilling incidents all add up to illegal infiltration of Canada by foreign governments, says Charles Burton, a senior fellow of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute who worked in the Canadian embassy in China. Canada, he said, must do more to stop it.

Canada currently shows minimal resistance to hostile foreign governments, said Burton, who just returned from a conference in Berlin, where 240 global participants discussed how to combat interference by Chinese agents.

The often-public intimidation is in part designed to create the impression that China’s authorities have a long reach, said Burton. But even while China has more diplomats in Canada than any other nation, and diplomats often serve as spies, it is difficult to know the extent of their power.

Chinese and Iranian agents especially target opinion leaders. They interfere with their speech and often make sure they know they are being monitored, said Burton, which is especially hard on university students.

While not particularly worried about himself, Burton said he is also frequently targeted, including by attractive Chinese women who claim they are “very interested in seniors,” something he finds almost comical.

Still, Burton calls on Ottawa to do much more.

“The RCMP have recently said they are intending to put more resources into protecting Canadians who are subject to menace and harassment by agents of a foreign power,” he said. “But up to now we haven’t seen arrests of any of these people. Nor have we heard of any people declared persona non grata for engaging in activities not compatible with their diplomatic status.”

CSIS, Burton said, has set up a website where people who have experienced foreign interference and espionage can report online. But it stipulates it is not a law enforcement agency, only an information gatherer.

Nevertheless, Burton says it is useful to see more public talk these days echoing his long-held admonition that Ottawa combat the foreign harassment of citizens.

“And if that results in Chinese government retaliation, then I think we simply have to accept that. I think it’s more important to protect our freedoms, democracy, security and sovereignty than it is to protect market access for Canadian commodities that might go to China.”

Heightened vigilance would also earn Canada greater respect from China and Iran, Burton said. The more exposure that governments, educators and the media give to such infiltration, the better things will be for all Canadians.

“It will shed some sunshine on this thing. And sunshine is an excellent disinfectant.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Why some Canadians born in Iran and China watch their backs

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , , ,

Birth tourism dad from China suing B.C. hospital, doctors and ‘birth hotel’

2022/12/17 Leave a comment

First case like this that I have heard of. Not totally unexpected given the pre-pandemic numbers at Richmond Hospital mean that such disputes could have been expected:

The father of a child born in B.C. via Canada’s controversial “birth tourism” route is suing the doctors who delivered the baby and the so-called “birth hotel” which brought the family from China.

Peng Chen, on behalf of his now four-year-old son Stephen, alleges that two doctors — Brenda Tan and Balbinder Gill — as well as Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH), were negligent in the provision of medical care to Stephen and his mother, Rang Heng, at Richmond Hospital.

His lawsuit makes references to complications at the time of Stephen’s birth, resulting in his son being in the intensive care unit for several days afterwards.

Chen, a resident of China, claims that, as a result of their negligence in 2018, his son suffered brain damage, seizures, delayed growth and development, cerebral palsy and cognitive impairment.

He further alleges that Jie Zheng and a Ms. Liang — who operated or worked at ABC, a birthing house on Ash Street in Richmond — misrepresented the level of antenatal and/or perinatal care and expertise that his wife and child would receive in Canada.

Chen claims that, because he had “little or no knowledge of the health-care system in Canada” he was “particularly vulnerable” to the alleged misrepresentations from Zheng and Liang.

He alleged that ABC was negligent in misrepresenting the level of care, both in its adverts in China and to the family when they arrived in Canada.

Chen said he entered into an agreement with ABC for Stephen to be born in Canada and that they arrived at the Richmond birth house in January of 2018, three months before the birth at Richmond Hospital.

Two other unnamed doctors and two unnamed nurses working at Richmond Hospital on the day of Stephen’s birth are also named in the suit.

All named defendants in the lawsuit have denied any negligence.

The allegations are more than four years old, but Dr. Tan’s legal team recently won a court application to have a video conference with Stephen’s mother, because her husband has, thus far, been unable to answer any questions with regard to Tan’s care of his wife and child.

Child suffered ‘hypoxia, ischemia’ to brain, father claims

With regard to the specifics of the day of the birth, Chen claims his wife attended Richmond Hospital in the early hours of April 18, 2018, but was discharged with instructions to return when labour had progressed.

Later that day, according to the lawsuit, Heng returned to the hospital and, at some point not specified, was given oxytocin – which promotes the progress of labour.

Chen claims that, between his wife being given oxytocin and the actual birth, Stephen “suffered hypoxia and ischemia to his brain.”

He said his son required resuscitation and several days of intensive care.

Chen claims that the unnamed nurses failed to ensure timely medical intervention to prevent brain damage and they failed to properly investigate, assess or evaluate his wife’s medical history prior to the birth and failed to alert other health professionals of fetal distress in a timely fashion.

He alleges that doctors Tan, who he says was the family’s assigned GP, and Gill and the two unnamed doctors failed to provide adequate prenatal care to his wife and failed to assess the risk factors in view of his wife’s medical history and “physical presentation.”

Chen claims that the doctors also failed to properly advise his wife of the risks of vaginal delivery or discuss the options to it.

And he alleges that, as a result of his son’s injuries, he, his wife and family members have to provide care above and beyond what would be reasonable out of “natural love and affection.”

Chen, on behalf of Stephen, is seeking unspecified general and special damages and health-care costs.

Vancouver Coastal Health denies negligence

VCH, which runs Richmond Hospital, has denied any negligence on its part or that of its employees and is disputing many of Chen’s claims, including Stephen’s injuries.

In its version of events, VCH claims Chen’s wife was admitted to hospital at around 12:15 a.m. on the day of the birth and that the second stage of labour started at around 7 p.m, almost two hours before the birth.

It states in its response to the claims that all care of Chen’s wife was “appropriate” and “in accordance with a reasonable standard of practice and procedure,” adding that nothing it or its employees did or failed to do contributed to the alleged injuries to Stephen.

VCH is seeking a dismissal of the lawsuit and seeks its costs associated with defending itself.

Birth doctors claim they did their jobs

Dr. Tan, in her response to the claim, denies that she was an agent of Richmond Hospital or that of the birthing house business ABC and is also disputing the alleged injuries suffered by Stephen.

She said she became Chen’s wife’s GP two months before the birth for the purposes of providing antenatal care and met with her several times in her office.

Tan has denied negligence and that the care she provided to Chen’s wife and son was appropriate and in accord with standard medical practice.

She added in her response that Chen’s wife was informed of the risks associated with the treatment received and gave consent.

Dr. Gill, meanwhile, denies that he assisted with the delivery of Stephen, claiming that he only helped Chen’s wife push the baby out, when it became apparent there was an emergency.

In response to Chen’s claims that Stephen suffered hypoxia and ischemia to his brain prior to being born, Gill said the child was born with “no respiratory effort and no heart rate detected.”

He said that, once the baby was delivered, “best efforts were made to provide resuscitation” until the child was transferred to a “higher level of care.”

Similarly to Dr. Tan, Gill said the care and assessment given to Stephen were “reasonable in the circumstances and consistent with that expected of pediatricians practicing” in B.C. and that nothing he did or did not do contributed to any alleged injuries or loss to the child.

And if there were any injuries to the child, Gill said it was not his fault and could have been caused by other defendants or unknown parties.

Gill further alleges that the injuries in question could have been caused by the negligence of Chen and his wife by failing to take reasonable care of their own health and failing to seek medical attention at the “onset of signs or symptoms,” failing to provide a complete and accurate history of health-care providers and failing to follow the advice of health-care providers.

Both Tan and Gill are asking for the claims against them be dismissed and they be awarded costs.

What is ‘birth tourism?’

So-called “birth tourism” is when pregnant, non-Canadian women fly to Canada in order to give birth and secure citizenship for their babies.

In addition to receiving benefits, like healthcare and education, when the children become adults, they can also sponsor their parents to immigrate to Canada.

The Canada Border Services Agency has said previously that pregnancy is not a reason in itself to refuse entry to the country to a tourist.

However, if a foreign national is seeking entry to Canada for the purpose of undergoing medical treatment and can’t show he or she has the money to pay for it, then that person could be deemed as a potential excessive demand on health service.

The practice has been a hot topic for many years, especially in Richmond, due to its Chinese population and proximity to Vancouver International Airport.

Earlier this week, the Richmond News’ parent company Glacier Media reported how birth tourism rates — which plummeted during the pandemic — are expected to spike again when the Chinese government lifts pandemic travel restrictions.

Between April 2021 and March 2022, B.C. hospitals recorded 110 non-residents of Canada who paid to give birth, based on data obtained from the Canadian Institute of Health Information (CIHI). Last year, 194 such births were recorded.

However, in the year prior to the pandemic, a record 868 self-paying non-residents — the vast majority of whom are understood to be Chinese nationals on tourist visas — garnered automatic citizenship for their newborns.

Richmond Hospital has been, for many years, at the epicentre of the industry, with 502 non-resident births in 2019-2020.

And the so-called “birth hotels” in the city are not breaking any laws.

Source: Birth tourism dad from China suing B.C. hospital, doctors and ‘birth hotel’

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Likud said to weigh residency, not citizenship, for ‘grandchild clause’ immigrants

2022/12/17 Leave a comment

Of note. While the law of return is of course controversial from a citizenship and immigration perspective, this proposed change reflects increased weight of religious and ultra religious parties and risks further undermining Isreal’s international reputation:

A Thursday report indicating that the incoming government is considering altering the Law of Return to offer residency but not citizenship to grandchildren of Jews sparked outrage among members of the outgoing coalition.

According to Ynet, the Likud party is working to negotiate an agreement with its expected coalition partners that would grant people who have only one Jewish grandparent, and who are not considered Jewish under Orthodox interpretation of Jewish law, the status of permanent resident but not full citizenship.

The religious parties in the presumed next government have demanded the cancellation of the so-called grandchild clause of the Law of Return, which effectively guarantees citizenship to anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent so long as they do not practice another religion.

The parties calling for the change, chiefly the Religious Zionism party, consider the immigration of non-Jews to Israel a threat to the country’s demographics and its Jewish identity. Most such immigrants to Israel come from the former Soviet Union, and many have arrived from Ukraine and Russia this year following Russia’s invasion.

Yesh Atid’s outgoing Tourism Minister Yoel Razvozov, a native of Russia, called such a compromise “shameful.”

Source: Likud said to weigh residency, not citizenship, for ‘grandchild clause’ immigrants

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with ,

RCMP probes elaborate scam targeting Canada’s largest Muslim organization

2022/12/16 Leave a comment

Weird. Await results of investigation with interest:

Canada’s largest Muslim community organization has been rocked by meticulous forgeries of RCMP and Canada Revenue Agency records, which weave an elaborate fiction about federal investigators using paid informants to build a terrorist-funding case against the charity.

For more than a year, the Muslim Association of Canada has been receiving documents from an anonymous sender that suggest authorities are attempting to entrap the organization, sowing turmoil within the grassroots group. It operates 22 mosques and community centres and 30 schools in 13 cities.

A Globe and Mail investigation has found that the records mailed to MAC are fake. The trove of documents, amounting to hundreds of pages, includes printouts designed to look like internal government e-mails between criminal investigators, fake RCMP search warrants andphony records of money transfers through the SWIFT interbank system to offshore accounts supposedly associated with informants within the charity.

The Canada Revenue Agency referred the matter to the RCMP after The Globe shared some of the documents with the tax collection agency. The RCMP said in a statement that they are reviewing the documents.

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, MAC is not convinced the documents are fake. The organization is calling on the federal government to launch an independent investigation aimed at determining whether someone in a government department or agency is engaging in “Islamophobic tactics against the Muslim community,” Sharaf Sharafeldin, MAC’s president responsible for strategy, said in a statement.

“The documents are quite intricate, detailed and troubling,” Mr. Sharafeldin added. “The documents or their contents must have come from a source within the federal government or its agencies as no one outside of the federal government or its agencies would have had access to such information.”

In April, 2021, the 25-year-old charity began receiving the documents in packages with no return addresses. MAC has so far received 11 deliveries of purported government files. They detail a non-existent seven-year effort by tax collectors and the RCMP to find evidence that MAC is funnelling donations to extremist groups. The last package arrived in late November.

Relations between the Muslim organization and the CRA have been fraught for years. Since 2015, the tax agency has been conducting a very real audit of MAC’s activities as a registered charity, a possible prelude to revoking its charitable status. That investigation is unrelated to any accusations of terrorist funding.

MAC has called this continuing CRA audit an “existential threat,” because losing charitable status would make it harder for the organization to raise money to run mosques and schools, as its donors would not be eligible for tax breaks. It mounted a Charter of Rights and Freedoms challenge against the CRA in April to stop the audit, arguing the agency is tainted by Islamophobia and systemic bias toward Muslim Canadians.

Canada’s Taxpayers’ Ombudsperson, François Boileau, said in an interview that he was “completely flabbergasted” to learn that someone is impersonating CRA investigators.

“Wow. Someone, somewhere is going to a lot of trouble inventing this scheme. So there is something very troubling,” he added.

The fake records sent to MAC, which were obtained by The Globe, make it seem as if the charity is riddled with informants supplying the RCMP and the CRA with details of its operations. A purported Mountie “Informant Manifest” lists six informants who are supposedly working with the National Security Joint Operations Centre, as well as 18 “secondary asset” informants.

The informant list includes what it describes as six current donors to the association, seven current members, a current board member of MAC, as well as a custodian, a banker and a food-service provider for the charity.

Perhaps the most explosive documents sent to MAC are purported records of cash payments and SWIFT wire transfers to RCMP and CRA informants who are supposedly supplying investigators with information on the organization.

The purported transfers show 13 payments into offshore bank accounts, supposedly for the benefit of three informants. All but one list the Bank of Canada as the sender. The documents show the equivalent of more than $320,000 being deposited into accounts in the British dependency of Guernsey.

But the Bank of Canada, in a statement to The Globe, said the SWIFT transfer documents bearing its name are forgeries.

“We can confirm that the documents purporting to be SWIFT transfer records are not genuine,” the bank said.

The central bank declined to say specifically what was inauthentic about the SWIFT documents, to avoid giving people tips on how to create fake wire transfers.

The fake records sent to MAC portray the Canada Revenue Agency as being under pressure from its leadership to nail the Muslim charity for wrongdoing. The documents make investigators appear willing to bend or break the rules in order to do so.

An e-mail dated March, 2022 and purportedly sent by Wayne Welch, an investigator with the CRA’s criminal investigation division in Mississauga, mentions the “urgency that the chief has placed on breaking ground on having a smoking gun on MAC.” It continues by saying: “We need to be more creative if not downright dirty in roping these bad actors in.”

One e-mail purports to show CRA leadership trying to use sex as bait. “It is agreed that scandal is the best leverage here. Please put our girl in play. He’s married. Let’s see if he bites,” the e-mail says. It’s not clear who the target at MAC is.

Another e-mail, purportedly sent in April by Shalini Shan-Hernandez, with the CRA’s criminal investigations division, paints a picture of a failing investigation. “There just isn’t the kind of material we need for a solid case,” says the message, addressed to Eric Ferron, the director general of the CRA’s criminal investigation directorate. It continues by saying: “Also, the assets have started being a little sketchy, since the larger payments have gone out.”

The records make it seem as if U.S. law enforcement is pushing the CRA for results and directing it to find an informant inside MAC’s leadership. “We on this side of the fence are concerned about the pace of your sourcing,” a June e-mail purportedly from a Federal Bureau of Investigation official named Mustafa S. appears to tell the CRA’s Mr. Ferron. “It is imperative that we are in a position by year’s end to move into the next phase of operations. To this end we need to establish a foothold in the executive of MAC.” The FBI agent is a real agent, but his e-mail address on the documents is incorrect.

Whoever sent the documents included what appear to be two RCMP search warrants – one from 2014 and another from January of this year – that purportedly show the Mounties had obtained court approval to wiretap and search MAC’s offices. While the warrants look authentic, they are missing key information, such as courthouse addresses and the locations of MAC offices. An extensive search of court records by The Globe did not turn up these warrants.

But The Globe did obtain a legitimate warrant filed in April, 2014. It focuses on another Muslim charity, and briefly mentions MAC. An affidavit that was part of an RCMP application for the warrant says that MAC provided more than $296,500 to the International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy (IRFAN) between 2001 and 2010.

In 2011, IRFAN was designated a terrorist entity by the Canadian government for providing $14.6-million in resources to organizations with links to Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip and is designated a terrorist organization by Ottawa. The CRA revoked IRFAN’s status as a Canadian charity in 2011.

RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki wrote to MAC in October, 2020, to assure the group it “was perfectly legal” to have made donations to IRFAN when “they were a legitimate registered charity.” Commissioner Lucki said “no charges were laid against your organization as a result of this investigation,” which was dubbed Project Sapphire.

The documents sent to MAC also describe a conflict between the RCMP and Ottawa’s Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre (FinTRAC), which monitors money flows for terrorism financing.

The e-mails make it appear as if FinTRAC officials were accusing RCMP investigators of bias, and of rejecting evidence FinTRAC had gathered on MAC as part of Project Sapphire.

“Our findings, thus far, indicate no transactions that meet the criteria for intentional criminality,” says a May, 2014, e-mail purportedly from Michael Boole, a manager at FinTRAC.

In a second e-mail also dated May, 2014, Mr. Boole purportedly questions whether there is a “political aspect” to the RCMP’s conduct. In a third e-mail supposedly sent that month, he admonishes the force. “It is also not part of our mandate, either in this project or in general, to target certain groups or manipulate data to fit certain agendas,” he appears to tell the RCMP Integrated National Security Enforcement Team.

A June, 2014, e-mail purportedly shows Mr. Boole telling the RCMP to back off.

“I will put this as diplomatically as possible. This is unacceptable. We will not acquiesce to your demand for conformity to the pre-determined scenario you have formulated,” the e-mail says.

But Mr. Boole, who is now manager of the anti-money-laundering unit in FinTRAC’s intelligence sector, has sworn these e-mails are fake.

In an Oct. 3, 2022, affidavit filed in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice, Mr. Boole said he had “not heard of the Muslim Association of Canada” until the summer of 2022, when he was contacted by federal lawyers who were analyzing an earlier batch of suspect documents sent to the charity.

He said that, during the period the e-mails cover, he did no work “on any matter related to suspected terrorist financing.”

The CRA’s Ms. Hernandez and Mr. Ferron have also sworn affidavits saying they did not author the documents sent to MAC.

Source: RCMP probes elaborate scam targeting Canada’s largest Muslim organization

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , ,

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