Will Egypt back off from the demolition of Cairo’s historic Islamic cemeteries? 

2023/09/05 Leave a comment

Memories from my Cairo days in the mid-80s. In this case, the government is “paving paradise to put up” an autoroute:

For the past 10 years, Egyptian researcher Mostafa el-Sadek has been visiting the Islamic cemetery complex City of the Dead in Cairo, always discovering something new about Egyptian heritage from tombs that date back to the arrival of Islam in the seventh century and up to the early 20th century.

But everything has changed since 2020. That’s when the Egyptian government began demolishing hundreds of these historic graves to widen highways to the new administrative capital 50 kilometers east of Cairo.

Sadek’s visits have also changed. He joined volunteers fighting to save the historic area. They work in parallel with the diggers and bulldozers to rescue artifacts amid the rubble of tombs in the Imam al-Shafi’i and Sayyida Nafisa complexes.

“We feel incapable and frustrated. The government that should protect this heritage destroyed it with its bulldozers,” Sadek told Al-Monitor.

First wave in 2020

The City of the Dead, which was first built with the inception of the Islamic capital in 642, covers six areas in the historic northern and southern Cairo, according to the Urban Regeneration Project for Historic Cairo report in 2010-2012.

In July 2020, the first wave of demolition targeted al-Qarafa al-Kobra in historic northern Cairo to link the area with the new administrative capital. Many tombs were demolished that housed famous figures from the 20th century, such as the first president of Cairo University, Ahmed Lutfi El-Sayed; writers Ihsan Abdel Quddous and Mohamed El-Tabii; engineer Abbud Pasha; and Princess Nazli Hanim Halim, Sadek said

The government said in a statement that these tombs were not registered as Islamic or Coptic monuments and were modern graves.

Sadek, who is also an obstetrician at Cairo University, argued, “Yes, it is not registered. But some of these tombs are full of history, architecture and art.”

A few months later, the government embarked on the second wave, which involved al-Qarafa al-Sughra (also called the Qarafa of Imam al-Shafi’i). The plan was to raze 2,760 tombs as part of the Salah Salem Road, to link the mosques and mausoleums that belong to the family of Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Cairo.

On Aug. 8, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi inaugurated Sayyida Nafisa Mosque as part of the renovation of the Ahl al-Bayt shrines. Speaking at the inauguration, Sisi spoke of “the state’s plan to revamp Historic Cairo.”

But Sisi’s plan has stirred public outcry and criticism from heritage researchers, archaeologists and architects. Distinguished architect Tarek el-Murri filed a lawsuit  to stop the demolition of cemeteries, with the court set to decide the case on Sept. 21.

“The removal and demolition operations are a disdain to a part of Egypt’s history and represent a danger to a significant area back to the seventh century A.D.,” Murri told Al-Monitor.

In contrast, Sisi ordered that a committee be formed to “assess the situation and consider available alternatives” for the relocation of the Sayyida Nafissa and Imam Shafi’i cemeteries, even as the government implements its development plan in the two areas. He also directed that a cemetery be established to bury remnants of the great figures of Egypt. The cemetery would also include a museum for artifacts found in the current cemeteries.

“We had felt optimistic after the president’s order, especially since the committee recommended to stop the demolition and [that there was] no need to build new roads in that heritage area,” Sadek said.

Prominent tombs destroyed

A week after Sisi inaugurated the Sayyida Nafisa Mosque on Aug. 18, as part of the second wave bulldozers were at the Qarafa of Imam al-Shafi’i to demolish the aforementioned 2,760 tombs, including those of prominent Egyptians in the fields of culture, politics, religion and art, as well as members of the royal family.

“I had never been shocked like this time. The demolition was more violent and indiscriminate,” Sadek said. “Even workers on bulldozers in the site felt sorry about that.” He said workers helped rescue the artifacts from the tomb of Prince Ibrahim-Hilmy, son of Ismail, the Khedive of Egypt (1860-1927).

“The situation is so catastrophic,” said Hossam Abdel-Azeem, founder of Egypt’s Shawahid Misr initiative, which is tasked with preserving Egypt’s lost heritage. Since December 2021, the initiative has rescued 25 artifacts and antiquities from the tombs, including tombstones dating from the Abbasid caliphate in the ninth century.

“All these landmarks are not registered under antiquities laws,” Abdel-Azeem told Al-Monitor. But “the funeral monuments are a major factor in Egypt’s history from ancient Egyptians to Islamic ages and modern history.”

On Aug. 29, the Cairo governorate rejected reports that the tombs of poet Ahmed Shawqi and of Imam Warsh had been destroyed.

However, Sadek said that he did find debris close to poet Shawqi’s tomb, and six graves of his family were destroyed.

Parliament member Maha Abdel Nasser sent several questions to Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouly on the development plans in 2020, but she hasn’t received any answers. She told Al-Monitor that five members pulled out of the Sisi’s presidential committee of experts over the government’s determination to demolish the graves.

“It is not clear what’s behind the project and the government’s determination to demolish the graves,” she said. Murri said that the government’s plan will replace these cemeteries with skyscrapers and green areas by 2030.

In a rare objection, Ayman Wanas, a government official who headed the Committee for the Survey of Buildings and Facilities of Distinguished Architectural Style, resigned on Thursday to protest the destruction of Cairo’s historic tombs.

Wanas posted his handwritten resignation on Facebook: “The ongoing demolition of the heritage cemeteries is not only a loss of the historical cemetery buildings but a loss of a historical urban fabric of unique value in the world and an important part of the world heritage.”

World heritage site

Historic Cairo has been considered a world heritage site by UNESCO since 1979. “We sent letters to the organization, but it hasn’t replied yet,” Sadek said.

In 2021, UNESCO said that “no information on this project was sent beforehand to the World Heritage Center for evaluation. … The World Heritage Center sent a letter in July 2020 to the Egyptian authorities requesting confirmation of this information and the provision of any relevant information, but neither of these has yet been provided,” UNESCO said.

The organization added, “While these demolished tombs and mausolea may not have been protected/registered monuments, they are nevertheless important parts of the historic urban fabric, and the roads could channel yet more traffic into the property.”

“Even UNESCO can’t halt this mess,” Murri said. Murri and Sadek still have a glimmer of hope that popular support might push the government to back off through talks, petitions, exhibitions and social media.

Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/09/will-egypt-back-demolition-cairos-historic-islamic-cemeteries#ixzz8C9EOSJK3

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Bouchard: Mise au point sur l’interculturalisme

2023/09/05 Leave a comment

While I disagree with Bouchard on his characterization of multiculturalism, which is also based on integration (“un modèle d’intégration d’une société dans l’unité et la diversité, dans un esprit d’équilibre entre les besoins et les attentes respectives de la majorité et des minorités” also applies to multiculturalism), nevertheless he is a strong advocate for and integration and inclusive approach:

L’interculturalisme semble réinvestir le débat public, comme en témoigne, entre autres, le texte d’Alex Bilodeau paru dans Le Devoir du 31 juillet. C’est une initiative bienvenue, car le dossier québécois de l’immigration évolue présentement dans une mauvaise direction. C’est l’occasion d’une mise au point assortie d’une mise en garde.

Concernant le texte de M. Bilodeau, ce n’est pas une bonne idée que d’associer nationalisme et interculturalisme sans clarifier les rapports entre les deux — si rapport il y a. Par ailleurs, l’auteur voit dans l’interculturalisme deux courants incompatibles.

D’un côté (courant A), il y aurait les tenants d’une nation homogène orbitant autour de l’héritage de la majorité canadienne-française. De l’autre côté (courant B), on trouverait un modèle centré sur le pluralisme radical qui réduirait la nation québécoise au français comme langue commune, sans accorder de priorité à l’intégration, ce qui le rapproche du multiculturalisme.

Ces deux courants sont en effet incompatibles, mais ce qu’il faut surtout souligner, c’est qu’aucun des deux ne relève de l’interculturalisme.

Selon Alex Bilodeau, l’opposition entre les deux courants se manifeste de trois façons :

Le rapport majorité-minorité. Selon le courant A, la première domine la seconde. En ce cas, il ne peut en résulter que l’exclusion ou une forme d’assimilation. Quant au courant B, il ferait l’économie d’une culture commune à construire et effacerait le rapport majorité-minorité.

L’intégration. Ici, le texte de Bilodeau se fait répétitif. Le premier courant se signale par l’assimilation, le second récuse la domination de la majorité au nom de l’égalité des droits.

La culture commune. Dans l’esprit du courant A, cet élément serait secondaire, le vieil héritage devant primer. Selon le courant B, au contraire, le rapport majorité-minorité doit être atténué en le traitant sur une base de complémentarité, de réciprocité et de respect de la différence.

Définis de cette façon, on voit bien que les deux courants sont en effet incompatibles. On voit aussi que le courant A est bien loin de l’interculturalisme. Le courant B se voit toutefois attribuer un de ses éléments, soit la nécessité de traiter la relation majorité-minorité hors de toute hiérarchie ou de toute volonté de domination. J’ajoute que le texte de Bilodeau est un peu difficile à comprendre du fait que le courant B est présenté de deux manières différentes.

Une dualité en interaction

Pour mémoire, je rappelle que l’interculturalisme (tel que je l’ai toujours conçu) est un modèle d’intégration d’une société dans l’unité et la diversité, dans un esprit d’équilibre entre les besoins et les attentes respectives de la majorité et des minorités. Il repose sur ce qu’on peut appeler une dualité en interaction. D’abord, on s’attend à ce que le coeur du modèle dessine les bases de la société plurielle dans laquelle nous souhaitons vivre.

Cette première composante doit se concrétiser dans un ensemble de politiques et de programmes qui mobilisent les appareils de l’État, mais aussi les principaux acteurs collectifs. Par ailleurs, ces deux composantes doivent être pensées en interaction dans un but de cohérence.

L’objectif concret de l’interculturalisme est d’amener les immigrants et les minorités à s’intégrer grâce à des programmes de rapprochement, d’échange, de partage et d’initiatives communes. Il ne s’agit pas de réduire ou de supprimer la diversité, mais de la mettre à profit dans l’intérêt général de la société et dans un esprit d’égalité, en accord avec le droit. De ce processus devrait résulter une culture commune dans laquelle immigrants et minorités auraient investi tout en gardant leur part de spécificité. À cause de la logique du nombre, il est par ailleurs prévisible que la culture de la majorité pèsera beaucoup plus que les autres dans cette opération.

Cela dit, je conçois bien qu’on puisse diverger d’opinion sur des modalités ou des points annexes, mais sur l’ossature, il y a peu à changer si l’on tient à rester dans l’esprit de l’interculturalisme.

La responsabilité gouvernementale

Quoi qu’il en soit, le gouvernement n’en fait pas assez face aux changements qui s’annoncent. En 2002, le Québec a reçu 63 000 immigrants permanents (moyenne des années 2015-2022 : 47 000) et 28 000 immigrants temporaires, en hausse également.

Le nombre total d’immigrants temporaires vivant au Québec actuellement est de 200 000 environ (dont plusieurs deviendront permanents). Ces tendances à la hausse vont vraisemblablement se poursuivre. Je rappelle ces chiffres pour illustrer l’énorme défi qui se pose sur le plan de l’intégration. Comment sera-t-il relevé ?

Pour l’instant, cette immigration est surtout pensée en termes économiques. Mais l’immigrant n’est pas qu’un rouage dans une stratégie de croissance, il est aussi un citoyen qui doit être inséré socialement et culturellement.

L’urgence d’agir

Pour des raisons pressantes, l’État doit agir énergiquement, comme le montrent des résultats de recherches réalisées récemment. Je pense notamment aux travaux des politologues Antoine Bilodeau et Luc Turgeon (dont nous informait Le Devoir du 31 juillet).

Il en ressort principalement que, pour diverses raisons (dont la loi 21 sur les signes religieux), le sentiment d’appartenance au Québec est en baisse au sein des minorités, au profit de l’appartenance canadienne.

Une partie de leurs membres (difficile à quantifier) ne se sentent pas acceptés et songent à émigrer. Comment cette situation va-t-elle évoluer dans les 15 ou 20 prochaines années en l’absence d’une intervention appropriée de l’État ?

Les clivages entre majorité et minorités sont en croissance dans de nombreux pays, où ils provoquent des conflits interethniques. Une fois profondément installés, ces clivages deviennent extrêmement difficiles à réduire — la France en est un exemple, dont nous devrions tirer une leçon.

Un Québec à l’enseigne du multiculturalisme ?

Si l’immigrant ne trouve pas à s’intégrer pleinement dans la société d’accueil, il le fera au sein d’une minorité. C’est une tendance qui peut conduire à long terme à une fragmentation, à l’essor d’une mosaïque ethnique sur le modèle du multiculturalisme. Est-ce le genre de société que nous voulons ?

Source: Mise au point sur l’interculturalisme

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Police in schools has long been a topic of debate. In Alberta, at least, the students have spoken

2023/09/04 Leave a comment

Good example of serious research and examination of the evidence of the experience of having police school resource officers in schools. Money quote: “…it is worth remembering that social policies need to be grounded in empirical evidence. Ideally, that evidence should be collected by researchers without preordained opinions.”

Not, of course, unique to this issue as advocates and activists, including researchers, often have “preordained opinions” rather than looking at the evidence more dispassionately.

I come across this regularly in my analysis of public service diversity. My How well is the government meeting its diversity targets? An intersectionality analysis, which showed that Black public servants were not under-represented at the all employees level, and less under-represented at the EX level than South Asian, Chinese and Filipino public servants. Black hiring rates were among the highest, separations the lowest and promotion rates second highest, with overall visible minority hiring and promotion rates higher than not visible minority. Overall visible minority hiring rates were higher than not visible minorities, separation rates were lower (likely reflecting age) and promotion rates were also higher over the 2017-22 period.

This prompted Twitter discussion, with advocates arguing for a disproportionality index based on narrow salary bands rather than my approach based on the broader occupational groups, including EX, and the hiring, separation and promotion data for the last six years. While some engaged on the substance of the different approaches, some “activists on a pension” public servants simply disregarded an “inconvenient truth” to their narratives:

The presence of police in schools, often referred to as school resource officers (SROs), has been a topic of debate for decades. However, after the global movement critically examining the role of the police in modern society, these discussions have intensified. Proponents argue police in schools reduce crime, keep students safe and improve police-community relations. On the other hand, critics maintain that SRO programs are costly and disproportionately disadvantage Black, Indigenous and other marginalized students. Activists and community leaders often argue that SROs contribute to the “school-to-prison pipeline.” Several American studies have found that racialized students are subjected to higher levels of police surveillance within schools and are more likely to be disciplined and/or charged by SROs. These studies have also found that students disciplined by school-based police officers often maintain a criminal label, have poor educational and career outcomes, and are at increased risk of becoming further entrenched in the criminal-justice system. Does the same situation exist in Canada?

Most Canadian research has failed to explore whether SROs disproportionately affect racialized and marginalized students. Nonetheless, a few small-scale studies have suggested that racialized and marginalized youth are likelier to have negative experiences with SROs than their white counterparts. Advocates have used these findings to support removing SRO programs from several large Canadian school boards. However, in the aftermath of recent high-profile incidents of violence in Canadian schools, including student homicides in Toronto and Edmonton, there is renewed support for returning the police to schools. How should we as society assess the different perspectives on this issue? As university professors, we believe that answering such challenging questions begins with rigorous empirical research.

Between 2022 and 2023 we conducted research on SRO programs within both the Edmonton Catholic and public school systems. Our multimethod approach included a review of official SRO records and focus groups, interviews and surveys with over 11,000 students, 4,000 parents and 650 teachers. These are the largest and most comprehensive such studies in Canada. Unlike most other Canadian studies, we explicitly set out to explore and understand the perceptions and experiences of racialized and marginalized students. We found that:

  • Regardless of race, sexual orientation and self-reported disability status, students and parents were much more likely to report positive experiences with their SRO (approximately 45 per cent of all respondents) than negative experiences (approximately 7 per cent of all respondents). Positive experiences included feelings of safety, assistance with victimization incidents, assistance with personal problems, informal conflict resolution, mentorship, legal education, and innovative strategies for discipline and reform.
  • Regardless of race, sexual orientation and disability status, most students reported that their SRO made them feel safe at school and was a positive member of their school community. Few students felt targeted or intimidated by their SRO.
  • Regardless of race, few students and parents felt that SROs treat Black, Indigenous and other racialized students worse than white students. It was also uncommon for participants to believe officers were biased toward sexual minorities and students with disabilities.
  • Most teachers believed SROs reduce, not increase, formal disciplinary actions (i.e., suspensions, expulsions, arrests etc.) against students. Teachers felt students would be treated more harshly by regular police officers who might be called to the school if the school did not have an SRO.
  • Regardless of race, sexual orientation and disability status, most students, parents and teachers (approximately 80 per cent of all respondents) want the SRO program retained or reinstated at their school. Few want to see the program permanently suspended (approximately 8 per cent of all respondents).

That said, the results of our studies are not all positive. Both teachers and students believed SROs are sometimes called to deal with non-criminal student conduct issues (including lateness) that school staff should handle. Teachers and students also complained that certain police officers – particularly those with an enforcement orientation – should not work with youth and should be screened out and removed from SRO programs.

While most Black and Indigenous students and parents supported Edmonton’s SRO program, Black and Indigenous students were somewhat more likely to support suspending the program than respondents from other racial backgrounds. Black and Indigenous students were also more likely to report negative experiences with SROs, including allegations of oversurveillance, targeting and unfair disciplinary decisions.

Our study also uncovered considerable weaknesses in how the school boards and the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) document SRO activities. How often are SROs involved in school disciplinary decisions, including suspensions and expulsions? How often do SROs ticket, arrest or lay charges against students? Are Black, Indigenous and other marginalized students disproportionately involved in SRO enforcement decisions? Does the presence of an SRO significantly reduce illegal activity on school property? We cannot answer these and other important questions with the existing data. If school boards retain SRO programs, we recommend improving the data being collected, including collecting data on the race and other demographic characteristics of those affected by SRO activities. At the same time, students and caregivers with personal experience with expulsions, suspensions and other interventions consistently reported being treated more harshly by school administrators than by SROs. This (perhaps surprising) finding suggests that leaving conduct issues in the hands of school administrators might lead to more harm for students and families – yet another aspect that warrants expanded data collection.

While many questions remain, our overall finding is that racialized and marginalized students and their families support SRO programs. Further, our results provide little evidence of perceived racial bias. This is news in a climate where some Canadian social scientists and activists now demand that SRO programs be eliminated. Unsurprisingly, they were not happy with our findings.

In the past, our research has – in various contexts – uncovered racial bias with respect to police street checks, arrest decisions and use of force. While the police largely dismissed these results, activists embraced our findings, using them as valuable evidence to support discussions about racial profiling. Our study of SROs has produced the opposite effect: Some advocates and scholars have been quick to criticize our findings because they do not support their preferred policies, while police organizations seem to support the results, without acknowledging negative findings.

This is concerning, but in some respects, these public responses fit a familiar pattern whereby activists and organizations selectively embrace, reject or ignore scholarly research depending on whether it supports or challenges their political position or preferred policies. However, one thing that makes the Edmonton SRO situation slightly different is that those who have opposed the SRO programs have said they were voicing the desires of Edmonton’s Black, Indigenous and other racialized communities. Our evidence, in contrast, demonstrates that such groups mainly support the SRO program, raising questions about who legitimately speaks on behalf of the interests of Black, Indigenous and other racialized parents and students on such issues in Alberta.

We deliberately mention Alberta because it is entirely possible that SRO programs in other jurisdictions are poorly run, biased and not supported by local communities. As researchers, we understand that context matters in how well any program or initiative operates. However, attention to such local specificity often gets lost on the political stage when people make sweeping statements embracing or rejecting policies without knowing or paying attention to the local details.

Given how many aspects of policing are contentious within Canada, it is worth remembering that social policies need to be grounded in empirical evidence. Ideally, that evidence should be collected by researchers without preordained opinions.

Kanika Samuels-Wortley is an associate professor in the faculty of social science and humanities at Ontario Tech University.

Scot Wortley is a professor in the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto.

Sandra Bucerius is a professor of sociology and criminology and director of the Centre for Criminological Research at the University of Alberta.

Source: Police in schools has long been a topic of debate. In Alberta, at least, the students have spoken

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Cryderman: Liberals are late to housing, and time is running out

2023/09/04 Leave a comment

Arguably, already run out given time lags in increasing supply and likely reluctance by government to freeze or reduce levels of permanent and temporary residents:

Whether talking about shacks or sidesplits, Pierre Poilievre has owned the housing affordability file from the time he became Conservative leader one year ago. This is not because he has all the answers, or warms hearts with his words. It’s because he gives the issue the time and weight it deserves.

After a cabinet retreat in Prince Edward Island where housing was the key focus, it appears the Liberals are finally grasping the practical and political urgency of the situation, as Mr. Poilievre long has. They are listening to what people have been saying in the country’s largest cities for years – and is now being said from Charlottetown to Kingston to Kelowna: The cost and scarcity of housing in Canada is bonkers.

At least in words, there appears to be greater recognition of that from newly minted Housing Minister Sean Fraser. He has added shifts of tone on housing since the Liberal cabinet shuffle in July.

He’s saying reasonable things such as: Maybe the federal governmentshould be more thoughtful about its international student program that has seen “explosive growth” and driven up housing costs in postsecondary communities. And it should start to use the power of the $4-billion Housing Accelerator Fund, first promised by the Liberals two years ago, with some political gusto.

In an interview with The Globe, Mr. Fraser added something new to the list: that his government has put a new focus on housing affordability for the middle class.

“This is now not just a crisis for low-income families,” Mr. Fraser said.

“This is a crisis for seniors who are looking to retire under very different circumstances than existed even a few years ago. It is a crisis for students who cannot find a place they can afford to live within an hour commute of the campus. And it is a crisis for young people who are seeking to get into the market who often have two people working in the household, and still can’t afford a place to live.

“It’s not reasonable for us to maintain an exclusive focus, or even a primary focus, that only speaks to low-income social housing.”

This reflects the truth that rents are up across the country, as demand grows and higher interests weigh on pocketbooks. Where I sit in Calgary, relatively affordable by other big city standards, rents are up an average of 16 per cent, year-over-year. The typical price of a home in the country is more than $760,000. The Canadian public is not going to be particularly patient in waiting for the 5.3 million homes economists say the country needs to build by 2030 to solve the affordability crisis.

Mr. Fraser said Canada is looking at a total capital spend that could exceed a trillion dollars to hit that housing target – “not an amount of money that most people can conceive of.” This will have to come both from the private and public sectors.

But it’s needed, not only in the real world, but also in the political sphere. Young people, according to recent polls, are increasingly disenchanted with the governing party. Some believe the Liberals aren’t doing enough on climate change, a concern exacerbated by a summer of wildfires. But economic anxiety about out-of-control costs, especially on housing, is likely an even bigger reason.

Nik Nanos, chief data scientist and founder of Nanos Research, told CTV the Liberals’ popularity is down overall but plummeting among younger voters, the demographic that’s helped Prime Minister Justin Trudeau win past elections. The latest Nanos polling shows the Liberals in third place among Canadians aged 18 to 29 years old with 16 per cent support, compared with the Conservatives and the NDP with 39 per cent and 31 per cent respectively.

Polls are just a snapshot in time, but the trend isn’t good for the incumbents. Although the election is likely two years away, the problem requires complicated solutions and time is not on their side.

Mr. Fraser refutes Conservative claims that the Liberals weren’t paying attention or were negligent as the housing situation worsened. The last two years have been exceptional, he said. “What’s happened in the last couple of years in particular is there has been a shift in the housing continuum in terms of where the intense need is.”

As the former immigration minister, Mr. Fraser appears keenly aware his current and past portfolios have some overlap. He speaks of not decreasing immigration to address housing pressures, but becoming more thoughtful about it.

The country needs new people and workers, and has a moral imperative to welcome refugees. But the Liberals have boosted Canada’s immigration and non-permanent resident numbers to historic levels – and sometimes undercount those who are here. Canada’s ranks are growing quickly, and a BMO analysis earlier this year said that for every 1 per cent of population growth, housing prices typically increase by 3 per cent.

“The people we want to bring in want to stay for the rest of their lives. Let’s plan for it. And then let’s target the people who can improve the quality of life that not only their family gets to enjoy in Canada, but to improve the quality of life for Canadians who’ve lived here for generations, by addressing some of these social challenges – in particular around housing and health care.”

Even before Parliament resumes on Sept. 18, Mr. Fraser said he intends to act by “actually leveraging the federal spending power to incentivize change at municipal levels.” In short order, there will be an announcement on the municipalities that will receive help through the vaunted Housing Accelerator Fund.

BMO has also raised concerns about “an investor class” that’s increasingly dominating the real-estate market, as opposed to the people who actually live in the homes. Mr. Fraser said investors have a key role to play in creating housing units, but he is worried about homes being held by investors that remain vacant.

Ottawa will soon change the financial equation for home builders to get more units built, he added in the interview. Although the minister wouldn’t go into specifics, economists have said it’s time to waive or defer the sales tax developers incur for purpose-built rentals to incentivize new building.

All and all, Mr. Fraser said Canadians should expect to see aggressive action by the federal government to get more homes built, across the housing continuum. The question is not only whether this large task can be accomplished but also whether the Liberals, late to urgency on this issue, can catch up to the Conservatives on the political front.

Source: Liberals are late to housing, and time is running out

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Dear colleagues: How to achieve student diversity, legally [affirmative action after SCOTUS]

2023/09/04 Leave a comment

Of note:

On 14 August the Biden administration provided colleges and universities with scenarios that would allow them to maintain the racial diversity of their student bodies following the Supreme Court of the United States’ (SCOTUS) decision last June that ended affirmative action.

Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona cast the maintenance of racial diversity in the nation’s colleges and universities as both an economic necessity and the fulfilment of America’s promise to itself. “For higher education to be the engine of economic opportunity, upward mobility and global competitiveness, we need campus communities that reflect the beautiful diversity of our country,” he said.

The Washington DC-based American Council on Education (ACE) welcomed the guidance provided by the Biden administration.

“This guidance from the Department of Education is a welcomed effort to delineate the limits of the ruling and help colleges better understand this new environment as they seek to meet their diversity and inclusion goals within the new limitations imposed by the court’s ruling,” said Audrey Hamilton, associate director of ACE’s public affairs.

Pushback against court findings

In the United States, SCOTUS is the final arbiter of constitutional questions. Its decisions are binding on both the federal and state governments.

While the Biden administration was well within rhetorical norms when it expressed regret about the decision, official government statements such as the “Dear Colleague letter” addressed to colleges and universities and signed by Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice (DoJ), and Catherine E Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education (DoE), are not generally considered the place to re-litigate constitutional issues in public.

Still, the administration pushed back against the SCOTUS’ rejection of the notion that student diversity adds to the educational experience of college and university students, stated most clearly in Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion in the case of Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v President and Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA).

“I have sought to understand exactly how racial diversity yields educational benefits,” said Thomas. “With nearly 50 years [since the establishment of affirmative action programmes] to develop their arguments, neither Harvard nor UNC – two of the foremost research universities in the world – nor any of their amici [friend of the court briefs] can explain that critical link.”

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), and Harvard University were sued by SFFA which claimed that the universities’ affirmative action programmes discriminated against Asian and white applicants.

The Dear Colleague letter underscored that both the DoJ and DoE believe: “Learning is enriched when student bodies reflect the rich diversity of our communities. Research has shown that such diversity leads to, among other things, livelier and more informative classroom discussions, breaking down prejudices and increased cross-racial understanding, and heightened cognitive development and problem-solving skills.”

The letter further states: “The benefits of diversity in educational institutions extend beyond the classroom as individuals who attend diverse schools are better prepared for our increasingly racial and ethnically diverse society and global economy.”

Holistic application-review processes

The DoJ’s guidance, that accompanied the letter from Clarke and Lhamon, is grounded in the SCOTUS’ decision in SFFA and, specifically, in the statement, just before the end of the majority decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, that “nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise”.

As interpreted by the DoJ, Roberts allowed universities and colleges to continue to use holistic application-review processes that provided opportunities, through essay prompts, to assess how an applicants’ background and individual attributes – including race, experience of racial discrimination or the racial composition of his/her schools or neighbourhood – position the applicant to contribute to the college or university in a unique manner.

Among the concrete examples the guidance provides are:

• “A university could consider an applicant’s explanation about what it means to him to be the first Black violinist in his city’s youth orchestra”; and

• “[A]n institution could consider an applicant’s discussion of how learning to cook traditional Hmong dishes from her grandmother sparked a passion for food and nurtured her sense of self by connecting her to past generations of her family (the Hmong are an indigenous group from East and Southeast Asia)”.

When Dr Alí Bustamante, deputy director of the New York-based Roosevelt Institute’s Worker Power and Economic Security Program, was asked if the DoJ’s examples were pitched only to those students who excelled in high school, and thus made them good candidates for Harvard at the expense of those students who managed to do well in the many poorly equipped and underfunded high schools in America’s slums, he said: “Yes.”

“A more apt example of how race directly impacts lived experiences is a narrative about a Black student that graduates from an underfunded school, lived through years of systemic exclusion, and/or residing in an over-policed community. These examples better show how race commonly impacts lived experiences and overcoming these experiences should be valued,” he wrote in an email to University World News.

Further, the decision does not, the DoJ told universities and colleges, prevent them from considering that data if it comes from a third party.

“An institution could . . . consider a guidance counsellor or other recommender’s description of how an applicant conquered her feelings of isolation as a Latina student at an overwhelmingly white high school to join the debate team,” says the Dear Colleague letter.

Measures beyond race

The SCOTUS decision dealt with a narrow question: did affirmative action programmes violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution ratified in 1868, one of the three post-Civil War amendments that banned slavery?

The clause reads in part: “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States . . . nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” SCOTUS decisions interpreted the phrase “No state” to include the federal government and, thus, included the laws under which affirmative action was implemented.

The decision does not prohibit colleges and universities from using means other than specifically identifying a student’s race to foster diversity. Both outreach and recruitment programs can, the DoJ says, “consider race and other factors that include, but are not limited to, geographic residency, financial means and socioeconomic status, family background, and parental education”. (Postal codes are strong predictors of race and these other sociological factors.)

Colleges and universities that seek diverse student bodies can direct their outreach/recruitment towards schools and school districts that serve predominantly students of colour and students of limited financial means.

They may also “target school districts or high schools that are underrepresented in the institution’s applicant pool by focusing on geographic location (for example, schools in the Midwest, or urban or rural communities) or other characteristics”.

Among these characteristics are low-performing schools or those with high dropout rates, those in which large percentages of students received free lunches or have historically low numbers of graduates being admitted to the college or university in question.

Neither these outreach/recruitment efforts nor establishing pathway programmes in which, for example, an institution partners with a high school to offer mentoring and summer enrichment boot camps run afoul of the SCOTUS decision.

Moreover, the DoJ says, neither would admissions policies such as the automatic admittance of community college (two-year college) graduates, as is the case in several states presently. For, each of these regimens is designed to increase the applicant pool and not to identify the race of any individual student by ticking off a box.

In his opinion, which argued for race blindness, Justice Thomas derided this bureaucratic shorthand: “What it [the admissions process] cannot do is use the applicant’s skin colour as a heuristic, assuming that because the applicant checks the box for ‘black’ he therefore conforms to the university’s monolithic and reductionist view of an abstract, average black person.”

Such arguments ignore the fundamental role racism has played in American history and how it is baked into many of the nation’s institutions.

“Affirmative action practices have been contested since they were first implemented [in the middle 1960s] because some Americans, including policymakers, do not agree with the use of policy to address, and attempt to repair, the injuries that marginalised communities have endured as a result of past discriminatory policies,” said Bustamante.

“Some Americans believe in the myth that government policy should be race neutral despite the stark reality that American policymaking has a legacy of disproportionately benefiting whites and men and excluding people of colour, women, and those with atypical abilities and gender identities.”

A university takes proactive steps

A month before the Biden administration released its guidance to colleges and universities, Sarah Lawrence College stole a march on the DoJ and DoE. The liberal arts college just north of New York City changed the essay prompt that students applying for admissions in the 2024-25 school year must follow.

The prompt begins by referencing and then citing the SCOTUS decision in SFFA.

“In a 2023 majority decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: ‘Nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the applicant can contribute to the university’.”

Prospective students are then asked to write an essay: “Drawing upon examples from your life, a quality of your character, and/or a unique ability you possess, describe how you believe your goals for a college education might be impacted, influenced or affected by the Court’s decision.”

According to Bustamante, Sarah Lawrence’s essay prompt aligns with the Biden administration’s view and not with the SCOTUS.

“The court majority has repeatedly affirmed that racial discrimination and marginalisation is not a given – a generalised experience of all people of colour. The Sarah Lawrence and Biden administration perspective is that the court’s ruling means that racial discrimination and marginalisation must be explicitly factored into admissions, and no longer be assumed based on the identification of race alone.”

Source: Dear colleagues: How to achieve student diversity, legally

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Réplique d’André Pratte à Mathieu Bock-Côté: une analyse injuste du PLQ qui ne tient pas la route

2023/09/04 Leave a comment

I’m with Pratte but appreciate the discussion and the contrasting perspectives. And for MBC to accuse Pratte of “ne soit pas conscient de ses propres mécanismes mentaux,” the same could be said by MBC:

Dans une chronique publiée dans Le Journal de Montréal samedi dernier, Mathieu Bock-Côté (MBC) accuse le Parti libéral du Québec de tenir un discours qui «repose explicitement sur la mise en minorité démographique des Québécois francophones par l’immigration massive pour fabriquer un nouveau Québec. Ce discours souhaite la disparition de notre peuple.»

Témoin à charge numéro un: Balarama Holness, qui s’est présenté aux élections de 2022 à la tête de son propre parti, Bloc Montréal. Celui-ci a recueilli moins de 0,2% du vote dans la province. M. Holness ne représente en rien le PLQ; c’est un marginal.

Témoin numéro deux: la militante Idil Issa, qui n’est pas membre du PLQ.

En quoi les propos supposément «haineux» de ces deux personnes démontrent-ils quoi que ce soit au sujet du Parti libéral du Québec? 

Le fond

J’aimerais m’arrêter au fond de ce qu’avance M. Bock-Côté: le PLQ manœuvrerait pour noyer le Québec francophone par une immigration massive devant produire «un nouveau Québec». Cette thèse, proche du «grand remplacement» des complotistes français, ne tient tout simplement pas la route.

D’abord, parce que le PLQ, s’il prône une hausse raisonnable de l’immigration afin de combler les besoins de main-d’œuvre, n’a jamais soutenu qu’il fallait une «immigration massive» au Québec, à l’image de l’Initiative du siècle proposée à l’échelle canadienne par le comité Barton.

Encore faut-il savoir ce qui, aux yeux de MBC, constitue une «immigration massive». Le seuil actuel, 50 000 nouveaux immigrants permanents par année, est clairement excessif à ses yeux. Qu’est-ce qui serait raisonnable: 30 000? 10 000? Zéro?

Quoi qu’il en soit, les projections de Statistique Canada montrent bien que même dans le cas d’une immigration beaucoup plus nombreuse qu’aujourd’hui, les immigrants et résidents non permanents ne représenteraient toujours que 27% de la population totale du Québec en 2041, contre 23% sous un scénario de faible immigration. De quelle «disparition» MBC parle-t-il?

Par ailleurs, des projections publiées par l’Office québécois de la langue française démontrent que même si les immigrants choisis par le Québec parlaient tous français à leur arrivée – c’est l’objectif du gouvernement Legault – cela ne changerait pas grand-chose aux grands indicateurs démolinguistiques. Le français langue maternelle continuerait de diminuer lentement – c’est le fait inexorable de la faible natalité chez les Québécois dits «de souche». L’élément le plus important, la connaissance du français au sein de la population québécoise, y compris les immigrants, resterait très élevée à près de 95%.

Main-d’œuvre

Il est vrai que depuis quelques années, le nombre de résidents non permanents a considérablement augmenté au Canada, entre autres au Québec. Cela est dû aux besoins croissants en main-d’œuvre et à la hausse du nombre d’étudiants étrangers. À un point tel que le ministre fédéral de l’Immigration a récemment évoqué la possibilité de limiter le nombre d’étudiants internationaux admis au pays. 

On se serait attendu à des applaudissements venant de François Legault, grand admirateur de MBC. Eh! non, l’intention fédérale a été dénoncée parce qu’il s’agirait d’une violation des compétences provinciales, tandis que les universités et collèges en région ont souligné l’importance cruciale pour eux de cette clientèle internationale. Il faudrait se décider: ou l’immigration est une menace, ou c’est une richesse?

Les libéraux du Québec, eux, optent avec conviction pour la seconde option. Il suffit de commencer à dresser la longue liste de Québécois de souche immigrante qui ont fait leur marque ici, en français, dans les domaines politique, économique et culturel pour confirmer cette vision positive des choses.

Si M. Bock-Côté fréquentait les libéraux du Québec au lieu de les imaginer dans ses cauchemars, il saurait combien ils aiment le Québec français et y sont profondément enracinés. Les accuser, sans fondement, de «souhaiter la mort de notre peuple» est faux et injuste. 

André Pratte, Coprésident du Comité sur la relance du Parti libéral du Québec

RÉPONSE DE MATHIEU BOCK-CÔTÉ

Oui, le PLQ instrumentalise politiquement l’immigration. Voyons pourquoi.

Le PLQ a-t-il intérêt à accélérer la transformation démographique du Québec? 

C’est ce que je soutenais dans ma chronique de jeudi. 

André Pratte soutient le contraire dans sa réplique, et semble même scandalisé qu’on puisse le suggérer. André Pratte fait semblant d’oublier que son parti, le Parti libéral du Québec, obtient moins de 5% d’appuis chez les Québécois francophones, et qu’il ne se maintient électoralement que grâce à l’appui des anglophones et de l’électorat issu de l’immigration. 

Il veut nous faire croire, probablement, que son parti ne s’en rend pas compte, et que son appui aux seuils d’immigration très élevés des dernières années n’a aucun lien avec cela. Non. Du tout. Zéro. 

D’ailleurs, le PLQ ne favoriserait pas une immigration massive – les seuils d’immigration fixés par les libéraux correspondraient seulement aux besoins des entreprises, ce qui est une fumisterie, mais j’y reviendrai une autre fois. 

Base électorale

Et si André Pratte dit ne pas se rallier à l’Initiative du siècle d’Ottawa, il préfère rester dans le Canada avec la «noyade» démographique (je reprends ici la formule de René Lévesque) annoncée qu’envisager la possibilité de l’indépendance. 

Le français se porterait même mieux que jamais au Québec: pour en arriver à cette conclusion loufoque, Pratte est évidemment obligé de prendre l’indicateur linguistique le moins significatif. 

Il est possible que Pratte ne soit pas conscient de ses propres mécanismes mentaux. Je n’exclus pas cette possibilité.

Si le PLQ est aujourd’hui chassé du Québec francophone, c’est qu’il l’a renié, en assimilant la moindre affirmation de son identité au souffle de «l’intolérance». 

La trudeauisation idéologique du PLQ sous Philippe Couillard a correspondu à son suicide électoral chez les Québécois francophones. Autrefois, le PLQ a porté une vision québécoise du Canada: il porte aujourd’hui une vision canadienne du Québec. Son objectif: toujours ramener à la baisse les critères d’adhésion du Québec au fédéralisme, et le transformer de telle manière que la question nationale se dissolve.

Le PLQ, rationnellement, cherche à élargir sa base électorale: cette stratégie l’a bien servi depuis 20 ans. La transformation de Laval en extension politique et sociologique du West Island en témoigne. Ce sera demain ou après-demain le tour des deux 450 – comme le reconnaissent bien des stratèges libéraux en privé, soit dit en passant. 

Évidemment, le PLQ ne va pas en criant sur les toits qu’il est favorable à une transformation démographique du Québec entraînant la mise en minorité progressive du Québec francophone. Il se contente de fonder son action politique sur cette logique.

Question nationale

Certains, parmi les multiculturalistes les plus militants, se permettent de le dire: j’en ai cité deux dans mon texte. 

Je les recite pour m’assurer que les lecteurs ne les oublient pas.

Balarama Holness affirmait ainsi que le PLQ aura besoin «de deux décennies pour se renforcer en région, le temps qu’il y ait des changements démographiques». Autrement dit, moins les régions seront francophones, plus le PLQ y progressera.

Je recite aussi Idil Issa, la militante multiculturaliste : «C’est les demographics qui vont gagner, finalement. Le Québec de Mathieu Bock-Côté, c’est le Québec du passé. Ils essaient de prendre une photo et de figer le Québec d’une ancienne manière. Nous sommes diverses, le Québec est différent maintenant. On doit être inclusifs. On doit pas aliéner les jeunes. On doit leur donner une place. Je veux que tout le monde qui aimerait être enseignante étudie l’éducation, étudie le droit. Ne soyez pas peur, la loi 21, ça restera pas au Québec, ça, c’est certain. Comme j’ai dit, que ce soit l’année 2300, on ira jusqu’au bout.» 

J’en cite un autre, sans savoir s’il est fédéraliste ou souverainiste, mais qui théorise les effets de cette révolution démographique pour le Québec. Amadou Sadjo Barry, dans Diversité culturelle et immigration (2023), qui écrit: «[…] on pourrait penser que dans les prochaines décennies, la population québécoise sera largement majoritaire en immigrants de première ou de deuxième génération et, par conséquent, aucun groupe, même les francophones descendants des Canadiens français, ne pourrait constituer la majorité. […] Le temps viendra où l’Europe et l’Occident ne suffiront plus comme références pour comprendre le peuple québécois et le définir. Ce temps, ce sera celui du grand déracinement auquel notre monde sera confronté». (p. 148)

Et qu’on me permette d’en citer un dernier: le philosophe Daniel Weinstock. 

Il ainsi affirmait en octobre 2009: «Manifestement, la préoccupation identitaire des Québécois est plus forte que dans le reste du Canada. Le Canadien anglais, c’est déjà un “post-ethnique”, une personne qui peut aussi bien être de souche écossaise que polonaise ou sud-américaine. Les Québécois, eux, ont toujours cette idée qu’ils ont un “nous” à protéger. […]. Quand Montréal comptera un aussi haut pourcentage d’immigrants que Toronto, ces questions ne se poseront plus avec autant d’acuité. Et encore moins quand on constatera qu’on n’a pas les moyens de se priver, par exemple, d’une infirmière, “hijab ou pas”». Autrement dit, la question identitaire québécoise allait se dissoudre au rythme de la transformation démographique de la société québécoise et de la mise en minorité des Québécois francophones. La société multiculturelle à laquelle rêvait Weinstock, et qui correspond globalement à la vision que le Canada de 1982 a de lui-même, présupposait pour se concrétiser une recomposition démographique québécoise.

Ce discours est courant, même si les médias y accordent peu d’attention. Je me corrige: il est possible d’en parler si c’est pour s’en réjouir. On chantera alors la diversification croissante du Québec. Si on s’en inquiète, on est accusé du pire. Il faudrait cesser, comme le fait Pratte, d’assimiler toute réflexion sur les effets démographiques et identitaires de l’immigration à la «théorie du grand remplacement», dont nulle figure publique ne se réclame au Québec – cette méthode relève à la fois de la malhonnêteté intellectuelle et de l’intimidation idéologique. 

C’est le simple bon sens: quand un pays reçoit davantage d’immigrés qu’il ne peut en accueillir, il favorise la formation de communautarismes dans ses frontières. Si les décennies passent, que l’immigration massive se poursuit, et que la machine à intégrer ne fonctionne toujours pas, c’est l’identité profonde de ce pays qui se transformera et sa majorité historique qui se minorisera. 

Mais revenons au PLQ. Il ne me semble pas inutile de rappeler qu’Ottawa, en 1995, a utilisé l’immigration massive à la manière d’un verrou démographique sur l’avenir politique et constitutionnel du Québec. Plus la majorité historique francophone fondra démographiquement, et moins le Québec aura de chances d’accéder à l’indépendance. 

L’ex-député libéral Christos Sirros l’avait dit mot pour mot au lendemain du référendum: «le désir d’indépendance des Québécois allait s’éteindre avec l’immigration». Il ne faisait que dire tout haut ce que les partisans du plan B dans les années postréférendaires pensaient tout bas.

En cherchant à casser la structure démographique du Québec, Ottawa entend en finir une fois pour toutes avec la possibilité de l’indépendance, et c’est dans cet esprit, encore une fois, qu’au lendemain du dernier référendum, dès sa reprise du pouvoir, le PLQ a haussé les seuils.

Qu’on me comprenne bien: je ne réduis évidemment pas l’immigration à son utilisation politique par le PLQ. 

Il y a de belles histoires d’intégration, d’ailleurs, comme Pratte le rappelle, et nul ne le contestera. Qui serait assez sot pour dire d’un phénomène de grande ampleur comme l’immigration qu’il est exclusivement positif ou exclusivement négatif?

Régime canadien de 1982

Mais la dynamique de fond, portée par le régime canadien, favorise davantage l’intégration des immigrés aux Canadiens anglais du Québec qu’aux Québécois francophones, et rien ne laisse croire que la tendance basculera à court ou moyen terme. 

Cette intégration à la communauté anglophone passe normalement par une identification privilégiée à Montréal, métropole bilingue aux deux langues officielles, fondée sur le principe du bonjour-hi. Le français, dans cette perspective, devient optionnel. La loi 101 n’entend plus ici assurer l’intégration identitaire des nouveaux arrivants à la majorité historique francophone mais conserver le droit pour cette dernière de se faire servir en français. Ce n’est plus une loi mettant le français au pouvoir mais assurant les droits minoritaires des francophones. 

Alors revenons au sujet de notre discorde: autant il serait hasardeux de réduire la question de l’immigration à son usage politique par les partis, autant il serait absurde de nier cette dimension. 

Ce qui nous ramène à cette évidence: l’immigration massive est une richesse électorale pour le Parti libéral. Il est de bonne guerre qu’André Pratte le nie. Mais le fait que cette vérité soit désagréable ne la transforme pas soudainement en fausseté.

Mathieu Bock-Côté

Source: Réplique d’André Pratte à Mathieu Bock-Côté: une analyse injuste du PLQ qui ne tient pas la route

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Ontario colleges are fuelling unprecedented growth in international students

2023/09/04 Leave a comment

Good analysis by there Globe with focus on Ontario and the impact of the Ford government policies in bringing us to this mess:

… There are currently two federal government reviews of the international student program under way, one by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and one by Global Affairs. But attempts to curtail the program will have to reckon with its impact on the schools, because international funding has become crucial to Canadian higher education.

Many of the Ontario colleges that have a large proportion of international students have expanded via branch campuses in the Greater Toronto Area or partnerships with private educational providers. The partner schools teach curricula from the colleges and the students receive Ontario college degrees and postgraduate work rights. Both Conservative and Liberal provincial governments have made attempts to limit the size of these lucrative public-private operations. The latest policy imposes a per-college cap of 7,500 students.

Cambrian College, which has a partnership with a private college in the GTA, said its home campus enrolment still has a domestic majority. It said it takes a measured approach because it doesn’t want to bring in more international students than the college or the Sudbury community can accommodate.

The schools have been encouraged on the international path by both provincial and federal governments. The federal government, which aims to attract half a million immigrants a year by 2025, is hoping to build a talent pipeline already equipped with Canadian educational credentials. The provincial governments benefit by placing a growing share of the postsecondary funding burden on prospective immigrants.

According to a report from Ontario Auditor-General Bonnie Lysyk, Queen’s Parkprovided by far the lowest level of government support to colleges of any province in 2018-19. The funding gap that colleges face has been exacerbated by the Doug Ford government’s decision to cut domestic tuition fees by 10 per cent in 2019 and freeze them at that level.

McMaster University economist Arthur Sweetman, an expert on immigration and public policy, said the growth in international students is an example of what happens when policy makers misunderstand the incentives they create.

The federal government has placed no limits on student visas, he said, and the provinces are happy not to increase their grants to postsecondary institutions. The result is that some schools have pushed the envelope.

“I think it’s a regulatory failure,” Prof. Sweetman said. “If you tell people to go make money and here are the rules, people are going to make money and go right up to the edge of the rules.”

Conestoga said in a statement that the well-being of its students is a priority and that it works with them to find affordable housing options. This year, it signed onto a sector-wide set of standards on how best to support international students.

Revenue generated through increased enrolment has helped the college boost hiring, invest in new facilities as well as in new programs and student services, the statement added, including supports for students seeking employment. It has expanded its Kitchener campus, opened one in downtown Guelph and will open two new locations in Milton next year.

David Agnew, president of Seneca, said international students are now the majority at his Toronto college, and that they enrich the learning environment and college experience for everyone on campus. Domestic students aren’t displaced by the international students, as schools are required to offer places in high-demand programs to Ontario applicants first and Canadians second. The school is, however, able to offer more programs for domestic students thanks to the funding that international students provide.

“We haven’t had a grant increase in more than a decade and now we have frozen tuition. We [wouldn’t] have enough money to operate anything close to the high-quality educational institution that Ontarians should expect,” Mr. Agnew said.

Seneca recently crossed the international majority threshold among full-time students, but the ratio drops to 39 per cent when continuing education students are included. Mr. Agnew admits that the concentration of international students at some Ontario colleges could be perceived as a concern by some people. But he says it’s wrong to lay the blame for housing shortages at the feet of international students.

He said housing affordability is an issue that cuts across society. Seneca has about 1,350 residence spaces and more than 28,000 students. The college would like to work with governments and the private sector to build more, Mr. Agnew said.

“Let’s not demonize international students,” Mr. Agnew said. “Let’s work on solutions to the affordable housing issue rather than trying to blame people.”

In a presentation to Hamilton City Council this year, Steve Pomeroy, an industry professor at McMaster’s Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative, said the biggest added pressure in the housing market is the rapid increase in non-permanent residents, a large chunk of whom are international students or former students. He places the inflection point at 2016, when international enrolments began to jump.

“When these folks come into the housing system they’re trying to find relatively affordable housing and they’re also displacing other folks who are trying to find relatively affordable rental housing,” Prof. Pomeroy said. The competition heats up and international students, who are nearly all renters, often outbid low-income Canadians in the bottom quartile of the rental market.

With as many as 900,000 students expected in the country this year, Prof. Pomeroy said in an interview it’s reasonable to assume they’re adding demand equal to somewhere between 5 per cent to 10 per cent of the national rental housing market of 4.5 million homes.

Economist Mike Moffatt was surprised when he first noticed the close links between the real estate crunch and higher education in London, Ont., where he teaches at the University of Western Ontario’s Ivey Business School. The share of the impact on rent prices attributable to international students hasn’t been quantified, Prof. Moffatt said, but rent increases are happening at the start of term and appear to be rising faster in locations near campus.

London, Kitchener, Windsor – mid-sized Ontario cities that have both university and college campuses and high numbers of international students – have seen record rent increases and the lowest vacancy rates in 20 years, according to a January report from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.

The international students do not deserve any blame, Prof. Moffatt said.

“Enrolment growth is not being fed into housing policy and it’s causing all kinds of local tensions,” he said…

Source: Ontario colleges are fuelling unprecedented growth in international students

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Douglas Todd: Remarkably popular book on baby boomers distorted by politicians

2023/09/02 Leave a comment

More on some of the false or at least misleading demographic arguments underlying current government immigration policies and organizations like the Century Initiative:

Daniel Stoffman was co-author of one of the most popular books written in Canada.

Boom, Bust and Echo: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Shift sold more than 300,000 copies after it was published in 1996, with a followup in 2000. Stoffman, who died this summer in Vancouver, shared the royalties equally with University of Toronto economist David Foot.

The theme of Boom, Bust and Echo was that “demographics explains two thirds of almost everything.”

Stoffman and Foot maintained the baby-boomer bulge of Canadians, born between 1947 and 1966, would have a huge impact on trends in real estate, the stock market, eating habits, health care, and leisure activities, including, for instance, the future of birdwatching.

But an odd thing happened largely because of this best-selling book. Its spotlight on Canada’s baby-boom cohort of almost 10 million people has often been misinterpreted, if not distorted, by corporate leaders and federal politicians. That did not please Stoffman, a journalist, author and secular Jew who described himself as a “radical centrist.”

Stoffman, who once worked as a reporter at The Vancouver Sun and edited the University of B.C. student newspaper, The Ubyssey, wrote 13 books before he died in Vancouver at age 78 on July 3. They included profiles of Canadian Tire, Barrick Gold, Boston Pizza and McCain Foods, plus The Money Machine, an unusually readable look at the mutual fund industry.

But the more risky book for Stoffman, in contrast to the crowd-pleasing Boom, Bust and Echo, was the one he wrote to challenge business leaders and politicians who maintain, to this day, that aging baby boomers are the No. 1 reason Canada needs one of the highest immigration rates in the world.

Most commentators, scholars and journalists have only recently been catching up with some of Stoffman’s analysis in his book Who Gets In: What’s Wrong with Canada’s Immigration Program — and How to Fix It, which was a finalist for the Donner Prize in public policy.

Stoffman was pro-immigration. But in the early 2000s he wanted Canadians to think seriously about the complex, almost taboo subject. That’s what he did after winning an Atkinson Fellowship from his liberal newspaper, The Toronto Star, to write a groundbreaking series on it.

Today, more mainstream voices are joining Stoffman in questioning the platitudes streaming out of Ottawa, particularly from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is currently justifying increasing Ottawa’s immigration target to a record 500,000 this year, double the 250,000 when the Liberals came to power.

Stoffman also anticipated the questions pundits are now raising about the federal Liberals’ related migration decisions to allow the number of foreign students and other non-permanent residents to reach almost two million, a figure CIBC’s Benjamin Tal cited this week. That compares to about half a million when Trudeau was first elected.

Former immigration minister Ahmed Hussen, echoing Trudeau’s talking points about the need to welcome immigrants, foreign students and guest workers to “grow our economy,” often justified his approach by referring to what he characterized as the baby boom problem.

“The question is: Why do we need immigration? Well, five million Canadians are set to retire by 2035. And we have fewer people working to support seniors and retirees,” he said, echoing similar remarks by other immigration ministers about the high costs of public health care for the elderly.

Stoffman’s book, Who Gets In, laid out some of the counter arguments economists are making today, which is that high in-migration can never replace an aging workforce.

The main reason is that immigrants also age. The baby boom generation is now aged 56 to 77, a cohort that includes millions of immigrants.

The second reason is many immigrants bring dependants. That is especially true under the Liberals, who quadrupled the number of parents and grandparents that could be sponsored.

The University of B.C.’s David Green and McMaster’s Byron Spencer, both economists, have their own unique way of responding to the supposed dilemma of aging baby boomers. Wryly, they say, the only conceivable way high immigration could offset Canada’s retiring workforce would be if every newcomer was a 15-year-old orphan. That’s because it would take 50 years for the teens to reach retirement age and, as orphans, they would not seek to bring in parents or grandparents.

Stoffman maintained there are two main reasons corporate leaders lobby Ottawa to keep immigration levels high, roughly triple per capita those in the U.S.

“I think the main purpose of Canada’s high immigration policy is to lower wages — and inflate real estate values,” he said in 2015.

The authors of Boom, Bust and Echo were aware, decades ago, of the two dangers. They recognized hiking immigration rates does indeed, as the politicians boast, increase the country’s overall GDP. But it also tends to lower GDP per capita, especially for low-skilled workers.

Stoffman said struggling immigrants best understood this downward pressure because they were the ones most likely to come to him after his speeches to express their worries.

In recent years, economists like Don Wright, former head of the B.C. government’s civil service, Mikal Skuterud of the University of Waterloo, and the B.C. Business Council’s David Williams have been strongly making the argument about lagging wages.

And a host of housing analysts, such as Steve Saretsky, John Pasalis and Ben Rabidoux, have also been warning about how high in-migration, including by foreign students and guest workers, puts intense pressure on rent and housing prices, which are at crisis levels in Vancouver and Toronto.

Stoffman was among the first to argue that Canada could deal with the societal costs of a large baby boom (which once made up 31 per cent of the population, but is now down to 23 per cent) by increasing productivity through innovation. Alas, in recent years productivity has fallen.

Another way is to offer incentives for Canadians to stay longer in the workforce, which the baby boom is doing. Canada could also encourage more people to have children, he said, particularly by providing better and cheaper daycare.

What would be an optimum number of permanent residents coming to Canada, leaving aside guest workers and foreign students? Eight years ago, Stoffman suggested a balanced number for Canada would be about 150,000 new immigrants annually.

Stoffman said he understood why right-wing people — “who think wage inflation is worse than income equality, and don’t want to see cab drivers and cleaning ladies earn more” — would promote “apocalyptic visions” about the need for higher in-migration targets.

“But it’s weird,” he wrote in Who Gets In, “that so many Canadians, who pride themselves on their social consciences and progressive politics, hurl nasty names at those who call for a more limited immigration program.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Remarkably popular book on baby boomers distorted by politicians

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Près de dix ans d’attente pour qu’un réfugié obtienne sa résidence permanente au Québec

2023/09/02 Leave a comment

Of note:

Les seuils d’immigration proposés par le gouvernement Legault menacent de faire exploser les délais des futurs résidents permanents dans la catégorie humanitaire. Tandis que s’amorceront dans moins de deux semaines les consultations publiques en immigration, Le Devoir a appris que le nombre de dossiers est tel qu’au rythme où vont les admissions au Québec, il faudra près de dix ans à un réfugié reconnu et à ses personnes à charge pour obtenir la résidence permanente.

Selon les données d’Immigration Canada, quelque 30 000 réfugiés reconnus vivant au Québec — soit des demandeurs d’asile à qui le gouvernement fédéral a donné le statut de « personnes à protéger », ce nombre comprenant leurs personnes à charge se trouvant à l’étranger — attendaient ce précieux sésame en date du 8 août. Or, la planification pluriannuelle soumise par la ministre de l’Immigration, Christine Fréchette, propose d’accueillir, pour chacune des quatre prochaines années, environ 3550 personnes dans la catégorie « réfugiés reconnus sur place ». Cette catégorie comprend les demandeurs d’asile arrivés au Québec notamment par voie terrestre, maritime et aérienne.

Une règle de trois montre qu’il faudra huit ans et demi pour écouler ces dossiers, sans compter que des milliers de nouveaux réfugiés reconnus vont venir ajouter le leur sur la pile. Rien qu’en 2022, 60 000 demandes d’asile de personnes vivant au Québec ont été déposées. Ces demandes ne seront toutefois pas toutes acceptées.

« Je suis abasourdie, même si les chiffres ne me surprennent pas tant que ça parce qu’il y a eu une hausse des demandes d’asile », a déclaré Stéphanie Valois, présidente de l’Association québécoise des avocats et avocates en droit de l’immigration. « Mais ce qui me surprend c’est quand on met [ce nombre] en parallèle avec les objectifs d’admission dans la planification du Québec. Il y a un décalage complet avec la réalité. »

« Le Québec se met la tête dans le sable », a déploré pour sa part Stephan Reichhold, directeur de la Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes. « Ces délais sont rattachés à des souffrances majeures pour les familles qui sont séparées et reconnues comme réfugiées. Qu’elles se fassent traiter comme ça, c’est absolument inacceptable. » Selon lui, le message qu’on leur envoie est clair : « Mieux vaut pour ces personnes déménager en Ontario ! »

Sans la résidence permanente, les réfugiés reconnus ne peuvent pas étudier, avoir accès aux garderies et occuper certains emplois, explique Me Valois. « Et pour la réunification familiale, c’est une catastrophe », dit-elle, en rappelant que, si les réfugiés reconnus sur place sont en sécurité au Québec, ce n’est pas toujours le cas de leurs proches. « J’ai beaucoup de clients du Soudan, et c’est la guerre là-bas. Même si le réfugié soudanais qu’on reconnaît comme personne à protéger se trouve ici, les membres de sa famille, eux, peuvent être bloqués à l’étranger dans une situation de danger. Ils ne peuvent pas attendre tout ce temps. »

Les partis d’opposition, choqués

Ces données sur le nombre de dossiers font réagir les partis d’opposition. Le député de Québec solidaire et porte-parole en matière d’immigration, Guillaume Cliche-Rivard, se dit « atterré » et « choqué » de constater que le plan de la ministre Fréchette maintiendra dans la précarité « sans raison apparente et pour des délais excessifs » les personnes parmi les plus vulnérables qui travaillent et sont déjà intégrées.

« Cela confirme l’incompétence du ministère, qui présente, année après année, des plans incomplets et sans crédibilité. La ministre Fréchette vient malheureusement de nous confirmer que son arrivée n’a rien changé à ce niveau. »

Pour le député libéral de Nelligan, Monsef Derraji, l’immigration dite « humanitaire » est aussi économique. « Ce n’est pas de la charité. C’est une catégorie qu’on s’est donnée, car on est très accueillant comme peuple au Québec », soutient-il. « Le nombre de demandes a augmenté depuis l’arrivée de la CAQ au pouvoir et, pour moi, on ne peut pas faire fi de ça. »

Il estime d’ailleurs que la consultation publique qui s’amorce passe à côté de débats importants. « C’est l’occasion en or de parler de la capacité d’accueil, on a l’occasion de parler des travailleurs étrangers et on ne le fait pas. C’est la même chose pour les personnes de la catégorie humanitaire, on n’en parle pas. »

Le co-porte-parole du Parti québécois en immigration, Stéphane Handfield, rejette pour sa part la faute sur Ottawa. « Il faut aborder la question en fonction de notre capacité d’accueil [langue, logement, école, médecin, etc.], ce que le gouvernement fédéral n’a certainement pas fait dans les dernières années. Il s’agit ici de personnes vulnérables, qui, dans bien des cas, sont séparées des membres de leur famille depuis de nombreuses années en raison de la lenteur du système d’immigration fédéral. »

Des cibles souvent dépassées

Rappelons que, dans le plan d’immigration, les cibles proposées par le gouvernement sont souvent dépassées, car ce sont des indicateurs. En 2021 et en 2022, par exemple, il était prévu d’accueillir entre 2500 et 2800 réfugiés reconnus sur place, y compris leurs personnes à charge, mais en réalité, plus de 5600 personnes ont été admises dans cette catégorie en 2021 et quelque 4000 en 2022. Environ deux fois plus.

En plus du nombre croissant de demandes d’asile, cela peut aussi s’expliquer par un rééquilibrage dans la foulée de la pandémie. En 2019, soit tout juste avant la pandémie, le nombre de personnes admises dans la catégorie « réfugiés reconnus sur place » avait été fidèle à la prévision. En 2018, la prévision a été légèrement dépassée.

Mentionnons que, dans la catégorie de l’immigration humanitaire, les « réfugiés sélectionnés à l’étranger », dont font partie les réfugiés parrainés au privé par des petits groupes d’individus ou des organismes, ne sont pas aussi nombreux à attendre. Selon les chiffres d’Immigration, Réfugiés et Citoyenneté Canada, le nombre est d’environ 2000 personnes.

Suscitant un engouement certain, les consultations publiques sur la planification de l’immigration au Québec pour la période 2024-2027 s’amorceront le 12 septembre prochain. Un nombre record de plus de 70 intervenants et organismes seront entendus.

Source: Près de dix ans d’attente pour qu’un réfugié obtienne sa résidence permanente au Québec

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , ,

Mohammed: Britain punishing poorer nations who sell citizenship is simplistic and destructive

2023/09/02 Leave a comment

Header doesn’t accurately capture this balanced analysis given that the author also stresses the “need to to address due diligence concerns related to inequality, alongside fraud, tax evasion and national security:

The move by the British home secretary Suella Braverman to impose visa restrictions on people from Dominica, Honduras, Namibia, Timor-Leste and Vanuatu has reflected again the tendency to employ a sledgehammer to crack a nut when managing immigration and border security.

In July, Braverman expressed concerns about the way Dominica and Vanuatu administer their citizenship by investment (CBI) schemes – so-called golden visas – citizenship in exchange for financial inputs in the host country.

According to her, these two Commonwealth countries have been conferring citizenship on individuals recognised as security risks to the UK. Braverman failed to identify these dangerous people.

Her decision has been met with scepticism. Critics contend that the numbers involved in these countries are scarcely large enough to warrant such measures. The move appears to disproportionately target black and brown-majority nations, raising concerns again about the justice in Britain’s immigration policies.

Against a backdrop of anti-migrant sentiment, the step aligns with the UK government’s normalising of restrictive immigration policies, distracting from the cost-of-living crisis, public transport strikes, NHS issues and economic inequality. The focus on externalising immigration challenges ignores migration as an issue that requires a more thoughtful and comprehensive approach.

It also prompts a closer examination of citizenship by investment schemes. Transparency International, a global civil society organisation that campaigns against corruption, has previously highlighted problems in Europe, stating: “Golden passport and visa schemes have turned EU citizenship and residency rights into a luxury good: with enough money, anyone can buy in.

It adds: “This is a particularly attractive prospect for criminals and the corrupt – and numerous scandals have proven they are taking advantage. These EU golden passport and visa schemes are not about genuine investment or migration – but about serving corrupt interests.”

The problem is insidious in the Caribbean, which has become a magnet for members of super-rich elites from the US and Europe seeking to take advantage of vulnerable nations to satisfy their need to create more wealth at the expense of the climate crisis, human rights and equality.

Golden visas have gained traction in Caribbean islands, especially those heavily dependant on tourism and foreign direct investment.

Advocates argue that CBIs can stimulate economic growth, create jobs and benefit local economies and infrastructure. Attracting overseas investment can provide valuable sources of funding for public services and development, benefiting both citizen and immigrant, and countries can diversify beyond tourism and agriculture. But they come with their own set of challenges.

They often require property investment, which can bolster real estate markets but exacerbate wealth inequality, catapulting house prices beyond the reach of local people. Providing privileges to the wealthy deepens the divide between elites and locals.

This is especially true for countries belonging to the Organisation of the Eastern Caribbean States – Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis, Montserrat, Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Martinique and Guadeloupe.

Reports from the International Monetary Fund show CBIs contributed nearly 30% of GDP for Dominica and 25% for St Kitts and Nevis in 2022. Citizenship scheme income helps to support hospitality, infrastructure, banking and youth development projects. CBI revenues have been pivotal in aiding these countries during Covid.

However, without robust background checks and enhanced due diligence, the risk of corruption, money laundering and illicit activities increases. The rush to attract foreign investments can make economies more vulnerable to external economic shocks and national security concerns.

A report last year by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project highlighted one of the best-known firms enabling these passport sales, Henley & Partners, whose chairman Christian Kälin has been dubbed the “Passport King”. The report illustrated the number of CBI applicants from countries including Russia, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Armenia and Nigeria attempting to gain citizenship in Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis.

Golden visa holders are often subject to tax in the host country. Income, property and other taxes bring other revenue streams. Tax evaders have ingeniously employed CBIs to obscure financial misconduct. Essentially, these individuals exploit tax havens to evade their obligations, relying on the host’s cooperation to reduce discovery risk. A key complicating factor is the acquisition of foreign citizenship as a safeguard against detection, a strategy favoured by the wealthiest tax evaders.

CBIs wield a transformative influence, redefining tax evasion in two ways: by reducing detection, thereby curtailing potential penalties from high-tax jurisdictions, and disrupting the international framework of tax information exchange, diverting potential revenue. This allows countries offering golden visas a discreet influence over global tax information-sharing initiatives.

The privileges conferred by investment visas vary significantly from country to country and even within programmes in the same nation. Generally, golden visas are premised on a significant financial investment, but specific rights and limitations can differ. Some convey rights to work, start a business or give access to services such as healthcare and education.

Some countries require a period of residency before granting voting rights, while others might not offer them at all to golden visa holders. This has led to controversy in the Caribbean where there have been allegations of using citizenship by investment for electoral manipulation.

The retired supervisor of elections in St Kitts and Nevis, Elvin Bailey, expressed concern that CBI holders were being allowed to vote. It has also been reported that a large number of Indian nationals, who are also Commonwealth citizens, and Chinese nationals, have been granted CBIs in St Kitts and Nevis that confer voting rights and ultimately allegiance to whichever administration dispenses these visas. Some were found to be involved in corruption and criminal activities.

Caribbean nations need to strike a balance between attracting investment and safeguarding their interests. In implementing robust procedures, including criminal background and funding source checks, they can ensure that those seeking these visas are genuinely contributing to society, and maintain the credibility of schemes.

Braverman’s approach to immigration raises questions about the UK’s commitment to equitable policies. Meanwhile, the Caribbean’s investment visa programmes offer economic opportunities but need to to address due diligence concerns related to inequality, alongside fraud, tax evasion and national security.

As the world grapples with issues of migration, corruption and governance, it becomes paramount for countries to wield more nuanced approaches to immigration, not the blunt force of sledgehammers.

Kenneth Mohammed is a Caribbean analyst with a focus on corruption

Source: Britain punishing poorer nations who sell citizenship is simplistic and destructive – The Guardian

Filed under Citizenship, citizenship-by-investment Tagged with , , , , ,

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