They served in an Iranian force Canada lists as terrorist. They say they were conscripts — but now may face removal

2026/08/27 Leave a comment

Of note. Legitimate distinction between conscripts vs regular members:

…On a single day, a large number of Iranian immigration applicants were notified by the Immigration Department that they may be inadmissible because they previously were conscripted to serve the organization. The Unheard Conscripts Advocacy Network believes the number to be several hundred. 

“Conscription is mandatory in Iran and we cannot flee from that,” said Gharehchahi, 35, who has a background in engineering and was assigned to IRGC’s dam-construction projects in 2014 and 2015, after his undergrad studies in Iran. “We all get punished if we don’t do our conscription over there.”

Since Ottawa’s listing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, immigration officials have begun flagging individual Iranian applicants for inadmissibility over alleged ties to the force. But the recent mass notifications — based on possible IRGC membership as a result of service in the force — have shocked the community. People worry the approach is capturing innocent conscripts who have never participated in terrorism.

Is Canada targeting the right people?

The Liberal government’s response to IRGC has been prompted by the group’s downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 in 2020, alleged involvement with other designated terrorist groups and brutal repression of Iranian people. The federal government has also been criticized for admitting IRGC officials in Canada.

With concerns over the regime’s harassment and intimidation of the diaspora in Canada, the Conservatives have urged stronger enforcement to ensure non-citizens are deemed inadmissible if “involved in regime-linked businesses, spreading propaganda, or human rights abuses.” The opposition also wants inadmissibility be extended to immediate non-citizen family members of regime officials.

“The government of Canada has wanted to show the Iranian community in Canada and the rest of the world that it takes the issue of the human rights violations in Iran seriously,” said Toronto lawyer Lorne Waldman, who has had more than 30 consultations with anxious applicants in Canada flagged for potential inadmissibility since Aug. 7….

Source: They served in an Iranian force Canada lists as terrorist. They say they were conscripts — but now may face removal

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

What is Dominion Society of Canada and why are people of different political backgrounds worried?

2026/08/26 Leave a comment

Of note:

…People with different political ties have criticized Dominion Society. They include Jason Kenney, former Alberta premier and onetime Conservative MP. 

“There are a bunch of totally legitimate concerns about what I would characterize as imprudent or irresponsible immigration policy,” Kenney, federal immigration minister from 2008 to 2013, told CBC Hamilton in an interview this week. 

“But I think that is categorically different than basing our immigration policy on race.”

Dominion Society, he added, seems more interested in the colour of people’s skin than the kind of contribution they’re making to Canada. 

“That is clearly un-Canadian, and it needs to be called out.

“People like me, who are on the right of centre of Canadian politics, have a special obligation to do that,” Kenney said. “I think it’s really problematic to have a group like that wrapping itself in Canadian patriotism and nationalism that is trying to exploit public concern about immigration and turn it into, frankly, a racist message.” …

Source: What is Dominion Society of Canada and why are people of different political backgrounds worried?

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

Geist: TMU Picks Damage Control Over Fixing the Damage: Behind Its Shameful Response to the Devastating Benotto Report on Campus Antisemitism

2026/08/26 Leave a comment

The contrast is telling:

…A report like this should have sparked immediate action, and it is difficult to believe that findings of this kind involving any other group would have been met with anything less. For example, in November 2020, amid mounting pressure over Egerton Ryerson’s residential schools legacy, TMU established a task force that issued its report within a year (during which time the Ryerson statue was toppled), and the Board of Governors adopted all 22 recommendations immediately (including changing the name of the university to TMU). But when the issue involves Jewish students, TMU’s response is far different. It sat on the report for nearly two weeks, released it with disciplinary findings redacted, and announced a President’s Implementation Task Force that will report back on the report in 2027. That means students arriving on campus in the next few weeks will face another year of antisemitism with the university signalling that there is no urgency to address the issue.

In fact, the task force membership leaves little doubt that the university intends to reject many of the report’s recommendations. Nearly half of the committee’s members have signed public petitions opposing some of the recommendations, including the adoption of the IHRA definition, and rejecting the report’s findings on the links between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Simply put, delaying the implementation of the Benotto report and stacking a new task force with opponents of its recommendations is precisely what you do when you don’t take the antisemitism report seriously and want to kill its recommendations. As a result, TMU is home to two problems: its antisemitism problem is now the most thoroughly documented in the country, and its leadership is more interested in damage control than fixing the damage. If the university is unable or unwilling to establish a safe environment for all of its students and faculty, it falls to the Ontario government, which already requires universities to implement policies to address and combat hate, including antisemitism, to ensure that it does.

Source: TMU Picks Damage Control Over Fixing the Damage: Behind Its Shameful Response to the Devastating Benotto Report on Campus Antisemitism

From the Globe editorial:

….As both reports show, Jews who don’t renounce Israel’s existence are treated as outcasts: “The redefinition of Zionism to incorporate genocide and the insistence that anyone who fails to actively support anti-Zionism is likewise culpable,” Ms. Benotto writes, “have contributed to an environment that has enabled antisemitism to flourish.” A Jewish lecturer says it’s “incredibly unsafe” to wear a Star of David, and even organizing a non-political Sabbath dinner requires a risk assessment, Ms. Benotto reported.

This is not about isolated episodes. It is about a poisoned environment. Our learning institutions should consistently stand up for the values they claim to represent. As Ms. Benotto documents, TMU already has policies against violence, threats of violence, and discriminatory, intimidating or harassing words and conduct. Every school should, as she urges for TMU, “establish clear behavioural expectations, protect the rights of all members of the community, and enforce its policies consistently, transparently, and predictably.”

It hardly seems too much to ask. Yet TMU has not responded to the eight recommendations of the Benotto report, instead announcing an “implementation committee” that has until next March to come up with a “blueprint.”

The report – again, commissioned by TMU – already lays out a course of action. No blueprint is needed, just a spine.

Source: The betrayal of Jewish students needs to end

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Austin Harper: The Truths That Failed Jason Arday

2026/08/26 2 Comments

One of the more balanced treatment of Arday and how his case is being used by both the right and left:

…I have been dwelling on these two images—the theatrical interracial handclasp; the pages and pages of monomaniacal media coverage of what was ultimately a niche academic scandal—because together they speak to a terrible reality. Arday was fetishized in his ascendancy by white liberals, for whom he served as a mirror in which they could see their own goodness. And he was fetishized in his downfall by white conservatives who saw him as a test case for their own obsessions with an academic apparatus that they believe is not meritocratic enough—which is to say, not white enough.

The right would have us believe that the Arday scandal is a story of affirmative action taken to its most caricaturish conclusion. Many progressives see it as something else: a racist witch hunt in which self-righteous zealots with suspect motives hounded a man to death. The problem with these narratives—and it is a sticky problem—is that they are both right.

To be a Black person in elite institutions, and particularly in elite academia, is to have the standards simultaneously set too low and too high: too low because only a Black person with Arday’s dubious qualifications and seemingly invented biography could have been elevated to the top of the mountain in academia and publishing; and too high because only a Black person could have been pushed off that mountain with such nakedly racist enthusiasm, his tumbling fall so ruthlessly documented, analyzed, and cheered. When a famous white man errs, people tend to rightly understand his mistakes or transgressions as an individual’s missteps. When a famous Black man does, the errors are typically turned into spectacle, characterized as proof of the inferiority, suspected all along, of his race….

Source: The Truths That Failed Jason Arday

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

Black Canadians face barriers when donating blood despite critical need, study says 

2026/08/26 2 Comments

The data is concerning but why must academics automatically point to “racist policies” with more general than specific points although I understand the impact of historical policies:

Black people in Canada who want to donate blood face barriers, despite a critical need for specific blood types to treat sickle-cell disease, says a study published on Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Researchers from the Interdisciplinary Centre for Black Health at the University of Ottawa shared their findings after interviewing 42 Black adults from March to June, 2023.

The study does not touch on the time period between gathering research and publishing findings.

The research findings offer new insights into complex factors at the root of why few Black individuals donate blood.

One of the co-authors, Jude Mary Cénat, a professor of psychology at the university and its research chair on Black health, said the barriers to blood donation are “predominantly rooted in the restrictive and racist policies adopted by blood donation systems in Canada.” 

As of last year, Canadian Blood Services said that Black donors accounted for just under one per cent of its entire blood donor base, about two per cent of stem-cell registrants and five per cent of cord-blood donors. By contrast, the Black population in Canada is growing and is expected to reach more than three million people by 2041. 

CBS says people in Canada from ethnically diverse backgrounds are less likely to find a matching donor because these communities are underrepresented. For its stem registry alone, 66 per cent of registrants are Caucasian. …

Source: Black Canadians face barriers when donating blood despite critical need, study says

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

Canadian citizenship applicants surging after ‘Lost Canadians’ law passed, testing Carney government’s immigration control promise

2026/08/26 Leave a comment

The assumption that many if not most will install themselves in Canada is unknown and there is no easy way that I know of to obtain accurate data as citizen immigration is not tracked unlike immigrants and temporary residents. That being said, proof data provides a sense of the possible magnitude. Previous cohorts of “lost Canadians” revealed that relatively few sought citizenship proofs but this cohort, at least during the first year, appears to be an exception (citizenship proofs in recent years have hovered around 60,000):

…Technically, none of these citizenship claimants via Canadian ancestry counts against the Carney government’s immigration levels plan. Certificate holders are recognized citizens, not immigrants, so they fall outside the targets Ottawa points to as evidence of restraint.

But the practical effect is similar: each certificate confers the right to a passport and to live and work in Canada, and archivists describe applicants who are explicitly planning moves out of the U.S. If a meaningful share of the 121,800 people now in line—and the larger pool behind them—relocates, the population pressures the government says it is easing will partially reassert themselves through a channel its plan does not measure.

The international contrast of other developed countries curtailing citizenship claims underlines the point. Sweden and Finland have increased residency requirements, and Italy has capped citizenship by descent at two generations. Canada, alone, has widened its ancestry route without limit.

Graeme Gordon is The Hub’s Senior Editor and Podcast Producer. He has worked as a journalist contributing to a variety of publications, including CBC, National Post, Canadaland, and Toronto Sun.

Source: Canadian citizenship applicants surging after ‘Lost Canadians’ law passed, testing Carney government’s immigration control promise

Inside IRCC’s application processing system highlights some 32,000 applications finalized and about 100,000 applications pending year-to-date, essentially

31,980 finalized since 1 January 2026, pending 99,520, essentially the same number in one year that PBO, IRCC and Ministers tabled as a five-year total.

Associated Hub editorial:

…The accounting fiction at the centre deserves plain statement. Certificate holders are recognized citizens, not immigrants, so none of them count against the 380,000 permanent resident cap or the 385,000 temporary resident target the government touts as restraint. The practical effect on housing, health care, and labour markets is identical. Ottawa has capped the front door while leaving a side entrance unmeasured, unmodelled, and effectively unbounded.

Peer countries have moved in the opposite direction. Sweden and Finland have tightened residency requirements; Italy has capped citizenship by descent at two generations. Canada alone has widened its ancestry route without limit—and without so much as a credible estimate of who will walk through it.

The government should, at minimum, integrate descent-based citizenship into its levels planning and publish honest projections of uptake. If a meaningful share of the 121,800 people now in the queue—and the far larger pool behind them—relocates, the population pressures Ottawa claims to be easing will partially reassert themselves through a channel its plan refuses to see. A promise to control immigration that ignores its fastest-growing stream is not control. It is bookkeeping.

Filed under C-3, Citizenship Tagged with

The Jason Arday story was never going to be just about him. That’s a shame

2026/08/17 1 Comment

Well, it never is. And yes, the focus should be on the institutional failure, not just the individual. Media organizations and commentators need to be more careful, both those on the left defending and those on the right criticizing:

…Black scholars know how a white scholar’s error tends to remain a story about that individual, while a Black scholar’s error often becomes a collective indictment, used to question Black presence in elite institutions more broadly. For some Black scholars, that generalization is part of a co-ordinated political campaign rooted in the belief that Black people do not belong there. Accountability therefore cannot stop with Mr. Arday. Cambridge must answer for its appointment, oversight and response; media organizations and commentators must answer for how allegations and speculation are framed and amplified; and political actors who extend one case to Black scholars collectively must answer for the wider harm they help produce. 

If they fail to do so, there will be lasting damage, because one controversy can easily harden into a presumption about who belongs in the academy.

Malinda S. Smith is a professor of political science at the University of Calgary. Debra Thompson is an associate professor of political science and Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies at McGill University.

Source: The Jason Arday story was never going to be just about him. That’s a shame

Filed under DEI, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Canada promised these caregivers a path to permanent residence. Now they say the government is ‘punishing’ them

2026/08/17 Leave a comment

Another example of earlier IRCC mistakes and consequent corrections impact upon lives:

…It came as a shock two months ago when Ottawa updated its website. It told applicants for the 2025 edition of the home care worker immigration program they’re not eligible for the so-called bridging open work permit. The permit would have allowed them to remain and work in Canada while their permanent residence application is in process.

“Many caregivers who applied in good faith have lost the ability to work legally while waiting for permanent residence processing,” said Kim, 40, who came here from Korea with her husband in 2024. Their work permit expires next week.  

“Leaving us without a viable way to maintain legal work status while stretching the processing time by years is completely unfair.”

What’s also unfair, according to the Canadian Caregivers Assistance Organization, is that the bridging work permit is available to most other economic immigration applicants with pending permanent residence. The advocacy group called it an affront to the contributions of foreign caregivers.

“This is highly discriminatory,” said its founder, Allan Ralph Basa, an immigration consultant based in Toronto. “Why will you deprive these caregivers of the continuity of their status?”

The updated information on the foreign caregiver program followed other recent policy “clarifications” that have resulted in tightened eligibility for Iranian nationals seeking work permit extensions under a special public policyand for international students who graduated from non-credit programs when applying for post-graduation work permit….

Source: Canada promised these caregivers a path to permanent residence. Now they say the government is ‘punishing’ them

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

New organization works to support Black politicians as they face barriers, discrimination

2026/08/17 2 Comments

Of note:

A newly incorporated organization is working to support Black politicians across Canada as they continue to face challenges with representation and discrimination.

The Canadian Congress of Black Politicians formally announced it was incorporated as a national organization this month.

Liberal MP Michael Coteau, who helped to assemble the group about a decade ago, told a press conference last week that it’s “refreshing” to see growth in the organization.

“This organization was established to build a network across the country so Black politicians from all levels of government and from all political stripes could come together,” he said.

The non-partisan group says it’s the only national organization that represents Black elected officials. With 150 members across the country in all levels of government, the congress encourages collaboration and mentorship and works to strengthen Black political representation and advocate for issues that affect Black communities across Canada.

“Those who want to do this work, be in elected office, there is a support system and there is an organization that is there for them now and going forward,” Colleen James, the group’s chair and councillor for the region of Waterloo, said at a press conference last week…

Source: New organization works to support Black politicians as they face barriers, discrimination

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with , ,

Ford government accused of xenophobia for going after temporary residents, undocumented migrants on social assistance

2026/08/17 Leave a comment

Instinctive response by advocates rather than acknowledging realities, which appear to be less than would first appear:

The Ford government is fuelling xenophobia by excluding temporary residents and undocumented migrants from accessing Ontario’s social assistance programs, critics say.

On Thursday, Children, Community and Social Services Minister Michael Parsa announced that the new rules, effective immediately, are meant to protect taxpayer dollars, ensuring Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program are focused on supporting only families and individuals who are legally authorized to live in Canada.

“They are promoting xenophobia with these speeches that migrants are stealing and leeching off the systems, which we are not,” said Luisa Ortiz-Garza, a migrant community co-ordinator at Parkdale Community Legal Services. “I think this is just an openly racist policy.”

Added MPP Lisa Gretzky, the NDP’s critic for children, community and social services: “We need to ensure that we are communicating with people responsibly and not using language that further marginalizes people that are already marginalized, and doesn’t feed into racist and discriminatory language.”

But a lawyer at Toronto’s Income Security Advocacy Centre said it’s far from clear that there are any substantial changes coming. Details have yet to be published. 

Source: Ford government accused of xenophobia for going after temporary residents, undocumented migrants on social assistance

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →