Caste bullying at Toronto schools prompts vote over new protected category 

2023/03/09 Leave a comment

Of note, unfortunate that needed:

The Toronto District School Board is set to vote on a motion that would include caste as a protected category, alongside race, gender, sexuality and other identities. If passed, the motion would be the first of its kind in Canadian schools.

Toronto District School Board trustee Yalini Rajakulasingam brought the motion before a committee on Feb. 8. On Wednesday, the board will hold a final vote. Ms. Rajakulasingham, who is the trustee for Scarborough North, said parents who identified as members of oppressed castes told her about bullying, harassment and slurs their children faced.

The caste system is a form of social stratification that has existed in the Indian subcontinent for several thousand years. Historically, dominant caste groups have enjoyed greater rights and privileges vis-à-vis oppressed castes, who have been subjected to social ostracization, violence and exclusion from certain professions. Caste prejudice has followed some South Asians as they immigrated to countries such as Canada.

“We realized that even at [the TDSB’s] human rights office, there was no way to file a complaint under caste,” Ms. Rajakulasingham said. “It was being filed as either race or religion. And we know that caste is its own specific power structure. It doesn’t function like race. It is its own category.”

Ms. Rajakulasingam, whose parents moved to Canada from Sri Lanka as refugees in 1986, identifies as a member of an oppressed caste. The stories she heard from parents in her ward resonated with her own life experiences growing up in Scarborough.

On the lowest rung of the caste ladder in South Asia are the Dalits, who were previously pejoratively referred to as “untouchables.” When India gained independence from British rule in 1947, its new constitution, which was written by Dalit civil-rights activist Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, explicitly banned caste discrimination and established affirmative action for oppressed castes.

However, Dalit-rights advocates in India and abroad argue that prejudice against oppressed castes has continued into modern day South Asian societies around the world. India’s growing Hindu nationalist movement has targeted Dalits, along with Muslims, Sikhs and Christians.

Vijay Puli, executive director of the Canada-based South Asian Dalit Adivasi Network (SADAN), said those attitudes have followed Dalit immigrants even though they have left India behind. “There is a lot of caste discrimination in Canada. Not just in schools, but in workplaces too. Casteist slurs are regularly used in schools. It happens through cultural practices, social settings and in rituals and traditions,” he said.

The TDSB’s proposal has drawn some opposition. A group called the Canadian Organization for Hindu Heritage Education (COHHE) has started a petition calling for a stop to the motion. The group says that adding caste to the list of protected identities is Hinduphobic. (The caste system has roots in Hinduism but exists in other communities.)

“There is little evidence or reports of ‘caste oppression’ in Toronto and for that matter Canada,” states the petition, which has more than 5,000 signatures. “Hence the declaration that ‘there is rise in documented anti-caste discrimination in the diaspora, including in Toronto’ makes the motion misleading, prejudiced and lacking in integrity.”

Ms. Rajakulasingam, who is Hindu, said she was confused by the allegation that the motion was targeting the Hindu faith. She said the motion did not single out any faith, but that it affected South Asian, African and Caribbean diasporas.

Jaskaran Sandhu, a Brampton resident and board member of the World Sikh Organization, said that caste dynamics exist in all South Asian communities. Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of Sikhism, singled out caste as a mode of oppression.

“As Sikhs, we are vehemently opposed to the caste system. We understand the importance of fighting caste oppression, wherever it exists,” Mr. Sandhu said.

Chinnaiah Jangam, associate professor at Carleton University and co-founder of SADAN, has faced death threats and online attacks because of his work on caste oppression and Hindu nationalism. In April of last year, SADAN held a consultation with TDSB board members and shared personal experiences of Dalit students in Toronto, Dr. Jangam said.

“An oppressed-caste girl in the 11th grade was told by her classmate that if she were a prostitute, she would not even get a penny because she had dark skin,” he said, outlining one such incident. “How can you say there is no caste-oppression in Canada?” he added.

In January, 2022, California State University made caste a protected category. In December, Brown University became the first Ivy League university to do so. The TDSB’s vote comes close on the heels of a historic decision by the Seattle City Council, which became the first jurisdiction in the United States to explicitly ban caste discrimination late last month.

Thenmozhi Soundararajan, executive director of the U.S.-based civil-rights group Equality Labs, said, “This motion aligns TDSB with this movement for equity that has started in educational institutions and is taking the world by storm.”

Ms. Rajakulasingam said the best way to end a cycle of discrimination is to sensitize children.

“When we recognize oppression, and we begin to speak about it, students can heal and feel empowered by their identities. Like how we feel accepted by racial identity, we want students to feel accepted by whatever their caste location is,” she said.

Source: Caste bullying at Toronto schools prompts vote over new protected category

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FIRST READING: Save the #citizenship ceremonies! 

2023/03/09 Leave a comment

Summary of some other commentary criticizing the move. Haven’t seen any commentary favouring the change although a small minority in comment sections and social media are in favour given “promised” reduction in processing times:

Amid news that the federal government is mulling an end to in-person citizenship ceremonies, a cross-section of prominent Canadians have emerged to denounce the “terrible” and “horrifying” idea.

“This is without question a terrible idea,” wrote former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi in a tweet last week. “The ceremony is deeply meaningful and the reasons for removing it given here are bureaucratic and puerile.”

On Feb. 25, the Department of Citizenship and Immigration first gave notice that they were mulling an end to in-person citizenship ceremonies in favour of a “secure online solution.” In-person ceremonies could still be arranged upon request, but subject to a delay.

Rather than swearing allegiance to the Crown in front of a citizenship judge, new Canadians would simply check a box online. Presumably, the “online solution” would also do away with a group singing of “O Canada.”

According to immigration officials, phasing out the ceremony was suggested purely as a way to relieve a three-month backlog in finalizing citizenship applications.

“Recognizing that more can be done to further improve client service and processing times … the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration announced that the Department would begin pursuing the necessary changes to allow for self-administration of the Oath of Citizenship,” it wrote.

A brief also noted the inconvenience of new citizens sometimes having to book time off work to make the ceremony. “Many clients have to take time off work to attend citizenship ceremonies, and this time off is not necessarily paid by employers,” it reads.

“It is a bad idea to do away with citizenship ceremonies. A very bad idea. The opposite of efficiency,” novelist John Ralston Saul wrote in a statement last week.

Some of the most vocal defenders, however, have been foreign-born Canadians whose own citizenship began with the swearing of an oath.

Sergio Marchi is an Argentinian immigrant to Canada who eventually served as minister of immigration under then-prime minister Jean Chrétien.

“For years, my parents would recount how momentous and meaningful (the ceremony) was. Why would government want to rob future citizens of this feeling of attachment?” wrote Marchi in an op-ed for the Toronto Star.

The former minister also called it an “insult” that the ceremony would be phased out merely in the name of expediency. He noted that when similar backlogs piled up under his tenure, the department began deputizing Order of Canada recipients to act as citizenship judges.

“In-Person Canadian citizenship ceremonies are the magical rituals that bring together everyone (new and old citizens) to celebrate the true meaning of the Canadian dream,” reads a Monday social media post by Tareq Hadhad, a Syrian refugee famous for founding the Nova Scotia-based chocolatier Peace by Chocolate.

“We cannot afford to lose the significance of this celebration of belonging nor can we diminish the value of Canadian citizenship,” Hadhad added.

Former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson came to Canada as a refugee from Japanese-occupied Hong Kong, and would preside over a few citizenship ceremonies herself as an Officer of the Order of Canada.

In a column for The Globe and Mail, Clarkson said she was “horrified” by the proposed change.

“The idea that Canada, which is perhaps the most successful immigrant nation in the world, would resort to a machine-oriented way of saying that you are now a citizen, is egregious,” she wrote.

Right up until the end of the Second World War, Canadians were considered British subjects and all citizenship rituals and protocols were dictated by the U.K.

But the 1946 passage of the Citizenship Act first demarcated Canadian citizenship as a distinct entity from that of the U.K. One of the more unique aspects of the bill was its provision that new Canadians should attend “appropriate ceremonies” in order to impress upon them the “responsibilities and privileges of Canadian citizenship.”

This is not a universal practice. While the United States maintains a similar swearing-in ceremony for new citizens, in many countries naturalization is a more bureaucratic process done without any official pomp.

The centrepiece of the Canadian ceremony is the Oath of Citizenship. After some modern refinements over the years, it’s now a 64-word recitation pledging allegiance to King Charles III, the “laws of Canada,” the “Constitution” and “the Aboriginal and treaty rights of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.”

Ironically, the Department of Immigration is looking to phase out citizenship oaths at a time when pledging allegiance to Canada has never been easier. 

With many citizenship ceremonies made virtual during COVID-19, thousands of new Canadians have already finalized their citizenship by speaking into a webcam.

However, it’s still against the law to deliver the oath by phone.

“Administering the Oath over the phone is not in keeping with the legislation,” reads an official guide for new Canadians living in remote areas.

Source: FIRST READING: Save the citizenship ceremonies!

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Griffith and Omidvar: Canadian citizenship by individual click? That’s not a good idea

2023/03/08 Leave a comment

Written jointly with Senator Omidvar:

The federal government’s recent proposal to allow applicants to self-administer the citizenship oath instead of being required to do so before a citizenship judge or equivalent undermines the meaningfulness and significance of becoming a Canadian citizen with fellow new Canadians.

Citizenship ceremonies are one of the few special moments in which the federal government can connect with new Canadians and celebrate their becoming Canadian and furthering their integration journey.

From experience attending ceremonies and taking the oath, we know the impact on new Canadians is real and meaningful, as it is on existing Canadians in attendance. Having citizenship conferred is not transactional, unlike obtaining drivers’ licences, health cards or passports. Citizenship allows for political participation through voting and being able to run for office and thus directly influence the future direction of Canada.

The proposed change continues a trend of diminishing the value of Canadian citizenship in practical aspects. There has been the ongoing massive shift to virtual citizenship ceremonies, prompted by the pandemic but expanded (99 per cent since April 2020). As well, there is no updated citizenship study guide despite plans for one more than three immigration ministers ago.

The government justifies the proposed change on operational and financial grounds and is silent on the policy implications regarding integration of new Canadians. The previous government was similarly silent on the implications of its quintupling of adult citizenship fees in 2014-15, which we now know has resulted, along with other factors, in a significant drop in naturalization rates.

The current government is explicit that cost savings will come primarily from reduced citizenship ceremonies, both physical and virtual.

It is striking that a government so attuned to the importance of reconciliation and recognition of past and current injustices and the concerns of particular groups, can be so blind to the power of citizenship ceremonies to bring people of diverse origins together to celebrate them becoming part of Canadian society with all the rights and responsibilities that entails. And arguing, on inclusion grounds, that the change will save applicants two hours of ceremony time misses this broader aspect of inclusion.

Arguably, with pandemic measures largely over, the government should revert to in-person ceremonies as the default option, as these provide a greater sense of community and connection than virtual ceremonies.

The government, early in its mandate, made significant changes to residency and language requirements to improve inclusion, and more recently, changes to the oath of citizenship to recognize Indigenous and treaty rights. Reducing processing and ceremony time are insignificant in comparison.

We know from the recent Statistics Canada and the Institute for Canadian Citizenship analysis that naturalization has declined dramatically from 60.4 per cent in 2016 to 45.7 per cent in 2021, five to nine years after landing, reflecting a combination of factors, including the pandemic and high citizenship fees. A substantive inclusion measure would require the government to implement, at least partially, its platform commitment in the 2019 and 2021 election platforms to eliminate citizenship fees.

Citizenship provides a mix of personal and public benefits.

Applicants personally benefit from the security citizenship provides in terms of mobility and voting rights and the ability to run for office. Canadian society benefits from the “common bond for Canadian-born individuals and naturalized Canadians alike, signifying full membership in Canadian society.”

The proposed change highlights how the government treats citizenship as a service transaction rather than a substantive unifying and integrating process to help new Canadians feel fully part of Canadian society.

Andrew Griffith is the former director general for Citizenship and Multiculturalism and is a fellow of the Environics Institute and of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. Sen. Ratna Omidvar is an independent senator from Ontario.

Source: Griffith and Omidvar: Canadian citizenship by individual click? That’s not a good idea

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Chinese interference in Canada? Chinese Canadians say they reported it for years — and were ignored

2023/03/08 Leave a comment

Of note:

The first time Cheuk Kwan and Sheng Xue testified to a parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee was in 2006. They warned of Beijing’s desire to “control everything” including activities of Canadians, and urged Ottawa to adopt a stronger stance in order to “earn (China’s) respect and not wrath.” 

“But every time we spoke to the government, it felt like we were putting on a show and helping them tick off a box that they were hearing from critics. Nothing was done,” Kwan said. 

Nearly 20 years later, he said they are part of a group of veteran Chinese-Canadian advocates and experts on China who are still struggling to be heard. 

On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apparently relented. He is set to ask MPs and senators on Parliament’s national security committee to launch a new investigation of foreign interference in Canada.

None of the recent leaks of Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) warnings about Beijing’s foreign interference have surprised people in the country’s Chinese diaspora who have directly experienced Beijing’s intimidation and harassment, they say. 

“These are not even open secrets. It’s common knowledge,” said Kwan, an author and filmmaker who co-founded the Chinese Canadian National Council in 1980. “It’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Kwan’s group supported those who fled to Canada from China following the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, and he has since witnessed Beijing’s mobilization of resources to influence other societies, particularly in places such as Canada, the U.S. and Australia where many Chinese diaspora settled. 

These days most of the blame is attributed to the increasingly infamous United Front Work Department. Since 1979, the United Front has been an official bureau in China that employs thousands of agents to pursue the Chinese Communist Party’s political strategy to use international networks to advance its global interests. According to official documents, the bureau takes special interest in people of Chinese descent living abroad, viewing them as powerful external threats as well as potential allies. 

Kwan alleges that his organization was targeted by United Front astroturfing: a new group arose with a very similar name, and it started issuing press statements and interviews that regularly opposed his own group’s messages, while boasting of connections to the Chinese consulate in Toronto. 

He and others also became suspicious when they saw buses of people arrive at federal political nomination meetings to support candidates who were known to shy away from critical messages about China, or when buses of international students in Toronto arrived to participate in counterprotests defending China’s position. 

Sources in the Chinese-Canadian community tell the Star that they have sent many tips, including copies of email correspondence, to RCMP and CSIS. In 2018, Mounties in Metro Vancouver probed allegations that the Chinese-state-linked Canada Wenzhou Friendship Society sent out messages on the social-media app WeChat urging chat group members to vote for certain candidates in mayoral elections — and offering a $20 transportation subsidy. But police later said they found no evidence of voter manipulation. 

“Even if there was proof the Chinese consulate or its proxies paid for transportation or paid people directly to support certain candidates or to protest, it’s hard to explain to Canadians the nefarious ways the Chinese state uses its tools and resources to try to influence our democracy,” Kwan said. While media had published the leaked WeChat screenshots offering the $20 subsidy, it is unclear why RCMP found that this was insufficient evidence of voter manipulation. 

And these are relatively subtle forms of influence, Kwan said: Beijing’s blunt tactic of coercion on Canadians is to threaten their friends, family members or business connections in China. 

He and others collected testimony and documentation, and published a report in 2017 with Amnesty International on a “sustained campaign of intimidation and harassment aimed at activists working on China-related human rights issues in Canada, in circumstances suggesting the involvement or backing of Chinese government officials.”

“We sent copies to the RCMP and to the Prime Minister’s Office, but it was ignored,” Kwan said. 

Numerous reports emerge over years

The report detailed threatening phone calls and physical confrontations of Canadians, improper detention of Canadians at Chinese airports, threats of retaliation against relatives living in China and online smear and disinformation campaigns. 

This was followed by a cascade of research from academics and advocacy groups, including Alliance Canada Hong Kong, journalist Jonathan Manthorpe’s book “Claws of the Panda,” and Australian researcher Alex Joske warning that Beijing’s foreign interference is “likely widespread” in Canada. 

Canada does not have laws or protocols in place for police and CSIS to work together with different levels of government to counter foreign interference. Following reports of intimidation of Canadians of Sikh heritage by Indian authorities, Canada’s Ministry of Public Safety told the Star that “anyone who feels threatened online or in person should report these incidents to their local police.”

But many Canadians have told the Star that their reports of threats from foreign actors to police have gone largely unheeded. A Chinese student in Quebec only had two followers on Twitter, but he still didn’t escape Beijing’s tactics, which he alleged included tracking his IP address and threatening his father living in China. 

Chinese-Canadian reporters and others would whisper to each other the names of Canadian politicians of various backgrounds who they saw having meetings or attending events with Chinese consulate staff. But without support from Canadian law enforcement, they didn’t dare air those observations publicly, Kwan said.

Last year Victor Ho — the former editor of Sing Tao Daily, Canada’s largest Chinese-Canadian newspaper, who has been outspoken on pressures from the Chinese government on Canadian media — was placed on a “wanted list” by security officials in Hong Kong. He was accused of violating the territory’s National Security Law, which applies to anyone in the world regardless of nationality. 

In the wake of recent reporting from the Globe and Mail and Global TV on leaked CSIS warnings, spy chief David Vigneault tolda parliamentary committee that a registry of foreign officials or agents would make it easier to track activities of people intent on influencing or interfering in Canadian elections on behalf of foreign governments.

“CSIS has been talking about foreign influence for the last few years — foreign interference — and I think that tool would be useful,” Vigneault said last Thursday. “It wouldn’t solve all our problems, but it would increase transparency.”

The most aggressive actors trying to influence Canadian lawmakers and voters are China, Russia and Iran, which try to coerce or pressure people within expat communities abroad — or leverage sympathizers in Canada — to exert influence on elections, nomination contests or public debate, the committee heard.

Trudeau is facing increasing pressure from the public and opposition parties to launch a public inquiry into allegations of foreign interference. Until Monday he had rejected calls for a probe, and said “there are ongoing public committee hearings … where those heads of agencies and people responsible for safety and integrity of our elections are testifying publicly on all the work that’s being done.” 

The RCMP told Parliament last week they are not investigating any allegations related to foreign interference from the 2021 federal election. 

The Globe and Mail and Global TV have separately reported several specific details about what happened in both the 2019 and 2021 campaigns. Among them: China being behind the nomination of Liberal candidate Han Dong ahead of the 2019 election; undeclared cash donations to candidates; schemes to have some of that money paid back to donors; having businesses hire Chinese students who were then lent out to volunteer and intimidation campaigns.

China has disputed all of the allegations.

The Star has not verified the reports independently, and security officials at the committee repeatedly declined to do the same, saying they couldn’t “validate” or “speak to” the allegations.

Sheng Xue was among those who fled to Canada from Beijing following the Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-reform demonstrators in 1989. Here, she continued to work as a journalist and became vice-president of the Canadian chapter of the Federation for a Democratic China. 

“The Canadian chapter has been quite active for the past 33 years. We’ve had yearly closed-door meetings with Global Affairs Canada,” Sheng told the Star.

Advocacy in Canada for human rights in China used to be a popular and mainstream activity among immigrants from China, she said. But Beijing soon turned to threatening their family members back in China to try to stifle their activities. 

“It was very effective. We lost a lot of members. When your parents or relatives are being harassed and threatened, most people won’t be able to stand it. Especially those who still wanted to go back to China to visit their families.” 

Sheng did not bow to this pressure, and in September 1996, she was arrested by Chinese police when she tried to visit her mother in Beijing. She was interrogated by more than a dozen officers for 24 hours, and then deported back to Canada. 

“My Canadian passport saved me. I have never been able to go back to China and my dad passed away in 1992 and I couldn’t see him. Luckily, my mom was able to come to Canada and she lived with me for many years,” said Sheng, who is now in her early sixties. 

Smear campaign includes fake nude photos 

She thought she would be safe living with her mother in Greater Toronto, But since 2014, the award-winning writer has faced a relentless online smear campaign, including fake nude photos and a photo that seemed to show her kissing a man who is not her husband. 

“This started in 2014, the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. In addition to the online posts and images, thousands of emails were sent to my contacts with the material and if you Google my name in Chinese, there are still a lot of fake nude photos as well as my phone number listed in fake online ads offering sex services,” she said. The Star has viewed copies of the emails and photographs. 

Sheng went to police all over North America to plead for help. 

“I remember going to a police station in Mississauga to report, and the officer just advised me to change my phone number. I told him, ‘Whatever new number I choose, they will find it out right away.’” 

“This is how the Chinese regime makes people feel isolated and hopeless.”

“Of course, the CSIS leaks aren’t surprising. We’ve spent years sharing information to Parliament,” said Uyghur Canadian human-rights advocate Mehmet Tohti, echoing Kwan and Sheng’s frustrations.

In the early 1990s, when the Chinese government was already targeting Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, the biology teacher left China for Turkey and then Canada. For over a decade, as China interned an estimated over a million people in Xinjiang in “re-education camps,” Tohti has been a prominent advocate, co-founding the World Uyghur Congress and working as the executive director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project based in Ottawa. 

For this work, he alleges, Chinese police threatened his mother at gunpoint and ordered her to not speak to her son again. The last time he spoke with her was on the phone in 2016 — to say goodbye. 

‘It’s time for my cousin to pay the price’

More recently, ahead of an unanimous House of Commons vote last month to accept 10,000 Uyghur refugees, a move that Tohti lobbied for, he said he received a menacing call from Chinese police. 

“They told me that my mother died and my two sisters are dead and it’s time for my cousin to pay the price. The message was basically that my family paid a heavy price and if I don’t stop, my cousin will be in danger. It’s a direct threat and it’s still ongoing,” Tohti told the Star. He said his mother had passed away from a stroke, but he believes his sisters are still alive. 

Canada, along with other Western nations, imposed sanctions on high-ranking officials in China in 2021 over what it said were “gross and systematic human rights violations” against Uyghurs. 

Tohti said he has spoken to the Canadian government at least 30 times, and while he is appreciative of existing support for Uyghurs, he thinks it is time for Ottawa to do more to protect them once they’re living in Canada, where they remain vulnerable to persecution. 

Advocates tell the Star that any new approach to countering foreign interference in Canada should involve a whole-of-government approach and apply to all countries and not just China, since local-level politicians and grassroots community groups are as vulnerable to intimidation and meddling as federal politicians.

“What’s happening is the hijacking of families back home to push Canadian citizens in Canada to live under the norms of the Chinese Communist Party and not as free citizens of Canada,” Tohti said. 

Kwan said with a sigh: “We have been talking about the same things in the (leaked) CSIS reports for years but getting much less attention.” 

“If it takes secret spy documents to finally get people’s attention, that is fine.” 

Source: Chinese interference in Canada? Chinese Canadians say they reported it for years — and were ignored

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Wudrick: Canada needs immigration reform that is fair and constructive

2023/03/08 Leave a comment

Right-leaning outlets cautioning on the risk to the social consensus in favour of immigration, particularly perceptions of queue jumping. But not xenophobic to raise these and other concerns:

Much has been written recently on rising concerns about Canadian immigration levels, and specifically the Trudeau government’s announcement of significantly higher immigration targets. As commentators have noted, Canada has historically had cross-party consensus on immigration that can be legitimately described as a uniquely Canadian phenomenon.

This good news has been a point of Canadian pride (or smugness) in a time of global political turbulence, given that in many of our peer countries, immigration backlash has manifested itself in sometimes ugly and xenophobic ways.

But here’s the bad news: This consensus is at risk, and may already be little more than a mirage. It’s consoling that immigration skepticism has not coalesced around any single political party, where it could become a political wedge issue. But fraying support for immigration across party lines exposes an even greater risk: that the issue will be ignored by all parties until it reaches a dangerous boiling point.

Part of the challenge is that Canadians concerned about immigration are often afraid to say so out loud for fear of being called racist or xenophobic. And to be clear, there are racist and xenophobic Canadians, as in every country. But it would be a colossal mistake for our political class to wave away any misgivings about our immigration policy as mere prejudice.

Politicians must understand some of the factors that stoke concerns with our policies and targets. Start with the Roxham Road border crossing between New York State and Quebec, where unlawful (irregular) refugee crossings have skyrocketed in recent years. Recently, news broke that New York City is paying for bus tickets to help asylum-seekers reach the border.

Roxham Road matters because it is about fairness. It represents a legal loophole that people are exploiting. Refugees are a legitimate humanitarian issue, but allowing a class of people to essentially “skip the line” will undermine support for a rules-based system that the public can believe is fair to all.

Second, for many Canadians the concern is not who is coming, so much as how many: for a population already dealing with serious supply strains, immigrants represent a demand spike that will only worsen the situation. Housing is an obvious example; so is access to health care. Just ask the six million Canadians who cannot find a family doctor.

Some argue, fairly, that new immigrants actually represent part of the solution to these supply challenges, providing much-needed additional labour, from construction workers to nurses and doctors. But such tangible factors are not used to inform government immigration targets, which smack of central planning. Perhaps it’s time we shifted away from immigration by fiat and adopted a more market-based approach.

Consider the relative success of refugees to Canada based on their path of entry. Experience shows that privately sponsored Syrian refugees have a better chance of finding employment than those brought in under government programs. This suggests that when migrants have non-government partners invested in their success, their integration into Canadian society is likely to go more smoothly.

While humanitarian refugees require sponsorship and charity from individual Canadians and communities, for many economic immigrants the relevant invested partner will be employers who, given labour supply challenges, are often among the loudest champions of high immigration levels.

Here, too, a legitimate criticism is often raised, since efforts by employers to create cheap pools of labour can drive down wages for all Canadians. But this blurs the immigration discussion with a separate issue: the difference between employers unwilling to pay higher salaries, and those who simply cannot find job candidates at any economically viable salary level.

Canada’s immigration consensus has served our country well for half a century. If we are to salvage it, we will need to listen to those with legitimate concerns about high immigration rates — and more importantly, adjust our approach away from government targets towards a system that prioritizes matching our supply of and demand for immigrants and refugees as smoothly as possible.

Aaron Wudrick is Director of the domestic policy program at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

Source: Wudrick: Canada needs immigration reform that is fair and constructive

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UK: Braverman seeks to backdate Channel crossings law amid fears of rush

2023/03/08 Leave a comment

The latest effort by the UK government. Numbers are comparable to Roxham Road. And like Roxham Road, France may be less interested than the UK in adopting measures that restrict asylum seekers from leaving France:

Refugees who cross the Channel in small boats from Tuesday could face detention and deportation under a new migration law that Labour and charities have called “unworkable” and “cruel”.

In an acknowledgment that the law will prompt a fresh rush of refugees across the Channel, the Home Office is seeking to make the illegal migration bill apply retrospectively from the day it is introduced to parliament, the Guardian has been told.

Suella Braverman, the home secretary, will ask for the proposed law to be applied from the moment she stands up in the Commons on Tuesday. The move follows criticism from unions that the legislation could result in an increase in trafficking across the Channel as refugees attempt to reach the UK before it is passed.

A Home Office source said: “If parliament passes the bill, the measures will be retrospective and apply from the date of introduction. That’s to stop people smugglers seizing on the opportunity to rush migrants across the Channel to avoid being subject to the new measures.”

Lucy Moreton, of the Immigration Services Union, said the plans would “fuel the service” for people smugglers, at least in the short term, “who could tell would-be arrivals that they needed to travel soon”.

Braverman is expected to say that under the new law, asylum claims from those who travel to the UK in small boats will be inadmissible, and the arrivals will be removed to a third country and banned from returning or claiming citizenship.

Details about how the policy will be implemented are scarce, with previous efforts to tighten procedures – such as the policy to send people to Rwanda – mired in legal challenges.

On Monday evening, a Downing Street spokesperson said Rishi Sunak had spoken to Rwanda’s president ahead of Braverman’s statement.

The prime minister and Paul Kagame “discussed the UK-Rwanda migration partnership and our joint efforts to break the business model of criminal people smugglers and address humanitarian issues”, the spokesperson said.

Source: Braverman seeks to backdate Channel crossings law amid fears of rush

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They came to Canada, were in child protection, but never got legal immigration status. Now advocates are speaking up

2023/03/08 Leave a comment

Failure by governments on a number of levels:

Raised by his great-grandmother in the Dominican Republic, Fili has few memories of his parents or his sister and two brothers, who were both murdered.

When his only caregiver died, the young boy, then about 10, moved in with friends he met on the streets and started catching fish and unloading cargo at a shipping port to provide for himself.

As a young teen, he was shot in the leg once while caught in a crossfire between local gangs, and made attempts to flee the country by sea before he and a friend successfully swam aboard an Egyptian ship. They left behind a life of street violence for an unknown journey that would lead to the harbour of Quebec City in 2002.

The 14-year-old became a Crown ward, but that only marked the beginning of a two-decade battle for the stowaway, an unaccompanied minor, to gain permanent residence in Canada while being bounced from foster home to foster home.

After aging out of the child welfare system, still without proper immigration status, he had run-ins with the law and was slated for deportation to a country he barely remembered.

“This is my country, my home,” said Fili, now 35, who asked that his real name not be published because he is still in immigration limbo.

Fili’s case, said his lawyer Erin Simpson, highlights the failure of child welfare agencies to address the unresolved immigration status of Crown wards in their care.

It also casts a spotlight on the racism inherent in the justice system and in immigration enforcement, Simpson said.

“It really is a long story of one institution after another failing to provide him with the care that he needed,” Simpson said. “It’s a story about systemic racism in various systems.

“His struggles with immigration have dominated his whole life here. There’s nothing that can be done to give him back those years.”

And it’s stories such as Fili’s that a coalition of advocacy groups would like to address with a campaign to push for an end to deporting those who came to Canada as a minor and spent time in the child-welfare system, and provide them with a pathway for permanent residence.

“In recognition of the systemic anti-Black racism within the child welfare system, the immigration system and the criminal justice system, this public policy is one of those things that can be done to address these concerns,” said Khaldah Salih, co-ordinator of the campaign led by the Black Legal Action Centre, the driving force behind the proposed public policy.

Children’s aid accused of neglect

The issue first came on the radar of the Toronto legal clinic in 2018 with the high-profile case of Abdilahi Elmi, a former child refugee and foster child who faced deportation to Somalia after run-ins with the law. Since then, the clinic became aware of other similar cases.

Elmi arrived in Toronto with his mother in 1995 at age 10 and was granted refugee protection in Canada. At 13, he was placed in foster care, and by 16, he was living on the streets.

His supporters said he was a victim of neglect by children’s aid officials who failed to help him acquire permanent status, a necessary step toward his citizenship, which would have spared him from deportation.

Trying to restore or obtain one’s permanent resident status after being deemed inadmissible for criminality can be very difficult if not impossible, and may take years.

Finally, in 2019, Elmi was granted a reprieve at the request of the UN Human Rights Committee, which argued Canada would violate its international human rights obligations by sending the now adult man to one of the most dangerous countries in the world, where he has no family and does not know the language and culture.

Andrew Brouwer of the Refugee Law Office, one of the coalition partners, has seen a fair number of adult migrants facing removal after they have spent years in Canada since childhood, as refugees or under family sponsorships, and sometimes as undocumented residents.

“They end up being criminalized while they’re in children’s aid custody,” he said, “and then they age out, they end up in the criminal justice system and then quickly are pushed through to the immigration enforcement system and are facing deportation.

“It’s really based on our experience with our clients and seeking a larger remedy to help all of them that we got involved in this campaign.”

The overrepresentation of Black children in the child welfare system and Black adults is well documented, including in a 2018 Ontario Human Rights Commission report, which found the number of Black children admitted into care was 2.2 times higher than their proportion in the child population.

A federal Department of Justice report in December also found Black adults accounted for nine per cent of offenders under federal jurisdiction (in custody or under community supervision) in the 2020-21 fiscal year although the community only represented about four per cent of Canada’s adult population.

“Overwhelmingly, it is men of colour, and in particular Black men, who’ve gone through both systems that are systemically stacked against them,” said Anthony Navaneelan of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, another coalition member. “They come in at the other end with deportation orders, despite having been in Canada for decades.”

“The state is the de facto parent here, so these are the fruits of the parents of the state’s actions. In our opinion, we can’t just coldly apply the Immigration Act to deport these individuals. There’s a responsibility on the part of the state to repair the damage it’s been involved in creating.”

Under the current immigration system, an increasing number of permanent residents are arriving first with temporary status as temporary foreign workers and international students. For various reasons such as the costs of raising a family in Canada, they suffer prolonged separations from their spouses and children.

As a result, said Navaneelan, the parent and child may have broken relationships when they finally reunite, and their relationships could be further strained with other adjustment challenges in a new language and culture.

The proposed policy is not a blanket amnesty or regularization program, as eligible candidates must provide a well-defined paper trail to qualify, he pointed out.

While no data is available on the number of people who had been through the child welfare system and are facing removals, Navaneelan estimated that the number will be less than a thousand.

According to Fili’s court submissions to stay his most recent deportation scheduled for November, he was wrongfully issued an exclusion order by border officials upon his arrival by sea in 2002, which prevented him from seeking asylum in Canada. He also disputed officials’ claim that the then 14-year-old waived his rights to undergo a pre-removal risk assessment to remain here.

After a brief detention, Fili was placed in the care of the Direction de la Protection de la Jeunesse, which submitted a permanent residence application for him on humanitarian grounds belatedly in 2005. After another delay, the application was approved in principle by Immigration in 2008.

In 2009, Fili was charged with assault stemming from an altercation with security guards outside a bar in Ottawa. Processing of his permanent residence was halted.

In 2010, according to his court appeal, he was with his then girlfriend when police entered her apartment in connection with an investigation that did not involve him, and found small bags of ecstasy and cocaine in the bedroom.

Although she confessed that the substances belonged to her, Fili was convicted of possession of four pills of ecstasy; possession for the purposes of trafficking of one gram of cocaine; and possession for the purposes of trafficking of eight pills of ecstasy.

The assault conviction was overturned on appeal, but the drug charges led to his permanent-residence approval being revoked. In 2016, when Canada Border Services Agency tried to deport him, he moved underground.

Fili, who now lives in Laval, said he had made many attempts to get temporary residence and work permits in Canada over the years . He said he was going about his life quietly undocumented when he joined a protest with other construction workers over owed wages and he was asked by police for ID.

“You can’t complain no matter what others do to you,” said Fili, 35, who got a two-year temporary residence permit in December, his first lawful status after 20 years. “You can’t speak out. It’s like you don’t exist, but this is my home where I’ve spent most of my life.”

‘Double punishment’ for Sierra Leone migrant

Yoro was 15 when he fled war in Sierra Leone and his father sent him and his two younger brothers to Canada in 2000 via Guinea. All three initially stayed with a family friend in Winnipeg before becoming Crown wards and separated from one another.

The unaccompanied minor was granted asylum and became a permanent resident in 2003 with the help of the family friend. Yoro said he stayed with more than 10 foster families during his time in care before he aged out and moved into shelters.

There were many challenges in terms of alcohol and drug abuse with his foster families, as well as fights and abuse, said Yoro, and there were often power outages in the homes because the bills were not paid.

“The foster care system only made sure you got food and shelter. As far as getting your immigration documents or anything like that, you didn’t get any help,” said Yoro, who asked to withhold his last name while his removal is pending.

A dropout at Grade 11, he said no one had ever explained to him the importance of getting his citizenship, though he wouldn’t have been able to afford the $630 application and $100 right-of-citizenship fees.

Yoro was convicted of drug trafficking and weapon charges in Saskatoon in 2018 — a case now under appeal before the Supreme Court of Canada — and sentenced to 36 months in jail. The border agency initiated his removal upon his release in February 2021 and his case is now before the immigration minister, who will decide if his threat to the public outweighs the risk he faces if deported to Sierra Leone.

“I have lived in Canada much longer than in my country of birth,” said the 39-year-old father of two, who now lives in Toronto. “There’s no good memories about Sierra Leone but war and deaths. I still have flashbacks of seeing vultures and dogs eating dead bodies on the street.”

Added Brouwer, his lawyer, “Yoro should be treated like every other Canadian kid. There’s a criminal justice system. He has gone through that process. He has served his time. Only because of the circumstances of his arrival here … he is now facing the additional horrific penalty of being banished from his country. That’s like double punishment.”

A new children’s aid partnership

Recognizing the needs of children with unresolved immigration issues, the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies partnered with the Peel CAS in launching the Child Welfare Immigration Centre of Excellence in 2018.

Since then, the centre, which also offers relevant training to care workers in the sector across Canada, has supported over 1,900 children and youth through referrals and helped 87 get their citizenship. In the last fiscal year alone, it served 666 clients from 82 countries.

This summer, the province is also expected to bring in new regulations to require all 50 children’s aid societies to review and identify a client’s immigration issues within the first 30 days of a child coming into care, said Mary Beth Moellenkamp, CEO of Peel CAS.

“Part of the impetus to this (centre) was to ensure that children and youth who left us, whom we weren’t able to help support with status or citizenship or for whatever reason we missed doing that, that they had a place to go back to,” she explained.

“Certainly we wouldn’t want to see any children or youth fall through a system issue, a gap that would put them at risk.”

The coalition has met government officials in private and submitted the proposed policy to various immigration and public safety ministers to no avail before launching its campaign earlier this year.

A spokesperson for the immigration department said officials cannot comment or speculate on future program or policy decisions.

Source: They came to Canada, were in child protection, but never got legal immigration status. Now advocates are speaking up

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

For Haitian migrants in limbo, calls to close Roxham Road clash with Canada’s friendly image

2023/03/07 Leave a comment

Of note:

Standing outside a migrant shelter near Mexico’s border with the U.S., Smyder Mesidor recounted a 10-country odyssey to get here. Driven out of Haiti by gang violence and Chile by a lack of work, the 30-year-old cook had been robbed by bandits and shaken down by customs officials as he walked across much of Latin America.

This road would end, he hoped, in either Florida or Quebec, both places where he has family.

So he reacted with a mix of bemusement and insouciance to word that Canadian politicians want to make it harder for migrants to enter by shutting down Roxham Road, the irregular border crossing south of Montreal.

Bemusement because such rhetoric seemed to clash with Canada’s immigrant-friendly image. Insouciance because, after what he’d been through, he was ready to brave the vagaries of the immigration system in a country that held out the hope of a better life.

“I don’t listen to that sort of talk,” Mr. Mesidor said. “Everyone speaks well of Canada.”

Among the thousands of Haitian migrants gathered here in Reynosa, a city of 700,000 across the Rio Bravo from Texas, there is persistent interest in reaching Canada, usually as a backup option if it proves too difficult to stay in the U.S. There is an even more persistent disregard for attempts by either country to stop people from coming.

Given the brutality and lack of economic opportunity back home, they don’t feel they have much choice but to push forward.

“We’re a little bit upset when we hear politicians say those things, because we don’t have a voice. We want to come and help them build their country,” said Kency Etienne, a 30-year-old teacher living in an encampment of several dozen tents on a concrete pad next to a Mexican government office. “But we don’t really think about it.”

Sitting nearby were Jean and Marie Petilme, who made the trek with their four children. Ms. Petilme is eight-months pregnant with a fifth. Hiking through Panama’s Darien jungle, Mr. Petilme said some migrants with them had their clothes stolen at gunpoint, others were swept away while fording a river and a few starved to death. Life hasn’t been much better in Mexico.

“We’ve been here for three months and we don’t get much to eat. We don’t have phones to fill out asylum applications,” said their daughter Miscalina, 12. “This is how we live.”

Mireille Joseph, 32, also travelled pregnant, including a five-day stretch on foot. She left her husband and two children behind in Haiti. Her hope is to get to safety and then work on having them join her. “I don’t really care at all what the politicians say. I want to come to either Canada or the U.S.,” she said.

The lifting of pandemic border restrictions, along with deteriorating economic and security conditions in Haiti and parts of Latin America, have driven a rise in northward migration this past year. In Haiti, armed gangs have tightened their control of the country, carrying out frequent kidnappings for ransom and blocking access to Port-au-Prince’s shipping terminals. The capital has suffered repeated shortages of food, fuel and medicine.

Under the Canada-United States Safe Third Country Agreement, migrants arriving in Canada from the U.S. are prohibited from making Canadian asylum claims, allowing for their swift deportation. But the rule only applies at official points of entry, leading asylum seekers to enter the country at irregular border crossings.The vast majority do so at Roxham Road near Plattsburgh, N.Y., because of its relative accessibility.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has vowed to renegotiate the Safe Third Country Agreement to apply to the entire border. The White House, however, has shown little interest in changing the status quo. Meanwhile, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been busing migrants from his state to northern cities such as New York, where Mayor Eric Adams has sent many of them on to the Canadian border.

The influx has led Quebec Premier François Legault and federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to ramp up pressure on Mr. Trudeau to stem the tide. “We as a country can close that border crossing. If we are a real country, we have borders,” Mr. Poilievre said last month.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, Mr. Legault said that the province’s social services could not handle any more asylum seekers. He also warned that the new arrivals, who predominantly speak Haitian Creole or Spanish, would contribute to “the decline of French in Montreal.”

The number of people who made refugee claims after crossing at Roxham Road last year – almost 40,000 – is high by the standards of Canada, used to being geographically insulated from migration. In Mexico, it seems modest, a fraction of the more than 200,000 who tried to cross into the U.S. in December alone.

In Reynosa, the shelters are full, leaving many to live on the streets, in parks and in vacant lots. Hot, dusty and perpetually sunny even in late winter, the city feels a world away from the snow-covered forest surrounding Roxham Road. At one intersection near a large encampment, a dozen small businesses have sprung up under tarps strung between trees, with everyone from barbers to fruit sellers providing services to the migrants.

Over a charcoal fire, 19-year-old Natalie Joseph helped prepare gorditas. She has spent much of her life on the move: She left Haiti at the age of 5, she said, with her family settling in Chile. Two years ago, worried about her prospects for finding work, she decided to hit the road with two friends. “You can get the basic necessities in Chile but we wanted something better,” she said.

Across the street, Maricianne Pierre said she had been waiting in Reynosa 2½ months. “I’d love to go to Canada. There are possibilities of school, social programs, work. I’m stuck here right now,” said Ms. Pierre, 40.

Hector Silva, a pastor who runs two shelters in the city, said he wasn’t sure what to tell people who were setting their sights north. He only hoped that the leaders of wealthy countries wouldn’t shut anyone out.

“We have a lot of people asking, ‘How can we do it – if we get the paper from the U.S., how do we get all the way to Canada?’ We don’t know,” he said as a U.S. Border Patrol chopper buzzed overhead. “They’re not criminals. Many people are running for their lives. Leaving the country looking for a better life is not against the law.”

At another shelter a few blocks away, Ricot Picot and his wife watched their two small children play. Mr. Picot, 42, who was a teacher in Haiti, said everyone would be better off if the people with power to decide immigration policy allowed them to complete their journey. “I pray for them,” he said. “We don’t have anything – no jobs, no support. We are not achieving anything staying here.”

Source: For Haitian migrants in limbo, calls to close Roxham Road clash with Canada’s friendly image

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , , ,

Drop in diversity hires reflects the weak societal IQ of business leaders and puts companies at risk

2023/03/07 1 Comment

Of note. Wonder whether same trend present in Canada:

We would like to think that as business gets more complex, that as new forces influence decision-making and the pace of change accelerates, leadership teams are evolving and getting smarter. And then we see this: U.S. corporations are quietly eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion roles faster than any other positions.

DEI positions declined 33 per cent at the end of 2022 from their peak after the George Floyd killing in 2020, according to Revelio Labs, a New York work force research firm. That compares with a decline of 21 per cent for non-DEI roles.

Among the companies that have cut deepest into the DEI muscle are Amazon, Applebee’s and Twitter, which has reduced its team to two people from 30.

Beyond the complicated politics around diversity, the business implications of this decline are significant – and material. It is one more metric reflecting the widening gulf between the societal IQ of modern leadership teams – their knowledge of how they are affected by wider social and cultural contexts – and the changing expectations of stakeholders. What we end up with is a valley of death for leaders who can’t or won’t evolve.

It goes well beyond diversity. Internal and external constituencies are demanding that company leaders incorporate into their strategies the social trends that are influencing their decisions, from DEI to ESG to political interference in the markets they serve. Increasingly, a company’s societal IQ has an impact on the choices made by customers, investors and employees – and ultimately the company’s bottom line.

Many leaders are ill-prepared for the change, since this impact often has little or nothing to do with the products or services they sell. The traditional expertise they learned in business school – finance, operations, valuation, market forces, competitive analysis and the like – is no longer enough to succeed.

The decline in diversity roles is a stark example. Too many companies saw diversity as an issue to be dealt with rather than a strategic imperative for success, despite all sorts of data showing successful companies look like the customers and communities they serve.

They rushed into a hiring spree they believed sent a clear message: We get it. In the three months following Mr. Floyd’s death, DEI roles rose 55 per cent, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.

Clearly, many didn’t get it at all. Now that the noise around the issue has subsided somewhat, companies are cutting the positions they created – and publicized – to demonstrate their commitment to change without having made meaningful improvements within their organizations. Many are using broad layoffs to cover their tracks; newly minted DEI jobs are often the first to go in the “last in, first out” formula for work force reductions.

Critics such as the National Urban League are rightly calling out companies for being disingenuous, suggesting they created dead-end jobs as part of a check-all-the-boxes exercise to appear responsive to the social justice movement.

Many point to DEI programs as window dressing, tucked under human resources for a degree of separation from the C-suites. While many companies adopted recruitment mandates requiring slates of racialized candidates for all jobs, many did not change the internal mechanisms that drive the success of new hires – training, development and cultural immersion.

To be sure, there are plenty of examples of the need for higher societal IQ that predate Mr. Floyd’s death. And it is an imperative that affects not just a company’s reputation.

To protest U.S. immigration policy, workers at Wayfair.com, the online home décor company, staged a walkout in the summer of 2019 because the company was selling goods to a government contractor hired to furnish detention centres along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Chick-fil-A, the U.S. fast-food chain, saw its U.K. expansion plans stymied in 2019 when LGBTQ+ groups protested what they saw as the intolerant Christian conservative views of the company’s owners. Its first foreign store closed after just six weeks.

Institutional investors pulled billions of dollars from Fisher Investments after its founder, Ken Fisher, allegedly made sexist comments at a 2019 conference. And Goya Foods and MyPillow faced boycotts for openly supporting President Donald Trump’s re-election bid in 2020.

Ask the leaders of any of these companies and they will probably tell you they were blindsided by the power of what they considered to be non-business influences.

There’s one more remarkable finding in new research from online recruiting firm Zippia: Only 3.8 per cent of chief diversity officers at U.S. companies are Black. More than 76 per cent are white, 7.8 per cent are Hispanic/Latino, and 7.7 per cent are Asian.

You don’t need an MBA to know that doesn’t add up.

Source: Drop in diversity hires reflects the weak societal IQ of business leaders and puts companies at risk

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

How to create an adaptive culture in the public service

2023/03/07 Leave a comment

Perhaps I am getting too removed from the day-to-day realities of the public service but I find the various calls for reform are all too similar without any realistic means of implementation, whether by sophisticated academics or equally sophisticated former clerks and other senior officials.

In the case of the latter, a more reflective examination of how they tried to effect change and the roadblocks they faced would be more useful and practical than calls for change in specific areas:

Public service institutions have long been challenged to deliver a wide array of programs for governments and the public, and they continue to deliver programs and services as technology and public expectations evolve. However, what is driving change and creating anxiety in public services is the frequency and complexity of emerging new policy issues, as well as structural concerns such as competency gaps and the ability to address future issues.

This is not news to those in public management: cabinets and ministers are attuned to the policy agenda and drive policy as best they can with available resources. Climate change and environmental sustainability, working digitally, migration and immigration and an aging population are issues that have risen to the fore of an already heavy public service agenda.

For the public service to cope with these demands requires change in activities, new decision processes and institutional arrangements, and, most fundamentally, adapting its culture. By this we mean improving leadership, responsiveness and innovative capacity in working horizontally such as through a willingness to share information and responsibilities. This will be essential for consistent and productive transformation.

Multiple perspectives highlight the shifts in the way public services will have to adapt which will have implications on technology, approaches to employment and the characteristics of jobs and how public organizations maintain coherence. Four points must be stressed about the role of public services.

1. The changes in the environment will result in structural shifts in how public organizations work. Public service leaders must be skilled at anticipating shifts and conceptualizing innovative institutional arrangements, including adopting new technology, and managing the transition. Structural changes driven by technology also need capable people who can adapt and learn alongside new technology in order to be effective. This also includes rethinking several outdated administrative policies that do not reflect the evolving work environment.

2. A key driver to effective public services is a motivated and capable workforce. This means that sustainable change cannot take hold without engaged, passionate public servants who look beyond the daily grind of tending files and communicating with other public servants. Being engaged not only means contributing to the strategic direction of government and better public policymaking, but also creating and re-creating organizations to meet new needs of their policy environments. It also means attracting, developing and leading the right talent for new challenges.

3. Relying on large consulting houses to carry out policy and organizational change signals a lack of trust in the public service. One explanation could be that decision makers do not believe the public service can think innovatively. The effect is a decline in internal capability and leadership competence due to years of neglect in effective internal recruitment strategies and training. Focusing on improving service rather than perpetuating a transactional culture would go a long way to repair current dysfunctions.

4. There is always a constituency for systematic change in public institutions and we believe that is true of the Canadian public service. Public servants at all levels want to be more responsive to governments and public needs but are frustrated by the lack of support and recognition from senior leaders on ways to innovate and to improve systems and processes. On the other hand, senior leaders want to build an engaged public service, but may be focusing on the wrong things such as compliance and oversight measures.

The pandemic brought about creative ways of generating ideas and delivering public services but there are questions about leaders embracing these changes for the future. The question is how to understand change, generate reform, produce a sustainable and adaptive culture and to prepare for the future.

Lost opportunities, new possibilities

Governments have initiated high-level periodic institution-wide review efforts focused on diverse areas of public sector management. This included human resources in 2019, ongoing changes to procurement practices, changes to government accountability with the Gomery Commission in 2006 or public service operational practices and results delivery beginning in 2007. These reviews were carried out internally or independently, but rarely convinced decision-makers to institute recommended changes. In addition, the reviews did not take the other reviews and functions into account, often recommending changes that were contradictory.

Embedded regularized spending reviews could be used to drive public service reform, but these were abandoned in 2012 in Canada. The United Kingdom, Australia and Netherlands conduct regular reviews of fixed elements of spending focusing on making room for policy priorities while improving efficiencies in existing program areas. It is apparent that the federal government has initiated spending reviews but it is unclear if and how these will be linked in a coherent way to public service reform efforts. Other countries are beginning to think about linking spending reviews and reform to ensure policy and spending coherence.

Reform is multi-level and multi-faceted          

Embracing change requires adopting a dynamic approach. Multi-level reform means accepting that the public service is highly decentralized and operates in diverse areas of responsibility. Organizational structures and operating environments vary widely, and departments and agencies will know best how to respond to them. What gets in the way of relevant reforms are highly centralized systems and a lack of management autonomy to achieve expected results.

The public service depends on several important systems to work properly. Human resources involve recruitment, skills development and competency training and retention. Information and technology management is driven by digitalization, worker’s autonomy and mobility, data storage and sharing. Policy development and advice must acknowledge and balance strategic, administrative and operational elements. There needs to be effective procurement of goods and services along with sound financial management, oversight and monitoring.

Finally, there is the machinery of government and performance indicators that track results and assesses risks for their achievement. All of these must be simultaneously considered in any transformation.

Previous reform attempts, however, have tended to focus on defined problems associated with one or two of these systems. They did not recognize the complexity of how public organizations work, how these systems intersect with others, or the unique operational challenges of departments and agencies.

Reform cannot be a one-size-fits all solution. Significant discretion, in exchange for regular reporting, must be given to deputy ministers and their management teams to support administrative and management reform. As highlighted long ago in the Glassco Commission (1963) and Lambert Commission (1979), “letting the managers manage” involves providing space to public servants to improve services and implement policy without creating unnecessary administrative burden and excessive control by central agencies.

Leaders must be given room to imagine and propose changes to various systems that can be considered by the center of government in a timely way. This does not suggest a patchwork of changes without coherence, but rather a dialogue that gauges how these changes could be adapted to support the achievement of outcomes, and seriously monitors what sort of progress is being made in a tailored way.

This means looking at what has worked elsewhere and innovating with other executives in the public service to find support when there appears to be no workable solution. The central agencies must be willing to ensure tailored coherence for departments rather than uniformity and perpetuating a compliance culture.

Collaboration and coordination are critical

For change to work in such a multi-level embedded system to work effectively, additional conditions must be met. First, there must be engagement and support between ministers and the public service leadership. There also has to be a greater emphasis placed on learning, rather than managing, from the center of government. Central agenciesshould take on the role of enablers and coordinators rather than assuming primary leadership over such change.

There should be clear roles and responsibilities for executives so they can use their discretion to implement appropriate systems and processes in concert with others to ensure coherence. Administrative tools such as the Management Accountability Framework, Policy on Results, Directive on Performance Management and Policy on Service and Digital should provide stronger forward-looking emphasis and support on organizational learning in a coordinated way. Reporting on these must also be joined up to demonstrate outcomes.

These changes require a shift in sensibilities, capabilities, readiness to contribute, senior management commitment and the motivation to drive organizational change. It also needs external input from academics, think tanks and other communities – and not high-priced secretive and ungrounded consulting contracts – to work in partnership. The public service no longer has the luxury to operate as an island.

An adaptive public service for the 21st century

Other countries are using the pandemic as an opportunity to advance reforms. A key criticism of public services is their lack of nimbleness. They are comprised of organizations operating not only in silos but also as rule-bound sub-systems working within centralized, homogenous processes. Although rules and hierarchy are essential for ensuring some level of administrative and management coherence, particularly for democratic governance, they must be balanced with the need for innovation and creativity when change is rapid and often unpredictable.

Our systems must accept that change is constant, and that reform will be ongoing rather than periodic. It also means learning from past mistakes. The public service needs scope to learn and manage, connecting responsibilities more directly to their authorities and resources, joining up otherwise independent reporting, and better monitoring progress. Better monitoring and reporting would ensure that departments are better held to account for their valuable work.

Source: How to create an adaptive culture in the public service

Filed under Government Tagged with , , , ,

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