Experiences of discrimination in daily life among Chinese people in Canada, and their perceptions of and experiences with the police and the justice system

2023/08/29 Leave a comment

Of note, particularly the change from 2014 to 2019:

  • In the five years preceding the 2019 General Social Survey (GSS) on Canadians’ Safety (Victimization), three in ten (29%) Chinese people aged 15 and older experienced discrimination or unfair treatment in their daily lives. While this proportion was similar for other racialized populations (29%), it was nearly double that of the non-racialized population (16%).
  • Compared to the 2014 GSS on Victimization, the proportion of Chinese people that experienced discrimination in 2019 nearly doubled (16% versus 29%). Increases were also noted among other racialized populations (21% in 2014 versus 29% in 2019) and the non-racialized population (12% versus 16%), although the rise was more pronounced among those who are Chinese.
  • Of the Chinese people who experienced discrimination in 2019, the largest proportion said it took place in a store, bank or restaurant (45%E). This was followed by those who said they were discriminated against when at work or when applying for a job or promotion (27%E), when attending school or classes (22%E), when crossing the border into Canada (6.7%E) and when dealing with the police or the courts (4.7%E).
  • Chinese people most often experienced discrimination on the basis of race or skin colour (22%), ethnicity or culture (17%) and language (11%). Discrimination on the basis of physical appearance (5.1%), sex (4.3%), age (3.7%) and gender identity or expression (1.4%) was less common.
  • The large majority (85%) of Chinese people reported a great deal of or some confidence in the police; however, this was lower than confidence among the non-racialized population (92%). Chinese people less often said they thought the police do a good job for every measure of police performance included in the survey, when compared to other racialized populations and the non-racialized population.
  • One-quarter (25%) of Chinese people came into contact with police—for a variety of reasons—in the 12 months preceding the GSS on Victimization. Of those who had contact with police, three-quarters (75%E) perceived their experience as positive. Still, this proportion was smaller than other groups (87% of other racialized populations and 89% of the non-racialized population that had contact with police).
  • Less than one in ten (7.2%) Chinese people had ever come into contact with Canadian criminal courts, less common than other racialized populations (12%) and the non-racialized population (22%).
  • According to the Canadian Legal Problems Survey, around one in six (16%) Chinese people experienced problems or disputes they considered serious and not easy to fix in the three years preceding the survey. Serious problems or disputes were less common for Chinese people than those from other racialized populations (21%).

Source: Experiences of discrimination in daily life among Chinese people in Canada, and their perceptions of and experiences with the police and the justice system

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

Mahboubi: Canada’s underemployed economic immigrants: How to stop wasting talent

2023/08/29 Leave a comment

Usual list of factors and issues. Regulated profession credential recognition is under provincial jurisdiction and that is where some of the movement is. Was always amused when at IRCC foreign credential recognition that appeared to me as all process with little substance.

And if economic principal immigrants are largely not using settlement services, the government needs to understand why and make necessary program adjustments (or just accept that for most economic immigrants, these services may be less necessary).

Would be nice if IRCC would publish settlement services on open data!

Canada consistently fails to fully utilize immigrants’ skills, limiting its efforts to address labour-market needs and imposing a loss on the economy.

Economic immigration is Canada’s largest and most popular admission category. To make such immigration more responsive to labour-market needs, Canada recently launched category-based selection that prioritizes in-demand occupations facing shortages, such as those in health care and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.

However, once they get to Canada, foreign-educated immigrants, particularly recent immigrants, often encounter difficulties finding employment that aligns with their qualifications, and experience persistent skills underutilization. This phenomenon exists even among immigrants in targeted occupations in category-based selection, limiting the benefit of immigrants’ influx in those occupations.

According to Statistics Canada, more than 25 per cent of all immigrants (aged 25-64) with a foreign bachelor’s degree or higher worked in occupations requiring only a high-school diploma or less in 2021.

Earlier evidence from 2016 also shows that only two in five economic immigrants with a health-related degree worked in health-related occupations. The mismatch rate is also high among immigrants with a degree in the STEMfields (more than 50 per cent).

While admitting more immigrants in targeted occupations can help combat some chronic labour shortages, addressing underutilization issues is far more critical.

Obstacles that prevent economic immigrants from fully utilizing their skills include regulatory, language and cultural barriers, nonrecognition of foreign credentials and work experience, lack of Canadian experience, and discrimination.

To better integrate economic immigrants, provincial governments need to work with regulatory bodies to streamline foreign-credential and work-experience recognition. Some provinces are already moving in the right direction. For example, eight provinces offer practice-ready assessment programs for internationally trained family physicians.

But although this program can help speed up the credential recognition process, it is not open to all physicians and the number of assessments seems to be low, failing to keep pace with demand: Only 50 applicants will be accepted this year in Ontario. Provinces should expand this program based on the outcome evaluation and consider a similar program for other regulatory professions.

Provinces can also learn best practices from abroad. For example, Australia offers four assessment pathways for international medical graduates to register to practice. It has also taken several actions to reduce red tape and to streamline and expedite the assessment and registration process. The changesinclude increasing senior staff and cutting the processing time for initial risk assessments, fast-tracking admission of practitioners from trusted countries, and reviewing standards and requirements.

Professional Engineers Ontario recently removed the requirement of Canadian work experience for qualified foreign engineers. This change is a welcome strategy for other regulatory professions and other provinces to follow.

In addition, investing more in bridging programs such as Canada Work Experience that connects immigrants with experienced professionals in their respective fields through experiential learning, internship, or unlicensed opportunities helps immigrants understand the local job market. It also allows them to learn the workplace culture and gain Canadian experiences and new skills.

Governments need to support programs focusing on employability skills and develop targeted job-matching programs to facilitate connections between employers seeking skilled workers and immigrants looking for opportunities. They also need to educate employers on the benefits of hiring immigrants and encourage employers to hire recent immigrants.

A McKinsey report found that organizations with more ethnic and cultural diversity are 36 per cent more likely to outperform their competitors in profitability. According to a Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council’s survey, 80 per cent of GTA employers who intentionally hire immigrants noticed a positive impact on their organization.

Raising awareness of, enhancing access to, and encouraging participation in employment services, language learning resources and bridging programs helpprovide better and faster labour-market integration of newcomers. Between 2016 and 2020, only 8.5 per cent of economic principle applicants accessed federally funded employment and community connection programs, far less than other immigrant groups.

According to a survey in 2021, only 8 to 9 per cent of skilled newcomers who used employment services learned firsthand about the available services from government offices (e.g., upon arrival at the border). The federal government needs to actively reach out to newcomers, educate them about employment assistance services and improve the usage of prearrival employment services.

As Canada plans to attract more skilled immigrants to fill gaps in the labour force and support the economy, better use of their skills and integration of this talent are becoming more crucial. Their prosperity means generations of benefits to come.

Parisa Mahboubi is a senior policy analyst at the C. D. Howe Institute, where Tingting Zhang is a junior policy analyst.

Source: Canada’s underemployed economic immigrants: How to stop wasting talent

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Korea struggles to shift immigration policies amid demographic changes

2023/08/29 Leave a comment

Of note:

Korea’s demographic challenges, marked by the lowest birth rate in the world and an aging population, are fueling discussions on the need for more comprehensive immigration policies.

The National Assembly Research Service released, Monday, a report titled “Relationships with Foreigners in Korean Society: Exploring Directions of Immigration Policy.”

In light of the increasing societal interest in immigration policies, the report aims to provide an overview of the status of foreigners residing in Korea and the need for a unified strategy on immigration.

As of December 2021, foreign nationals made up approximately 3.8 percent of Korea’s population, totaling around 1.96 million residents, according to the report. Statistics Korea predicts the number to rise to 3.23 million, or 6.4 percent of the population, by 2040.

These statistics highlight the urgency for formulating an inclusive immigration policy.

Getty Images Bank
Front page of the report, titled “Relationships with foreigners in Korean society: exploring directions of immigration policy”, released on Monday by the National Assembly Research Service / Courtesy of National Assembly

“As the percentage of overseas Koreans decreases, immigrants from various nations continue to grow. It’s imperative to establish a societal environment and institutional framework capable of accommodating them,” said Lee Sang-jic, author of the report and associate research fellow of the Quality of Life group at the National Assembly Futures Institute.

However, public sentiment on this issue remains mixed. Results from the World Values Survey (WVS) showed a complex perspective among Koreans towards immigrants, characterized by both an increased willingness to embrace immigrants and a simultaneous psychological resistance.

While 80.5 percent of Koreans believe immigrants should be welcomed, up from 71.9 percent in 2019, negative biases based on race and nationality also increased to 67.5 percent from 62 percent over the same period.

One of the key challenges in addressing immigration issues is the fragmented approach within the government.

Currently, different ministries handle different aspects of immigration. Labor-related immigration policies are overseen by the Ministry of Employment and Labor; the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy; and the Ministry of Justice, whereas multicultural-related issues are managed by the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.

Experts attribute this fragmentation to a focus on economic solutions to demographic challenges. The policies often position migrant workers merely as a labor resource, while marriage-based immigrants are perceived as a fix for declining birth rates.

The report suggests first gaining an understanding of Korea’s perspective on a society with immigrants and then developing a comprehensive policy for effective social integration.

In May 2022, Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon proposed establishing a dedicated immigration agency. A team was set up in November 2022 to improve the immigration system, but no concrete plans for the agency have yet been discussed.

Source: Korea struggles to shift immigration policies amid demographic …

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French Govt Sees Islamic Clothing In Schools As ‘Political Attack’

2023/08/29 Leave a comment

Hear we go again:

The wearing of abaya dresses by some Muslim women in French schools is a “political attack”, the government’s spokesman said Monday as he explained a ban announced on the clothing.

Education Minister Gabriel Attal said Sunday that the long, flowing dresses that originated in the Middle East would no longer be allowed in schools when the new term begins next week because they violate secular laws.

Government spokesman Olivier Veran said it was “obviously” a religious garment and “a political attack, a political sign” which he saw as an act of “proselytising” or trying to convert to Islam.

“School is secular. We say it in a very calm but firm way: it is not the place for that (wearing religious clothing),” he told the BFM TV channel.

Attal said Monday that the government was clear that abayas “did not belong in schools.”

“Our schools are being tested. These last few months, violations of our secular rules have considerably increased, particularly with regard to the wearing of religious clothing such as abayas or qamis which have appeared — and remained — in some establishments,” he told reporters.

Attal’s decision to ban abayas has sparked a new debate about France’s secular rules and whether they are used to discriminate against the country’s large Muslim minority.

A law of March 2004 banned “the wearing of signs or outfits by which students ostensibly show a religious affiliation” in schools.

This includes large Christian crosses, Jewish kippas and Islamic headscarves.

Unlike headscarves, schools had struggled to regulate the wearing of abayas which were seen as being in a grey area.

The government has sided with politicians on the right and far-right who had pushed for an outright ban, arguing that they are part of a wider agenda from Islamists to spread religious practice throughout society.

But politicians on the left and many Muslims see France’s secular rules — known as “laicite” — as a front used by conservatives for Islamophobic policies.

They say some women choose to wear abayas, or headscarves, to signal their cultural identity, rather than out of religious belief.

Many conservative politicians have pushed in recent years for the ban on the wearing of religious symbols to be widened to universities and even parents accompanying children on their school outings.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen campaigned in last year’s presidential election to ban veils from all public streets.

The country’s constitution guarantees citizens the right to practice religion freely, but it imposes an obligation on the state and state employees to respect neutrality.

The abaya ban is likely to face a legal appeal and could lead to difficulties for school authorities who will have to decide when a large flowing dress moves from being a personal fashion choice to a religious statement, observers say.

Source: French Govt Sees Islamic Clothing In Schools As ‘Political Attack’

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Sacha Baron Cohen’s Speech on Standing Against Hate

2023/08/28 Leave a comment

For the record:

Reverend Sharpton, members of the King family—thank you for inviting me to join you today. This is an incredible honor.

I’m indebted to the legacy of Dr. King and the work of the King Center. When I was a 19-year-old university student doing my thesis on the civil rights movement, I visited Atlanta and stayed at the historic Butler Street YMCA. I’ve never forgotten how I was welcomed by the staff of the King Center and the people of Atlanta.

There, I learned about how Black Americans and Jewish Americans—and people of so many faiths—linked arms together, went to jail together, sacrificed their lives together, and achieved historic victories together for civil rights. Their brave alliance teaches a powerful lesson that we can never forget: when we are united, we can hasten the day—as Dr. King proclaimed—when all of “God’s children will be able to walk the earth in decency and honor.”

The power of our unity is exactly why those who stand in the way of equality and freedom seek to divide us. They appeal to the worst instincts of humanity, which often simmer just below the surface. I’ve seen it in my own work.

As Borat, the first fake news journalist, I interviewed some college students—three young white men in their ballcaps and polo shirts. It only took a few drinks, and soon they were telling me what they really believed.

They asked if, in my country, women are slaves. They talked about how, here in the U.S., “the Jews” have “the upper hand.” When I asked, do you have slaves in America?, they replied, “we wish!” “We should have slaves,” one said, “it would be a better country.”

Those young men made a choice. They chose to believe some of the oldest and most vile lies that are at the root of all hate. And so it pains me that we have to say it yet again. The idea that people of color are inferior is a lie. The idea that Jews are dangerous and all-powerful is a lie. The idea that women are not equal to men is a lie. The idea that queer people are a threat to our children is a lie.

At other times, I’ve seen people make a different choice.

As Borat, I once got an entire bar in Arizona to sing, “Throw the Jew down the well”—which revealed people’s indifference to anti-Semitism. But when I tried to film that same exact scene at a bar in Nashville, something different happened. People started to boo. And then they chased me right out of that bar.

Those people made the choice that brings us all here today—they chose to belief the truth: the truth that we are all deserving of respect, dignity, and equality, no matter who we are, what we look like, how we pray, or who we love.

We always have a choice.

Today, the choices we make are more important than ever because the forces of hate have a new weapon that was not available in 1963—social media. These social media platforms deliberately amplify content that triggers outrage and fear, including fear of “the other.”

This technology gives an advantage to the intolerant. They’ve gone from Klan rallies to chat rooms, from marches to message boards. It’s how they spread their filth, recruit new members, and plan their attacks. And we’ve all seen the deadly results. A surge in hate crimes. The murder of religious and ethnic minorities. And, on the other end of this Mall, an attack on democracy itself—hate and violence that should have no place in our pluralistic societies.

Today, we make a different choice—and we call on people everywhere to join us in standing up to hate, conspiracies, and lies, especially on social media.

To every person online, when someone tries to blame the problems of the world on vulnerable groups, don’t believe it. Don’t click on the conspiracy. Don’t “like” the lie. Learn the facts. “Education”—as Nelson Mandela said—“is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

To every corporation that advertises on social media, these platforms cannot survive without your dollars. Without your revenue, racist “influencers” cannot spew the lie that immigrants and people of color are trying to “replace” white Christians. Corporations—pull your ads from platforms that spread racism, hate, and bigotry.

To every social media CEO who has gotten rich off algorithms that help fuel the mental health crisis among our children and the polarization of our societies—change your business model. Stop hate for profit. For once, use the billions of dollars you’ve made to build a product that is not toxic, but safe.

Finally, to elected officials… Here in the United States, it’s been nearly 30 years since Congress passed meaningful internet regulations, in large part because social media companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars blocking them. Meanwhile, from Pittsburgh to Buffalo and now Cedar Glen, hate in the virtual world kills in the real world. How many more people have to die? Congress, it’s time to hold these social media companies accountable for the harm they cause.

We always have a choice. Today, as others spread lies, we choose truth. As others stoke conspiracies, we choose facts. As others fuel hate and division, we choose the empathy and the unity that allows us to make progress together, for equality, for decency, and for democracy, especially here in U, S, and A.

Thank you all very much.

Source: Read Sacha Baron Cohen’s Speech on Standing Against Hate

Filed under Hate crimes, Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

Integrity of immigration system at risk as international student numbers balloon, minister says

2023/08/28 Leave a comment

Smart communications to link to integrity issues but test will be what he and the government does about it. Too late for the upcoming academic year and the education associations are already protesting:

Immigration Minister Marc Miller says the concern around the skyrocketing number of international students entering Canada is not just about housing, but Canadians’ confidence in the “integrity” of the immigration system itself.

Canada is on track to welcome around 900,000 international students this year, Miller said in an interview that aired Saturday on CBC’s The House. That’s more than at any point in Canada’s history and roughly triple the number of students who entered the country a decade ago.

That rapidly increasing number of international students gained increased attention this week when the country’s new housing minister, Sean Fraser, floated the idea of a possible cap on the number of students Canada brings in.

Fraser framed a cap on international students as “one of the options that we ought to consider” during a cabinet retreat earlier this week in Prince Edward Island.

Miller, who took over from Fraser at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, told guest host Evan Dyer that the rising number of students was a concern for housing, though he says it is important not to overstate that challenge.

“It is an ecosystem in Canada that is very lucrative and it’s come with some perverse effects: some fraud in the system, some people taking advantage of what is seen as a backdoor entry into Canada, but also pressure in a number of areas — one of those is housing,” he said.

But Miller shied away from committing to the idea of a hard cap on the number of students entering Canada.

“Just putting a hard cap, which got a lot of public play over the last few days, is not the only solution to this,” he said.

“Core to this is actually trying to figure out what the problem is we’re trying to solve for. It isn’t entirely housing, it’s more appropriately the integrity of the system that has mushroomed, ballooned in the past couple of years.”

Miller said there were a number of “illegitimate actors” who were trying to exploit the system, which was eventually having a negative effect on people trying to come to Canada for legitimate reasons. Miller referred to one high-profile instance last month of an international student found sleeping under a bridge.

He said he would not get involved with “naming and shaming,” but said his focus was on some private colleges. Work would need to be done to tighten up the system, he said, to make sure institutions actually had space and suitable housing for people who are being admitted. Miller also said closer collaboration with provinces was key to solving the problem.

Cap opposed by major universities

In a statement to The House, the National Association of Career Colleges said “regulated career colleges provide efficient, high-quality, industry-driven training for domestic and international students to produce the skilled workers Canada most desperately needs.” That includes workers in the construction trades that build housing, they said.

Philip Landon, interim president and CEO at Universities Canada, also pushed back on the idea of a cap, seeking to position major universities as part of the solution to the problem.

“I think we can say that the housing situation is a crisis for Canadians broadly,” Landon said in a separate interview with The House. “I do not think that the blaming newcomers or international students … is the right way to go.”
With Canada facing an acute shortage of affordable housing, the federal government is considering putting a limit on the number of international students it allows in each year.

Speaking to The House, a number of international students in Ottawa pushed back on the idea that people like them are making housing unaffordable. In fact, said Rishi Patel, a student from Zambia, international students often have a more difficult time finding housing than domestic students as they often lack credentials.

“I just came to Canada. I don’t have any credit checks yet. I don’t have any employment references,” he said.

Mike Moffatt, an assistant professor at the Ivey Business School who specializes in housing policy, agreed with that sentiment when he spoke in P.E.I. earlier in the week.

“This is a systemic failure, I would say, of both the federal and provincial government and as well that the higher education sector in which I work to ensure that there’s enough housing for both domestic and international students.”

“Domestic and international students are the biggest victims of this, not the cause of it,” he said.

Housing has become a top political issue federally, with the Tory opposition hammering the government as Canadians struggle with the cost of living.

“We as Conservatives will make sure that international students have homes, health care and when they want it, jobs so that we can get back to a system that supports our universities, attracts the world’s brightest people, helps the demographics of our country but does not leave people living in squalor,” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said.

Talking with Dyer, Miller said the focus of his department was on ensuring the system was working properly for those trying to come to Canada.

“What we don’t want to see is hopes dashed based on a false promise,” Miller said.

Source: Integrity of immigration system at risk as international student numbers balloon, minister says

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Did discrimination keep this couple out of Canada? A Canadian court delivers a ‘bittersweet’ ruling

2023/08/28 Leave a comment

Of note, ongoing challenge of indicators used to indicate likely refugee claims and overstays:

The Canadian government has been ordered to reinstate a travel document for a Roma couple who were kept from making a trip to this country at least partly because their hosts were former refugees.

The Federal Court ruled this week on a case that put a spotlight on the Canada Border Services Agency’s use of “association with refugees” as an “indicator” to vet travellers.

And although the couple will now get their travel document, Justice Simon Fothergill ruled that the CBSA’s use of indicators did not amount to a discriminatory practice.

The couple said they were disappointed at Fothergill’s decision.

“We have been unable to visit our family in Canada for more than four years now,” said Andrea Kiss, who had set out on the 2019 trip to see her sister, who was about to have an abdominal surgery.

“I am disappointed the court did not recognize the harm and humiliation that CBSA’s discrimination against Roma people is causing.”

Kiss and her husband were set to fly from the Budapest airport in 2019 to visit Andrea’s sister in Toronto, who, along with her family, has refugee status in Canada.

Although the couple had been issued an electronic travel authorization (eTA) — a travel document required for those flying into Canada from visa-exempt country such as Hungary, they were stopped and referred for further screening.

Canadian border officials made a “no-board” recommendation and cancelled the couple’s travel authorization. The case note, among other concerns, cited their hosts as “convention refugees who arrived in Canada via irregular means in 2015 and 2016 respectively.”

The notes suggested the couple had weak ties to Hungary, where they did not own property or a long-term rental lease and were unable to explain what they would do over their three-month stay in Canada, how the husband managed to take such a long vacation from work or why they were carrying $2,000 in cash.

In fact, according to the couple’s claim, not only did they own property in Hungary, the husband had worked for the same employer for 26 years and had received approval for a six-month leave for the trip.

The Kisses challenged the decision in court with a non-Roma Hungarian family that faced a similar experience, claiming CBSA officials did not have the authority to conduct overseas examination and cancel the travel documents, and that the use of “association with refugees” as an indicator was discriminatory.

The government had agreed that their eTAs should be granted, but the complainants insisted on seeking a formal declaration from court to that effect.

“The Court has found that the Officer had statutory authority to cancel the Applicants’ eTAs, although the criteria for exercising that authority were not satisfied in either of these cases. This is conceded by the (Immigration) Minister,” Fothergill wrote in the decision.

However, there’s no evidence established, the judge found, of “the existence of a co-ordinated program by the CBSA to interdict travellers abroad solely on the ground that they are of Roma ethnicity or associated with Roma refugee claimants in Canada.”

The court said the border officials’ decisions were based on information provided by a private security agent employed by Air Canada, combined with other information contained in immigration records.

It pointed out that the decision-making officer was located in Vienna, Austria, and had no direct interaction with the travellers and did not “exercise any coercive powers,” hence the complainants’ “unauthorized overseas examination” accusation against the border officials was unsupported.

“This did not constitute the examination of foreign nationals, but rather the provision of assistance to an air carrier in meeting its obligation to ensure travellers are eligible to enter Canada,” wrote Fothergill.

During the court proceedings, the complainants submitted evidence that showed CBSA overseas liaison officers made no-board recommendations against 1,252 Hungarian nationals between 2012 and 2018.

An affidavit from a York University law professor said the recognition rate of refugee claims from Hungary, majority of them by Roma minorities, was almost 69.7 per cent, a rate above the refugee board’s overall protection grant rate.

The complainants argued that the border officials’ cancellations of the travel authorization was part of Canada’s broader interdiction policy that seeks to enforce its border and immigration laws extraterritorially by pushing the border out against undesirable visitors such as potential refugees, even before they depart from their country of origin.

Air travel advocate Gabor Lukács, who assisted the families in court, said that while he was happy the complainants were vindicated and will have their travel authorization restored, the ruling was bittersweet.

“If you target people from Hungary who have a refugee history, it is tantamount to targeting the Roma people. The evidence on that point was clear and uncontradicted,” said Lukács, founder of the Halifax-based Air Passenger Rights.

“The court is basically saying that by preventing people to board a flight because they are too brown, because they have the wrong ethnicity, the CBSA is just helping the airlines to meet their own legal obligations. It is a whitewashing of what is quite clearly a systemic discrimination.”

Source: Did discrimination keep this couple out of Canada? A Canadian court delivers a ‘bittersweet’ ruling

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Rudyard Griffiths: Want cheaper housing? Boost supply—but reduce demand too

2023/08/28 Leave a comment

While he is oblivious to the temporary resident numbers, a rare call to reduce permanent resident numbers to earlier levels of around 300,000, the demand side of the equation. Valid points on the financialization of housing but likely untouchable given how it would affect current home owners :

Mike Moffat deserves congratulations for serving up some innovative and impactful policy ideas to address Canada’s gaping housing shortage. The federal cabinet would do well to zero in on his suggestions when he briefs them in Charlottetown this week for what is being billed as an important confab on the country’s housing “crisis.” The key point that government ministers need to hear more from Moffat on is reintroducing accelerated depreciation rates for rental housing. Government cannot and should not try to “solve” the housing shortage on its own. Large pools of private capital need to be attracted back into building rental housing and currently the incentives do not exist for this to happen on any meaningful scale.

What is striking about Moffat’s essay and much of the current conversation about housing is the relentless focus on increasing supply. It is as if the issue of housing demand has been erased from policymakers’ minds when it comes to tackling what has been rightly identified as one of the most complex and important issues facing the country.

Take immigration. Right now in Ontario we are adding every two years the population of Mississauga and building a city roughly equivalent in size to Cornwall. To state the obvious, this is completely unsustainable and likely unfixable in any reasonable period of time that voters could and should expect. Yet we know that returning immigration levels, and student and temporary worker visas, back to the twenty-year average of 300,000 people—versus the one million plus arrivals in the last twelve months—would have an immediate and salutatory effect on demand.

Immigration’s impact on housing looks like a live debate going into the cabinet meeting with the new housing minister (and former immigration minister) Sean Fraser publicly musing about putting a cap on the “explosive growth” of international student enrolments.

Let’s hope this is where government ultimately end ups or acknowledging the impact of record population growth on shelter costs. After all, expectations about the future matter as price signals in the here and now. They give buyers and sellers clues as to the direction of travel of a market, in this case, housing. Indicating to the market that demand via population growth will be slower for the foreseeable future would lower shelter prices today and is an easy win. 

Immigration of course is a sensitive issue that has many dimensions beyond economics and housing. But to argue that Canada wasn’t becoming more diverse and inclusive at annual migration levels a quarter of what they are today is preposterous. Also, migration isn’t the weather. It is a choice. It can be expanded or lowered according to the absorptive capacity of society. Right now that capacity, in terms of not only housing but a variety of other metrics such as health care and public infrastructure, is clearly beyond reasonable limits.

Missing also from the current discussion is some much-needed soul-searching about the role the federal government has played recently in stoking housing demand, and its corollary, a crisis of affordability. Much of the pandemic-era rise in shelter costs has its origins in a little-known mechanism called the Domestic Stability Buffer. This is the amount of capital that banks are required by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions to set aside to cover losses in the advent of a Black Swan-type event.

In the Spring of 2022, OSFI cut the DSB from 2.25 to 1 percent, providing Canada’s banks with a massive $300B in new lending capacity or 15 percent of total annual GDP. These funds overwhelming went into residential mortgage origination during the same period the Bank of Canada was slashing its overnight rate and pushing down borrowing cost by buying bonds hand over fist. The combustion of hundreds of billions in new capital and ultra-low rates explains much of the unprecedented runup in prices with average homes nationally now costing as much as average homes in Toronto in 2019. Think on that for a moment… 

As with immigration levels, OSFI made a policy choice. Some or all of the $300B in new lending capacity created out of thin air could have been mandated for corporate loans to create private sector jobs or fund new capital investment. But it wasn’t. Instead, OSFI joined the alphabet soup of other Ottawa financial organizations (CMHC, FCAC, etc.) and added to a policy environment already highly favourable to increasing shelter costs.

Part of this week’s cabinet deliberations should be a root-and-branch review of federal policy as it relates to the financialization of housing as an asset. What schemes genuinely help lower-income Canadians get into homes and rental accommodation? Which are in fact subsidies to higher-income Canadians, investors, the banks, and the real estate sector as a whole? Proof point: in what world does it make sense to have over forty percent of residential units in Ontario “investor-owned”, with some communities such as Windsor, Sudbury, and St. Catherines seeing that level approach 80 percent or more?

Here the biggest tool the federal government wields to increase housing affordability is the capital gains exemption on Canadians’ primary residences.

When this policy was instituted in 1971 it was never envisioned as applying to the housing market with an average home price at ten times the average national income. Nor was it meant to shelter millions of dollars of capital gains in luxury home sales in Canada’s major cities for the 1 percent. We need to have an adult conversation about this exemption. Is it really still in our national interest? Beyond its effect on shelter costs, are we OK with the large intergenerational wealth transfers it is increasingly facilitating? Transfers that allow the children of high-income families to “afford” housing in our largest cities, through nothing other than their birth, and price out the less fortunate. One-third of people don’t own a home, and don’t benefit from the subsidy—many not out of choice.

The cautionary tale for not using all the tools at our disposal to address our national housing crisis is what is happening right now to real estate in China.

The Chinese also took housing to their largest asset class by far and trebled, like Canada, over a generation, its contribution to GDP. They used similar tools such as cheap credit from government via the banking sector and tax subsidies to individuals and corporations to engineer a massive explosion of real-estate-related wealth.

Their entire real-estate-led economic growth model has hit a wall. High prices slowed family formation. Ever higher debt levels curbed purchases. The real-estate portion of Chinese GDP is now falling precipitously, and it seems Beijing has few if any tools left to prevent a deep recession that could end up structurally damaging their economy.

Canada has all the same raw ingredients to replicate the toxic housing and real-estate endgame China now faces. The stakes are high. We need bold action and yes there is a case for increasing housing supply. But let’s also think about the policy levers that we have to sensibly curtail demand and unwind the financialization of housing as an asset class. Both are factors that China’s experience indicates can quickly flip an unaffordability crisis into long-term, intractable economic malaise.  For all our sakes let’s hope the policy deliberations needed to avoid this “own goal” begin this week in Charlottetown.

Source: Rudyard Griffiths: Want cheaper housing? Boost supply—but reduce demand too

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Cornellier review of Meggs: Immigration 101

2023/08/28 Leave a comment

Good summary of her book and of interest more generally given Quebec indépendantiste perspective and areas where future Quebec governments may push for additional powers with respect to temporary workers, students among others. Relatively silent on the imbalance of settlement service funding where Quebec maintains its share of funding irrespective of its declining share of immigrants to Canada:

Les enjeux liés à l’immigration au Canada et au Québec n’ont pas fini de faire la manchette. Au Québec, l’an dernier, selon l’Institut de la statistique du Québec, il y a eu 80 700 naissances et 78 400 décès. Comme la tendance devrait se maintenir, cela signifie que, désormais, seule l’immigration pourra contribuer au maintien et à la croissance de la population québécoise.

On peut toutefois se demander, dans l’état actuel des choses, si une telle croissance est nécessairement un bienfait. Quand on considère le problème aigu de la pénurie de logements, le manque de places dans les services de garde et l’état précaire de notre système de santé et de services sociaux, sans parler des défis engendrés par une croissance de ce type dans le dossier de l’avenir du français au Québec, ce n’est pas une évidence.

Pour réfléchir rigoureusement et sereinement à cette question, Anne Michèle Meggs est la personne toute désignée. D’origine ontarienne, Meggs est diplômée en études canadiennes et vit en français, à Montréal, depuis des décennies. Elle a dirigé le cabinet du ministre ontarien des Affaires francophones avant de travailler comme directrice de la planification au ministère de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l’Intégration du Québec.

Dans L’immigration au Québec. Comment on peut faire mieux (Renouveau québécois, 2023, 204 pages), un recueil de chroniques d’abord parues dans L’aut’journal depuis 2019, elle montre avec efficacité que le dossier de l’immigration au Québec est complexe, souffre d’une gestion désordonnée et charrie son lot de mythes.

Meggs ne s’oppose pas à l’immigration. Cette dernière, note-t-elle, « fait partie de l’histoire de l’humanité » et n’a rien de condamnable. On migre pour avoir une meilleure qualité de vie, pour fuir les conflits, la persécution ou les catastrophes naturelles, et ça se comprend. « L’immigration est un projet foncièrement humain », écrit Meggs.

Pour être couronnée de succès, cette démarche doit se faire dans le respect des personnes qui migrent, de la société d’accueil et de la société d’origine. Cela exige, de la part de la société d’accueil, d’avoir « une vision claire soutenue par une infrastructure législative et administrative efficace ». Or, au Canada et au Québec, cette vision, pour l’instant, fait défaut.

D’abord, les idées fausses entretenues au sujet de l’immigration nuisent à la rigueur du débat. Non, redit Meggs en citant des experts, l’immigration n’est pas une solution à la pénurie de main-d’oeuvre et au vieillissement de la population. Non, ajoute-t-elle, le déclin du français n’est pas d’abord le résultat de l’immigration, mais celui du faible taux de natalité des francophones, de leur anglicisation et de leurs comportements linguistiques : engouement pour la culture et pour les cégeps anglophones, indifférence à l’égard du statut du français, exigence de l’anglais en entreprise, etc.

« La société d’accueil, écrit Meggs, a le devoir de créer un espace propice à l’intégration en français [des personnes immigrantes]. » Elle est souvent loin d’être à la hauteur de cette mission. Les efforts de francisation déployés par le gouvernement du Québec, notamment en milieu de travail, ne méritent pas non plus la note de passage.

Le principal obstacle à une bonne compréhension du dossier de l’immigration au Québec est toutefois le tripotage des chiffres. Alors qu’on se demande si notre capacité d’accueil — une notion qui n’a jamais été rigoureusement définie — est de 30 000 ou de 70 000 immigrants, le Québec en accueillait, en 2022, 155 400, c’est-à-dire 68 700 personnes admises à la résidence permanente et 86 700 personnes détentrices d’un permis de séjour temporaire (étudiants étrangers et travailleurs), cela sans compter les demandeurs d’asile.

Tout le débat, dans ces conditions, est faussé puisque les temporaires, plus nombreux que les permanents, échappent à la réflexion sur les seuils et aux efforts d’intégration en français qui devraient être déployés par le gouvernement du Québec.

En vertu de l’Accord Canada-Québec sur l’immigration signé en 1991, explique Meggs, le Québec pourrait exiger que les immigrants temporaires soient inclus dans le calcul annuel du nombre d’immigrants qu’il veut recevoir. Il pourrait aussi ajouter des conditions linguistiques à cet accueil, mais il ne le fait pas, sauf quand il déplore, mollement, le refus fédéral des demandes de permis d’études pour de jeunes Africains francophones.

Pour avoir une politique d’immigration efficace et humaine, le Québec devrait pouvoir gérer seul l’ensemble du dossier, c’est-à-dire être indépendant, note justement Meggs. En attendant, Justin Trudeau et François Legault disent et font un peu n’importe quoi.

Chroniqueur (Présence Info, Jeu), essayiste et poète, Louis Cornellier enseigne la littérature au collégial.

Source: Immigration 101

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How to fix Canada’s international student system? These experts have a plan

2023/08/26 Leave a comment

Another proposal to address the excessive growth of international students:

Amid a raging debate over how to manage Canada’s international student sector, some say the federal government should adopt a different kind of system for granting visas to foreign students — one that could reset expectations and help weed out “bad actors.”

And such a system, advocates say, has already been proposed.

For years, critics have been calling for reforms to this country’s fast-growing international education program. Thousands of international students are lured to Canada each year, many by the prospect of gaining permanent residence as a result of getting a Canadian education and ensuing work permit.

This week, facing public pressure over the housing crisis, the federal government mused about reining in the surging number of students who have filled the classrooms of post-secondary institutions from coast to coast.

“It’s critical to signalling first that there is a real problem,” Toronto immigration lawyer and policy analyst Mario Bellissimo told the Star.

Though caps have never been placed on visas for foreign students, workers or visitors before, advocates point out the idea of restricting how many people can apply for entry into the country is not a new concept. Many permanent residence programs already have annual quotas, such as for the sponsorship of parents and grandparents.

“The mechanism of how they’re going to do this is as important as establishing a cap. If it’s not set out in a way that’s sustainable, we’re meeting back here in a year or two.”

What Bellissimo and others say they believe would help is a two-staged system similar to the existing economic immigrant selection process to both cap and manage the international student intake.

Earlier this year, Bellissimo led an effort with other lawyers and MPs to submit a proposal to reform the international student program to then immigration minister Sean Fraser, who is now in charge of the housing portfolio.

The proposed Expression of Interest Study Permit Program is modelled on the current economic immigration application management system. That system requires interested applicants to enter into a pool and be invited to submit an application based on their scores in a points-ranking system.

Points would be allocated based upon factors such as the applicant’s education history, previous degrees, grades, language ability, financial sufficiency and educational institution to which they were admitted.

The pool would be divided into streams between those accepted by colleges and universities, as well as those who are pursuing a study permit for “in-demand” occupations in Canada or who have no interest in remaining in the country after graduation. There could also be the option for provinces and municipalities to support the applications destined for their regions.

Once all the study permit spots are filled, the remaining candidates in the pool would wait for the next round of invitations in the following school term. Their applications would be disposed of after a year and they would have to reapply to be considered again to avoid a backlog.

“Capping is not necessarily a bad thing, because if you allow everyone to apply, inevitably many are going to be turned away or are not processed at all,” said Bellissimo. “So you’re actually squeezing the door shut as opposed to opening it.”

The approach would reset applicants’ expectations of their ability to come to Canada either temporarily or permanently, and redirect them to other programs if one were close. For international students, it could mean picking other countries if it was too competitive to get admitted to Canada.

Bellissimo says he was told the proposal was being considered.

Education is a provincial jurisdiction and post-secondary education institutions are currently charged with admissions of international students. The Immigration Department can control the intake by wielding its power in issuing study permits or inviting eligible applicants to apply without overstepping on the provincial jurisdiction.

“Managed intake is probably a first priority versus cap. The idea of a management system is you don’t necessarily have to refuse 50 per cent of applicants. You can somewhat control the number of applicants that are actually competitive to apply for study permits,” said Vancouver immigration lawyer Wei William Tao, who was part of the effort with Bellissimo.

“Now … schools throw off letters of acceptance kind of blindly to as many people they can, knowing that a large proportion will never make it here, but (are) still eager to.”

By limiting the number of spots schools could feed in the pool, said Tao, it would encourage their administrations to be more “prudent” in handing out letters of acceptance to candidates.

But the idea to cap the intake has already upset the post-secondary educational sector that has increasingly counted on international students as a source of revenue amid declining domestic enrolments and provincial cuts to education.

Employer groups that rely on international students to fill job vacancies have also raised concerns over the proposed cap.

The Quebec government has already publicly rejected the idea.

“This has developed into a huge industry. So people are upset if there’s a cap, then some colleges or some universities are going to miss out on income,” said Toronto immigration lawyer Zeynab Ziaie.

“It’s a very short-sighted way of looking at this, because if we’re just having them go through programs or colleges that are just for show and just to give them permission to remain here, is it really helping Canada?”

Ziaie said both Canada and shady recruiters have marketed the international student program as a pathway for immigration. However, there has been a huge gap between the number of students who are being admitted and who end up qualifying as permanent residents.

She said immigration officials have the power to impose stricter and more cumbersome requirements on student visa applicants such as higher language test scores and the minimum $10,000 bank balance, which has remained unchanged for years.

“It might limit who can come in and study in Canada, but at the same time, it might be more fair if you were someone who is likely not going to ever be able to apply for permanent residency,” said Ziaie.

“You shouldn’t really have to come and incur all of these costs and then not have a pathway to permanent residency later.”

Source: How to fix Canada’s international student system? These experts have a plan

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