Tom Flanagan: Why the Liberals once tried to ban Black immigration

2023/08/23 Leave a comment

Bit silly to tie this ban to the Liberals as Conservative government’s of that and other early periods were equally exclusionary:

“Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain….”

Oklahoma! is a classic work of American musical theatre. Probably everyone has heard some of the music even if they haven’t seen the stage play or movie. Composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein immortalized the frontier conflict between “the cowman and the farmer” — but they left out a bigger, racially-charged conflict surrounding Oklahoma’s accession to statehood in 1907. This conflict included an inspiring Canadian dimension.

The new state had a large Indian population because it had been carved out of the United States’ Indian Territory. The so-called “Five Civilized Nations” of the southeastern American states (most notably the Cherokee), had been deported there in the 1830s by Democrat President Andrew Jackson in the infamous Trail of Tears expulsion.

These tribes had acquired, from their southern white neighbours, the practice of owning Black slaves. They brought along thousands of slaves, who became the nucleus of Oklahoma’s Black population. After the Union States of the North won the Civil War, the Indian tribes emancipated their slaves, but former slave-owners continued to look down on Black people. In this, they were joined by many white settlers who flooded into the Indian Territory from nearby southern states.

After the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896 enunciated the odious segregationist doctrine of “separate but equal” in Plessy v. Ferguson, whites and Indians alike in Oklahoma began planning to entrench and extend “Jim Crow” segregation laws. Once Oklahoma became a state, legislators set to work, passing one Jim Crow law after another, segregating schools and public buildings, and outlawing interracial marriage.

Canada during this same period was actively seeking agricultural immigrants to fill up the Prairie provinces. Small groups of Oklahoma Blacks, led by their Baptist ministers, decided they didn’t like what statehood would mean for them without the protection of the U.S. federal government. As one immigrant put it: “Things began getting worse for our people. So, my father, always ambitious and proud, wanted to go where every man was accepted on his merit or demerit, regardless of race, colour or creed. So, in the summer of 1909, we moved to Canada.”

It was a long overland journey of more than 3,000 km. Between 1905 and 1911, about 1,000 Black people from Oklahoma moved to Canada to homestead in the West, establishing five small farming villages, of which the best-known were Eldon, near Maidstone in Saskatchewan, and Amber Valley, north of Edmonton in Alberta.

Some Canadians welcomed their new neighbours while others complained to the federal government. “We view with alarm the continuous and rapid influx of Negro settlers,” the Alberta chapter of the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire wrote to the minister of the interior in Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberal government.

In response, Laurier’s cabinet passed an order-in-council prohibiting Black immigration to Canada for one year. Its rationale? The “race is deemed unsuitable to the climate and requirements of Canada.” The order, however, did not need enforcement because the Liberal government had already run newspaper ads and sent speakers to Oklahoma to tell Blacks that they would not be happy in the cold Canadian climate. Laurier rescinded the order after losing the 1911 election, knowing that Robert Borden’s newly elected Conservative government would repeal it.

The Black homesteaders survived and thrived in their villages; their children and grandchildren eventually moved to the cities, and indeed all over the world. Today the largest concentration of their descendants remains in Edmonton. They founded the Shiloh Baptist Church there in 1910 because other churches didn’t want them as members. That church still functions as the religious home of a mixed-race congregation.

The U.S. was the world’s first large-scale democracy, which was truly a historic achievement. But the democratic rule of the majority can lead to the oppression of racial minorities. Black Oklahomans found greater toleration in Canada’s constitutional monarchy than in American democracy.

Is it surprising that a Liberal government deliberately excluded the Black race from immigrating to Canada? Not really. Liberal governments wrote the first Indian Act in 1876, banned Chinese immigration in the 1920s and interned Japanese Canadians during World War II.

Because of their suffering on the notorious Trail of Tears, the Five Civilized Nations are one of the prime victim groups of American history. Yet they adopted the practice of Black slavery from the whites who drove them out of their ancestral homes and continued it in the West.

Despite all these ironies and hypocrisies, this story had a happy ending. Freedom-seeking people found refuge and a new life in Canada, and that’s worth celebrating.

The original, full-length version of this essay was recently published in C2C Journal.

Tom Flanagan is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary.

Source: Tom Flanagan: Why the Liberals once tried to ban Black immigration

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ICYMI: ‘Some of my closest friends are from Iran’: How this human rights hearing sparked a fight over ‘unconscious bias’

2023/08/22 Leave a comment

Interesting case, which seem always to follow Professor Attaran. And while “some of my closest friends…” arguments can hide explicit or unconscious bias, one needs to assess the context of the remarks and the actual behaviour of the person involved.

An unfortunate side effect of this case is that it provides a disincentive for public office holders to share more of their thinking:

The former head of Canada’s human rights watchdog may have left the door open for an appeal of one of his final rulings by taking the time to make clear his views on the topic — and allegations — of “unconscious bias.”

In doing so, he opened a rare window, observers say, into the private thinking of an adjudicator — one that may now become the subject of scrutiny before the courts.

In July, David Thomas, the former chair of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, dismissed a complaint against the Immigration Department.

Thomas also took the unusual step of including a seven-page addendum with his 109-page decision. In those extra pages, he addressed the fact that he had been accused of unconscious bias during some heated exchanges at the hearing.

“I feel the need to speak on the record from a personal perspective,” Thomas wrote. “Allegations of racial bias are very toxic in today’s world. The mere allegation of such impropriety carries with it significant stigmatization.

“It is often very difficult for the accused to achieve redemption because the allegation, though difficult to prove, is also quite difficult to disprove. My personal reputation was impugned by Dr. Attaran’s allegation, so I wish to reply to defend myself.”

The case Thomas was hearing centred on a human rights complaint brought by Amir Attaran, a University of Ottawa law professor and an American-born Iranian.

In 2009, Attaran had applied to sponsor his aging parents, both U.S. citizens, to Canada under the family class immigration program.

The next year, he complained to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, claiming the Immigration Department discriminated against parents and grandparents by delaying the processing of their applications based on age, race, family status and national/ethnic origin.

It was taking immigration officials, at the time of the complaint, 42 days to screen the sponsors of spouses and children — but 37 months for those who wanted to bring their parents and grandparents to Canada.

After some legal wranglings and delays caused by COVID-19, Attaran’s complaint was heard in 2021 by Thomas, who left the tribunal later that year but continued to preside over the case.

Thomas said in dismissing the complaint that both Attaran and the commission, as a party at the hearing, failed to establish a “prima facie” case demonstrating “adverse” differential treatment in the provision of a service by the Immigration Department.

The commission is mandated to promote human rights through education, research and policy development, and is responsible for screening human rights complaints and referring them to the tribunal, the independent body responsible for hearing the cases.

The tribunal ruled in favour of the government’s arguments that the delays in processing parent and grandparent sponsorships were caused by Canada’s annual immigration levels plans and the immigration minister’s instructions — neither of which is considered “a service” under the Canadian Human Rights Act.

While the process for parents’ and grandparents’ applications may be different from spousal sponsorships, the tribunal dismissed the allegation that the practices were discriminatory.

That was the ruling. Then came the addendum.

In it, Thomas referred to Attaran’s “insinuations” of bias, including a suggestion that he had given preferential treatment to a government witness because the adjudicator and the government witness were both white men, rather than to the complainant’s expert witness, who was female and Asian.

Thomas also made reference to an incident during the hearing in which he called out the “mannerisms” that Attaran demonstrated as others spoke — rolling his head back, mock-laughing and throwing his face into his hands — that prompted the complainant to raise his concern over the perception of bias.

“I honestly feel it gives rise to an apprehension of unconscious bias. I have spent my entire working life, as a minority person, being told I should speak differently, I should behave differently, it is not something I welcome,” Thomas quoted Attaran in his addendum.

“And I am unhappy that it has happened here and from somebody I respect, as I very much do you. The case law requires me to put notice of an apprehension of bias on the record when it happens.”

Attaran did not ask the adjudicator to recuse himself.

Although Thomas in his decision recognized Attaran had the “protected characteristics” under the human rights act, he said he did not observe the complainant to speak with an accent or differently from any North American.

“I have only seen him on a video screen. He does not even appear to me to be a visible minority. Perhaps it might be different in person. I also highly doubt that I have a subconscious bias against people with a Persian ethnic background,” Thomas continued.

“Some of my closest friends are from Iran, including my college roommate who has remained a lifelong friend and participated as a groomsman at my wedding. In the absence of a motion for my recusal, I did not view the allegation as being serious. I perceived it more as an attempt to intimidate me, which it did not.”

Thomas went on to trace unconscious bias to the “controversial” implicit-bias test developed by researchers 30 years ago that he said failed to meet “the accepted standard of consistent test results” and suggested the implications to discrimination were not “supportable.”

“While the complainant may argue that the respondent is discriminatory due to the unconscious bias that is unseen, the respondent is equally open to argue that the complainant is delusional and seeing discrimination where it doesn’t exist,” Thomas wrote.

“Neither of these arguments are helpful to the adjudicator.”

In an interview, Attaran said he did not ask Thomas to recuse himself because he believed the comments on his “mannerisms” were a lapse of judgment.

Attaran defended his own demeanour at the hearing, saying cross-examinations can be unpleasant because no one likes to have their evidence pierced. But he took issue with Thomas’s claim that he couldn’t be biased against Iranians.

“This is basically like saying I can’t be a racist because I have a Black friend,” said Attaran. “I am not calling Mr. Thomas a racist, but I am saying that his approach on unconscious bias and denying that I am a racial minority person is something a racist might do.”

The human rights tribunal refused to comment on the case, but said its adjudicators are independent decision-makers.

Thomas declined the Star’s request for interview, saying he will let the decision speak for itself.

“It would be highly inappropriate for me to make any comments about it at this time,” Thomas said in an email. “Decision-makers avoid speaking about their decisions while under review lest their comments be construed as supplemental reasons or something else that might interfere with the process which must run, undisturbed, through the courts.”

Generally, the court system is of the opinion that it’s difficult to prove bias against a tribunal adjudicator and that one must rely on surrounding circumstances to make any determination, because it’s impossible to get into the decision maker’s mind.

But what makes this human rights tribunal decision unusual — and potentially disputable — is that the adjudicator laid out his way of thinking and response in the seven-page addendum.

“The court said it’s difficult to get into the (person’s) state of the mind,” Caroline Carrasco, senior counsel of the Canadian Human Rights Commission on this case, said in an interview.

“I’m saying to you, though, I haven’t seen anything like this. It’s unconventional.”

She said that through the addendum: “We have an opportunity to get the personal perspective of a decision-maker on the issue of unconscious bias and his thoughts about the complaint.”

The human rights commission told the Star it’s appealing Thomas’s decision because the case touches on racial bias, systemic discrimination, the definition of service and the rights of older immigrants as they navigate Canada’s immigration processes.

Both the commission and Attaran, representing himself, have asked the Federal Court to overturn the tribunal decision, arguing that it was not transparent, intelligible and justified. They want the case referred back to the tribunal for reconsideration.

Source: ‘Some of my closest friends are from Iran’: How this human rights hearing sparked a fight over ‘unconscious bias’

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Hundreds of appointed positions vacant after 8 years of Trudeau’s government

2023/08/22 Leave a comment

Seems like another example of failure to deliver. But surprising that article makes no mention of the increased diversity of GiC appointments which is one of the successes of the current government (also seen in ambassadorial, senate and judicial appointments).

I am, however, less charitable than UoO professor Gilles Levasseur regarding excusing the government given that they have been in power for 8 years and the system should operate more smoothly:

Almost eight years after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government came to power, hundreds of government-appointed positions — from boards of port authorities and advisory councils to tribunals that hear refugee claims or parole cases — are vacant or are being occupied by someone whose appointment is past its end-date.

A CBC news analysis of governor in council (GIC) appointments to 206 government bodies or institutions found that 418 of the 1,731 positions — 24.1 per cent — are either vacant or are being occupied by someone whose appointment has continued past its end date.

Of that number, 280 positions — 16.2 per cent ot the total — were vacant. Another 138 appointees — 7.9 per cent — were past their end-dates and were awaiting either replacement or renewal of their appointments.

Those figures do not include a number of positions currently occupied by someone who is in an acting or interim capacity. Some of those positions have been held by interim or acting appointments for years.

While some GIC appointments come with lucrative six-figure salaries, others provide only per diems of a few hundred dollars plus expenses when board members attend meetings.

Former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper’s government went on an appointment spree in the weeks before it left office in 2015, leaving very few vacancies and making 49 “future appointments” of individuals whose terms weren’t due to be renewed until well after the election that brought Trudeau to power.

Some experts say leaving hundreds of positions vacant can affect wait times for services or decisions, while leaving boards staffed by people who are past their end-dates can affect an organization’s ability to make decisions.

Other experts, however, argue that the backlog is understandable given the Trudeau government’s decision in its first mandate to overhaul the appointments process to make it less political and boost diversity.

The problem isn’t confined to GIC appointments.

In the Senate, 14 of 105 seats are empty, with vacancies in nine out of 10 provinces. The Senate’s clerk, who manages the day-to-day operations of Canada’s upper house, has been acting in an interim capacity since December 2020.

There are 86 vacancies for federally-appointed judges across Canada, including one seat on the Supreme Court of Canada. All of the seats on seven of the Judicial Advisory Committees set up to assess judicial candidates — including all three committees in Ontario — are vacant.

In June, Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard Wagner warned of an “alarming” shortage of federally appointed justices.

“There are candidates in every province,” Wagner told reporters. “There’s no reason why those cannot be filled.”

Government officials say they are working on filling positions. Stéphane Shank, spokesperson for the Privy Council Office (PCO), defended the government’s appointment process.

“Governor in Council (GIC) appointments are made through an open, merit-based process on a rolling basis throughout the calendar year,” Shank said in an e-mail.

“The process takes into account current and forecasted vacancies, as well as [incumbents remaining in place], to maintain operational integrity of these institutions. Legislative provisions for appointees to continue in office can provide organizational continuity until such time as a new appointment is made.”

No timelines

Shank said the government made 780 GIC appointments in 2022 and will continue filling openings. He said he could not predict when positions such as the commissioner for conflict of interest and ethics — which has been vacant since mid-April — will be filled.

“A new Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner will be appointed by the Governor in Council in due course,” Shank wrote.

Shank pointed to a website with 49 GIC “appointment opportunities” posted. But most of those appointments began the application review process months ago. Ten of the postings list dates in 2022 for application reviews to begin — one dates back as far as March 2022.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/QPx9m/1/

The problem isn’t spread evenly throughout the government.

An analysis by ministerial office found the highest percentage of vacant or past-due appointments at Transport Canada: 47.8 per cent of its 230 GIC positions. The boards of several port authorities across Canada consist entirely of vacant positions or board members who are past their appointment dates.

The second highest percentage was at Global Affairs — 42.1 percent of its 19 GIC positions — followed by Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, with 40.9 per cent of its 44 positions.

Nadine Ramadan, press secretary for Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez, pointed out that the department has more GIC positions to fill than most other ministries.

“Lots of factors go into appointing the best candidates for the roles,” she said. “Due to the complexity of the files across Transport Canada, these roles are often very technical and finding the perfect candidate with the necessary technical requirements for the position takes time.”

But other ministers with large numbers of GIC appointments to make had better track records.

In his former role as minister of heritage, Rodriguez left only 13.3 per cent of 150 appointments vacant or past their appointment dates. He also made several future appointments to renew or replace positions that were near their end dates.

There are two notable exceptions to that track record, however. The board of directors for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is 58.3 percent vacant or composed of individuals past their appointment dates, while three of eight positions on the National Arts Centre board are vacant.

Former employment minister Carla Qualtrough had more than 100 appointments to manage — including members of the Social Security Tribunal, which hears appeals of decisions involving things like employment insurance and pension benefits. She left that portfolio with a vacancy rate of only 5.5 per cent.

The Prime Minister’s Office plays an overall role in GIC appointments but is also directly responsible for 22 appointments. After two vacancies on the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency were filled Friday, just two PMO appointments remain vacant: the conflict of interest commissioner and the law clerk of the House of Commons 

Sen. Percy Downe, who served as director of appointments to former prime minister Jean Chrétien, said it’s important to keep GIC positions filled and a normal vacancy rate should be “three to four per cent at the most.”

These appointments “affect Canadians in many ways,” he said. “They affect their security … they affect the economy.”

Downe said positions that are occupied by people past their appointment dates make it difficult for government departments and agencies to make plans.

“For the boards and agencies, it’s important to know the status as you undertake projects and works that may be required,” he said. “Will this person actually be here in three months or six months? Should we involve them? Should we make them a head of a subcommittee?”

Gilles Levasseur, a professor in law and management at the University of Ottawa, said a higher level of vacancies isn’t surprising given the changes the Trudeau government made to the appointments process and the need to reflect Canada’s diversity.

“People can criticize but we’ve also got to make sure that we understand the system itself and the challenge we’re facing because of these new elements that we didn’t have 10, 15 years ago,” he said. “And because we want to be more open to the society, it takes more time to fill these positions.”

Levasseur said it is not a problem if people are past their appointment dates if they’re doing the job and their presence doesn’t interfere with decision-making. He added the government could do more to let Canadians know about openings.

“A lot of people don’t even know that these positions are available,” he said.

Michael Barrett, Conservative critic for ethics and accountable government, said the level of vacancies is symptomatic of a bigger problem with the current government.

“After eight years of Trudeau, this incompetent Liberal government can’t deliver basic government services like passports and there are backlogs, delays and chaos in everything they touch,” he said in a media statement.

“It has been nearly half a year without an Ethics Commissioner and widespread judicial vacancies are allowing repeat violent criminals to walk free because there are not enough judges to hear cases.”

The New Democratic Party has not yet responded to a request for comment.

Source: Hundreds of appointed positions vacant after 8 years of Trudeau’s government

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ICYMI: A Major Hollywood Diversity Report Shows Little Change—Except for One Promising Stat

2023/08/22 Leave a comment

Of note:

Over the last 16 years, Hollywood has certainly discussed the need for better representation in onscreen. Movements like #OscarsSoWhite and #MeToo dominated red-carpet conversation and social media. And there has been some change: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences grew and diversified its voting body in hopes of nominating a wider array of movies and performances—and the nominees and winners have in fact been more diverse in recent years. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

But a new study from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative suggests that, despite the talk of progress, not much has actually changed onscreen. Stacy L. Smith, a professor of communications and head of the initiative, led a review of 1,600 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2022. The largest study of its kind, it examines a whopping 69,858 speaking roles across those movies to see whether Hollywood has generated a significant shift in representation in terms of gender, race and ethnicity, LGBTQ+ identity, or disabilities. 

“It’s all talk and little action,” says Smith. “Many of these numbers did not move or went backwards. That shows us that the industry does not know how to change without the intervention of experts to work with them to change the systemic processes that lead to inequality and discrimination.”

But the study did identify one major exception: In the last 16 years, the percentage of Asian characters with speaking roles onscreen skyrocketed from 3.4% to 15.9%. In that same time period, Black characters saw little change, from 13.0% to 13.4%, and the proportion of Latino characters grew from just 3.3% to just 5.2%. “My initial reaction is I’m very happy but very guilty,” says Bing Chen, the CEO and Co-Founder of Gold House, an organization that champions and invests in Asian Pacific creators and companies. “We need to support all multicultural communities.” But he finds the data encouraging: change is achievable across demographics.

Chen identifies three major milestones for Asian characters onscreen in the last several years. In 2018, Crazy Rich Asians, the first film by a major Hollywood studio to feature a majority Asian cast in 25 years since The Joy Luck Club premiered in 1993, became a genuine blockbuster. The next year, The Farewell and Parasite—movies partially or completely featuring non-English dialogue—performed well at the box office against their budgets and won awards. Parasite won four Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film. “The year former President Trump was spitting all sorts of really anti-Asian xenophobic commentary, talking about ‘kung flu’ and all that nonsense,” says Chen. “So when Parasitewon, that was a really big affirming moment of, we’re actually creatively excellent, even if we don’t speak your language.” 

And last year, Everything Everywhere All at Once became a surprise box office smash and the most-awarded film of all time.

And that’s just in film. On TV, shows like Fresh Off the Boat, Squid Game, and Kim’s Convenience have had a major cultural impact. And cultural exports from Asian countries have gone mainstream in the U.S. “There’s no question that the rise of K-Pop as a institution has directly and indirectly contributed to the acculturation of the masses to K-content, writ-large,” says Chen. Smith agrees that while the U.S. dominated the global pop culture space for decades, much of that power has shifted to Asian countries that are exporting music, television, film, and even social media content to the U.S. at high rates, and K-Pop paved the way for mass cultural events like the Korean show Squid Game.

Here’s why experts think we’ve seen a shift onscreen—and why there’s still work to do.

Most underrepresented groups have seen little progress

Movies remain very white, very straight, very cis, and very male. 

The few highlights in the data come with major caveats. As Barbie‘s massive box office numbers demonstrate, female-led pictures can succeed when studios actually make them. Executives are finally starting to learn that lesson: 44% of leading or co-leading roles went to women and girls in 2022, a 16-year-peak and more than double the number in 2007. But, on the whole, casts are still dominated by men. The percentage of female characters with speaking roles ticked up just 4.7 percentage points from 29.9% in 2007 to 34.6% last year. 

And while women of color made major strides in representation onscreen—19% of movies in 2022 featured a woman of color in a leading role, up from an abysmal 1% in 2007—there has been little progress throughout the late 2010s and 2020s. The percentage of women of color in leading roles has remained flat for years. And 70 of the top 100 films of 2022 featured no women of color in any role. 

“We now have 16 years of evidence that shows that activism failed particularly with girls and women since it’s almost a flatline from 2007 to 2022,” says Smith. The advocacy arm of Time’s Up, the celebrity-filled organization that sprung up in the wake of #MeToo and promised to fight for gender equity in film, imploded last year. Whispers that after all the talk of change in 2017 the pendulum is swinging back to a more regressive approach to business have spread through Hollywood.

Other data points proved even more bleak. Only 2.1% of speaking characters in the top films of 2022 identified as LGBTQ+, a percentage which has not changed meaningfully since 2014 when the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative began measuring. There were 5 transgender characters in the top 100 films of 2022, a 9-year high point, but 4 of these 5 characters appeared in a single film: Bros.

And the number of speaking characters with a disability in a major film was just 1.9% in 2022, a drop from 2.4% in 2015 when Annenberg started recording stats.

In light of these data, the success of Asian characters onscreen stands out even more. Chen argues that those successes have come only after years of advocacy.

There’s been a renaissance of Asian stories onscreen

Chen attributes the rise of Asian representation in film to several factors. One is simply the proliferation of content largely thanks to streamers’ constant quest for new programming to court more subscribers: More storytelling has translated to more diverse storytelling. The rallying cry around #StopAsianHate tied to acts of violence against Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic helped motivate activists to push for greater representation of Asian stories onscreen in hopes that movies could evoke empathy and relatability. But Chen says the efforts to tell Asian stories stretch beyond that one movement. “I would say within the community, the way we think about it is of course we still care about #StopAsianHate and ensuring that the safety and belonging of our community, but our community cares even more about creative excellence, as opposed to just sort of representation.”

And then there’s the surge in adaptations of bestselling books written by Asian authors, like Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before series, and the forthcoming Interior Chinatown show, based on the book by Charles Yu. “You see a rise in both the number of Asian authors writing books and making the bestseller list but also, equally important, the quick adaptation of those works by Asian producers,” Chen says. “This has been a very concentrated effort in the community over the last three to four years.” 

In terms of original content, Chen points to writer-directors with newfound creative control over their projects. Beef’s Lee Sung Jin, Turning Red’s Domee Shi, Minari’s Lee Isaac Chung, Joy Ride’s Adele Lim, Never Have I Ever’s Mindy Kaling have gotten to tell stories “that reflect their real lived experience,” he says. There have, of course, long been Asian creators in Hollywood, but finally these particular movies and shows in all their specificity and detail have been greenlit. In a previous op-ed for TIME, Chen and his co-founder Jeremy Tran argued that diversity in studio leadership can trickle down to the content itself, pointing to the power of studio big wigs like Bela Bajaria and Marian Lee Dicus at Netflix, Albert Cheng at Amazon Prime Video, and Asad Ayaz and Nancy Lee at Disney.

Smith casts some skepticism on the notion that Hollywood has altered what stories it brings to the big screen—even in the face of massive box office takes. Yes, the ticket sales for Crazy Rich Asians afforded director Jon M. Chu the opportunity to direct other films with notably diverse casts, like In the Heights and the forthcoming Wicked adaptation. And the success of that same film boosted the career of Michelle Yeoh, who went on to win an Oscar for another film with a predominantly Asian cast, Everything Everywhere All at Once. But to Smith, those exceptions can obfuscate the work that still needs to be done.

“If you can think of a few instances, what that does is cause you to overestimate a particular event,” she says. “So if you call up someone like Jon Chu or the Daniels [directors of Everything Everywhere All At Once], you’re going to think, ‘Oh things are actually getting better.’ I would challenge the studios to look at the data.” The data, she says, suggests that shifts in Asian representation in film can largely be attributed to increased audience appetite for foreign films, not efforts by American studios to diversity Hollywood. “It’s a function of the box office changing,” she argues, “not the decisions of legacy studios.”

An influx of international content

What we watch has fundamentally shifted in the last few years. Back in 2020, when he won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film for Parasite, Korean director Bong Joon Ho said in his acceptance speech, “Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.” He could not have known then how quickly Americans would heed his advice. Parasite went on to win Best Picture at the Oscars and proved to be a box office phenomenon in the U.S.

Around the time of Parasite’s history-making Oscars win, streaming services, particularly Netflix, were taking a more international approach to producing and acquiring content. Audiences seemed decreasingly deterred by those pesky subtitles. Crossover hits like the Korean show Squid Game and the Indian film RRR have become some of the streamer’s biggest hits. (Squid Game set a record for the most watched show on Netflix ever and ranked No. 1 in more than 90 countries across the world.

“Netflix is spending literally billions of dollars in K-content and Indian content,” says Chen. “Korea and India, in particular, are becoming the dominant successful exporters of pop content.” The studio has invested in massive production infrastructure in Korea and is increasingly focused on doing the same thing in India in addition to acquiring original content in those countries.

Netflix is certainly the most globally minded of the American studios. “Bela Bajaria is way out in front as the Chief Content Officer at Netflix,” says Smith. “As a woman who comes from an underrepresented background, she’s hitting it out of the park in terms of curating global talent. The entire industry is following her league.” The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative has previously found that Netflix performs better than traditional Hollywood studios on representation metrics, both in the U.S. and globally.

Beyond streaming, content from Asian countries has become increasingly dominant on TikTok and YouTube, platforms where Gen Z especially consumes most of its content. Younger viewers who hail from multicultural homes and are increasingly connected to people across the globe through social media don’t have the same bias toward a single language that past generations do.

In film, Katherine Pieper, program director at the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, says the pandemic helped accelerate the shift toward international content as viewers sought out new content while stuck on our couches at home rather than relying on whatever Hollywood was putting in movie theaters for entertainment. “With the change in the box office from 2020 to 2022, we saw a couple of types of broad categories of films in the top 100 that had been relatively minimal in previous years,” she says, “namely anime films, Bollywood films, and international films set primarily in South Asia or in Japan with primarily Asian characters.”

Pieper and Smith attribute the influx in Asian representation largely to those foreign films suddenly overtaking their American counterparts at the domestic box office rather than any major change in how the traditional studios make decisions. “Each year there’s between five and eight films that meet those descriptions that we hadn’t seen before 2021, in addition to a couple of films from the U.S. that might have played the role, like Raya and the Last Dragon, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and The Eternals.” 

But of course, those few North American releases can have an impact as well. The Canadian show Kim’s Convenience found a significant American audience on Netflix and launched the career of Simu Liu, who became the first Asian man to lead a major American superhero film in Marvel’s Shang-Chi. That movie, in turn, afforded him opportunities in other mainstream movies, like Barbie. The impetus shouldn’t be only on creators of color to write for and cast non-white actors. 

“If an Asian writer-producer is producing a piece, there are probably going to be some Asian characters. But if a non-Asian one is, what is their propensity to write an Asian character and why?” asks Chen. “My best inference is that writers’ rooms have become more diverse in general—though there’s still a long way to go obviously.” 

That progress, of course, ties directly to issues being raised by the actors and writers on strike in Hollywood. The WGA has revealed that while the proportion of underrepresented writers has grown in the last several years, they largely occupy lower-level positions and are the first to be put in financial straits when studios decide to forgo writers’ rooms or make major cuts. “Creators of color are the first people to be penalized in these strikes for all sorts of systemic reasons,” says Chen. Both Smith and Chen are eagerly watching the strikes to see how changes to writers’ rooms might impact long-term trends. The ultimate goal, they say, is to empower writers and actors of color to continue to tell their own stories—and pressure studios to back their visions.

Source: A Major Hollywood Diversity Report Shows Little Change—Except for One Promising Stat

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Corporate DEI initiatives are facing cutbacks and legal attacks

2023/08/21 Leave a comment

Of note:

Just three years after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis set off a torrent of hiring of chief diversity officers and other such roles, companies are coming under attack from conservative legal activists who argue that their DEI policies and programs constitute racial discrimination.

The challenges come as companies, faced with an uncertain economy, have already been laying off large numbers of people, including many only recently hired to implement their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) strategies.

The one-two punch has legal experts split on what’s ahead for these efforts, while longtime diversity advocates argue that companies should take these setbacks as an opportunity to reset.

“We cannot place the reasoning for it on something as subjective as the right thing to do. It has to be the smart thing to do,” says Janet Stovall, global head of diversity, equity and inclusion for the NeuroLeadership Institute, a consulting firm focused on culture and leadership.

A surge in hiring, followed by dramatic cuts

In the corporate DEI world, Catalina Colman’s story is a familiar one.

In 2020, she was working at a small tech company as a human resources generalist, handling tasks such as employee onboardings and exits.

She had already been thinking about how to help the company grow in a more diverse and equitable way, when in May of that year, George Floyd was murdered. Suddenly, everything accelerated.

“We recognized we just needed to move quickly, and we needed to start implementing things fast,” says Colman.

The racial reckoning unfolding across the country unleashed demands for change. Companies scrambled to respond to the moment. According to the jobs site Indeed, job postings with DEI in the title jumped 92% from July 2020 to July 2021.

But the deceleration has also come quickly. Economic pressures have led companies to pull back, cutting DEI jobs including Colman’s alongside other human resources roles. Since last July, Indeed has seen DEI job postings drop by 38%.

And then in June, in another blow to diversity advocates, the Supreme Court rejected the use of race-conscious admissions in higher education, setting off predictions that corporate policies around diversity will soon meet the same fate.

Predictions of what’s next for corporate DEI

To be clear, the court’s decision applies to affirmative action at colleges and universities, not employer efforts to foster diversity in the workplace.

In a statement issued after the ruling, Charlotte Burrows, chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, wrote, “It remains lawful for employers to implement diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs that seek to ensure workers of all backgrounds are afforded equal opportunity in the workplace.”

But in a Bloomberg opinion piece, Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman cited Justice Neil Gorsuch’s concurring opinion, in which “he made it crystal clear that in his view, the court’s rule that an educational institution ‘may never discriminate based on race’ now applies with equal force to employers.”

Feldman told NPR the writing is on the wall.

“There’s a high probability, a very high probability, that a majority of this current Supreme Court will say the exact same thing,” he said in an interview last month.

But other attorneys say such assumptions are premature. Bonnie Levine, founder of the law firm Verse Legal, points out that a day after the affirmative action decision, the Supreme Court ruled that a Christian wedding website designer could refuse to work with same-sex couples.

“The Supreme Court has been very clear about not wanting to infringe on the rights of private parties,” says Levine.

Regardless, conservative activists are already waging a new fight.

In early August, Edward Blum, the strategist behind the affirmative action case, filed a lawsuit against the venture capital group Fearless Fund over grants it awards to black female entrepreneurs. Blum argues that the program amounts to “express and intentional racial discrimination in the making of contracts,” according to the lawsuit.

Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller has also been busy, asking the EEOC to investigate hiring practices aimed at increasing minority representation at a long list of companies including Kellogg’s, Hershey and Alaska Airlines.

“They are bringing these cases to make law. That’s why they’re bringing them,” says Levine.

A moment to get out or double down

Even before this year, corporate diversity, equity and inclusion efforts have come under harsh criticism, including that they’re expensive, performative, even a source of division themselves.

At companies where DEI was never a priority, this may be a moment to get out.

“It makes sense that you wouldn’t want to just jump into something that is going to be more complicated if you don’t feel like you have to,” says consultant Stovall.

But for clients who are in it for the long haul, Stovall is doubling down on advice she’s always given: Focus on the rationale. Make the business case for bringing on a diversity of backgrounds and experiences.

“Every organization has basically only three goals: make money, save money, achieve a vision,” she says. “If you can tie DEI directly to one of those goals, it gets a little bit harder for even those who want to destroy it to argue that they should.”

For Catalina Colman, trying to find another DEI job after her layoff in April was disheartening. Positions she applied for were eliminated midway through the interview process.

This summer, she decided to put herself out there as an independent consultant. She’s banking on companies wanting to continue the work they started, recognizing a business imperative.

“Consumers, users are still going to want — at the end of the day — diversity to be a key pillar for an organization,” she says.

Source: Corporate DEI initiatives are facing cutbacks and legal attacks

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Opposition mounting to Dundas Street name change. Three former Toronto Mayors call for reconsideration 

2023/08/19 Leave a comment

For the record, letter from former mayors Crombie, Sewall and Eggleton, highlighting the false arguments used by advocates for the name change. Opportunity for new mayor Chow to signal that she has a broader perspective than the Dundas change advocates and is careful with taxpayer money:

Dear Mayor and City Councillors,

We, former Mayors of Toronto, request you to re-consider the decision to re-name Dundas Street.

We question the interpretation of the research leading to that decision and the practicality of carrying it out. Henry Dundas (1742-1811) was, according to a considerable amount of historic evidence, a committed abolitionist of slavery. His first achievement as an abolitionist was in 1778, when, as a lawyer, he took a appeal case in Scotland, of an enslaved person Joseph Knight, brought to Scotland from Jamaica by his owner. In court Dundas stated that he “hoped for the honour of Scotland, that the supreme Court of this country would not be the only court that would give its sanction to so barbarous a claim. Human nature, my Lords, spurns at the thought of slavery among any part of our species.” The judges not only agreed but ended slavery completely in Scotland.

Dundas has been faulted for his next act on the subject, in 1792. Then a British MP, he moved an amendment to a motion of William Wilberforce on the abolition of the slave trade to make it gradual. Wilberforce’s motion of the previous year, 1791, had failed miserably, 163 to 88. With Dundas’s amendment, it at least passed in the House of Commons, the first anti-slavery motion to do so in Great Britain.

Unfortunately, the plan was subsequently defeated in the House of Lords. It would take a lot more than a British law to get rid of the slave trade and slavery, which Dundas understood. Yet even Wilberforce eventually came to see the necessity of intermediate steps: in 1823 he became vice-president of the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery.

Dundas’s appointment, of John Graves Simcoe, also an abolitionist, as the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada (Ontario) also promoted the anti-slavery cause. On arrival, Simcoe sought to get an abolition bill adopted, but there were slave owners in the House of Assembly and much opposition. The abolitionist attorney-general, John White, who presented it, then revised it drastically and it passed in 1793, making Ontario the first jurisdiction in the British Empire to adopt an anti-slavery law. John White, not so incidentally, was defeated in the next election.

Dundas was also enlightened about French-English relations in Canada, notably requiring laws to be enacted in both languages, instead of English only. He also was responsible for Britain taking steps to reverse two decades of oppression of Black Loyalists in the Atlantic provinces.

In summary, it appears that Henry Dundas for whom the street is named, was a committed abolitionist who, when facing strong opposition and certain defeat, rather than give up his quest, advocated for interim measures that would ultimately lead to that result. It seems he was doing the best he could under challenging circumstances at that time in history.

Therefore, we don’t see a valid reason to remove his name from the street. From a practical perspective, and given the City’s financial circumstance, there are more appropriate ways to spend $8.6 Million.

On behalf of David Crombie, John Sewell, Art Eggleton

(The letter was signed by Mr. Eggleton

Source: Breaking: Opposition mounting to Dundas Street name change. Three former Toronto Mayors call for reconsideration

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Une laïcité à géométrie variable

2023/08/16 Leave a comment

Useful reminder:

Je ne suis pas entièrement d’accord avec le titre de la lettre de Benoît Pelletier (« La laïcité, un principe phare de l’identité profonde du Québec », Le Devoir, 5 août 2023) et plusieurs de ses énoncés, mais je suis d’accord avec sa proposition suivante : « La laïcité ne va pas à l’encontre de la liberté de religion. Elle en fait plutôt partie intégrante. Elle en constitue une dimension essentielle. » Cela a d’importantes conséquences.

La laïcité comporte deux éléments essentiels : elle implique la séparation de l’Église et de l’État, d’une part, et la laïcisation des services publics, d’autre part. Au Québec, la séparation s’est progressivement amorcée aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles et sera confirmée dans la Loi sur la liberté de culte de 1853. La jurisprudence est claire là-dessus. Quant à la laïcisation des services publics, c’est différent, car elle s’amorce à partir de la Révolution tranquille des années 1960 et se conclut dans le domaine de l’éducation par les lois de 1999 et 2005. Ce n’est pas de l’histoire ancienne…

Pour ce qui est de la séparation de l’Église et de l’État, dans la réalité politique et sociale, elle est loin d’être aussi tranchée qu’on le dit. On trouve partout de nombreux assouplissements. Dans des États laïques comme la France, l’État est propriétaire de dizaines de cathédrales, les municipalités sont propriétaires de milliers d’églises, avec obligation constitutionnelle de les entretenir ; l’État français consacre d’énormes budgets au patrimoine religieux ; l’État finance de nombreuses écoles privées religieuses.

Dans plusieurs États européens, tous officiellement laïques, il peut y avoir de l’enseignement religieux dans l’école publique, un financement public de certains cultes (Belgique) et la présence de crucifix dans l’école publique (Italie, Bavière). Aux États-Unis, où, en vertu du First Amendment, on parle du « wall of separation », la Cour suprême autorise la prière au Congrès, dans les législatures et les conseils municipaux, permet l’installation de crèches de la nativité dans un parc municipal, de croix sur le domaine public ; le port de signes religieux est possible au Congrès et dans les législatures.

Au Québec, la séparation de l’Église et de l’État ne dispense pas l’État de devoir permettre la construction de lieux de culte ; la législation autorise le financement d’écoles privées religieuses, subventionne le patrimoine religieux, accorde aux associations religieuses des avantages fiscaux. On est loin de la laïcité stalinienne.

Si, comme le dit le professeur Pelletier, la laïcité est « un principe phare de l’identité profonde du Québec », cette profondeur est à géométrie variable ! Certes, les disciples des Lumières de l’Institut canadien et les membres du Parti patriote ont parlé de laïcité, mais le Bas-Canada et le Québec ont très longtemps baigné dans une atmosphère globale de stricte religiosité.

Aussi, cela fait sourire lorsqu’on lit, dans la Loi sur la laïcité, l’un des « considérants » solennels : « CONSIDÉRANT que la nation québécoise a des caractéristiques propres, dont […] un parcours historique spécifique l’ayant amenée à développer un attachement particulier à la laïcité de l’État. » Ce parcours est spécifiquement fort court…

Source: Une laïcité à géométrie variable

Filed under Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Why an Unremarkable Racist Enjoyed the Backing of Billionaires

2023/08/14 Leave a comment

More on the far right ecosystem in the USA:

In 1923, Princeton University Press published “A Study of American Intelligence” by Carl Campbell Brigham, a eugenicist and professor of psychology at the university.

Brigham, like many men of his class and station at the time, believed in race hierarchy — of a natural order of humanity, with some groups at the top and others at the bottom. He was part of a national effort, among elites and ordinary citizens alike, to improve the “racial fitness” of the American people by restricting immigration and removing the undesirable through sterilization.

As one like-minded eugenicist, Robert M. Yerkes, wrote in his foreword to Brigham’s book, “The author presents not theories or opinions but facts. It behooves us to consider their reliability and their meaning, for no one of us as a citizen can afford to ignore the menace of race deterioration or the evident relations of immigration to national progress and welfare.”

As a scientist, Brigham would bring the laws of heredity and the study of intelligence to bear on the question of race hierarchy. He would purport to show, with scientific precision, the inherent superiority of so-called Nordic Americans above all others.

“His four major groups consisted of native-born whites, total whites, foreign-born whites, and Negroes,” explains the historian Nell Irvin Painter in “The History of White People.” “Within these groups, Brigham differentiated between the above-average foreigners and the below-average foreigners. Turks and Greeks just barely improved on the foreign-born average, while men from Russia, Italy, and Poland ranked at the bottom with the ‘Negro draft.’ Northwestern Europeans topped the chart.”

It was the traditional Anglo-American race hierarchy, illustrated with the charts, graphs and calculations that elevated the claim from everyday, casual prejudice to an objective account of society. And it served its intended purpose: to naturalize inequality of status and resources in an era defined by its yawning gaps between haves and have-nots.

It should come as no surprise to learn, as Adam Cohen notes in “Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck,” that “John D. Rockefeller Jr., the world’s wealthiest man, funded scientific research into how what he called the ‘defective human’ could be bred out of the population.” Or that, as Edwin Black explains in “War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race,” eugenicists drew from “almost unlimited corporate philanthropy to establish the biological rationales for persecution” of the so-called unfit.

I mention all of this as context for Richard Hanania, a rising star among conservative writers and intellectuals. For years before appearing in the pages of newspapers and publications like this one, Hanania wrote articles for white supremacist publications under a pseudonym. According to a recent investigation by Christopher Mathias of The Huffington Post:

[Hanania] expressed support for eugenics and the forced sterilization of “low IQ” people, who he argued were most often Black. He opposed “miscegenation” and “race-mixing.” And once, while arguing that Black people cannot govern themselves, he cited the neo-Nazi author of “The Turner Diaries,” the infamous novel that celebrates a future race war.

Hanania no longer writes for those publications. And though he may claim otherwise, it doesn’t appear that his views have changed much. He still makes explicitly racist statements and arguments, now under his own name. “I don’t have much hope that we’ll solve crime in any meaningful way,” he wrote on the platform formerly known as Twitter earlier this year. “It would require a revolution in our culture or form of government. We need more policing, incarceration, and surveillance of black people. Blacks won’t appreciate it, whites don’t have the stomach for it.” Responding to the killing of a homeless Black man on the New York City subway, Hanania wrote, “These people are animals, whether they’re harassing people in subways or walking around in suits.”

Hanania sees his claims as uncomfortable truths. “The reason I’m the target of a cancellation effort is because left-wing journalists dislike anyone acknowledging statistical differences between races,” he recently wrote. But his supposedly transgressive views are little more than the warmed-over dogmas of the long-dead ideologues who believed in the scientific truth of race hierarchy. Of course, those men, their peers and their followers lost their appetite for that talk in the wake of the Holocaust, when the world got a firsthand look at the catastrophic consequences of state-sponsored racism, eugenicism and antisemitism.

But more interesting than either Hanania — whose recent notoriety has not lifted him too far from his previous obscurity — or his rancid views are his backers. According to Jonathan Katz, a freelance journalist, Hanania’s organization, the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, has received at least $700,000 in support through anonymous donations. He is also a visiting scholar at the Salem Center at the University of Texas at Austin — funded by Harlan Crow.

A whole coterie of Silicon Valley billionaires and millionaires have lent their time and attention to Hanania, as well as elevated his work. Marc Andreessen, a powerful venture capitalist, appeared on his podcast. David Sacks, a close associate of Elon Musk, wrote a glowing endorsement of Hanania’s forthcoming book. So did Peter Thiel, the billionaire supporter of right-wing causes and organizations. “D.E.I. will never d-i-e from words alone,” wrote Thiel. “Hanania shows we need the sticks and stones of government violence to exorcise the diversity demon.” Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican presidential candidate, also praised the book as a “devastating kill shot to the intellectual foundations of identity politics in America.”

The question to ask here — the question that matters — is why an otherwise obscure racist has the ear and support of some of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley? What purpose, to a billionaire venture capitalist, do Hanania’s ideas serve?

Look back to our history and the answer is straightforward. Just as in the 1920s (and before), the idea of race hierarchy works to naturalize the broad spectrum of inequalities, and capitalist inequality in particular.

If some groups are simply meant to be at the bottom, then there are no questions to ask about their deprivation, isolation and poverty. There are no questions to ask about the society which produces that deprivation, isolation and poverty. And there is nothing to be done, because nothing can be done: Those people are just the way they are.

If some groups — and really, if some individuals — are simply meant to be at the top, then there are no questions to ask about their wealth, status and power. And as my friend John Ganz notes in his newsletter, the idea of race hierarchy “creates the illusion of cross-class solidarity between these masters of infinite wealth and their propagandist and supporter class: ‘We are of the same special breed, you and I.’” Relations of domination between groups are reproduced as relations of domination between individuals.

This, in fact, has been the traditional role of supremacist ideologies in the United States — to occlude class relations and convert anxiety over survival into the jealous protection of status. The purveyors of supremacist ideologies have worked in concrete ways to bound the two things, survival and status, together; to create the illusion that the security, even prosperity, of one group rests on the exclusion of another. (The history of segregated housing in this country is testament enough to the success of that ideological project.) With enough time to grow and take root, these ideologies branch out with a life and logic of their own, reproduced by people who believe they have something new, novel and forbidden.

Why are billionaires backing an unremarkable racist as he tries to find a place in polite society? Because his interest in a hierarchical society built on racism serves their interest in a hierarchical society built on class — and ruled by capital.

It’s the same, then, as it ever was.

Source: Why an Unremarkable Racist Enjoyed the Backing of Billionaires

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Concrete actions must accompany diverse cabinet, Canada Research Chair says

2023/08/14 Leave a comment

Hard not to agree with Erin Tolley but some perspective on what the government haas done – increased diversity in GiC, judicial, senate appointments, improved representation and data on public service diversity, refunding of the multiculturalism program and explicit anti-racism initiatives, special attention to Black Canadians along with the various historical recognition initiatives – would be helpful. Further action of course possible:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau moved last month to introduce more diversity into his cabinet but some political experts said the additions won’t have much effect unless they go beyond surface-level representation.

Trudeau added seven new faces to his governing team on July 26 including Mississauga MP Rechie Valdez, the first Filipina Canadian woman MP, and Toronto MP Gary Anandasangaree, who is the first Sri Lankan Tamil to serve in cabinet.

Trudeau said in July that the new cabinet is a reflection of Canada’s diversity and would bring new voices, skills and experiences to the table.

Many saw the changes as part of an effort by the Liberals to shore up support in tight ridings and among specific ethnic communities.

But Erin Tolley, the Canada Research Chair on gender, race and inclusive politics at Carleton University in Ottawa, said a seat at the table is only one part of true representation – both for the ministers themselves and for the people they represent.

“I think in these particular cases, appointing somebody from those communities does act as a signal that the Liberals are listening, that they value input from that community,” said Tolley.

At the same time, it’s reductive to speak of changes to cabinet in terms of racial impact, she said. Focusing solely on race instead of policy is a disservice to both diaspora communities and the ministers themselves because it assumes diaspora communities vote primarily on the basis of the racial background, she said.

There’s little evidence to suggest voters can be motivated solely on racial grounds, said Tolley, which means a more diverse cabinet isn’t likely to dramatically shift voting behaviour among the people they represent come election time.

“You can’t simply put diverse faces around a table without also changing the way you do policy and the kinds of policy choices you’re making,” said Tolley.

Without this, communities could shift their alliances if they feel their support is being taken advantage of and if they’re not seeing responsiveness from a government, she said.

Sabreena Delhon, executive director of the Samara Centre for Democracy, said politicians can also feel taken advantage of if they don’t receive the supports they need in their new roles.

“If you’re going to have someone in a space where they have traditionally been under-represented or have had limited decision-making power, you need to think about what it will take to retain them,” Delhon said. “And that relates to creating working conditions that are sustainable and supportive.”

Delhon said Samara’s podcast, “Humans of the House”, which interviews former members of Parliament about their experiences in politics, has helped showcasewhat it means to work on the Hill. The candid conversations have talked about mental health struggles, the gruelling schedules and the steep learning curve MPs face when they receive a promotion.

When diverse MPs are given those promotions, there needs to be mechanisms in place to support their success and retention in the roles, said Delhon.

“If we don’t find ways for the House of Commons and the broader workplace culture of politics in Canada to hold on to the best and brightest problem solvers, then the leaders that we need will stop stepping forward altogether.”

And, she added, it’s not uncommon for racialized politicians to be the subject to threats online which add more stress and mental health struggles to their long list of challenges.

Samara analyzed more than 2.5-million posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, directed toward candidates in the 2021 federal election. About 20 per cent of those tweets were “toxic or abusive,” Delhon said, including sexually explicit content and attacks on their identities.

Cabinet shuffle day can be “an exciting day,” said Delhon, “but it’s important to understand how challenging the path to that position might have been for some,” especially those who are racialized.

When Charmaine Williams, a member of provincial parliament in Ontario, was named to Premier Doug Ford’s cabinet last year she became the first Black person in cabinet for the conservatives in that province.

She said she’s felt supported “every step of the way,” both from her colleagues and her constituents – “all those who’ve been impacted by the various barriers that so many Canadians (and) Ontarians face.”

This makes the feelings of support and inclusion even stronger, she said, because she knows folks “understand what it’s like to be the first.”

Williams was speaking in Ottawa at the end of a summit of the Canadian Congress of Black Parliamentarians. She said collaborating with other Black politicians reminds her that even though they may be the only ones in the room, you’re still there with the mandate to fight for all Canadians.

“It’s such a great feeling,” she said.

Source: Concrete actions must accompany diverse cabinet, Canada Research Chair says

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with , , ,

Record levels of international students straining Canada’s housing supply further

2023/08/12 Leave a comment

Not much new but confirms problems. Bit rich of Universities Canada to state that “Solving the housing crisis will require collaboration among all levels of government…” while ignoring the complicity of universities in increasing demand:

Record numbers of international students coming to Canada is making the already inflated cost of housing worse, said Steve Pomeroy, a policy research consultant and senior research fellow at Carleton University’s centre for urban research.

The biggest strain on Canada’s housing market, he said, isn’t only the rising rate of permanent residents, with more than 400,000 permanent residents in 2022, and the Liberal government determined to hit 500,000 a year in the next couple of years. Those coming here seeking temporary residence, either temporary foreign workers or international students, are fuelling rental price increases.

“Temporary foreign workers and students are going to be renters, as opposed to owners,” he said.

Average rents nationally jumped more than 10 per cent last year and are expected to rise again this year, although rents in hotter markets, such as Toronto and Vancouver, are up significantly more.

Data released earlier this year by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) show 807,750 international students with valid student visas studying at Canadian post-secondary institutions as of the end of 2022. At 30-per-cent higher than the 617,315 students in 2021, it’s now at the highest level it’s ever been.

With the exception of 2020, where numbers were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada’s complement of international students historically saw between six to nine per cent growth annually.

Pomeroy said universities are driving the numbers as a way to generate more revenue, because they can charge international students much higher tuitions.

“In Ontario, university tuition fees are frozen, grants are frozen, but the only variable that universities have to generate new revenues is international students, so they naturally go and chase those,” he said.

More visiting students, he said, create inordinate demand at the very bottom of the rental market, where there’s already a tight market for low-income workers, fixed-income seniors and those who rely on social assistance.

Benjie Rustia, an official with an international immigration and study agency located near the Philippine capital of Manila, said his international-student clients know that coming here means fighting a tight entry-level rental market.

“They are well informed by their relatives or friends in Canada,” he told the National Post.

“Making informed decisions is the basic aspect for the process for international students, and are based on thorough research and understanding.”

Late last month, news of an international student from India found living under an east Toronto bridge brought attention to the problem, and highlighted concerns from advocates that Canada’s affordability crisis is rendering increasing numbers of foreign students homeless.

Most international students coming to Canada flock to Ontario, which in 2022 saw over 411,000 foreign students enrolled in the province’s post-secondary institutions.

British Columbia ranked second with 164,000 students last year, followed by Quebec with 93,000, Alberta with 43,000 and Manitoba with 22,000.

While India’s 319,130 international students rank as Canada’s biggest cohort, followed by China with 100,075, the Philippines is seeing big bumps in the number of their students coming here.

Canada issued 25,295 study permits to Filipino students to study here in 2022, a 76-per-cent increase from the 14,355 visas issued to students from that country in 2021.

As of June 2023, 11,400 permits were issued to students from the Philippines.

Rustia said his clients typically search for schools that offer on-campus residence living or look for schools near where they can stay with friends and relatives already in the area.

News reports on Wednesday described long wait-lists for on-campus housing at Calgary universities, with 740 students waiting for housing at the University of Calgary, and the city’s Mount Royal University establishing a waiting list for their 950 dorm rooms for the first time in the school’s history.

Solving this problem, Pomeroy said, could be done by striking partnerships between schools, governments and developers.

“If the government was smart, it would say ‘OK, we’re causing the problem by giving out these visas to international students, how can we solve this problem,’” he said.

“Let’s work with the universities, let’s work with the private developers for some incentives and stimulus.”

He suggested using existing programs, such as the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s rental construction financing initiative — which provides low-cost loans to encourage rental apartment projects — to encourage student-centred rental construction to keep the pressure of local residential rental markets.

“You can wait until folks get displaced and they’re in the homeless shelter and we intervene and provide supportive housing and wraparound services to help them get out of shelters at significantly high cost, or we could build 1,000 units of student housing with no cost to government,” Pomeroy said.

A statement to the National Post from Universities Canada, a post-secondary institution lobby group, agreed the federal government should be doing more to address the issue.

“Solving the housing crisis will require collaboration among all levels of government, and universities remain willing partners in these efforts,” wrote interim president Philip Landon.

“Universities Canada urges the federal government to meet its commitments, as set out in the National Housing Strategy, to reduce homelessness, construct new homes and provide Canadians with access to affordable housing that meets their needs.”

Canada’s universities, he wrote, are doing more to approve and build more on-campus housing, as well as provide resources to help students access off-campus living space, as well as developing “innovative housing models” to relieve local rental market pressures.

Emails to Immigration Minister Marc Miller went unacknowledged.

Tom Kmiec, the Conservative party’s immigration and citizenship critic, said that the current government’s housing and immigration policies are leaving newcomers on the streets.

“More homes were being built in 1972 when Canada’s population was half of what it is today,” he said in a statement.

“The Liberal government has failed to deliver on their housing promises and failed to come anywhere close to building the number of houses we need, leaving Canada short millions of homes and Canadians struggling to afford a place to live.”

Source: Record levels of international students straining Canada’s housing supply further

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

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