Facial Recognition Powers ‘Automated Apartheid’ in Israel, Report Says

2023/05/05 Leave a comment

Of note:

Israel is increasingly relying on facial recognition in the occupied West Bank to track Palestinians and restrict their passage through key checkpoints, according to a new report, a sign of how artificial-intelligence-powered surveillance can be used against an ethnic group. 

At high-fenced checkpoints in Hebron, Palestinians stand in front of facial recognition cameras before being allowed to cross. As their faces are scanned, the software — known as Red Wolf — uses a color-coded system of green, yellow and red to guide soldiers on whether to let the person go, stop them for questioning or arrest them, according to the report by Amnesty International. When the technology fails to identify someone, soldiers train the system by adding their personal information to the database.

Israel has long restricted the freedom of movement of Palestinians, but technological advances are giving the authorities powerful new tools. It is the latest example of the global spread of mass surveillance systems, which rely on A.I. to learn to identify the faces of people based on large stores of images.

In Hebron and East Jerusalem, the technology focuses almost entirely on Palestinians, according to Amnesty’s report, marking a new way to automate the control of interior boundaries that separate the lives of Palestinians and Israelis. Amnesty called the process “automated apartheid.” Israel has strongly denied that it operates an apartheid regime.

“These databases and tools exclusively record the data of Palestinians,” said the report, which is based on accounts by former Israeli soldiers and Palestinians who live in the surveilled areas, as well as field visits to observe the technology’s use in affected territories.

The Israel Defense Forces, which plays a central role in the occupied territories of the West Bank, said in a statement that it carries out “necessary security and intelligence operations, while making significant efforts to minimize harm to the Palestinian population’s routine activity.”

On facial recognition, it added, “Naturally, we cannot refer to operational and intelligence capabilities.”

Government use of facial recognition technology to so explicitly target a single ethnic group is rare. In China, companies have made algorithms that sought to identify minorities as they passed by the country’s ubiquitous cameras. China’s government has also used facial recognition checkpoints to control and track the movements of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minorities.

Israel’s use of facial recognition at checkpoints builds on other surveillance systems deployed in recent years. Since protests in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah over the eviction of Palestinian families in 2021, the presence of cameras has increased in the area, most likely supporting an Israeli government video surveillance system capable of facial recognition known as Mabat 2000, according to Amnesty.

In one walk through the area, Amnesty researchers reported finding one to two cameras every 15 feet. Some were made by Hikvision, the Chinese surveillance camera maker, and others by TKH Security, a Dutch manufacturer.

TKH Security declined to comment. Hikvision did not respond to a request for comment.

Government forces also use the cameras on their phones. Israeli authorities have a facial recognition app, Blue Wolf, to identify Palestinians, according to Breaking the Silence, an organization that assisted Amnesty and collects testimonials from Israeli soldiers who have worked in occupied territories.

Soldiers use the app to photograph Palestinians on the street or during home raids to register them in a central database and to check if they are wanted for arrest or questioning, according to the 82-page Amnesty report and testimonials from Breaking the Silence. Use of Blue Wolf was reported earlier by The Washington Post.

The surveillance is partly an effort to reduce violence against Israelis. This year, Palestinian attackers have killed 19 Israelis. At least 100 Palestinians this year have been killed by Israeli security forces, many during gunfights that broke out during military operations to arrest Palestinian gunmen. Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 after capturing it from Jordan during the Arab-Israeli war that year.

Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist in Hebron, a West Bank city where there is regular violence, said people are under constant surveillance. He, his friends and family are regularly stopped by soldiers to be photographed using the Blue Wolf app. Surveillance cameras line the streets and drones commonly fly overhead.

Mr. Amro said the Israeli military has become so dependent on the automated systems that crossing the checkpoints grinds to a halt when there are technical problems.

“Everything is watched. My whole life is watched. I don’t have any privacy,” he said. “I feel they are following me everywhere I go.”

Mr. Amro said Palestinians are angry that the surveillance tools never seem to be used to identify crimes by Israeli settlers against Palestinians.

Ori Givati, a former Israeli tank commander who is now the advocacy director of Breaking the Silence, said the new surveillance systems began being put in place around 2020. The technology has allowed the Israeli government to move toward an automated occupation, he said, subjecting Palestinians to constant oversight and supervision.

The facial recognition systems work, he said, “not just as an invasion of privacy but a powerful tool for control.”

Source: Facial Recognition Powers ‘Automated Apartheid’ in Israel, Report Says

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Ismail: Canada welcomes record number of newcomers. Now what?

2023/05/04 Leave a comment

Raises many of the needed issues but remains fixed on current and planned levels as well as uncapped temporary residents. As I have argued before, unlikely that Canada will be able to address its housing, healthcare and infrastructure needs given these numbers.

And it is striking that IRCC has not published any data on the use of settlement services since 2016, even though the government spends over one billion annually. The only semi-public data we have are web enquiries which are low, between 10-15,000 per month, about a third of pre-pandemic levels:

Canada announced recently it had reached a significant milestone: welcoming over 30,000 Afghan refugees to the country since 2021, putting it on track to resettle at least 40,000 by the end of 2023.

Newcomers are critical in shaping the nation’s economy, particularly given the ongoing challenges around an aging population and persistent post COVID-19 labour shortages.

In 2022, Canada welcomed 437,180 immigrants — the highest on record, according to Statistics Canada. Further, the government announced a plan to welcome 1.5 million more by 2025.

Despite the need and the numbers, we continue to hear stories of highly skilled and foreign-trained newcomers facing challenges in transitioning to life in Canada.

The concept of the “Canadian Experience” is still a stereotype for some employers and creates barriers to joining the labour market and expediting the settlement process. Additionally, the costs and availability of housing are major issues — as it is for many Canadians. While efforts are being made by the government and settlement services to encourage newcomers to settle outside of major urban centres, there is a lack of vital support in those areas.

While some may see newcomers as a burden on our system, the numbers prove that to be the opposite. Data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) shows that refugees join Canada’s middle-class within five years of their arrival and, over time, pay more in income taxes on average than they receive in public benefits and services. 

When it comes to home ownership, 65 per cent of refugee families who have been in Canada for 10 years or more live in homes they own, compared to 70 per cent of Canadian born citizens.

As Canada welcomes more people from around the world, the need for infrastructure to support the growth in our housing markets, schools, and health care systems, is critical. The appropriate funding and management of this growth needs to be considered by all levels of government, and support from various organizations, like Polycultural Immigrant and Community Services, is paramount.

Between 2021 and 2022, Polycultural’s Afghan Initiative Program supported over 7,000 government-assisted refugees who were brought to Canada under the emergency evacuation initiative. And the organization has also provided settlement and housing supports to nearly 1,500 Ukrainian temporary residents under the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel. Overall, over 30,000 immigrants were supported by Polycultural over the last year.

Polycultural works with Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), provincial, regional, and local partners to address the needs of the refugees, including providing employment services, language classes, access to health care, and support in finding housing.

By 2036, up to 30 per cent of the country’s population will be immigrants. The government and its partners should continue to aid newcomers and advocate for the funding and investments that enable Canada’s newest citizens to truly thrive in their new home.

Marwan Ismail is the executive director of Polycultural Immigrant and Community Services, a charitable, non-profit, community-based agency.

Source: Canada welcomes record number of newcomers. Now what?

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As Canada stays mum, which Commonwealth countries will put the King on their money?

2023/05/04 Leave a comment

Relatively easy change to make, no constitutional issues but likely some will object:

Countries around the world whose currencies pay tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth II now have a new monarch — and a decision to make about whether the King has a place on their money.

Since the queen’s death in September, Canada has stayed mum on whether or not it intends to put the King’s likeness on its coins and bills.

But other members of the Commonwealth have moved more quickly towards enshrining his visage on their cash — or instead moving away from any kind of royal tribute.

Unsurprisingly, the United Kingdom was the first country to move forward with new banknotes that will feature King Charles, unveiling the designs in December.

The Bank of England says the new banknotes will come into circulation in mid-2024.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand also said after the queen’s death that it would be preparing to change out the image it uses on coins for one approved by the new King. It said the transition would take several years.

Australia went in the other direction, deciding not to place King Charles on its new five-dollar bill. Its central bank announced in February that the country was opting for an Indigenous design instead.

But the King is still expected to appear on Australian coins that currently bear the image of Queen Elizabeth.

The decision to include the portrait of King Charles on banknotes and coins is largely symbolic.

But even symbolic details can reflect the relationship between a country and the monarchy, as well as the level of public support for the institution.

“Different countries are going to approach it differently, depending on the level of attachment to the monarchy and the strength of the republican movement in each country,” said Jonathan Malloy, a political science professor at Carleton University, referring to campaigns that seek to separate countries from their relationships with the Crown.

In the Caribbean, many countries have been contending with conversations on what role the monarchy should play. Barbados, for example, ditched the British monarch as its head of state in 2021.

Other Caribbean nations that still belong to the Commonwealth have said little about whether King Charles will be depicted on their banknotes and coins.

However, the Antigua Observer reported earlier this year that the governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, Timothy NJ Antoine, said there may be “no appetite” for that.

In Canada, the federal government has not disclosed whether it plans to move ahead with placing the monarch on Canadian currency, appearing to avoid the conversation altogether.

The Finance Department would only say that “additional details will be forthcoming.”

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s office did not respond to questions on the matter in time for publication.

Malloy said that’s not surprising, noting there appears to be a partisan divide when it comes to the monarchy’s role in the country.

He said the Liberal government may be hesitant to discuss the future of Canadian currency and the monarch because its overall stance on the monarchy has been murky. Meanwhile, the Conservatives have traditionally stood more boldly with the Royal Family.

“I don’t think Prime Minister Trudeau wants to get rid of the monarchy, but he also doesn’t want to call attention to it,” he said.

“Whereas the Conservatives, I’m sure, would put (King) Charles on the money.”

The Royal Canadian Mint and Bank of Canada are waiting for the federal government to make a decision regarding the future of coins and banknotes.

“As always, the minister of finance is responsible for approving the form and material of any new banknote, including the portrait subject, in accordance with the Bank of Canada Act,” Bank of Canada spokeswoman Amélie Ferron-Craig said in an email.

“As such, it would be up to the government to announce if the King’s portrait is going to appear on any banknote.”

According to the Royal Canadian Mint, Canada has included a likeness of the reigning monarch on its coins since it started production in 1908.

Source: As Canada stays mum, which Commonwealth countries will put the King on their money?

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Scholars defend Polish Holocaust researcher targeted by govt

2023/05/02 Leave a comment

Of note and Poland’s struggle to come to terms with its history:

Scholars and historical institutions from around the world are coming to the defense of a Polish researcher who is under fire from her country’s authorities after claiming that Poles could have done more to help Jews during the Holocaust.

Barbara Engelking said in a TV interview last week that Polish Jews felt disappointed in Poles during World War II, referring to what she described as “widespread blackmailing” of Jews by Poles during the Nazi German occupation.

Since then the historian and the independent TV broadcaster have been threatened with consequences by government institutions — turning the matter into a campaign issue ahead of elections scheduled for this fall.

Poland’s conservative government and pro-government media have described the remarks by Engelking, who is Polish, as an attack on the nation. They accuse her of distorting the historical record and not giving due credit to the Poles who risked — and sometimes lost — their lives to help Jews.

It is the latest eruption of an emotional debate that has been going on for years in Poland over Polish-Jewish relations, particularly the behavior of Poles toward their Jewish neighbors during the war — when Germans committed brutal crimes against Poles, whom they considered subhuman, and against the Jews, a population they sought to exterminate in its entirety.

Poles reacted in various ways to the German treatment of the Jews. Some helped the Jews, an act punishable with execution by the occupation forces. Others denounced or blackmailed them, motivated by antisemitic hatred or for personal gain. Many Poles lived in fear and sought to survive the war without getting involved either way.

Even Polish nationalists do not deny that some Poles preyed on their Jewish compatriots, but they say a relatively recent focus in scholarship on that aspect of the war distorts a larger history of heroism by Poles who resisted the Germans. They argue it risks blaming Polish victims for German crimes.

Engelking spoke on the 80th anniversary of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. She was being interviewed by private broadcaster TVN about an exhibition she helped create on the fate of civilians in the ghetto, “Around Us A Sea of Fire,” which opened last week.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki reacted to the interview with a long social media post describing Engelking’s comments as “scandalous opinions” and part of an “anti-Polish narrative.”

Morawiecki referred to the more than 7,000 Poles recognized by Israel’s Holocaust institute Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. A Polish institute is trying to document cases that have so far not been recorded.

“We know that there could be tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of such cases,” Morawiecki said.

This week Education Minister Przemysław Czarnek threatened the funding of the institution where Engelking works, the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, which is part of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

“I will not finance an institute that maintains the kind of people who just insult Poles,” Czarnek said.

He said that Poles “were the greatest allies of the Jews, and if it had not been for the Poles, many Jews would have died, many more than were killed in the Holocaust.”

According to Yad Vashem, some 3.3 million Jews lived in Poland on the eve of the Sept. 1, 1939 German invasion, and only 380,000 survived the war.

Some 3 million other Polish citizens who were not Jewish were also killed during the war.

Poland’s state broadcasting authority has also opened an investigation into TVN, which is owned by the U.S. company Warner Bros. Discovery. The broadcaster faced government criticism recently for a report claiming that Saint John Paul IIhad covered up cases of clerical abuse in his native Poland before becoming pope.

Government critics see an attempt to exploit the issue to win votes ahead of the election — as the ruling party risks losing votes to a far-right party, Confederation, which has been surging in popularity.

Liberal media and commentators warn that media and academic freedoms are being threatened.

Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan said on Twitter this week that he called Engelking to show support for “freedom of expression and of academic research, in the face of blatant and menacing attacks.”

By Friday more than 600 scholars of the Holocaust and related subjects in Poland and abroad had signed a statement expressing opposition to the “political attack” on Engelking.

They said they regard “such censorious tendencies … as extremely dangerous and unacceptable,” adding: “We object to the idea of making a subject that calls for meticulous and nuanced research — as carried out by Professor Engelking — part of an election campaign.”

The POLIN Museum of the History of the Polish Jews, where the exhibition about civilians in the Warsaw ghetto is being shown, also defended Engelking in a statement Wednesday.

The museum argued that the feelings of disappointment expressed by Jews during the war are a “fact,” and that “they appear in almost every account of those who survived the Holocaust, as well as those who managed to leave a record of their fate, but did not survive.”

“The essence of scientific research is a dispute, but a brutal personal attack on a scientist and an outstanding authority in her field cannot be called a dispute,” it said.

Engelking more than a decade ago again angered some Poles by seeming to downplay Polish wartime suffering, saying death for Poles then “was simply a biological, natural matter … and for Jews it was a tragedy, it was a dramatic experience, it was metaphysics.”

Source: Scholars defend Polish Holocaust researcher targeted by govt

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust Tagged with ,

Bouchard: D’où viennent nos valeurs?

2023/05/01 Leave a comment

Always interesting to read Bouchard’s analysis and this is a particularly strong response to Premier Legault’s tweet stressing the Catholic heritage:

Le tweet de M. Legault début avril nous invite à nous interroger sur l’origine des valeurs prédominantes dans notre société. Quelles en sont les racines dans notre histoire ? Deux thèses se présentent, l’une privilégiant la religion catholique, l’autre, la culture populaire.

Le catholicisme

Une première difficulté posée par cette thèse, c’est qu’elle est contredite de plusieurs façons par l’histoire. Le catholicisme prêchait l’austérité, la soumission, la quête de spiritualité, la chasteté. Ce sont là, on en conviendra, des valeurs qui s’accordent mal avec l’esprit du temps présent. Mais l’Église enseignait aussi la liberté, l’entraide, la solidarité, l’éthique du travail. À première vue, on est ici en terrain plus sûr.

Ce n’est pas le cas : nos valeurs ont émergé malgré l’opposition de l’Église. Nous accordons une large place à la démocratie et à l’éducation. Sur ces deux points, le dossier de l’Église est en souffrance. L’autorité venait d’en haut et on ne croyait pas nécessaire de prolonger l’éducation du peuple au-delà du secondaire et même du primaire. L’Église a longtemps combattu les projets d’instruction obligatoire et gratuite jusqu’à 14 ans.

L’égalité sociale, qui nous est chère, s’est longtemps heurtée à la vision hiérarchique de la société professée par l’Église. Le statut de chacun était fixé par la Providence. L’Église s’est opposée aussi à l’émancipation de la femme (travail salarié, autonomie juridique, droit de vote, contraception…). Enfin, nos élites laïques ont fortement encouragé l’entrepreneuriat et l’insertion d’une élite francophone dans le domaine des affaires. Encore là, il y avait incompatibilité. L’Église avait envers l’industrialisation une tradition de méfiance, et même d’opposition.

Quant à la liberté, confrontée à une moralité tatillonne et à la pratique de la censure, elle a eu fort à faire jusqu’à la fin des années 1950. L’Église était aussi loin du compte en matière d’ouverture à l’autre. Elle prêchait l’antisémitisme, était hostile aux autres religions, interdisait les mariages mixtes au nom de la race pure et a longtemps fait preuve de racisme envers les Autochtones. Elle a par ailleurs beaucoup tardé à composer avec la modernité, le changement, le progrès, les droits de la personne. L’État-providence, avec ses politiques sociales généreuses, fut l’une des grandes réalisations de la Révolution tranquille. Une bonne partie du haut clergé a vu d’un mauvais oeil cette initiative de l’État.

Pendant longtemps, l’émancipation économique, sociale et politique des Canadiens français a compté parmi les objectifs principaux de notre nation. L’émancipation, c’est-à-dire la levée des contraintes imposées par le colonialisme anglophone. Or, à des moments clés de notre histoire, l’Église s’est mise au service du colonisateur contre les Canadiens français — pensons à la Conquête, aux rébellions de 1837-1838, aux deux crises de la conscription.

Voici une autre difficulté. Des catholiques de renom comme Jean Hamelin, Pierre Vadeboncoeur et Fernand Dumont ont soutenu que la foi de nos ancêtres était très superficielle. Ils y ont vu la conséquence d’une pastorale autoritaire trop centrée sur le rituel et la routine, qui ne tenait que par la « coutume ». Sous l’effet des nouvelles coutumes introduites dans les années 1945-1960, l’ancienne serait disparue. Fernand Dumont : « On s’est débarrassé de la religion comme d’un vieil appareil de radio qu’on jette pour acheter une télévision. » Comment imaginer que les fidèles, ces « robot[s] télécommandé[s] », « ces chrétiens sans anticorps » (J. Hamelin) aient pu être profondément imprégnés des valeurs en cause ici ? F. Dumont encore, dans une conférence de 2003, reprochait à l’Église d’avoir failli à faire passer dans la culture civique les valeurs du christianisme.

Enfin, le Québec est une petite nation minoritaire qui est née et a grandi sous deux colonialismes et qui s’est toujours inquiétée de sa survie. C’est plus qu’il n’en fallait pour inspirer des réflexes d’autoprotection qui font d’abord appel à la solidarité.

La thèse de la culture populaire

Il est plus vraisemblable que nos valeurs soient nées dans la culture populaire. L’héritage de valeurs comme la solidarité, le travail, l’esprit communautaire et la liberté peut en effet être rattaché à une tout autre expérience que la religion catholique. Cette thèse comporte deux volets.

Il y a d’abord notre passé lié au défrichement. Nos ancêtres lointains étaient des défricheurs. Ils ont façonné le territoire originel et ont édifié une société. Après la mise en valeur de la vallée du Saint-Laurent, ce travail s’est poursuivi jusque dans les années 1940 dans les espaces péri-laurentiens, où, en un siècle, une quinzaine de régions ont été fondées. Nous avons été longtemps un peuple de défricheurs.

Or l’expérience des défrichements inculquait profondément le goût de la liberté. Elle faisait appel aussi à l’éthique du travail, à l’esprit d’entreprise (les colons, isolés, étaient laissés à eux-mêmes). S’ajoutait à cela, par nécessité, la solidarité communautaire, dans un contexte de vide institutionnel où la survie était un défi constant.

Le deuxième volet, c’est celui du travail industriel. La culture robuste née de l’expérience pluriséculaire des défrichements s’est ensuite transmise dans le cours de l’urbanisation. Car les Canadiens français étaient aussi un peuple de lutteurs, cette fois dans la sphère du travail. L’historien Jacques Rouillard a bien montré la vigueur et l’ampleur des luttes ouvrières menées depuis longtemps au sein du syndicalisme, sans compter la fréquence et la dureté des conflits là où il n’existait pas de syndicats.

On connaît les valeurs forgées dans ces luttes : équité, égalité, solidarité, émancipation sociale, entre autres. Or, elles résultaient de pratiques conflictuelles, souvent agressives, que le clergé, en grande partie, a longtemps condamnées, s’employant plutôt à diffuser l’idée que le patron devait être traité comme un père par ses employés.

On voit que l’origine de nos valeurs reste une question complexe. Mais on voit bien aussi que, sur des points essentiels, elles ont pris le contre-pied de l’héritage de l’Église plutôt que de s’en nourrir.

Source: D’où viennent nos valeurs?

Filed under Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Is Canada taking the wrong approach to the labour shortage?

2023/04/29 Leave a comment

Good discussion of high vs low wage market needs. However, a discussion of productivity and per capita GDP missing, and the current immigration policies are working against increasing productivity as Skuterud and others have argued:

Does Canada need more immigrants with less education to do low-paying work, when many of their highly educated peers are already toiling in such jobs?

As employers struggle to find workers, a new report is calling into question Canada’s efforts to use immigration to deal with labour shortages.

“The labour shortages we’re seeing are mostly concentrated on the lower-skilled jobs, but we know that there’s already a very large proportion of immigrants with university education working in these jobs,” Statistics Canada researcher Feng Hou, co-author of the joint StatsCan and immigration department report, told the Star.

“It’s important for policymakers and the public to decide if we want to continue to select highly educated new immigrants to work in lower-skilled occupations or increase (the number of) immigrants with lower education levels.

“It’s a choice we have to make.”

The stakes are high and could have a lasting impact on the Canadian labour market — changing the calibre of the future workforce, suppressing wages or discouraging employers from investing in innovation and improving work conditions.

There could also be unexpected societal consequences.

“A significant move away from highly educated immigrants would weaken the tendency for the children of immigrants to attain high education levels, a major success for Canada compared to other countries,” cautions the report.

“In many countries the population generally has a more positive attitude toward highly-skilled immigrants than the lower-skilled. Any change that negatively affects Canadians’ perception of immigration could put a damper on its success.”

Canada raises immigration intake

As of March, Canada’s unemployment rate was at five per cent. Meanwhile, job vacancies have trended down 731,570 across all sectors since last June, despite a slight increase earlier this year.

The growth in unfilled jobs was in transportation and warehousing (+14,500) as well as health care and social assistance (+12,400), while the numbers dropped for professional, scientific and technical services (-6,200; -10.9 per cent), manufacturing (-4,200; -6.0 per cent) and educational services (-3,800; -14.1 per cent).

To tame the tight labour market, the federal government has raised the annual intake of new immigrants, with a goal of bringing in 500,000 a year by 2025, relaxed the rules to usher in foreign workers and passed a new law to prioritize potential immigrants in targeted sectors, including those in lower-skilled jobs previously ineligible for permanent residence.

A one-time program was also launched to grant permanent residence to 90,000 international students and foreign workers in essential jobs in Canada — many in the low-skilled spectrum of the caregiving and food production and distribution sectors — to ease the crunch.

Concerns have been raised regarding the extent to which immigration should be geared toward filling higher or lower-skilled jobs, and whether the country is on the right track.

How are newcomers to Canada faring?

Based on census and the government’s immigration database, the new study examined how newcomers who came under different programs fared and if they were employed in jobs at par with their education and skill levels. Although the analysis was based on 2016 data, Hou believes the findings would be similar today.

Among all immigrants aged 20 to 64, 60 per cent were in higher-skilled jobs and 40 per cent in lower-skilled positions, comparable to the ratio among their Canadian-born peers, at 64 per cent and 36 per cent, respectively.

(Higher-skilled jobs are defined as requiring a minimum of two years of post-secondary education and above; lower-skilled jobs only require some high school education and on-the-job training.)

Although immigrants played a key role in the labour market at all skill levels, accounting for 24 per cent of all employment, they also are more likely than their Canadian-born peers to be at the bottom of the ladder. 

According to the 47-page report, 34 per cent of immigrants selected via the economic category (including principal applicants, spouses and dependants, and in Canada since 1980) were employed in lower-skilled jobs.

Even among longer-term economic immigrants who have been in Canada for more than a decade, 31 per cent were in lower-skilled positions. 

This group of immigrants, selected for their higher education and skills, is a major provider of lower-skilled labour. It accounted for 53 per cent of all adult immigrants, and almost half (46 per cent) of the immigrant labour force in lower-skilled jobs.

Economic immigrants who were chosen under the Provincial Nomination Program, which allows provinces to select their own permanent residents, had the largest share in lower-skilled jobs, at 40 per cent. That compared to 28 per cent among those in the federal skilled worker program and 15 per cent in the Canadian Experience Class.

“Traditionally, economic immigrants in particular have been selected based on a ‘human capital model,’ which orients immigration towards higher educated individuals,” said the report. “However, not all economic immigrants occupy higher-skilled jobs.”

Cyclical factors are driving labour market conditions

The study referred to the many factors contributing to the pandemic-induced labour market conditions: worker fatigue; concerns among workers about COVID-19 infection; strong government financial support to individuals; the decline in immigration levels; and a possible desire to change jobs.

Given most of these drivers were cyclical, it recommended the temporary foreign workers program may be a more reasonable solution to the labour crisis amid current economic uncertainty.

However, critics say the solution is not about bringing in fewer low-skilled immigrants but focusing more on credential recognition in order to make the best use of all immigrants’ skills.

“The business cycle has not led to fewer temporary foreign workers. The use of temporary foreign workers through different immigration streams continues to go up,” said Naomi Alboim, who served senior federal and provincial government roles in immigration and labour.

“They say they hope it will resolve itself when the pandemic abates. But the pandemic is still with us. It’s not necessarily good for our economy just to continue to bring in temporary foreign workers, nor is it good for the temporary foreign workers.”

The report cited the boom and bust of the higher-skilled tech and oil sectors as examples of the temporariness of cyclical labour market, but Alboim said it failed to recognize the “ongoing needs” for lower-skilled workers in areas such as skilled trades and health care that can’t be easily replaced by automation and technology. 

“Even if the high interest rates result in a reduction of economic growth and perhaps less people being required, we know that there are sectors at the lower end where we are going to continue to need people,” said Alboim.

“I’m not saying the majority of people coming into the country should be selected on the basis of lower skills. We should just have a little bit more of a balance so we don’t have a bifurcated immigration system that says, ‘Higher-skilled. Permanent. Lower-skilled. Temporary.’”

‘We do need … a mix’

The success of the economic immigration program comes down to the match between newcomers’ skills and the jobs that need to be filled, said Rupa Banerjee, Canada Research Chair of economic inclusion, employment and entrepreneurship of Canada’s immigrants.

It’s an irony that low-skilled immigrants in many ways actually have employment appropriate to their education and skill levels while their highly educated and skilled peers struggle to get compatible jobs and become disillusioned with the decision to come to Canada.

“What’s really important is to look at this through a more nuanced viewpoint. It’s not as cut and dry or black and white as simply we don’t need as many low-skilled immigrants,” said Banerjee.

“We do need to have a mix of different skill levels coming into Canada, but we still have this problem of job skill mismatch and that continues to be a major challenge that we need to continue to work on.”

Source: Is Canada taking the wrong approach to the labour shortage?

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Changing how U.S. forms ask about race and ethnicity is complicated. Here’s why

2023/04/28 Leave a comment

Good explainer. Canada’s visible minority categories provide much richer detail:

The first changes in more than a quarter-century to how the U.S. government can ask about your race and ethnicity may be coming to census forms and federal surveys.

And the Biden administration’s revival of this long-awaited review of federal standards on racial and ethnic data has resurfaced a thorny conversation about how to categorize people’s identities and the ever-shifting sociopolitical constructs that are race and ethnicity.

While this policy discussion is largely under the radar, the stakes of it touch the lives of every person in the United States.

Any changes to those standards by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget could affect the data used to redraw maps of voting districts and enforce civil rights protections, plus guide policymaking and research. They could also influence how state and local governments, as well as private institutions, generate statistics.

Here are a few things to know about this complicated effort that could change OMB’s Statistical Policy Directive No. 15:

Asking about race and ethnicity in a combined question could shrink a mysterious “Some other race” category

The current standards require federal forms that ask participants their identities to inquire about race and ethnicity through two separate questions. That’s why on census forms, for example, before you see the race question, there’s a question about Hispanic or Latino identity, which the U.S. government considers to be an ethnicity that can be of any race.

But for the 2020 census, close to 44% of Latinos either did not answer the race question at all or checked off only the box for the mysterious catchall category “Some other race,” according to data the Census Bureau released last month.

“They provide really important insights to what we’ve seen in our research over the decade — that Hispanics continued to find great difficulty with answering the separate questions on ethnicity and on race,” Nicholas Jones, director of race and ethnic research and outreach in the bureau’s Population Division, says about the data, the release of which the bureau moved up to help inform discussions about OMB’s standards.

The rise of “Some other race” — which is legally required on the census by Congress and is now the second-largest racial category in the U.S. after white — helped drive earlier research by the bureau into alternative ways of asking about race and ethnicity.

Combining those two topics into one question, while allowing people to check as many boxes as they want, is likely to reduce confusion and the share of Latinos who mark “Some other race,” bureau research from 2015 suggests.

And that has led an OMB working group to propose making a single combined question the new required way of collecting self-reported racial and ethnic data.

How would a combined question likely change how many people identify as Asian, Black or Pacific Islander?

The bureau’s research involved comparing how people could respond to a combined question vs. separate questions.

Its testing in 2015 – along with similar testing in 2010 and 2016 – found no statistically significant differences in the shares of participants who reported identifying as Asian, Black or Pacific Islander. (There are conflicting findings about the potential impact on the percentage of people reporting as American Indian or Alaska Native.)

But Howard Hogan, a former chief demographer at the bureau who retired from the agency in 2018, contends that research is inconclusive on the potential effects a combined question could have on those groups, particularly on the Black population.

“We don’t know for sure. It’s possible that it would have no effect or even increase. But it’s also equally possible, and I believe slightly more likely, that it would reduce,” Hogan says about a combined question’s impact on the share of people identifying as Black, adding that not all of the bureau’s experiments were designed to test how people may respond to a combined question when it’s asked by a census worker in person, which is how many people of color have participated in the count rather than filling out a form on their own.

The bureau was able to do a month of in-person interviewing for its testing in 2016, and it found no statistically meaningful differences in the shares of people identifying as Asian, Black or Pacific Islander.

Despite the limitations of the agency’s research, the bureau’s officials continue to stand behind their recommendation that a combined question would be the “optimal” way of asking about a person’s race and ethnicity.

“We’re confident in the sampling methodology as well as the consistent results that we’ve seen across three, large national tests,” says Sarah Konya, chief of the bureau’s census testing and implementation branch.

There are concerns about how a combined question could affect racial data about Latinos

Major civil rights organizations focused on census and data issues have also voiced their support for a combined question.

But a campaign called “Latino Is Not A Race,” which is led by a group of researchers who are part of the afrolatin@ forum, has raised concerns that a combined question would allow some Latinos to answer the question by only checking a box for “Hispanic or Latino.”

“The idea that there are some Latinos who are just Latino is contributing to the myth that Latinos are exempt from racialization. That’s not true. Our history has never been that. If you go back to any country in Latin America, you will see a racial hierarchy where whites were on top, brown-skinned people were somewhere in the middle, and Black people and people racialized as Indigenous have been on the bottom,” says Nancy López, a sociology professor who directs the University of New Mexico’s Institute for the Study of “Race” and Social Justice and is calling for research into an additional racial category that could be meaningful to Latinos who are racialized as “Brown.”

The OMB working group has said it’s looking into doing more testing of the combined question’s effects by this August, and outside advisers to the bureau on its Census Scientific Advisory Committee have recommended additional tests and focus groups on specifically how Latinos would respond to this race-ethnicity question format.

Any follow-up research is running up against a summer 2024 deadline that OMB has set for its review of the standards in order to enact changes before the end of President Biden’s first term and in time for them to be incorporated into 2030 census preparations, which are already underway.

In the meantime, both López and the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund are calling for the standards to clearly define the difference between the concepts of race and ethnicity, which the OMB working group acknowledges many people understand to be similar or the same.

If there’s no combined question, there may be no new “Middle Eastern or North African” checkbox

Entangled within the discussion about the combined-question proposal is the possibility of a new checkbox for “Middle Eastern or North African” — a category that the OMB working group has proposed to no longer classify as white under the federal standards.

Many people in the U.S. with origins in Lebanon, Iran, Egypt and other countries in the Middle East or North Africa do not identify as white people, and advocates for Arab Americans and other MENA groups have spent decades pushing for a checkbox of their own on the census and other forms.

Including a “Middle Eastern or North African” checkbox would likely reduce the share of participants who mark “White” or “Some other race,” while increasing the shares marking “Black” or “Hispanic or Latino,” the Census Bureau’s 2015 research suggests.

But if OMB does not change the standards to allow for a combined question about race and ethnicity, it’s not clear whether a new checkbox for “Middle Eastern or North African” would be approved. The bureau’s research has not specifically tested treating that category on forms as an ethnicity, which has long been the preference for the Arab American Institute and other advocates for a MENA category.

Source: Changing how U.S. forms ask about race and ethnicity is complicated. Here’s why

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Swiss to erect 1st national memorial honoring Nazi victims

2023/04/28 Leave a comment

Over due, but test will be how it interprets Switzerland’s role in persecution of Jews and others during the Nazi regime:

Switzerland’s executive body agreed Wednesday to help pay for a national memorial to honor the six million Jews and other victims of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution, in what the leading Swiss Jewish group is calling the country’s first official monument of its kind.

The Federal Council, the seven-member executive branch, approved 2.5 million Swiss francs (about $2.8 million) for the memorial that will be erected at an unspecified “central location” in the capital, Bern, at a time when the number of Holocaust survivors has dwindled and antisemitism has risen again.

“The Federal Council considers it of great importance to keep alive the memory of the consequences of National Socialism, namely the Holocaust and the fate of the six million Jews and all other victims of the National Socialist regime,” a government statement said.

Switzerland and its capital, through the move, were “creating a strong symbol against genocide, antisemitism and racism, and for democracy, the rule of law, freedom and basic individual rights,” it said.

The statement did not mention whether the memorial would make any direct reference to any Swiss role in the persecution of people during the Nazi regime in Germany.

The Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities, an umbrella group, said Switzerland has about 60 small, private sites remembering the Holocaust and other crimes of the Nazis.

“There is, however, no official or national memorial for the numerous Swiss victims of persecution, for the thousands of refugees repelled at the borders or deported, but also for the many courageous helpers in this country,” it said, noting that the memorial would be created to honor them all.

The group says recent studies have shown that a “sizeable number” of Swiss citizens were victims of the Nazi regime, “persecuted because they were, for example, Jews, socialists, Sinti or Roma.” Both Sinti and Roma are peoples who live predominantly in eastern Europe.

It noted that thousands of people flocked toward Swiss borders during World War II seeking protection, only to be “repelled and, in many cases, sent back to certain death.”

Switzerland has long grappled with its ties to Nazi Germany — not least through a call for national introspection on the issue from its first Jewish and woman president, Ruth Dreifuss, in 1999.

The country was neutral during WWII, but a government-appointed panel in 1997 found Switzerland had taken part in over three-fourths of worldwide gold transactions by Nazi Germany’s Reichsbank — both as buyer and intermediary.

Source: Swiss to erect 1st national memorial honoring Nazi victims

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust Tagged with ,

Les baby-boomers du Québec ne sont pas «pure laine» à 95%

2023/04/26 Leave a comment

Of note:

Selon M. Charles Gaudreault, ingénieur chez H2O Innovation, il faudrait s’attendre à un effondrement de la population québécoise d’« origine ethnique française » allant jusqu’à 45 % en 2050. Préoccupé par l’impact de l’immigration sur les populations des pays d’accueil comme le Canada et ses provinces, il n’a élaboré qu’un seul scénario pour couvrir huit décennies dans la revue Nations and Nationalism.

Ses inspirations lui viennent d’abord du Britannique David Coleman, pour qui « la population britannique blanche devrait tomber à moins de 56 % de la population du Royaume-Uni en 2056 ». Elles proviennent aussi des Américains James Smith et Barry Edmonston, qui ont prévu que la population blanche des États-Unis — à l’exclusion des Hispaniques — ne compterait plus que pour 51 % en 2050.
 
Considérant à tort que le recensement de 1971 offre les données les plus sûres sur l’origine ethnique, M. Gaudreault a effectué sa projection à partir d’un Québec dénombrant 6 millions d’habitants. À cette époque, les Québécois d’origine ethnique française comptaient pour 79 % de la population. Ne restent alors que 21 % pour englober toutes les autres origines, notamment les Premières Nations, les Britanniques, les communautés italiennes et grecques.

Pour justifier son choix, Gaudreault se base sur deux sources dont il a pris connaissance de manière distraite. D’une part, il prétend devoir faire un retour à « la démographie ethnique » après que « les démographes se [sont] tournés vers la démographie linguistique ». D’autre part, il s’appuie sur une étude généalogique d’un groupe de chercheurs sous la direction d’Hélène Vézina.

Il est faux d’affirmer qu’une « démographie ethnique » a déjà existé. S’il y a eu jadis rapprochement entre l’origine ethnique et la langue maternelle, c’était par intérêt pour cette dernière. Richard Arès n’a-t-il pas fait remarquer que « plus on va vers l’ouest, plus les chances du français s’effritent » chez les Canadiens français ?

Ensuite, affirmer « que les ancêtres des baby-boomers étaient à 95 % d’origine française », c’est confondre l’origine ethnique des personnes recensées en 1971 avec 2000 généalogies « contenant plus de cinq millions de mentions d’ancêtres », dont la plupart sont arrivés au XVIIe siècle, prenant ainsi une avance jugée « insurmontable ».

M. Gaudreault a ventilé ses résultats en trois classes étanches, plutôt que de les rendre perméables les unes aux autres, comme chez les démographes. Il y a d’abord les Canadiens français (Ethnic French Canadians). Ensuite, les Autochtones, les Britanniques et tous les autres groupes ethniques recensés en 1971 sont identifiés sous l’appellation Non French Canadians. Enfin, tous les immigrants arrivés depuis 1971, leurs enfants et leurs descendants forment une classe à part (Immigrants and Descendants – IAD).

Notons que le troisième groupe (IAD) réunit tous les immigrants originaires de pays francophones (France, Sénégal, Vietnam, Haïti, etc.) ainsi que tous les enfants que la loi 101 conduit, depuis 1977, dans nos écoles françaises ! Partant donc de zéro en 1971, les effectifs de ce groupe sont les seuls à augmenter sous l’effet de l’immigration. Les deux premiers groupes ne peuvent qu’être marginalisés avec le temps.

Le talon d’Achille : la rétroprojection

La partie rétrospective appartenant déjà à l’histoire, nous avons évalué les résultats de M. Gaudreault pour le groupe IAD à partir des faits démographiques observés entre 1971 et 2001.

Charles Gaudreault affirme que « la sous-population des IAD affiche une augmentation constante, de 0,8 million en 2000, à 2 millions en 2020, à 3 millions en 2035, puis à 4,1 millions en 2050 ». Cette suite de résultats dessine une équation mathématique qui ne tient pas compte des fluctuations de l’immigration. Au départ, il y a une sous-estimation de 29 % (1971-1976), suivie d’une surestimation de 24 % (1977-1988), et ainsi de suite.

Au recensement de 2001, on a dénombré au Québec 510 100 personnes immigrées arrivées durant les trois dernières décennies du XXe siècle. Parmi ces personnes, on comptait 150 800 femmes en âge d’avoir des enfants en 2001. Tous calculs faits, parmi ces Québécois recensés en 2001, nous avons estimé que 118 500 personnes âgées de 30 ans ou moins étaient issues des immigrantes de cette époque.

Selon nos calculs, la somme des immigrés de la période 1971-2001 et de leurs descendants n’est que de 617 000 personnes au lieu des 860 000 obtenues selon la projection de Charles Gaudreault. Force est de reconnaître qu’il y a surestimation de 243 000 personnes du groupe IAD. En pourcentage, cette surestimation est très importante : 39,5 % !

La partie rétroactive de la projection de Charles Gaudreault conduit à une proportion d’Ethnic French Canadians de 64,5 % en 2014. Puisque nos calculs donnent une proportion de 71,2 % pour une sous-estimation de près de 7 points, le maintien des mêmes hypothèses jusqu’en 2050 ne peut que produire, après 35 ans, des résultats sans commune mesure avec les données historiques probantes.

Source: Les baby-boomers du Québec ne sont pas «pure laine» à 95%

Filed under Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Islamophobia widespread in Canada, early findings of Senate committee study indicate

2023/04/25 Leave a comment

Of note:

Islamophobia and violence against Muslims is widespread and deeply entrenched in Canadian society, early findings from a Senate committee studying the issue indicate.

Muslim women who wear hijabs – Black Muslim women in particular – are the most vulnerable, and confronting Islamophobia in a variety of public spheres is difficult, the committee on human rights has found.

“Canada has a problem,” committee chair Sen. Salma Ataullahjan said in a phone interview with The Canadian Press.

“We are hearing of intergenerational trauma because young kids are witnessing this. Muslims are speaking out because there’s so many attacks happening and they’re so violent.”

The problem is worse than current statistics suggest, Ataullahjan said.

Many Muslims across Canada live with constant fear of being targeted, especially if they have experienced an Islamophobic attack, witnessed one or lost a loved one to violence, the committee found.

“Some of these women were afraid to leave their homes and it became difficult for them to take their children to school. Many were spat on,” Ataullahjan said. ” Muslims have to look over their shoulder constantly.”

Last month, figures released by Statistics Canada indicated police-reported hate crimes targeting Muslims increased by 71 per cent from 2020 to 2021. The rate of the crimes was eight incidents per 100,000 members of the Muslim population, based on census figures.

The Senate committee’s work began in June 2021, not long after four members of a Muslim family died after being run over by a pickup truck while out for an evening walk in London, Ont. A man is facing terror-related murder charges in their deaths.

The committee’s senators, analysts, translators and other staff travelled to Vancouver, Edmonton, Quebec, and across the Greater Toronto Area to speak with Canadians who attend mosques, Muslims who were victims of attacks, teachers, doctors and security officials, among others.

The findings from those conversations are now being put together in a report, which the committee began drafting this week, Ataullahjan said.

The final version of the report – set to be published in July – is expected to include recommendations on what can be done to combat Islamophobia and how government can better support victims of attacks, she said.

Among the committee’s findings is an observation that attacks against Muslims often appear to happen out on the streets and appear to be more violent than those targeting other religious groups, Ataullahjan said.

Analysts and experts interviewed by the Senate committee said the rise of far-right hate groups and anti-Muslim groups are among the factors driving attacks against Muslims, Ataullahjan said.

The committee looked at the cases of Black Muslim women in Edmonton who were violently assaulted in recent years.

“Some of them sat in front of us and everyone was getting teary-eyed because it’s not easy to tell your story especially where you’ve been hurt,” she said.

The 2017 shooting at a Quebec mosque when a gunman opened fire, killing six worshippers and injuring several others, is another example of violent Islamophobia, she said.

The Senate committee’s report will also address recent violence against Muslims, including an alleged assault outside a Markham, Ont., mosque where witnesses told police a man tore up a Qur’an, yelled racial slurs, and tried to ram a car into congregants.

The committee will also detail day-to-day aggression against Muslim Canadians, including accounts from hijab-wearing girls in schools who don’t feel comfortable reporting instances of Islamophobia to police, Ataullahjan said.

The National Council of Canadian Muslims said the initial findings align with what it has been observing and trying to inform government leaders about for years.

“We’re happy that this is being done,” said spokesman Steven Zhou. “It’s something that everyone everywhere needs to study up on. It’s a worsening problem.”

The council gets calls every day from Muslims across Canada detailing instances of Islamophobia, Zhou said, underscoring the need for action.

“People don’t like to report these things,” he said. “It takes a lot out of them to actually go to courts or talk to the police who might not understand exactly what they’ve gone through.”

Zhou said he expects the committee will make recommendations similar to suggestions the council has already put forward, including changes to hate crime legislation, creating policies that would prevent hate groups from gathering near places of worship, and legislation to deal with online hate.

The National Council of Muslim Canadians also hopes the report will help Canadians familiarize themselves with the Muslim community.

“We want to address hate,” he said. “But also it’s about building bridges. For people to learn about Islam, for people to learn about what this religion is actually about, how the community works.”

Source: Islamophobia widespread in Canada, early findings of Senate committee study indicate

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

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