ICC: Naturalization visualized, looking at citizenship data in detail

2024/07/03 Leave a comment

Was happy to be part of this and had fun pouring through and analyzing the data:

Continuing its focus on understanding the causes and potential responses to the decline in citizenship uptake, today the Institute for Canadian Citizenship is publishing an in-depth analysis by expert researcher Andrew Griffith of demographic and socioeconomic data from Census 2016 and 2021 of naturalized and non-naturalized immigrants. 

Click here to view the report

Highlights from the report

1. Citizenship is declining across all major demographic variables

Citizenship rates have declined across all major source countries, education levels, and provinces of residence. Notably, citizenship uptake is lowest among university-educated immigrants, who represent a growing proportion of recent immigrants. Despite higher immigration levels, Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta experienced the largest declines in naturalization.

2. Family class immigrants have the lowest naturalization rates, refugees the highest

Immigrants who arrive under the family category have the lowest naturalization rates in both census periods, but also experienced the largest decline – 17 percent – between the two periods. Naturalization is higher for economic class and refugee immigrants, but these categories also experienced declines of 10 percent and 5 percent respectively across the two periods analyzed.

3. Naturalized citizens generally have higher incomes than non-citizens, non-citizen women lag behind in most labour force measures

Among immigrants with a bachelors degree, median after-tax income of non-citizens is only 43 percent of the median after-tax incomes of citizens across all census periods. The gap in unemployment levels between non-citizen and citizen women increased from less than 1 percent in Census 2016 to 2.3 percent in Census 2021 – a 155 percent increase.

4. Government can act to reverse the trend

Government should expand funding to programs that educate, encourage and prepare immigrants for citizenship, and also adopt a meaningful performance target focused on the naturalization rates of recent immigrants – those who arrived within 5-9 years. It should avoid diminishing the value of citizenship by making it a more visible and celebrated part of the immigration journey.

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with ,

Coyne: In a country where immigrants are the majority, anti-immigration politics are obsolete

2024/07/02 Leave a comment

Or counter productive. But still room for lots of debates and discussions over numbers of both permanent and temporary, priorities and programs and the like:

….Indeed, we are about to cross a significant threshold. As of the 2021 census, 23 per cent of Canadians were immigrants – a record. Add to that the 17.6 per cent of the population with at least one foreign-born parent, and more than 40 per cent of the population were either first- or second-generation immigrants.

That was three years ago – before the current great wave of immigration. By now that number must be at least 42 or 43 per cent. Add to that the 6.8 per cent of the population, as of April 1 of this year, made up of non-permanent residents, and we are very nearly at 50 per cent.

That proportion is only likely to grow. Two years ago – again, before the great wave – Statistics Canada projected first- and second-generation immigrants would make up 52.4 per cent of the population by 2041. But that was on the basis of a projected total population of 48 million. It is already at 41.4 million.

There is no going back from this. We have crossed the immigration Rubicon. It’s easier to campaign against immigration in a country with little experience of it. But in a country where immigrants, and their children, make up the majority? It is not going to happen.

Source: Opinion: In a country where immigrants are the majority, anti-immigration politics are obsolete

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McGugan: Canada is a great place, with politicians who have a knack for bad decisions

2024/07/02 Leave a comment

More critical commentary, but leaves out the complicity of business associations, education institutions, provincial governments and others:

….The government’s incoherence on housing reflects its commitment to a similarly befuddled immigration agenda.

Mr. Trudeau supersized immigration after he became Prime Minister in 2015. Exactly why was never clear: Canada’s existing system admitted generous numbers of people, primarily on economic grounds, and was considered a model internationally.

Yet Mr. Trudeau ramped up the annual immigrant intake from a net total of roughly 200,000 people in 2015 to 300,000 by 2019 and more than 400,000 currently. Even more important, he allowed a vast expansion in the scale of programs that admit non-permanent residents – primarily international students and temporary workers – taking that category to more than 800,000 people this year.

The entirely predictable result of this population surge has been housing shortages and soaring rents. Ottawa is now moving to slash the number of non-permanent residents, but that will take time.

Perhaps the key question to ask is why nobody in Ottawa saw problems coming. It doesn’t take advanced economic modelling to suspect that the collision between a drum-tight housing market and an unprecedented surge of new residents would not turn out well.

On this Canada Day, we should ponder why our political class – federally and provincially, left and right – has developed such a knack for making unforced errors. Canada remains great. Sadly, its politicians aren’t.

Source: Canada is a great place, with politicians who have a knack for bad decisions

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Current immigration levels could lead to ‘overreaction,’ Quebec premier says

2024/07/02 Leave a comment

Of note and legitimate concern even if coming from Premier Legault and his series of missteps:
Quebec Premier François Legault warned Friday there’s a risk of “overreaction” against newcomers if the province maintains its current immigration levels.Legault told reporters on the Gaspé Peninsula he doesn’t want to see Quebec end up like the United States or France, where the debate on immigration has fuelled extremist views. Recent statistics show there has been an increase of more than 300,000 non-permanent residents in Quebec in the last two years, a number Legault said is more than the province can accommodate.

“There’s a risk of reaction or overreaction in the face of impacts on services, on the French language, on housing,” he said. “We have to be balanced in how many immigrants we take in every year.”

Legault’s comments came in response to a question about whether he fears a “rise of the right” in Quebec and Canada. Concerns about immigration have fuelled the popularity of far-right parties in several European countries, including France, where the anti-immigration Rassemblement National is leading in polls heading into the first voting round in parliamentary elections this weekend.

In the United States, President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump clashed on immigration during a televised debate Thursday night, and the issue will probably be a flashpoint in the 2024 presidential election.

“What I hope is that we don’t end up in the same situation as the United States or France,” Legault said. “I think Quebecers have always been welcoming. But we can’t welcome 300,000 new people in two years. That’s too many.”…

Source: Current immigration levels could lead to ‘overreaction,’ Quebec premier says

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Gurski: Again, the Liberals show they don’t really understand national security

2024/07/02 Leave a comment

Interesting commentary on the IRGC listing and related security issues:

Last week saw a flurry of activity from the Canadian government on national security.  First, it announced on June 19 that the IRGC — Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — had been formally “listed” as a terrorist entity. Then the Senate approved Bill C-70 calling for the establishment of a foreign agent registry.

I will defer comments on C-70 for later and focus on the significance – if any – of the decision to add the IRGC to a large number of “listed entities.” The government crowed that it took this move after “years” of hard work and claimed this demonstrated, yet again, how seriously it takes national security.

Except that the IRGC move was not all that urgent: the Conservatives asked that the Liberal government list this group back in 2018, which makes you wonder what took so long. It is not as if the government needed to study whether the IRGC merited this rank given its 40 years of support for other listed entities (among which are Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad) and well-known penchant for mucking about in the Middle East and elsewhere. Calling it a terrorist group now does not exactly constitute rocket science.

The terrorist listing tool dates back to 2002 (full disclosure: I wrote the first al-Qaida listing that year while working as a senior terrorism analyst at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, CSIS) and is used to identify groups the government believes engage in terrorist activity. It is handy largely from a financing perspective: if you are daft enough to send a cheque or e-transfer to Hamas leadership, you are guilty of terrorist financing.

But aside from that, the listing process suffers from two problems. First, it is not essential for a group (or individual) to be listed to warrant attention and investigation from our protectors (Communications Security Establishment, CSIS, RCMP, etc.). We at CSIS had been looking at al-Qaida for decades prior to the creation of the list; in other words, we did not need some mandarin to say “gee, AQ is a terrorist group, maybe our spies should monitor it.” Furthermore, the non-appearance of a group (or individual) from the list does not preclude investigating it (or him/her). Our spies aren’t waiting for orders to carry out their work in accordance with their well-established practices and legislative mandates.

Second, the listings are often purely political in nature. The addition of the Proud Boys in January 2021 was clearly a knee-jerk reaction to the raid on the U.S. Capitol by a dog’s breakfast of wankers, including some members of the U.S. branch of this group. The chapter in Canada has never carried out a single act of violence in this country and frankly, to cite a friend of mine who investigated the far right in Canada in the 1990s, couldn’t make a cheese sandwich. Sources told me that CSIS was not in favour of listing the Proud Boys as the group did not merit that kind of attention/status.

Sometimes groups are “delisted” for purely political reasons too. The Harper government took the anti-Iranian People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI, better known as the MeK) off the list in the early 2010s, despite its use of violence here and abroad. Go figure.

The timing of the IRGC decision also raises eyebrows. Just before the House of Commons rose for the summer? Did the government think no one was paying attention?  Just before a byelection in Toronto? To show it takes national security “very seriously” (to quote Chrystia Freeland)? To deflect criticism of its handling of the ongoing People’s Republic of China interference gong show?

For what it is worth, I have no issue with naming the IRGC a terrorist entity. I worked as an Iranian analyst for 20 years at both CSE and CSIS, and I understand what this ideological bunch of thugs stands for.

At the same time, the choice of day/month for this action does nothing to shake my belief that this government neither comprehends nor cares about national security. The IRGC could have been listed 20 years ago, and in all honesty should have been part of the original process just after 9/11. Making a big deal of it now just looks, well, political.

Phil Gurski is President and CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting.
http://www.borealisthreatandrisk.com

Source: Gurski: Again, the Liberals show they don’t really understand national security

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Yakabuski | Ne pas apprendre de ses erreurs [Dattani]

2024/07/02 Leave a comment

Agreed. Where is the vetting? And for not disclosing this information, Dattani shouild be automatically disqualified:

Lors de la Journée internationale dédiée à la mémoire des victimes de l’Holocauste de cette année, la présidente intérimaire de la Commission canadienne des droits de la personne (CCDP), Charlotte-Anne Malischewski, s’est déclarée « profondément préoccupée par la montée fulgurante de l’antisémitisme » qui s’observe au Canada depuis les attaques du Hamas sur Israël commises en octobre dernier.

« Lorsque la haine se présente dans nos communautés, elle menace la sécurité publique, la démocratie et les droits de la personne, a-t-elle tenu à rappeler. La haine nous divise et nous oppose les uns aux autres. »

Dans le contexte actuel, où la guerre à Gaza a fait de la communauté juive canadienne le bouc émissaire des critiques visant le gouvernement israélien de Benjamin Nétanyahou, on se serait attendu à ce que le ministre fédéral de la Justice, Arif Virani, s’efforce de trouver un digne successeur à Mme Malischewski pour occuper sur une base permanente ce poste se trouvant au sommet de la hiérarchie des instances des droits de la personne au Canada.

D’autant plus que la CCDP se verra octroyer de nouveaux pouvoirs en vertu du projet de loi C-63 sur les préjudices en ligne afin de déterminer la validité des plaintes concernant le contenu haineux. Le nouveau président de la CCDP doit lui-même être au-dessus de tout soupçon de parti pris pour ou contre tout plaignant qui s’adressera à la commission.

Or, en nommant Birju Dattani à la présidence de la CCDP, le 15 juin dernier, M. Virani semble avoir surtout cherché à plaire à l’aile progressiste du Parti libéral du Canada. La nomination de cet ancien directeur de la Commission des droits de la personne du Yukon et « défenseur de l’équité, de la diversité et de l’inclusion » rappelle celle d’Amira Elghawaby, devenue l’an dernier représentante spéciale chargée de la lutte contre l’islamophobie, qui s’est vue hantée par ses écrits considérés comme antiquébécois après l’annonce de sa nomination.

Mme Elghawaby s’est vite excusée. Mais son acte de contrition a aussitôt été remis en doute par les politiciens québécois, et sa crédibilité en a irrémédiablement été entachée. Si elle a pu garder son poste, elle est toutefois devenue quasi invisible depuis son entrée en fonction.

Le cas de Birju Dattani est beaucoup plus grave. Selon les révélations publiées cette semaine dans les médias torontois, le passé de cet ancien président de l’Association des étudiants musulmans de l’Université de Calgary est semé de propos antisémites et d’associations douteuses. Alors qu’il étudiait à Londres, en 2012, il a participé à une manifestation devant l’ambassade d’Israël au cours de laquelle les manifestants répétaient le slogan « le sionisme, c’est du terrorisme ». En 2015, alors qu’il était chargé de cours dans la capitale britannique, il a participé à une conférence aux côtés d’un membre du groupe fondamentaliste islamiste Hizb ut-Tahrir, qui prône la charia et que le gouvernement britannique a inscrit sur sa liste des organisations terroristes prohibées cette année.

Le Centre consultatif des relations juives et israéliennes ne demande rien de moins que le retrait de sa nomination. Selon l’organisme, M. Dattani « a partagé des articles comparant Israël à l’Allemagne nazie, a participé à une table ronde au Royaume-Uni avec un membre du Hizb ut-Tahrir, […] qui cherche à établir un nouveau califat et s’oppose à l’existence d’un État israélien, et a donné à plusieurs reprises des conférences sur le mouvement Boycott, désinvestissement et sanctions (BDS) lors de la Semaine contre l’apartheid israélien dans des universités britanniques ».

Le bureau d’Arif Virani a plaidé l’ignorance en disant que M. Dattani ne l’avait pas informé de ses gazouillis controversés ou de son militantisme anti-Israël lors du processus de nomination à la présidence de la CCDP. À l’époque où il vivait à Londres, M. Dattani utilisait un autre prénom. Cela n’épargne toutefois pas le ministre d’être accusé d’avoir failli à la tâche de procéder à des vérifications rigoureuses avant de le nommer.

M. Virani promet maintenant d’effectuer un examen officiel de la nomination de M. Dattani avant le 8 août, soit la date de son entrée en fonction à la tête de la CCDP, et de rendre le rapport de cet examen public. Pour sa part, M. Dattani s’est excusé cette semaine dans une entrevue au Globe and Mail, où il reconnaît que ses propos et ses gazouillis antérieurs ont pu blesser des membres de la communauté juive. « Je ne le ferais pas maintenant », a-t-il souligné, en précisant que son opinion avait « évolué » depuis.

Tant mieux si Birju Dattani reconnaît ses torts. Sa nomination reste néanmoins irrecevable. Après tout, il a manifestement essayé de cacher ses propos antérieurs aux membres du bureau du ministre de la Justice, qui lui ont certainement demandé, lors du processus de nomination, de leur faire part de toute information potentiellement compromettante sur son passé. Les Canadiens doivent pouvoir croire en l’impartialité de la CCDP pour que cette instance conserve la crédibilité nécessaire au bon accomplissement de sa fonction critique, qui est celle de protéger la population canadienne contre la discrimination.

Quant au gouvernement de Justin Trudeau, disons que la nomination de M. Dattani est un autre exemple d’un excès de zèle progressiste, qui se retourne encore une fois contre lui. Disons qu’il ne semble pas apprendre de ses erreurs.

Source: Chronique | Ne pas apprendre de ses erreurs

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