Paul: PEN America Has Stood By Authors. They Should Stand By PEN.

2024/04/30 Leave a comment

Agreed. Money quote: “I prefer to stand by PEN America and by all its members, though perhaps quite now, who would wish to see PEN’s mission upheld and strengthened rather than dismantled. Who does it really serve to keep tearing things down?”

All strong institutions stand to benefit from internal dissent and external pressures. But too often, recent efforts to reform institutions have meant reconstituting them in ways that distort or fundamentally undermine their core mission.

Nonprofit organizations, governmental agencies, university departments and cultural institutions have ousted leaders and sent their staffs into turmoil in pursuit of progressive political goals. In the wake of the 2016 election and the 2020 murder of George Floyd and in a rush to apply sweeping “In this house we believe” standards unilaterally, organizations have risked overt politicization, mission drift, irrelevance and even dissolution. And now the war in Gaza is ripping its way across American universities.

The latest target is PEN America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to free expression by journalists and authors. Last week, after an increasingly aggressive boycott campaign by some of its members, PEN canceled its annual World Voices Festival, which was conceived by Salman Rushdie and was to mark its 20th anniversary in May. This followed a refusal by several writers to have their work considered for PEN’s annual literary awards. The ceremony awarding those prizes was also canceled.

An open letter sent to PEN America’s board and trustees and republished on Literary Hub, now the de facto clearinghouse for pro-Palestinian literary-world sentiment, accused the organization of “implicit support of the Israeli occupation” and of “aiding and abetting genocide.” It demanded the resignation of PEN’s longtime C.E.O., Suzanne Nossel, and current president, Jennifer Finney Boylan. According to its 21 signatories, mostly up-and-coming authors, “among writers of conscience, there is no disagreement. There is fact and fiction. The fact is that Israel is leading a genocide of the Palestinian people.”

In response and in keeping with its mission of independence and free expression, PEN America accepted the writers’ willingness to voice their conscience. It has also made clear that there is room for more than one point of view on what constitutes genocide and on the current conflict in Gaza.

“As an organization open to all writers, we see no alternative but to remain home to this diversity of opinions and perspectives, even if, for some, that very openness becomes reason to exit,” PEN America stated in an open letter to its community.

That doesn’t mean PEN’s critics are without a point. I have also heard dissent from inside PEN that the organization has not been as strong in its advocacy for Palestinian writers since Oct. 7 as it has been for Ukrainian writers since the Russian invasion. I have seen internal letters describing this disparity in detail. Those grievances may well be legitimate, and PEN should respond appropriately, advocating on behalf of all writers caught up in conflict, repression and censorship, regardless of geopolitical circumstance.

But for those advocating that PEN America reform itself in the service of a single political agenda, the organization’s efforts to accommodate a range of views count against the organization. “Neutrality,” the authors of the most recent letter contend, “is a betrayal of justice.” Nothing short of total capitulation will serve their purpose. And they are conducting an intimidation campaign among other members and authors to join their ranks or shut up about it. According to PEN leaders, writers have expressed fear in openly supporting the organization in the onslaught of this latest campaign.

Since 2006, I’ve been one of PEN America’s 4,500-plus members, which includes writers, journalists, activists and professionals involved in the world of letters. I joined well before I joined The Times, after the publication of my second book, a liberal critique of the effects of online pornography, which met with a certain amount of pushback. As a freelance journalist and author who covered politically sensitive topics, I appreciated the protection PEN America offered. PEN takes a firm stand, for example, against online abuse, something every working journalist today experiences to one extent or another. PEN is also firmly committed to fighting book bans in schools, libraries and prisons, something that grew increasingly relevant to me when I became the editor of The New York Times Book Review.

Of course, these conflicts are minor compared with a war in which lives are at stake. But whatever my personal views on the Middle East, I don’t expect or even want all its members to conform to my brand of politics.

PEN brooked dissent before. In 2015 it honored the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo after its members were brutally attacked and in spite of opposition from some of its members. I appreciate that the organization has named a prominent transgender writer and activist as its president even if I do not share all her views when it comes to gender politics. I don’t have to agree with everything PEN does; in fact, I prefer that I don’t agree, because that opens me up to protection in kind from members who may not agree with me on all issues.

Even if we’ve grown inured to organizations losing their way under political pressure, we shouldn’t be indifferent to the potential consequences. Especially now that there are so few truly independent organizations left.

According to its charter, PEN “stands for the principle of unhampered transmission of thought within each nation and between all nations, and members pledge themselves to oppose any form of suppression of freedom of expression in the country and community to which they belong, as well as throughout the world wherever this is possible.” I prefer to stand by PEN America and by all its members, though perhaps quiet now, who would wish to see PEN’s mission upheld and strengthened rather than dismantled. Who does it really serve to keep tearing things down?

Source: PEN America Has Stood By Authors. They Should Stand By PEN.

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Anita Anand first aimed to transform Canada’s military culture. The public service is next

2024/04/30 Leave a comment

A bit of a puff piece. And equating the military with the public service is misleading, as the public service is miles ahead of the military in improving representation at all levels for all groups.

Corporate boardrooms. Military barracks. Federal government offices.

They’re not locales with a reputation for fostering diversity.

Anita Anand has been trying to change that.

Ensuring people of all backgrounds feel accepted and heard no matter the venue is a mission that has followed her at every stage in her life and career, she said in a recent interview.

“This is a very personal issue for me,” said Anand, who is the first person of colour to hold the federal government’s purse strings as Treasury Board president.

“I still walk into rooms and look at tables that are not diverse.”

Case in point: in February, Anand walked into a briefing regarding mental-health counselling for Black public-service workers.

There were no Black employees in the room, she said.

“I said to the individuals briefing me: ’Why aren’t there any Black individuals facing me?’ This is not acceptable.”

Part of her mandate is to dismantle systemic barriers in the federal public service that allow workplace harassment, bullying, racism and other forms of discrimination and violence to fester.

It needs to happen at all levels, she said.

“We actually want to ensure we see diversity in briefing rooms for the minister, at the deputy minister level, at the assistant deputy minister level.”

Anand is no stranger to what racial discrimination can feel like.

Before she became the member of Parliament for Oakville, Ont., in 2019, she worked as a lawyer and law professor.

At one workplace, she said, people would often ask if she was in the accounting department.

“That struck me because there were more South Asians in the accounting department than there were in the school of lawyers,” she said.

“Often I would get confused with other Indian women that were working in the same work environment that I was.”

Rather than focusing on such events, she said she has put far more energy toward understanding how to improve the situation.

That included working at the United Nations, writing a thesis on racial discrimination in Canada, and researching the number of racialized individuals on boards of directors when she was a professor.

“At every stage of my life, I have tried to incorporate my views about diversity and inclusivity in everything I am doing,” Anand said.

“It’s not that I have to try to do it. It is a natural part of the way I think.”

Anand said it’s difficult to pick out a point in time when she became aware of her own racial identity.

“I’ll just say that was very stark for me growing up.”

Her Indian parents met in Ireland in the 1950s as physicians, got married in England, then lived in India and Nigeria before immigrating to Canada.

“They raised their three daughters in a predominantly white province with very few South Asians when they moved,” she said.

“We had a wonderful upbringing in Kentville, Nova Scotia, but the fact that I was racialized never left my consciousness. There weren’t very many people who looked like me and my sisters at my school.”

Part of her goal now is to make sure racialized children can see themselves in all manner of jobs, including in high-ranking government and military roles.

As defence minister, Anand said she told her team that cultural change was a file that “should not leave the centre of my desk.”

In the months before she took the file in fall 2021, a string of senior military leaders were accused of sexual misconduct.

And just over half a year into her tenure, Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour released the results of an external review, saying the culture within the Canadian Armed Forces was “deeply deficient.”

Anand accepted Arbour’s recommendations for change, admitting in a statement upon its anniversary in May 2023 that “change does not happen overnight, and it will not continue without effort.”

She was assigned to oversee the public service last July.

About 80,000 people are in the Canadian Forces, Anand said, but the number is closer to 275,000 for the entire public service.

The problems of that larger group seem to have flown under the radar, Anand said.

“Maybe it’s the (sexual misconduct) cases, maybe that it’s more stark because of the hierarchy that is so evident in uniforms and badges in the Canadian Armed Forces, compared to the public service, where we’re not wearing uniforms,” she said.

“But the issues are palpable.”

A panel of experts the Treasury Board tapped to help with workplace culture has recommended major changes, including instituting mandatory racism, discrimination and harassment training.

The panel also said employees must have mental-health counselling supports, and managers need to be trained in trauma-informed leadership.

As she reviews the recommendations, Anand said she will develop a path forward, with an action plan ready to go before the summer.

It won’t leave the centre of her desk, she said.

“This is not something that I have to worry about whether I will remember,” Anand said.

“It is as a function of who I am.”

Source: Anita Anand first aimed to transform Canada’s military culture. The public service is next

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Douglas Todd: Clever film brings home exploitation of foreign students in Canada

2024/04/30 Leave a comment

Of note, timely:

Vancouver filmmaker Shubham Chhabra throws a lot into his short movie Cash Cows about international students from India stressing to make a go of it in Canada.

There’s the student, Rohit Sharma, whose boss in Canada doesn’t intend to pay him because he thinks he’s doing him a favour. There are the five male international students sharing one small basement suite in Surrey because rents are extreme. There is confusion about handing over up to $45,000 to dubious immigration consultants, but still needing jobs as security guards and pizza-makers.

Being a foreign student while working in well-off Canada, en route to obtaining prized status as a permanent resident, isn’t exactly “living the dream,” even though one character in the film claims that it is.

Cash Cows is fictional but based on the experiences of Chhabra, who came to B.C. in 2015, as well as his closest friends from India, source of Canada’s largest cohort of international students.

The film sets its dramatic-comedy tone from the get-go, with opening images of unsuspecting cows being ground down and devoured as juicy hamburger or steaks.

While international students face multiple stresses in Canada, including extreme tuition fees and often shoddy educations, Cash Cows highlight the way they’re exploited by employers. It’s a problem that has been spreading since the federal Liberal government increased the number of international students in Canada to 1.3 million from 225,000 over the last decade.

The pivotal scene in Cash Cows, which has been shown at the Vancouver Asian Film Festival and won an award for best screenplay, features a foul-mouthed boss, Jaspreet Singh, excoriating Rohit for daring to expect to actually be paid for working more than six months as a night security guard at his car dealership, called Brown Brothers.

‘I’m doing you a favour. Why the f–k do you expect everything for free?” shouts the boss, who has agreed to sponsor Rohit for permanent resident status. The employer warns the student that if he asks too many questions he could have him deported. No longer naïve, Rohit realizes he has to endure indentured labour.

Cash Cows is fundamentally about how some employers, and in some ways politicians and educational institutions, are treating foreign students and other temporary residents as “commodities rather than as a sustainable human resource,” Chhabra said.

While the filmmaker personally feels it’s a “privilege” to have studied at Langara College and now be working as an assistant director for the TV series Family Law, he wants his short film, and a longer documentary scheduled for release this spring, to help viewers understand the spectrum of experiences of international students.

He’s aware an untold number of employers are taking advantage of foreign students, whose families back home, like his, will often sacrifice a great deal so their offspring can gain a foothold in Canada.

In India, the vision of getting into Canada on a study visa “is super-idealized in movies, TV shows and music videos,” Chhabra said. While unpleasant truths are sometimes mentioned in India’s media, most young people fly to Canada with incredible optimism.

Reality can be shocking for many, Chhabra says, “despite Canada being one of the best countries in the world.” Exploitive employers in Canada have many schemes, including not paying student employees at all, or expecting them to repay some of their salary.

“One of my friends was stuck in a seven-year-employment scam, where he was paying back almost 30 per cent of his paycheque.” He did so, Chhabra said, because the boss had promised to sponsor him as an immigrant.

“It’s 100 per cent illegal,” said Chhabra. When the friend obtained permanent residency, “he quit the job the first day he could. He got his trucker’s licence, which is what he wanted to do, and he’s now super-happy, making real money, working hard.”

Chhabra’s own story inspired the key conflict depicted in Cash Cows. The manager at a fast-food outlet he was working for in Vancouver was finding convoluted excuses to underpay him, alleging he was in training. Chhabra challenged him.

“He gave me this long spiel about how grateful I should be. And I went back to work,” Chhabra said.

Another moment in Cash Cows is based on the experience that one of his friends had as a security guard. The student, already unpaid, was forced by his boss to come up with the money to compensate for a vandal smashing an automobile window with a rock while he was on night duty.

In addition to the scams featured in Cash Cows, reports are arising of many others in Canada. They include employers taking secret kickbacks from foreign students and other non-permanent residents to create jobs for them, some of which don’t really exist. Another controversy emerged this week, with news of a 650 per cent increase in five years in the number of foreign students applying for refugee status.

In the midst of all the schemes and conflicts, which are dividing opinion among Canada’s South Asian population, Chhabra said he hopes Cash Cows helps viewers understand the different ways young people on study visas are trying to survive and prosper in a new land.

He intended to do so while avoiding heavy-handedness: “I wanted to make something light-hearted, yet grounded in reality, with a little message.”

One way the film has a bit of fun is by bringing alive the way many foreign students end up crammed together in tiny basement suites.

That is exactly what Chhabra and his friends had to do. For a long time Chhabra and two male friends shared the same double bed, sleeping in shifts and sometimes at the same time. While Chhabra’s Canadian girlfriend has described the practice as “so weird,”  he says it’s considered fine in Indian culture.

More seriously, in the past year Chhabra worries the national discussion of migration in Canada has hit a “tipping point,” where non-permanant residents such as foreign students are now being seen in a more pessimistic light, particularly in regard to contributing to pressure on housing and rental prices.

And while Chhabra wants to fight against the negativity, in some ways he can understand why in January Immigration Minister Marc Miller imposed a two-year cap on study permits.

“We see all the negatives, like everyone else,” said Chhabra. “And we want to work together to make it better.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Clever film brings home exploitation of foreign students in Canada

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CANADIANS ABROAD: Overview of Recent Research and Implications for Public Policy

2024/04/29 Leave a comment

This report, commissioned by Senator Woo, essentially argues for more services and support for Canadian expatriates. While it contains some useful comparisons of provincial health care coverage and non-coverage, as well as provincial election regulations, it is disappointingly light on measures of connection to Canada, whether passport issued to Canadians abroad (no recent public stats apparently) or non-resident taxation (less than 32,000 in 2021).

In terms of the specific recommendations below, my thoughts are as follows:

  • Always good to have better and more comprehensive data, along with academic research. For the latter, important to have range of perspectives, from this stating the case for more services (as the report does) to more critical voices.
  • On the various recommendations for centralized information for “all information relevant to the Canadian diaspora,” this understates the complexity of compiling and maintaining such a data that incorporates federal and provincial information. The argument for the need appears more theoretical than based upon public opinion research.
  • As to the needs for a strategy, hard to argue against that but the challenge, as we seen in so many areas, strategies without serious implementation are more photo ops and virtue signalling than meaningful.
  • With respect to consular service, one needs to start at first principles in terms of the obligations and limits to consular service to manage expectations and costs. In general, Canada has been generous in recent crises in terms of family members and permanent residents, even in cases of long-term expatriates with minimal to no current connection to Canada
  • More nutty are the arguments regarding healthcare coverage, mental health awareness, and the medical care at home and abroad sections, especially given the strains our healthcare system in Canada is facing. Expats planning to return to Canada are responsible for reinstating coverage and the various provincial websites are easy to find and understand. Is it really a Canadian government responsibility to help expats deal with mental health issues among diaspora communities? There is some merit in studying the impact of the return of expats to Canada on healthcare given that they have for the most part not paid Canadian and provincial taxes but the issue of Canadians seeking medical services abroad is a completely separate issue as these are paid by individuals, not taxpayers.
  • On tax policy, unclear what exactly is the issue and what are they trying to advocate. Canadian taxation is based on residence and most expats don’t pay Canadian non-resident taxes although some who maintain property in Canada do pay property tax.
  • Expat voting is a classic case where the policy arguments are divorced from reality. The report makes the specious comparison between overall voting rates between Canadian and non-residents but not the more telling on that only 55,000 non-resident voters registered, a drop in the bucket compared to the overall number of around three million adult expats. The same concerns regarding the cost of maintaining an updating a database on federal and provincial voting regulations apply. And suggesting electronic voting from abroad when we do not have it in Canada, not to mention the potential cost and security risks, even more hard to justify.
  • The last three recommendations – economic development engagement, chambers of commerce, and cultivating the diaspora – already happen to some extent in every embassy that I had worked in. No doubt, could be improved and strengthened.

Overall, the author has an overly optimistic take on the interest and willingness of long-term Canadian expatriates to advance Canadian interests. The vast majority are living their lives in their country of residence, contributing to that country’s economy and society, with relatively few highly engaged in advancing Canadian interests. Those are largely known to embassies and consulates and Canadian interest groups. Again, more could be done but given limited resources and little hard evidence to demonstrate effectiveness, the case is weak.

Source: CANADIANS ABROAD: Overview of Recent Research and Implications for Public Policy

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Visible minorities have difficulty accessing the labour market

2024/04/29 Leave a comment

While some interesting comparisons between Quebec and the rest of Canada, some of the methodology is odd. Why pick the 15-24 cohort given than many are in college or university rather than the 25-34 cohort which I and others use to avoid that issue.

While the general contrast between visible minorities and not visible minorities is valid, it ignores some of the equally significant differences between visible minority groups.

Still interesting to note the persistence of gaps between Quebec and Canada:

…More and more newcomers to the job market will be members of a visible minority. The case of young Canadian-born visible minorities merits special attention, with the goal of preventing their socioeconomic exclusion and the potential consequences for social cohesion.

In a context where Quebec and the rest of Canada rely on immigration to address the labour shortage, logic would dictate that we first realize the full potential of those already present. The integration into the workforce of Canadian-born individuals from ethnocultural minority groups, particularly the young, must be among the priorities of policymakers so as to avoid a situation where integration difficulties are passed on from one generation to the next. Failing this, a growing share of the population risks being marginalized.

Governments, the business community and all relevant stakeholders must work together on this in order to permanently eliminate the barriers hindering the economic integration of these young individuals and preventing them from fully contributing to the progress of society.

Source: Visible minorities have difficulty accessing the labour market

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Keller: The Trudeau government’s promise of 3.87 million new homes is next to impossible

2024/04/29 Leave a comment

I and others have been noting that time needed to increase housing means further revisions to the number of immigrants, temporary and permanent, is needed:

…An extraordinarily high share of our national wealth is already invested in housing rather than in productive business assets. In 2022, 37.9 per cent of Canada’s gross fixed capital formation – investment in assets – was tied up in dwellings. That’s the highest level in the OECD.

And the Trudeau government’s unreachable building target may aim too low. To achieve affordability solely through more housing, CMHC last year said the number of homes needed could be almost six million. CIBC economist Benjamin Tal pegs the shortfall at closer to seven million.

The logical conclusion is that we can’t build our way to affordability, at least not any time soon. Ottawa has to lean harder on the demand side of the equation. That means significantly reversing the unprecedented spike in the number of temporary residents. Population growth has to come down – way down.

Source: The Trudeau government’s promise of 3.87 million new homes is next to impossible

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Yakabuski: Ottawa’s noble plan to fast-track francophone immigrants seems doomed to fail

2024/04/29 Leave a comment

Sadly likely true:

….Still, it is far from clear Ottawa’s francophone immigration policy can achieve its ambitious goals. For starters, it pits Quebec and the federal government against each other in seeking to attract newcomers from the same (and rather limited) pool of French-speaking immigrants. Quebec chooses its own economic immigrants and puts a premium on French skills.

What’s more, many francophones who immigrate to another Canadian province may end up moving to Quebec soon after they arrive here. Many may find that their image of a bilingual country where francophones can thrive in any province is shattered upon arrival, and opt to relocate to Quebec.

More to the point, given Canada’s rising overall immigration numbers, Ottawa would need to adopt even more aggressive targets to stabilize the francophone population outside Quebec. Indeed, the House of Commons official languages committee last week recommended a 12-per-cent target for French-speaking immigrants outside Quebec this year, rising to 20 per cent by 2036, “to rebalance the demographic weight of francophones in Canada.”

Alas, Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon is not likely to run out of ammunition any time soon.

Source: Ottawa’s noble plan to fast-track francophone immigrants seems doomed to fail

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StatsCan: Employment by choice and necessity among Canadian-born and immigrant seniors

2024/04/29 Leave a comment

Noteworthy difference between immigrant and non-immigrant seniors as well as among different visible minority groups:

As Canada’s population gets older and life expectancy keeps increasing, Canadian-born and immigrant seniors may alleviate downward pressures on the overall employment rate through their involvement in the labour market. 

Many seniors work past their mid-60s for various reasons. Some find it necessary to keep working because of inadequate retirement savings, mortgage payments, unforeseen expenses, or the responsibility to support children and other family members in Canada or abroad. Others choose to work to provide a sense of personal fulfillment, stay active and remain engaged. 

Working by choice rather than necessity may have important implications for the well-being of seniors. Furthermore, data on employment by choice and necessity may help employers and policy makers understand the factors that influence seniors’ retirement decisions.

To shed light on this issue, this article uses data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and examines the degree to which Canadian-born and immigrant seniors aged 65 to 74 worked by choice or necessity in 2022.Note 

One in five seniors aged 65 to 74 worked in 2022—almost half of them by necessity

Of all Canadian-born and immigrant seniors aged 65 to 74, 21% were employed in 2022. Nine percent reported working by necessity and 12% reported working by choice. Those working by necessity represented 351,000 individuals that year.Note 

Immigrant seniors were more likely than their Canadian-born counterparts to work by necessity in 2022. Of all immigrant men aged 65 to 74, 15% reported working by necessity in 2022 (Table 1). The corresponding percentage was 9% for Canadian-born men.Note  Immigrant women (9%) were also more likely than Canadian-born women (6%) to report working by necessity.

….The degree to which immigrants worked by necessity in 2022 varied across population groups. About 20% of Black, Filipino or South Asian immigrant men reported working by necessity that year, compared with 8% of Chinese immigrant men and 12% of White immigrant men. Black immigrant women (12%) and Filipino immigrant women (13%) were also more likely than Chinese immigrant women (6%) to report working by necessity…

Source: Employment by choice and necessity among Canadian-born and immigrant seniors

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Phillips: Kaffiyeh ban unites all leaders, who are aware of Muslim voter influence in Ontario

2024/04/27 Leave a comment

Hard to maintain the argument that the kaffiyeh is primarily cultural given context, the statements of Sara Jama and the nature and discourse of protests. And as to Phillips using turbans and kirpans as a counter example, these are primarily religious, even if for some they also have a political significance.

Being sensitive to community concerns does not necessarily mean agreement given conflicting concerns among communities, as the current Jewish Palestinian tensions illustrate, and thus Speaker Arnott made the right call which needs of course, to be implemented with rigorous consistency for all political symbols:

The Speaker of Ontario’s legislature, Ted Arnott, has done something rare: he’s managed to get the leaders of all four parties at Queen’s Park united on a controversial issue.

Of course, they’re united against him — specifically against the ban he’s imposed on wearing Palestinian kaffiyehs in the provincial parliament, indeed anywhere in the legislative precinct that he oversees.

His decision has ignited a fierce debate: is the kaffiyeh, the checkered head scarf worn by Palestinians since time immemorial, cultural or political?

The answer to that binary question must be yes. It’s both — depending. The kaffiyeh has long been a cultural symbol of Palestinian identity. But wearing it has become more political, especially since the outbreak of the Hamas-Israel war last October.

That’s basically what Arnott said when he announced his ban. Wearing kaffiyehs “at the present time in our assembly,” he said, has become political. Arnott presumably thinks he’s just being consistent by banning kaffiyehs in line with established rules against wearing anything that “is intended to make an overt political statement.”

But what an unnecessary mess he’s created. This was a non-issue at Queen’s Park until Arnott issued his ban, apparently in response to a complaint by one unidentified MPP. It’s not as if there was a rash of kaffiyeh-wearing in the legislature. The only member who regularly wears one is independent Sara Jama, who was thrown out of the NDP caucus last year for her stand on the Mideast conflict.

Now we have the spectacle of Jama being told to leave the chamber for wearing a kaffiyeh. And a group of Arab-Canadian lawyers denied entry to the legislature when they wore kaffiyehs to a meeting with NDP Leader Marit Stiles.

I’m with the party leaders (including Premier Doug Ford) on this one. No doubt there’s a political dimension to wearing a kaffiyeh these days, but the long-established cultural tradition can’t be denied either. Why make an issue out of it at a time when feelings are running so high? Remember the fuss years ago about turbans and kirpans worn by Sikhs? In hindsight it seems like a fight about nothing.

Focusing on the kaffiyeh raises questions of consistency as well. What about wearing a tie or scarf in Ukrainian national colours? One of the Conservative MPPs who refused unanimous consent to overturn Arnott’s decision, Robin Martin, wore a necklace in the legislature emblazoned with “bring them home” in solidarity with Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Good for her, but wasn’t that also “political?”

Some have made much of the fact that party leaders opposing the ban may not be acting entirely for principled reasons, given the byelection set for May 2 in Milton where Muslim voters could make the difference.

I find it hard to be shocked by the notion of politicians acting for political reasons, and in this case the lesson to be drawn is “get used to it.” What’s happening in Milton is just a taste of how Muslim voters may have an impact in key ridings in the next federal election.

All provincial parties are courting Muslim voters in Milton, where 23 per cent of the population identified as Muslim in the 2021 census. The Liberal candidate, Galen Naidoo Harris, who isn’t Arab or Palestinian, has even made a point of wearing a kaffiyeh in social media postings.

Muslim voters are already an important factor in our politics. An organization called The Canadian-Muslim Vote identified more than 100 ridings in 2021where the Muslim vote exceeded the expected margin of victory. Many (including Milton) are in the GTA and will be fiercely fought over in the next federal election.

All the more reason for political leaders to be sensitive to the concerns of Muslim voters, as they’ve learned to be sensitive to the concerns of Sikh, Italian, Ukrainian, Jewish, you-name-it voters who aren’t shy about mobilizing their communities around issues that matter to them.

Banning the kaffiyeh is that kind of issue for an increasingly influential slice of voters. There are good reasons of principle to drop the ban. The politics of it point in that direction too.

Source: Kaffiyeh ban unites all leaders, who are aware of Muslim voter influence in Ontario

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , ,

Don Kerr: Canada’s population growth is exploding. Here’s why

2024/04/27 Leave a comment

Good analysis but late to the party like a number of others:

As a professional demographer who has carefully followed Canada’s demographic evolution over the past three decades, I am shocked by some of the most recent demographic data released by Statistics Canada. From 1991 through to 2015, the year in which the current government was first elected, the annual growth in Canada’s population grew in a predictable manner at an average of roughly 320,000 persons per year. 

Following 2015, that growth has rapidly accelerated. Following a temporary dip in population growth due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Canada’s population growth reached just over half a million in 2021 (509,285 persons), close to a million in 2022 (930,422), and then an astronomical 1.27 million persons in 2023. 

Put another way, whereas for several decades Canada’s population growth rate hovered at about 1.0 percent annually, this rate has more than tripled in a few short years, up to 3.2 percent in 2023. 

In even starker terms, the 2023 rate of population growth is like adding a new Saskatchewan to Canada’s total population in slightly less than a single calendar year. As of 2023, there is not a single country in the G7 or in the OECD that has a population growth rate even close to Canada’s. Population growth in the U.S., for comparison, is currently at about 0.5 percent. Even prior to the recent upturn, Canada’s rate of population growth was actually the highest in the G7 and among the highest in the OECD. 

Most astoundingly, in making international comparisons, Statistic Canada now points out that Canada in 2023 is among the 20 fastest-growing countries in the world, ranked beside several very high fertility countries, largely situated in sub-Saharan Africa. While Canada’s current population growth of 3.2 percent is obviously not sustainable, a constant growth rate of 3.3 percent would imply a doubling in Canada’s total population in under 25 years.

The last time Canada saw a growth rate comparable to this was fully 67 years ago. In 1957, Canada was close to the height of its baby boom, with a birth rate close to four births per woman. Slowly over decades this growth rate gradually declined as fertility rates fell (no abrupt shifts here).1  

Most recently, Canada’s growth has almost entirely been the result of international migration (97.6 percent) as the rate of natural increase (births minus deaths) has continued to decline steadily. Hence, the pace at which Canada’s population grows, in a predictable manner, can be seen as a function of Canada’s immigration policy—meaning, then, that this is a policy problem that the federal government, in consultation with the provinces, can solve itself by setting and regulating immigration targets. This includes both permanent immigration (economic, family, and refugee classes) as well as the increase in non-permanent residents (international students, temporary work permits, and asylum claimants). 

The question remains as to how we have gotten into this situation in the first place. When Sean Fraser was first appointed to the Trudeau cabinet as immigration minister in the fall of 2021, Canada’s growth rate was roughly 1 percent. By the time he was shifted from immigration to housing and infrastructure in the summer of 2023, Canada’s growth rate had climbed to its current heights. As many commenters have pointed out, it is somewhat ironic that the minister appointed to fix the issue of housing affordability was the minister of immigration who allowed this unprecedented growth in population. 

In the summer of 2023 when Canada’s population was growing at a rate that had not been seen for almost 70 years, Fraser attempted to downplay the link between population growth and rising housing costs, saying that the solution to the country’s housing woes should not involve closing the door to newcomers. 

The data from both Statistics Canada and the Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corporation (CMHC) belie the minister’s baffling assertion. Canada’s demographic growth has clearly outpaced its housing stock. Coming out of the pandemic, housing starts climbed to 271,000 in 2021, the highest number recorded for half a century, only to drop slightly in 2022 and 2023. In total, Canada witnessed about 800,000 housing starts over the 2021-2023 period, whereas over this same period, Canada’s population grew by over 2.5 million. The fact that the CMHC forecasts fewer than 224,000 starts in 2024 and only 232,000 in 2025 does not bode well for housing affordability in Canada, particularly in the context of continuing rapid population growth. 

Having said all this, it seems that the federal government has finally woken up to this issue and is now committed to reducing this growth. Current immigration minister, Marc Miller, has made overtures towards slowing Canada’s population growth—even potentially back down to historically sustainable levels. Most importantly, Miller recently announced that the proportion of “non-permanent residents” (NPRs) in Canada will be reduced from its current level of fully 6.2 percent of the total Canadian population down to 5.0 percent over the next three years. For context, NPRs were only about 3.1 percent of Canada’s population in 2021. [mfnBy NPRs, the federal government is referring to international students, persons in Canada on temporary work permits, as well as asylum claimants.[/mfn]

As the government has already capped and reduced the number of international students, a sizeable share of this reduction will occur among persons with temporary work permits. Over 60 percent of Canada’s population growth in 2023 was a by-product of the increase in the number of NPRs. If immediately implemented, Canada could shift from admitting an additional 800,000 NPRs in 2023 to seeing a decline in the number of NPRs by perhaps -160,000 in 2024 (serving to reduce Canada’s rate of growth). Merely with this reform, and continuing with its current commitment to welcoming roughly half a million landed immigrants yearly over the next several years, Canada’s growth rate could return to sanity. The issue remains as to how successful the government will be in implementing this reform.

The dramatic shift in Canada’s rate of population growth has inevitably had important consequences, and not all of them positive. Take, for example, the increasing strain on the country’s already-burdened health and social services. In policy terms, a steady, gradual upturn in population growth is far better for planning future labour force, housing, and infrastructure needs.

Overall, Canada will be well served into the future by returning to and maintaining a predictable rate of population growth and avoiding the rather abrupt shifts experienced most recently. A majority of Canadians have long been supportive of Canadian immigration policy. The recent mishandling of this file has jeopardized this consensus. Hopefully not irreparably. 

Don Kerr is a demographer who teaches at Kings University College at Western University. From 1992-2000 he worked in the demography division at Statistics Canada.

Source: Don Kerr: Canada’s population growth is exploding. Here’s why

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