Reaction to Conservative support for the notwithstanding clause

2023/02/17 Leave a comment

From the right (Ivison) to the left (Raj):

Most MPs come to Ottawa with good intentions, resolving to follow their conscience to make life better for their communities. Often though, they find that their conscience is not going in the same direction as their party. A decade ago, I remember Indo-Canadian Conservative MP Tim Uppal sending me a set of head scarves for my western Quebec soccer team, to wear in a solidarity protest against the Quebec Soccer Federation’s turban ban. Today, Uppal says he opposes Quebec’s Bill 21, the law that bans some public servants in the province from wearing religious symbols such as turbans to work.

Yet, earlier this week, he and the rest of the Conservative party voted in favour of a Bloc Québécois motion that called on the House of Commons to remind the government that it is solely up to Quebec and the provinces to decide on the use of the notwithstanding clause.

This is the same clause that was invoked by Francois Legault’s Quebec government pre-emptively to shield it from court challenges — which was prescient because the Quebec Superior Court judged last year that Bill 21 violates religious freedom but is beyond the reach of the judiciary. A panel of judges at the Quebec Court of Appeal is now weighing whether the bill disproportionately discriminates against Muslim women who wear the hijab (even the notwithstanding clause does not protect legislation that discriminates on the basis of gender).

I wrote to Uppal and said I was surprised at the party’s position on the use of notwithstanding. “I understand it’s popular in Quebec but we both know it’s blatant discrimination,” I said.

In reply, Uppal said that the motion was about the ability of the provinces to use the notwithstanding clause as guaranteed in the Constitution. “We are not interested in getting into a drawn-out constitutional battle. There are more important issues to focus on,” he said. It would be mildly amusing to watch political parties make age-old mistakes for the first time, if the consequences weren’t so serious. The Conservative party’s discomfort at siding with the Bloc, in pursuit of soft nationalist votes, risks alienating ethnic voters.

It is reminiscent of Justin Trudeau’s indiscretion early in his leadershipwhen he said he favoured keeping existing representation in the Senate because it was to Quebec’s advantage — a statement that did not go down well in other parts of the country where he was trying to build support. It may once have been possible to simultaneously pander to different groups on opposite sides of the same issue, but it is no longer. We have the internet now.

Uppal has been trying to reassure the World Sikh Organization that he and his party remain opposed to Quebec’s secularism law. He has said the Liberals are trying to spin a narrative that the Conservatives explicitly support the pre-emptive use of the clause.

Who knows why anyone might believe that line, except for the fact that it is demonstrably true.

The Bloc’s motion is not abstract — it relates directly to the pre-emptive use of Section 33 of the Constitution by the Legault government in its secularism and language legislation.

Sikh groups have, correctly, asserted that this erodes the Charter and suspends human rights. Uppal claims that the notwithstanding provision is a longstanding part of the Charter, which is true, but he cannot ignore that this vote empowers Legault and endorses his position. I know the arguments in favour of use of notwithstanding — and support them to a point. Stephen Harper’s former deputy chief of staff, Howard Anglin, made an impassioned argument in support of Section 33 recently, arguing that judges violated the “1982 bargain” by egregiously overreaching in their judgments. “Judges make poor gods,” he said. “Call me a stickler for democracy but I prefer the people wielding ultimate power in any society to be accountable, and, in a pinch, removable.”

He’s right. But until recently, the clause was used when politicians wanted to correct what they believed was judicial excess. Now it is being invoked (by Quebec and Ontario) at the beginning of the process to camouflage unjust laws. Federal justice minister David Lametti says that such use “guts Canadian democracy and means the Charter doesn’t exist” — a bold statement that commits his government to act.

Trudeau said in late January that Lametti is looking to refer the use of Section 33 to the Supreme Court, pending the ruling from the Quebec Court of Appeal on the religious symbols case. The prime minister’s intervention provoked a choleric reaction from Legault, who says it is up to the Quebec National Assembly to decide the laws that govern the province.

The premier argues the Canadian Charter is part of the Constitution Act that Quebec didn’t sign — an argument that ignores Quebec’s own charter, adopted unanimously by the province’s legislature in 1975, which is clear that every person has the right to full and equal recognition of his or her human rights, without distinction, exclusion or preference based on race, gender or religion. “Discrimination exists where such a distinction, exclusion or preference has the effect of nullifying or impacting such rights,” it says. Legault has been discriminating against the allophones and anglophones that constitute 20 per cent of Quebec’s population because it is popular with the francophone majority, who have been persuaded by their government that the French language and Quebec culture are threatened.

The federal government has little option but to oppose such blatant injustice, but in doing so the country’s unity will likely be tested. If Lametti asks the Supreme Court to impose restrictions on the use of Section 33, it could prove explosive. The court may refuse to hear the case on the grounds of conflict of interest — Section 33 was designed to limit the power of the courts. If the top court’s anglo majority does overturn the law, it could be the casus belli the separatists have been waiting for and could send Canada hurtling toward another referendum.

In their defence, the Conservatives might argue that western premiers don’t want restrictions placed on a notwithstanding clause that has been used by Alberta and Saskatchewan.

But the real reason Conservatives voted for a Bloc motion — never a smart or admirable thing — is to pander for votes in Quebec.

They may get them, but the cost could be their integrity and the trust of ethnic communities who could lose confidence in Poilievre’s party as a protector of minority rights.

Conservative MPs might want to refresh their memories on the thoughts of the philosophical founder of their movement, Edmund Burke, on the subject of natural law and individual rights. “The liberty of no one man, no body of men, and no number of men, can find means to trespass on the liberty of any person, or any description of persons, in society. This kind of liberty is indeed but another name for justice; ascertained by wise laws and secured by well-constructed institutions.”

Source: In Quebec, the Tories can choose principles or pandering. Not both

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s Quebec lieutenant made a shocking declaration this week that went unnoticed in English Canada, telling reporters that Conservatives “of course” agree with the provinces’ pre-emptive use of the notwithstanding clause.

On Tuesday, Quebec MP Pierre Paul-Hus said the party “might not necessarily” contest Quebec’s Bill 21 at the Supreme Court — reversing Poilievre’s previous stance. Then, Paul-Hus added, “Is the use of the notwithstanding clause in a pre-emptive manner, as the provinces have used it — are Conservatives in agreement with that?”

“Bien oui,” he said, meaning, “Of course” — or, literally, “Well, yes.”

That might be news to some of the Conservative MPs who vocally opposed Bill 21, a discriminatory law that bars those wearing religious symbols from holding certain public-sector jobs.

But perhaps they shouldn’t be surprised.

This week, they all sided with the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois and voted to tell Ottawa — the Liberals and any future federal government — to butt out of the notwithstanding clause debate. (Only Manitoba’s Candice Bergen, Nova Scotia’s Rick Perkins and Ontario’s Alex Ruff, who represents Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, didn’t show up for the vote, and only the Liberals and NDP opposed.)

The motion proposed by the Bloc read: “That the House remind the government that it is solely up to Quebec and the provinces to decide on the use of the notwithstanding clause.”

The notwithstanding clause was a compromise that allowed prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau to enshrine the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms into the Constitution. It gives legislatures the right to override some Charter rights for a renewable period of five years. Several politicians around the table at the time felt the political cost of using the clause would dampen the temptation to use it.

But that thinking has drastically shifted. In 2019, Quebec’s government introduced Bill 21 to popular support. Knowing the legislation was discriminatory, Premier François Legault pre-emptively invoked the notwithstanding clause to protect it from court scrutiny. The clause was pre-emptively used again last year by Quebec when it passed Bill 96, legislation that limits the rights of anglophones in the province and curbs the use of other minority languages.

Then, last fall, Ontario Premier Doug Ford attempted to pre-emptively invoke the clause, too — this time to stop educational support workers from striking.

Widespread public opposition and the unions’ collective action forced Ford to back down, but not before Ottawa spent days contemplating how it should respond. Should it ask the Supreme Court if the provinces had the right to use the clause pre-emptively? Within Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office, staff argued the power of disallowance — a constitutional provision that gives the federal government the right to disallow provincial laws — was outdated (it hasn’t been used since 1943), but they searched for creative ways to send a message that Ottawa wasn’t happy and that it believed the notwithstanding clause needed parameters around it.

At the time, and again this week, Justice Minister David Lametti argued the pre-emptive use of the notwithstanding clause was robbing the courts of having their say.

“It was always meant to be a last resort, in the context of constitutional negotiations,” he said. “It’s a grave matter when we use a law to breach people’s rights in Canada (and) the use of the notwithstanding clause must be an exception.”

The Bloc, unsurprisingly, doesn’t want the federal government telling Quebec what it can and can’t do.

But it is more than noteworthy that the Tories agree — regardless of whether Paul-Hus was making up party policy on the fly or if he had Poilievre’s benediction.

The vote Monday suggests several things.

First, we can expect that as prime minister, Poilievre would sit back and allow any province to pass discriminatory laws using the notwithstanding clause. This is what the Bloc motion called for. This is what Conservative MPs supported.

Second, Poilievre is aggressively courting nationalist voters in Quebec, embracing the same playbook that failed for Erin O’Toole and Andrew Scheer, and his position on Bill 21 may be shifting again. During the French-language Conservative leadership debate last May, Poilievre said he “would not reverse the federal decision” to fight both Bill 21 and 96 at the Supreme Court. But if the Liberals are no longer in office when these laws reach the country’s top court, can Poilievre be counted on to defend minority rights? Monday’s vote suggests not.

Lastly, the Conservative MPs who vehemently opposed Bill 21, who argued against O’Toole’s non-intervention policy and paved the way for his ouster and Poilievre’s leadership, acted disingenuously. Opposing Bill 21, believing that pre-emptive use of the clause should be limited, or that the federal government should fight the bill at the Supreme Court, meant voting against this motion.

Several MPs I spoke with said they believed they were simply reaffirming what the Constitution states, making a statement of fact.

It clearly was about much more than that.

Either you believe in something, or you don’t.

Source: Would Pierre Poilievre’s Tories let provinces strip us of our rights? ‘Of course,’ one of his MPs says

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Conservatives clarify opposition to Bill 21 following vote for notwithstanding clause

2023/02/16 Leave a comment

Not sure that they will be able to appease all the various groups, whether community or regional, with this approach of trying to have it both ways:

The federal Conservatives are trying to reassure the World Sikh Organization of Canada that the party remains opposed to Quebec’s secularism law after its MPs voted in support of a provision the province used to make it into law.

On Monday, the Conservatives voted en masse in favour of a Bloc Québécois motion recognizing that provinces have a “legitimate right” to use the notwithstanding clause, including pre-emptively.

In Tuesday’s letter to Balpreet Singh, a spokesman for the Sikh association, deputy Conservative leader Tim Uppal said the Liberals are trying to spin a narrative that the Conservatives explicitly support the “pre-emptive use” of the clause.

The clause is a provision in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that allows provincial and federal governments to pass laws that circumvent parts of the Charter for a period of up to five years.

When the clause is invoked pre-emptively, it effectively prevents anyone from launching a legal challenge in court.

“We’re talking about the suspension of human rights and the erosion of the charter,” Singh said. “And that’s a huge hit. Not just for minorities, but for all Canadians.”

The Sikh organization is among groups vocally opposed to Quebec’s secularism law, which bans some public servants in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols such as turbans at work.

Premier Francois Legault’s government invoked the notwithstanding clause to usher in the law, as well as Bill 96, which reforms provincial language laws.

In 2021, the Ontario government used the notwithstanding clause to restore parts of the Election Finances Act. It also invoked the clause last year to impose a new contract on education workers, but quickly backed down from the measure.

In his letter, Uppal says the notwithstanding provision is a “long-standing part” of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the ability of provinces to use it is “the legal reality.”

He goes on to say Trudeau’s government has “not made any attempts to change it,” despite having been in power since 2015.

“Since Bill 21 was introduced in March of 2019, the Liberal government has taken no action in the courts to oppose it,” Uppal said.

Uppal says that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has been clear he is against the Quebec law, and while he respects the province’s ability to pass its own legislation, he hopes it is repealed.

Singh said Tuesday that he appreciates the clarification, but is disappointed with the Conservatives choosing to vote for a motion that appears to be “empowering” provinces to use the clause.

“You can’t say that they can use the notwithstanding clause willy-nilly,” he suggested, while also arguing against Bill 21.

Source: Conservatives clarify opposition to Bill 21 following vote for notwithstanding clause

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Former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi urges politicians to stand up for Amira Elghawaby

2023/02/16 Leave a comment

Of note:

Former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi addressed concerns about Islamophobia in Canada to the Senate Committee on Human Rights virtually on Monday afternoon.

During his presentation, the former mayor urged politicians to stand up for Amira Elghawaby, Canada’s first special representative on combating Islamophobia.

Elghawaby has been mired in controversy since being appointed to the role due to a 2019 opinion column about Quebec’s religious symbols law — widely known as Bill 21 — that she co-authored. She has since apologized.

Nenshi, who has been a vocal critic of Bill 21, says he’s been “extraordinarily vexed” in the last few weeks about the lack of political response to the situation.

“The fact that the special representative has been browbeaten, has been harangued, has been lectured to, has been forced to take meetings with people who are not interested in listening to her but are interested in using her to score political points — to me, really highlights a very serious problem in our country,” said Nenshi in his presentation.

He points to moves the Alberta government has made in effort to deter vandalism of faith institutions, but says that only goes so far. Policymakers also need to stand up for those being impacted by hate, he says.

“I thought that it would be important to make a statement in the corridors of power in Ottawa, in the institutional framework of government to say, ‘Guys … as policymakers, you actually have to be able to have a little more courage,'” said Nenshi on CBC Calgary News at 6.

“We talk about it as though it’s about courage or bravery to stand up for people, but it’s really not. It’s the easiest thing in the world to do, and it is actually just about doing the right thing.”

Recommendations to government

In the meeting, Nenshi was asked to list three recommendations the committee should make to the government to address Islamophobia.

Source: Former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi urges politicians to stand up for Amira Elghawaby

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Irwin Cotler: To combat antisemitism, we must first agree how to define it

2023/02/16 Leave a comment

While I am a great fan of Cotler’s contribution, his advocacy for the IHRA definition needs to be nuanced as it can and is sometimes being used to discourage criticism of Israeli government policies. Given the Netanyahu government’s various actions (judicial reform, settlements, citizenship revocation), Israel will come in for more criticism that cannot and should not be deemed antisemitic – but some may do so invoking the definition.

Personally, I was surprised that Cotler in not among the signatories to Statement by Canadian jurists on proposed transformation of Israel’s legal system:

We are presently experiencing a resurgence in global antisemitism — the oldest, longest, most enduring and virulent of hatreds. Indeed, since my appointment as Canada’s special envoy for preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism in November 2020, I have witnessed the increasing mainstreaming, normalization and legitimation of antisemitism in the political, popular, campus, and media and entertainment cultures.

In order to combat this concerning surge in antisemitism, we must begin by defining it. Because antisemitism knows no borders, it is important that Canadian institutions at all levels embrace the same definition, in order to facilitate collective efforts to combat it.

Significantly, in 2022, Canadian governments and institutions continued to embrace the most authoritative, comprehensive and representative definition of antisemitism that exists today ­— the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism.

The provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan all officially adopted the definition in 2022, as well as the City of Vancouver. The Government of British Columbia has also expressed support for the use of the definition in B.C. These governments join Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, as well as the Government of Canada, which all previously adopted the definition.

The IHRA definition is the result of a 15-year-long democratic decision-making process involving intergovernmental bodies, governments, parliaments, scholars and civil society leaders. Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel was a leading inspiration for the definition and a key initiator of a process in which I had the privilege of participating as a parliamentarian and minister of justice, and which ultimately led to its approval by the IHRA — a 35-country intergovernmental body — in 2016.

As Canadians, we can be proud of the distinct Canadian connection to this process of adoption. The IHRA definition is anchored and drawn from the 2010 Ottawa Protocol on Combating Antisemitism, which was endorsed by every major Canadian political party and unanimously adopted by Parliament.

It is also inspired by the equality rights and anti-discrimination provisions in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, reflecting, as Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nation’s special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, put it, “The human-rights lens through which antisemitism should be viewed.”

It likewise offers an explanation of the different manifestations of antisemitism that exist today. Traditional antisemitism is the discrimination against, assault upon and denial of the rights of Jews to live as equal members in whatever society they inhabit. The new antisemitism is the discrimination against, assault upon and denial of the rights of Jews and the State of Israel to live as an equal member among the family of nations. What is common to each form of antisemitism, traditional and new, is discrimination.

The IHRA definition provides examples of both forms of antisemitism. The examples addressing older forms include stereotypes of Jews as controlling the media, world governments and the economy. Examples of newer forms include denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination and holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the State of Israel.

These latter examples have provoked some opposition, with opponents alleging that the IHRA definition will stifle criticism of the actions of the Israeli government, as well as advocacy for Palestinian human rights. This claim is as misleading as it is unfounded.

In fact, distinguishing between what is and what is not antisemitic enhances and promotes free expression and peaceful dialogue. In particular, the IHRA definition explicitly states that “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”

Accordingly, the definition serves to protect speech that is critical of Israeli policy — which I have myself engaged in — so long as it does not cross the delineated boundaries into antisemitism. Conversely, using this definition, genuine antisemitism, such as those examples listed above, can be defined and recognized.

The IHRA definition therefore sets the parameters for a healthy, democratic, tolerant debate and dialogue. It fosters non-hateful communication, and prevents both actual instances of antisemitism as well as unjust labelling of antisemitism. In doing so, it aligns with Canadian values of equality, diversity and human rights.

My hope for 2023 is that the Canadian jurisdictions that have not yet adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism will do so, and that the ones that have adopted it begin to implement and use it. The IHRA definition is an indispensable resource in helping to identify, recognize and define antisemitism, and adopting it is the critical first step towards Canada’s collective effort to combat the rising tide of antisemitism.

National Post

Irwin Cotler is Canada’s special envoy for preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism and a former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada.

Source: Irwin Cotler: To combat antisemitism, we must first agree how to define it

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Khan: Expanding immigration will not erase racism in Canadian society

2023/02/16 Leave a comment

This is a somewhat silly header. After all, would cutting immigration erase racism?

More substantially, Khan’s commentary lacks historical perspectives, as there has been progress since the elimination of racial preferences in the 1960s. International comparisons with other OECD members provide a more balanced assessment, where Canada is one of the stronger countries in its integration outcomes. Public opinion research, particularly that of immigrant and minority populations, tends to portray that most are reasonably satisfied with their life in Canada, with relative few differences with the non-minority groups.

Of course, Canada far from perfect but to only focus on the shortcomings without acknowledging progress or comparing Canada with other countries reads more like a rant than measured analysis. To use an Australian term, this narrative is that of a “black armband” where everything is negative.

Of for a Canadian term, this is a woke version of Polievre’s “everything is broken.”

That being said, immigration should not just be a numbers game “the more the merrier” as I have and continue to argue:

In its latest immigration plan, the federal government says it hopes to welcome almost 1.5 million new permanent residents between 2023 and 2025, up from approximately one million in the immigration targets for 2020-22. The economic benefits of increased immigration aside, there remains a major elephant in the room that Canada is still not ready to address – racism and discrimination against “visible minorities” – code for non-white immigrants.

While recent surveys claim that public opinion in Canada is more in favour of immigration than ever, recent practices suggest otherwise. Examples include heightened surveillance of select immigrant populations, intense scrutiny of some of their financial resources and discrimination against migrant workers. There have also been incidences of hate crimes against members of immigrant groups. The government must address the issue of racism in immigration policy with a series of broad measures. Otherwise, if left unaddressed, these incidences have the potential to work against Canada’s intentions to continually increase immigration levels and grow its economy.

This is the key failing of the government’s plans on immigration, past and present. Although the latest plan does discuss anti-racism measures much more than previous versions, it is strictly in the context of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s own organizational strategy. Unfortunately, it does not address the real issue – that racism is not just organizational, it is endemic in Canadian society.

A national immigration plan cannot succeed in the long term if it does not acknowledge or address racism and discrimination in society. This is important because eight out of the top 10 source countries for immigrants to Canada, accounting for almost 70 per cent of annual intake, are non-white countries from the Global South.

This disconnect is becoming blatantly obvious in many ways. For instance, it is impossible to view the increase in immigration numbers without looking at the impact of regressive laws and policies such as Bill 96 in Quebec on new immigrants.

Racism affects not only our social connections with immigrants, but also our economic dependence on them. Canada’s approach to immigration has been to view migrants as a source of labour. That approach is bound to create tensions in the long term.

Immigrants may help with Canada’s labour shortages and aging demographics. But if the environment toward them is socially hostile, the chances of them gaining economic ground decrease substantially. In that case, Canada will no longer be a desired destination for people wanting to migrate. Or they will leave because the living conditions are toxic.

This hostility is on display in how Canada refers to immigrants in an official capacity. Immigrants are numerical “targets” to achieve in a given timeframe. International students are deemed the “ideal immigrants,” a common racist stereotype. Canada should not attract students based on how much labour or revenue they can provide in the long term – or because many students themselves use this as an opportunity to gain Canadian permanent residency – but rather how education can enrich their futures. Immigration levels are about “breaking records,” as numbers are increased based on labour shortages rather than the capacity to absorb new people from different parts of the world.

Phrases used by the government to justify rising numbers, such as “filling labour shortages, creating jobs, and driving economic growth,” perpetuate stereotypes of immigrants. The term “visible minority,” or the politically correct “racialized newcomers,” indicates a continued “othering” of immigrants. Semantics hide the racist notion that immigrants are only as useful as their revenue-generating skills. Everything else is their own problem.

This approach to reducing immigrants to labels and economic tools completely ignores the existence and reality of racism as a social and economic hurdle for immigrants. Canada sees new immigrants as a way to fill labour shortages, but the statistics tell a different story. New immigrants are far behind their Canadian-born counterparts in finding employment. Yet, the push to increase immigration levels to record highs continues without anyone talking to employers about immigrants’ inability to find work. This may only increase unemployment rates amongst racialized groups.

Racism also applies to our policies toward refugees and asylum seekers. Recent cases have shown how authorities continue to treat refugees from Afghanistan differently compared with those from Ukraine. If Canada is choosing to discriminate among seriously at-risk populations such as refugees fleeing war and death based on – it can be assumed – their race or religion, this itself proves the point that racism is more than just an organizational issue. It is endemic in our society.

For instance, Canada’s recent appointment of a representative to combat the rise in Islamophobia in this country reflects the federal government’s concern that violence and racism toward racialized communities is becoming normalized. But it ignores longstanding racism against the original inhabitants of this country.

Indigenous communities continue to be oppressed, and the arrival of immigrants, many of them unaware of Canada’s dark colonial past, only adds to Indigenous communities’ distrust of settlers.

Among racialized communities in Canada, Black and Asian Canadians also continue to experience some of the highest levels of discrimination.

If Canada truly wants its millions of new immigrants to be able to contribute to the country, it must address racism and discrimination as broad societal issues. We need a holistic policy approach, not one that is piecemeal.

To do this, the thinking around immigration needs to evolve and specifically address the following in policy and practice:

First, there is a need to change the language around immigration to Canada. This starts with changing how Ottawa frames immigration and immigrants as a labour supply issue. Immigration is a human right and not a numbers game. It must work for both the migrant and the host country.

Second, immigration is never purely economic. Regular immigrants also attempt to escape conflict, discrimination and political instability in their home countries. This is important to remember when assessing admissibility and the potential of each immigrant beyond just their economic capabilities.

Third, anti-racism efforts must be incorporated into the philosophy of services provided to immigrants including settlement services, employment, housing, education and health. This will require different federal, provincial and territorial departments to work in tandem with each other, not in silos.

Last, any immigration plan must also come with a strategy that socially protects the rising number of immigrants rather than just economically compensates them. Addressing racism and race relations must be important elements when designing immigration policy in a country that calls itself multicultural.

Immigration cannot just be about achieving targets and numbers. It is not an assembly line opportunity. Ultimately, we are dealing with individuals and families who also have hopes and expectations of Canada. Undermining these expectations through racial discrimination is the last thing anyone seeking to start a new life in a new country needs.

Source: Expanding immigration will not erase racism in Canadian society

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Goldberg: The Censoring of an Iranian American Artist

2023/02/15 Leave a comment

Here we go again…. I’m much more concerned about the physical health and safety of the brave women and men who have been risking all to protest against the mandatory dress code for women and the general repressive nature of the Iranian regime:

The work of the Iranian American artist Taravat Talepasand is cheeky, erotic and defiantly anticlerical. One painting in her new midcareer survey, “Taravat,” incorporates Iranian bank notes whose images of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini have been dosed with LSD. A graphite drawing, titled “Blasphemy X,” depicts a veiled woman giving the finger while lifting her robe to reveal high heels and a flash of underwear. There are sculptures of women in niqab face coverings with enormous exposed breasts. On a gallery wall, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” the slogan of Iran’s recent nationwide protests against the morality police, is written in neon in English and Persian.

When “Taravat” opened late last month at Macalester College, a left-leaning school in St. Paul, Minn., with a focus on internationalism, some Muslim students felt it made a mockery of modest Islamic dress, and thus of them. They expressed their outrage, and this month Macalester responded by temporarily closing Talepasand’s show, and then, apparently unaware of the irony, surrounding the gallery windows with black curtains.

Those curtains astonished Talepasand, an assistant professor of art practice at Portland State University. “To literally veil a ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ exhibition?” she exclaimed to me.

The uproar over “Taravat” was directly connected to a recent controversy at Hamline University, a few minutes’ drive away from Macalester, where an adjunct art history professor named Erika López Prater was fired for showing a 14th-century painting of Muhammad in an art history class. In late January, Macalester — where, as it happens, Prater now teaches — hosted a discussion between faculty and students, most of them Muslim, to address issues raised by the Hamline incident. There, some students described being upset by “Taravat.”

“I invited them to share what emotions they were holding in their bodies,” one faculty member wrote in an email, part of which was shared with Talepasand. “They named ‘undervalued, frustrated, surprised, disrespected, ignored, and it felt like hit after hit.’”

Ultimately, Macalester handled the student complaints better than Hamline did. No one was fired, and after being closed for a few days, “Taravat” reopened. But the administration’s response was still distinctly apologetic, demonstrating the anxious philistinism that can result when bureaucratic cowardice meets maximalist ideas about safety.

In a message to campus, the provost, Lisa Anderson-Levy, said that Macalester understands “that pieces in the exhibition have caused harm to members of our Muslim community.” The black curtains came down, but they were replaced with purple construction paper on the gallery’s glass entrance and frosted glass panels on its mezzanine windows, protecting passers-by from “unintentional or nonconsensual viewing,” in the words of the administration. A content warning is affixed to the door. Next to it, some students put up a yellow sign asking potential visitors to show solidarity with them by not going in.

“There’s a lot of nuance and complexity in these kinds of situations,” Anderson-Levy said in a statement when I reached out to talk. “We believe that taking time to slow down and listen carefully to the diverse perspectives across our campus community allowed us to create space for conversation and learning.”

At least some students seemed to be learning to approach contentious art cautiously. A senior sociology major who’d visited the gallery with their sculpture class when Talepasand was still assembling the exhibition told me they were thinking of returning to see what had changed. But they worried that could be an act of entitlement, and felt the need to reflect “on my place as a white person” who is “not affected by the harms as much as others.”

Some readers might object to dwelling on one instance of misguided sensitivity at one small college when the country is in the midst of a nationwide frenzy of right-wing book bans, public school speech restrictions, and wild attempts to curtail drag performances. But I think this moment, when we’re facing down a wave of censorship inspired by religious fervor, is a good time to quash the notion that people have a right to be shielded from discomfiting art. If progressive ideas can be harnessed to censor feminist work because it offends religious sensibilities, perhaps those ideas bear rethinking.

In her excellent 2021 book “On Freedom,” the poet and critic Maggie Nelson described how, in the 20th century, the avant-garde imagined its audience as numb, repressed and in need of being shocked awake. The 21st-century model, by contrast, “presumes the audience to be damaged, in need of healing, aid, and protection.”

There is value in this approach. Mary Gaitskill recently published a captivating essay about two writing classes that she taught 25 years apart. Each included a menacing male student obsessed with sadistic violence against women. In 1997, the guy was named Don, and Gaitskill was struck by how enthusiastically his female classmates seemed to respond to his imagined scenes of torture and murder. It is only toward the end of the semester, after another student’s outburst, that the young women express their fear of Don. Until then, surrounded by a culture that valorized shock and darkness, they demonstrated a “seemingly bizarre forbearance” that blunted their authentic reactions.

“But these days that breed of forbearance is looking like an indulgence that we cannot afford,” Gaitskill writes. “These days, niceness is looking pretty damn good; these days, the darkness is just too overwhelming.” In her 2022 class, she writes, almost half the class had spent time in mental institutions. Relentless demands for safety can simply be a sign of how vulnerable people feel.

Still, to automatically give in to those demands is to suffocate the arts. This becomes especially clear when you see how easily the language of trauma and harm can serve reactionary ends. Just last week, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on a school district in New Jersey that removed Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” a frequent target of conservative censorship, from the freshman honors curriculum. A parent had complained that exposure to the book’s “graphic images of sexual violence” could be “emotionally traumatizing.” This, said Talepasand, “is where the far left and the far right look very similar.”

I’m not naïve enough to believe that if the left rediscovered a passionate commitment to free speech, the right would give up its furious campaign against what it calls wokeness. But I do think that if the left is to mount a convincing response to what has become a wholesale assault on intellectual liberty and free expression, it needs to be able to defend challenging and provocative work. Art need not defer to religion. If that’s no longer obvious we’ve gone astray.

Source: The Censoring of an Iranian American Artist

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Why promoting multiculturalism could increase support for the EU

2023/02/15 Leave a comment

Interesting study and linkage (may be more correlation than causation):

Many political parties combine pro-EU policies with critical stances toward immigration and multiculturalism. But are these two approaches contradictory? Drawing on a new study covering France and Germany, Natalia Bogado, Evelyn Bytzek and Melanie C. Steffens highlight that discourses emphasising the threat of cultural diversity can increase Euroscepticism among voters, while discourses promoting multiculturalism are associated with an increase in support for the EU.

Since the 1990s, the Leitkultur debate – ironically spearheaded by later Wilkommenskulturchampion, German Chancellor Angela Merkel – has been at the heart of discourses about immigration and asylum in Germany. In a nutshell, the debate is a body of discourses (more or less extreme) grounded on the notion that without a German guiding culture that everyone equally adopts (i.e. a culture into which everyone has been equally assimilated), German society would fall apart.

In other words, social cohesion and peace can only exist in conditions of complete cultural assimilation. Multiculturalism is thus disparaged as an unsustainable ideology that leads to a lack of social unity, violence, criminality, and even terrorism by those who have allegedly failed to adopt the cardinal tenets of the German culture. Accordingly, Merkel famously declared multiculturalism dead in 2010, and the notion that cultural diversity poses a serious threat to peaceful coexistence in Germany was a constant in her political rhetoric throughout her 16 years in power.

Beyond Germany and the Leitkultur, assimilation has dominated public debates about immigration and asylum in many European countries. In France, assimilationist discourses have been the leitmotif of the far-right populist Rassemblement National and the lifeline that secured electoral success for many centre-right candidates – famously, Nicolas Sarkozy, but others as well. Similarly, Brexit followed a campaign where immigration and the threat it allegedly poses to the British cultural identity were highly salient. Armed with a wide array of nationalist and assimilationist slogans, the UK Independence Party and the anti-EU factions of the Conservative Party were able to turn fears over national-identity loss and immigration into anti-EU votes.

Evidence from France and Germany

Brexit offered anecdotal evidence of the negative impact of assimilationist discourses that present immigration, asylum, and cultural diversity as a threat to the nation on support for the EU. In a new study covering Germany and France, we provide scientific evidence to support these assumptions.

Specifically, we found that reading electoral pledges (taken from the 2019 European Parliament election) such as “We must regulate immigration to preserve Europe’s cultural integrity” or “We must protect our European way of life and our Christian values under threat by unconditional migration,” decreased support for EU integration, identification with the EU and – particularly concerning in light of Brexit ­– increased intentions to vote to leave the EU.

Thus, our study evidenced that something as (apparently) innocent as expressing concern about cultural diversity threatening the integrity of national cultures and customs can fuel Euroscepticism and intentions to leave the Union. Conversely, reassuring voters of the benefits of multiculturalism and cultural diversity increased support for the EU.

Reading electoral pledges that emphasised the importance of promoting multiculturalism and respecting cultural diversity improved EU attitudes and reduced intentions to vote to leave the EU. Electoral pledges such as “We celebrate cultural diversity and want to make Europe a safe place for all” and “We are determined to defend the right of asylum and of migrants to live in Europe without having to abandon their cultural identities” had a positive impact on support for the EU, identification with the EU, and intentions to remain in the Union.

The way forward

In a context where Euroscepticism continues to grow, our research helps us to understand how politicians’ assimilationist messages can promote Euroscepticism. These findings have important implications for political and media discourse. Assimilation discourses are not exclusive to the populist far-right: many pro-EU centre-right parties have also emphasised the threat of cultural diversity in their immigration discourses.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel – who advanced a strong pro-refugee agenda, welcoming hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and urging other EU countries to do the same – framed immigration and asylum almost exclusively in assimilation terms. In light of our findings, it is hardly surprising that during Merkel’s tenure, Germany saw the electoral rise of the Eurosceptic Alternative for Germany and the rise of radicalised groups like Pegida and others. Beyond Germany, our study highlights why, despite many politicians’ efforts to promote a pro-EU agenda, the persistence of assimilation discourses means that Euroscepticism will continue to grow among Europeans.

Furthermore, the echoes of Brexit still threaten the continuity of the Union, as exposure to information emphasising the United Kingdom’s sovereignty gains following its exit from the Union increases Euroscepticism and willingness to leave the EU. As such, the importance of adopting multicultural discourses when framing immigration and asylum for the future of the EU cannot be understated.

Additionally, our study offers further hope: in addition to promoting the benefits of multiculturalism, fostering an emotional connection to the EU can also protect the Union from the impact of assimilationist discourses. Unfortunately, data from the 2018 European Social Survey is not reassuring, as EU attachment remains moderate to low among Europeans. However, research has offered some avenues to promote EU attachment.

Recently, studies have found that policies like EU Cohesion Policy and the adoption of the euroincreased emotional attachment to the EU. Future research should continue to explore ways to achieve this longstanding goal of increasing Europeans’ attachment to the Union. At the moment, the Russian invasion of Ukraine represents a watershed moment for the EU to display its political, financial, and cultural leadership in the region and thus strengthen European citizens’ emotional attachment to the Union.

Source: Why promoting multiculturalism could increase support for the EU

Filed under Integration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

CSIS warned Trudeau about Toronto-area politician’s alleged ties to Chinese diplomats

2023/02/15 Leave a comment

Fortunately, the truth generally always emerges; unfortunately, it appears the PM and government didn’t take the warnings seriously:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and senior aides were warned on at least two occasions that government MPs should be cautious in their political dealings with former Ontario Liberal cabinet minister Michael Chan because of alleged ties to China’s consulate in Toronto, national-security sources say.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has a dossier on Mr. Chan that contains information on his activities in the 2019 and 2021 federal election campaigns and meetings with suspected Chinese intelligence operatives, according to the two security sources. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the sources, who risk prosecution under the Security of Information Act.

Mr. Chan, now deputy mayor of the city of Markham, told The Globe that he is a loyal Canadian and accused CSIS of character assassination, saying they never once interviewed him about his alleged involvement with the Chinese consulate.

“Your own statement to me about a recent briefing by CSIS to Prime Minister Trudeau, serves only to ignite xenophobia and cause continued, unwarranted and irreparable damage to my reputation and the safety of my family,” he said.

He added: “CSIS has never interviewed me regarding their false and unsubstantiated allegations. However, I am aware that they have conducted intimidating interviews with my friends and acquaintances and then instructed them to keep their mouths shut.”

Mr. Chan, 71, was elected as a regional councillor in Markham’s Oct. 24 election last year and, as the councillor with the most votes, he also became deputy mayor. In 2018, he retired from provincial politics, where his last post was minister of international trade for Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government. He has been a key organizer and fundraiser in Ontario’s Chinese-Canadian communities for the federal and provincial Liberal parties.

CSIS has observed Mr. Chan meeting in the past years with Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei, whom one source describes as a “suspected intelligence actor,” and Beijing’s former vice-consul-general Zhuang Yaodong. CSIS believes Mr. Zhuang handled security files out of the Toronto consulate, the source said. Mr. Zhao’s code-name for Mr. Chan is “The Minister,” the source said.

In 2019, Mr. Chan had a number of meetings with Mr. Zhao that were described in a CSIS 2020 briefing package as “clandestine in nature” and were allegedly election-related, the source said. In that same year, CSIS observed Mr. Chan and an associate meeting with Mr. Zhao and Mr. Zhuang at a Chinese restaurant.

Mr. Chan said in his statement to The Globe that his meetings with Chinese consular officials are not unusual for politicians. He also said that he met frequently with consular officials from many Asian and Southeast Asian countries in 2019 relating to business activities abroad.

“Meetings to discuss business and trade between Consular officials and Canadians, politicians or otherwise, are a common practice,” he said. “Just in case you were not aware, I met a few days ago with the Deputy Consul-General from China in Toronto and Mr. Wei Zhao.”

The source said Mr. Zhao, who came to Canada in 2018, has also been observed meeting with a number of constituency staffers for Liberal MPs in Toronto, including an assistant for International Trade Minister Mary Ng. Some of those aides were asked by Mr. Zhao to keep their MPs away from pro-Taiwan events, according to the source.

CSIS Director David Vigneault flagged Mr. Chan’s return to public office during a fall 2022 briefing that he delivered to the Prime Minister and his national security adviser, Jody Thomas, on Chinese election interference. He cautioned that Liberal MPs should be vigilant in their dealings with Mr. Chan, according to two other sources. The Globe is not identifying them because they were not authorized to speak about sensitive matters.

In that same briefing, Mr. Vigneault said China’s consulate in Toronto had targeted 11 candidates from the Greater Toronto Area, a mix of Liberals and Conservatives, in the 2019 federal election, the sources said. But the sources said the CSIS director told Mr. Trudeau there was no indication China’s interference efforts had helped elect any of them, despite the consulate’s attempts to promote the campaigns on social media and in Chinese-language media outlets.

The Globe has previously reported that Mr. Chan had been on CSIS’s radar, stretching as far back as 2010, because of alleged close ties to the Chinese consulate. He had also been involved in community events with leaders of the Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Organizations, considered one of the consulate’s unofficial lobby groups.

In a 2019 briefing for the Prime Minister’s Office, one of the national-security sources and a government source say, security officials also flagged Mr. Chan’s Chinese consular connections soon after he was recruited by Ms. Ng to serve as her campaign co-chair in that year’s federal election.

In the 2019 briefing, security officials told senior PMO staff, including Mr. Trudeau’s Chief of Staff, Katie Telford, that Mr. Chan should be on “your radar” and that “someone should reach out to Mary to be extra careful,” according to one source. That security briefing also dealt with foreign interference, tactics and Chinese tradecraft, the source said.

Ms. Ng told The Globe that no one from the PMO told her to steer clear of Mr. Chan, who also co-chaired her 2017 by-election campaign when she replaced veteran Liberal MP John McCallum. The Prime Minister opened the Markham-Thornhill riding for Ms. Ng, who had earlier served as his director of appointments, by naming Mr. McCallum as Canada’s ambassador to China.

Mr. Trudeau later fired Mr. McCallum after he criticized the American request for Canada to detain and extradite Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou.

In the interview with The Globe, Ms. Ng said that Mr. Chan never actually took up the role of campaign co-chair in 2019 because, she said, there were other capable volunteers to help.

“We were working with so many members of my community – the Chinese members of our community, Tamil members of my community, Muslim Canadian and Jewish Canadians – so really it was really a cross section of people. So the campaign, you know, it just was working as it was and I felt very supported by a lot of people who were on the ground,” she said.

She added: “I haven’t talked to Michael in quite some time.”

A confidant of Ms. Ng said the MP quietly dropped Mr. Chan as co-chair after public comments in the late summer of 2019 where he condemned Hong Kong pro-democracy demonstrators and supported China’s crackdown on them, attributing the protests to alleged manipulation by foreign actors. Mr. Chan agreed to step aside because he did not want his comments to reflect badly on Ms. Ng, the confidant said. The Globe is not naming the confidant, who was not permitted to publicly discuss the matter.

“Your statement to me regarding Mary Ng’s campaign is utterly false,” Mr. Chan said. He did not elaborate.

The confidant also said that Ms. Ng’s assistant, who used to work for Mr. McCallum, likely met Mr. Zhao at Chinese-Canadian community events, often frequented by Chinese consulate officials. He stressed, however, that Ms. Ng has avoided meeting Chinese consulate officials since she became Trade Minister in 2021. She became Minister for Small Business in a cabinet shuffle in 2018.

Ms. Ng received the necessary vetting to obtain a security clearance to serve in cabinet in 2018 when she became Small Business Minister.

In the 2017 by-election campaign, then Chinese consul-general He Wei gathered Chinese-Canadian media at the consulate and urged them to support her election, saying they needed a friend like Mr. McCallum in Ottawa, according to one of the security sources. Ms. Ng’s confidant said she was not aware of the intervention by Mr. He, now a senior official in China’s Foreign Ministry.

CSIS has repeatedly warned that China has been conducting foreign interference operations in Canada, including efforts to influence the political process.

On Thursday, Adam Fisher, CSIS director-general of intelligence assessments, told the House of Commons committee on procedure and house affairs that Beijing uses a variety of means to influence the political process, including attempting to get information from unwitting politicians.

“They are not necessarily relying on trained agents. They use cutouts. They use proxies. They use community groups. They use diaspora organizations and community leaders,” he said.

Cherie Henderson, CSIS assistant director of requirements, also noted that states like China will funnel money directly to proxies.

“They will use whatever avenue they can to achieve their objectives,” she told the committee, which is studying alleged Chinese interference in the 2019 election.

In June, 2015, Mr. Chan was the subject of a Globe investigation, which revealed that CSIS was concerned that the then-minister may have grown too close to the Chinese consulate in Toronto, prompting a senior official to formally caution the province about the minister’s alleged conduct in a 2010 briefing.

Around that time, then-premier Dalton McGuinty dismissed the CSIS warnings as baseless. When The Globe brought the allegations to Ms. Wynne in 2015, she also dismissed them. Mr. Chan wrote in 2015 that “there is a persistent theme that there is a perceived risk that I am under undue influence and that I am an unwitting dupe of a foreign government. This is offensive and totally false.” Mr. Chan has steadfastly denied the assertions made by Canada’s spy agency.

He brought a libel action against The Globe, but the case has not gone to court.

In his recent statement to The Globe, Mr. Chan said the 2015 article was “especially egregious and disheartening for someone like myself who has always put the interests of Canada and Canadians first and foremost, and who has a long, true record of exemplary public service.”

Source: CSIS warned Trudeau about Toronto-area politician’s alleged ties to Chinese diplomats

Filed under disinformation, foreign policy, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Canadian Heritage changes vetting process for anti-racism funds after nixing contract

2023/02/15 Leave a comment

Of note. This should catch most of the problems and the inclusion of reviewing social media activities is unfortunately necessary with respect to all forms of hate, whether antisemitism, anti-Asian, anti-muslim etc:

Canadian Heritage has changed the way it vets funding requests for community and anti-racism projects after it cut ties with an organization that was accused of antisemitism.

The federal government terminated a contract with the Community Media Advocacy Centre in September after it granted the group more than $122,000for projects to help combat anti-racism.

Ottawa has since attempted to recoup the funds, but has been unsuccessful in getting the money back, said Mala Khanna, an associate deputy minister at Canadian Heritage.

“It would be possible for the minister to take legal action,” she told a House of Commons committee on Monday.

That option has not yet been pursued, she said.

The federal government’s relationship with the group ended a few days after media reported that a senior consultant had posted what federal ministers described as antisemitic content on Twitter. The ministry decided to review its vetting process and says a new procedure is now in place.

Those applying for money will now have to put into writing that they will not espouse hate or discriminate, Khanna said.

Unlike before, the minister will have the power to immediately terminate a contract if its terms are violated. And staff involved with doling out funding have received anti-racism and antisemitism training.

Under the new vetting process, the government will also review the social media accounts of the staff of organizations that apply for government funding, Khanna said.

“Racism, hate and discrimination would make you ineligible for government funding, and requiring applicants to attest upfront themselves that they or anyone that is associated with the project will not engage in hate,” Khanna said.

“I think those are important lessons that we’ve learned.”

Michael Levitt, president and CEO of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said staff at the Canadian Heritage department need rigorous training so they can better understand and identify antisemitism.

“While we appreciate that Canadian Heritage has implemented new processes to prevent organizations and individuals who espouse antisemitic and racist views from receiving government funding, this can only be effective under certain conditions,” Levitt said in a written statement Monday.

He said it’s imperative that staff remain committed to real and meaningful action so that someone who promotes antisemitic views “never receives another cent of Canadian taxpayer money.”

Members of Parliament for the Liberals, New Democrats and Bloc Québécois were critical of Canadian Heritage for its approval of the contract in the first place, and then its delay in cancelling it.

“The concerns are very legitimate, and the fact this antisemitism was funded by the government, by the taxpayers, I find unbelievable,” NDP MP Peter Julian said at the heritage committee on Monday.

“We can’t have a federal government that takes that long to respond to egregious cases of hate being disseminated, whether that’s online or any other venue.”

Liberal MP Anthony Housefather said he raised concerns with the department in mid-July regarding social media posts by Laith Marouf, a senior consultant with the Community Media Advocacy Centre. The organization had been awarded government money to build an anti-racism strategy for Canadian broadcasting.

One tweet read: “You know all those loud mouthed bags of human feces, a.k.a. the Jewish White Supremacists; when we liberate Palestine and they have to go back to where they come from, they will return to being low voiced bitches of thier (sic) Christian/Secular White Supremacist Masters.’’

Marouf and his lawyer Stephen Ellis could not be reached for comment. However, Ellis previously told The Canadian Press that Marouf harbours no animus toward the Jewish faith as a collective group. He drew a distinction between his client’s tweets about people he calls “Jewish white supremacists” and Jewish people in general.

The department didn’t receive the tweet until Aug. 2, Khanna said, and it wasn’t until Aug. 20 that they suspended the contract. On Sept. 23, the contract was officially terminated.

“We could have moved faster. I wish we moved faster,” Khanna said.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs said it is still waiting for other departments to adopt the same policies and practices.

“This is larger than one program and one organization. It is a holistic, all-of-government commitment that must be undertaken,” its president and CEO, Shimon Fogel, said in a statement.

Khanna said other government departments that issue grants and contributions have expressed interest in the work Canadian Heritage has done over the last few months. She said she has met with two other departments to discuss what they learned.

“I’m confident that the measures we put into place will make a difference,” she said. “If we were in such a situation again, I believe we would be able to move more quickly. Within a matter of days.”

Source: Canadian Heritage changes vetting process for anti-racism funds after nixing contract

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Mims: The AI Boom That Could Make Google and Microsoft Even More Powerful

2023/02/14 Leave a comment

Good long read. Hard to be optimistic about how the technology will be used. And the regulators will likely be more than a few steps behind corporations:

Seeing the new artificial intelligence-powered chatbots touted in dueling announcements this past week by Microsoft and Googledrives home two major takeaways. First, the feeling of “wow, this definitely could change everything.” And second, the realization that for chat-based search and related AI technologies to have an impact, we’re going to have to put a lot of faith in them and the companies they come from.

When AI is delivering answers, and not just information for us to base decisions on, we’re going to have to trust it much more deeply than we have before. This new generation of chat-based search engines are better described as “answer engines” that can, in a sense, “show their work” by giving links to the webpages they deliver and summarize. But for an answer engine to have real utility, we’re going to have to trust it enough, most of the time, that we accept those answers at face value.

The same will be true of tools that help generate text, spreadsheets, code, images and anything else we create on our devices—some version of which both Microsoft MSFT -0.20%decrease; red down pointing triangle and Google have promised to offer within their existing productivity services, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. 

These technologies, and chat-based search, are all based on the latest generation of “generative” AI, capable of creating verbal and visual content and not just processing it the way more established AI has done. And the added trust it will require is one of several ways in which this new generative AI technology is poised to shift even more power into the hands of the biggest tech companies. 

Generative AI in all its forms will insinuate technology more deeply into the way we live and work than it already is—not just answering our questions but writing our memos and speeches or even producing poetry and art. And because of the financial, intellectual and computational resources needed to develop and run the technology are so enormous, the companies that control these AI systems will be the largest, richest companies.

OpenAI, the creator of the ChatGPT chatbot and DALL-E 2 image generator AIs that have fueled much of the current hype, seemed like an exception to that: a relatively small startup that has driven major AI innovation. But it has leapt into the arms of Microsoft, which has made successive rounds of investment, in part because of the need to pay for the computing power needed to make its systems work. 

The greater concentration of power is all the more important because this technology is both incredibly powerful and inherently flawed: it has a tendency to confidently deliver incorrect information. This means that step one in making this technology mainstream is building it, and step two is minimizing the variety and number of mistakes it inevitably makes.

Trust in AI, in other words, will become the new moat that big technology companies will fight to defend. Lose the user’s trust often enough, and they might abandon your product. For example: In November, Meta made available to the public an AI chat-based search engine for scientific knowledge called Galactica. Perhaps it was in part the engine’s target audience—scientists—but the incorrect answers it sometimes offered inspired such withering criticism that Meta shut down public access to it after just three days, said Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun in a recent talk.

Galactica was “the output of a research project versus something intended for commercial use,” says a Meta spokeswoman. In a public statement, Joelle Pineau, managing director of fundamental AI research at Meta, wrote that “given the propensity of large language models such as Galactica to generate text that may appear authentic, but is inaccurate, and because it has moved beyond the research community, we chose to remove the demo from public availability.”

On the other hand, proving your AI more trustworthy could be a competitive advantage more powerful than being the biggest, best or fastest repository of answers. This seems to be Google’s bet, as the company has emphasized in recent announcements and a presentation on Wednesday that as it tests and rolls out its own chat-based and generative AI systems, it will strive for “Responsible AI,” as outlined in 2019 in its “AI Principles.”

My colleague Joanna Stern this past week provided a helpful description of what it’s like to use Microsoft’s Bing search engine and Edge web browser with ChatGPT incorporated. You can join a list to test the service—and Google says it will make its chatbot, named Bard, available at some point in the coming months.

But in the meantime, to see just why trust in these kinds of search engines is so tricky, you can visit other chat-based search engines that already exist. There’s You.com, which will answer your questions via a chatbot, or Andisearch.com, which will summarize any article it returns when you search for a topic on it.

Even these smaller services feel a little like magic. If you ask You.com’s chat module a question like “Please list the best chat AI-based search engines,” it can, under the right circumstances, give you a coherent and succinct answer that includes all the best-known startups in this space. But it can also, depending on small changes in how you phrase that question, add complete nonsense to its answer. 

In my experimentation, You.com would, more often than not, give a reasonably accurate answer, but then add to it the name of a search engine that doesn’t exist at all. Googling the made-up search engine names it threw in revealed that You.com seemed to be misconstruing the names of humans quoted in articles as the names of search engines.

Andi doesn’t return search results in a chat format, precisely because making sure that those answers are accurate is still so difficult, says Chief Executive Angela Hoover. “It’s been super exciting to see these big players validating that conversational search is the future, but nailing factual accuracy is hard to do,” she adds. As a result, for now, Andi offers search results in a conventional format, but offers to use AI to summarize any page it returns.

Andi currently has a team of fewer than 10 people, and has raised $2.5 million so far. It’s impressive what such a small team has accomplished, but it’s clear that making trustworthy AI will require enormous resources, probably on the scale of what companies like Microsoft and Google possess.

There are two reasons for this: The first is the enormous amount of computing infrastructure required, says Tinglong Dai, a professor of operations management at Johns Hopkins University who studies human-AI interaction. That means tens of thousands of computers in big technology companies’ current cloud infrastructures. Some of those computers are used to train the enormous “foundation” models that power generative AI systems. Others specialize in making the trained models available to users, which as the number of users grows can become a more taxing task than the original training.

The second reason, says Dr. Dai, is that it requires enormous human resources to continually test and tune these models, in order to make sure they’re not spouting an inordinate amount of nonsense or biased and offensive speech.

Google has said that it has called on every employee in the company to test its new chat-based search engine and flag any issues with the results it generates. Microsoft, which is already rolling out its chat-based search engine to the public on a limited basis, is doing that kind of testing in public. ChatGPT, on which Microsoft’s chat-based search engine is based, has already proved to be vulnerable to attempts to “jailbreak” it into producing inappropriate content. 

Big tech companies can probably overcome the issues arising from their rollout of AI—Google’s go-slow approach, ChatGPT’s sometimes-inaccurate results, and the incomplete or misleading answers chat-based Bing could offer—by experimenting with these systems on a large scale, as only they can.

“The only reason ChatGPT and other foundational models are so bad at bias and even fundamental facts is they are closed systems, and there is no opportunity for feedback,” says Dr. Dai. Big tech companies like Google have decades of practice at soliciting feedback to improve their algorithmically-generated results. Avenues for such feedback have, for example, long been a feature of both Google Search and Google Maps.

Dr. Dai says that one analogy for the future of trust in AI systems could be one of the least algorithmically-generated sites on the internet: Wikipedia. While the entirely human-written and human-edited encyclopedia isn’t as trustworthy as primary-source material, its users generally know that and find it useful anyway. Wikipedia shows that “social solutions” to problems like trust in the output of an algorithm—or trust in the output of human Wikipedia editors—are possible.

But the model of Wikipedia also shows that the kind of labor-intensive solutions for creating trustworthy AI—which companies like Meta and Google have already employed for years and at scale in their content moderation systems—are likely to entrench the power of existing big technology companies. Only they have not just the computing resources, but also the human resources, to deal with all the misleading, incomplete or biased information their AIs will be generating.

In other words, creating trust by moderating the content generated by AIs might not prove to be so different from creating trust by moderating the content generated by humans. And that is something the biggest technology companies have already shown is a difficult, time-consuming and resource-intensive task they can take on in a way that few other companies can.

The obvious and immediate utility of these new kinds of AIs, when integrated into a search engine or in their many other potential applications, is the reason for the current media, analyst and investor frenzy for AI. It’s clear that this could be a disruptive technology, resetting who is harvesting attention and where they’re directing it, threatening Google’s search monopoly and opening up new markets and new sources of revenue for Microsoft and others.

Based on the runaway success of the ChatGPT AI—perhaps the fastest service to reach 100 million users in history, according to a recent UBS report—it’s clear that being an aggressive first mover in this space could matter a great deal. It’s also clear that being a successful first-mover in this space will require the kinds of resources that only the biggest tech companies can muster.

Source: The AI Boom That Could Make Google and Microsoft Even More Powerful

Filed under Data, Other Tagged with , , , , ,

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