City apologizes, seeks to rectify job loss after ‘clean-shave’ policy under fire by Sikh advocacy group

2022/07/07 Leave a comment

Reasonable accommodation in action with “under-mask beard covers”:

First came the Tuesday afternoon phone call and apology from Toronto Mayor John Tory. Now, Birkawal Singh Anand wants his job back.

Anand was one of more than 100 Sikh guards laid off from the security companies contracted to staff City-operated shelters and respite sites after the guards refused to follow a City mandate requiring they be clean-shaven in order for a tight-fitting N95 mask be worn in the event of a COVID-19 outbreak.

On Tuesday, Toronto issued a press release apologizing and saying that security guards should be rehired and paid for lost wages. “City of Toronto apologizes to the World Sikh Organization of Canada (WSO) for any delay in addressing this issue and ensuring security contractors were offering religious accommodations.”

The city said it was providing the update to “ensure security contractors accommodate all employees following a complaint from the World Sikh Organization of Canada.”

“It shouldn’t have taken a public outcry to make this change but I still appreciate that it is happening,” Anand said Tuesday night.

“The city did their part, now it’s up to the company to do theirs.”

Demanding that a Sikh shave his beard is like asking a non-Sikh to “peel off their skin,” Anand told the Star Monday.

“I told them, I belong to the Sikh community, shaving is not an option for me.”

The job losses began in April, the new release said. City staff had been inspecting work sites and deducting billable hours from contracted security companies for having employees who were not clean shaven.

The WSO complained about the layoffs in June, saying security service providers did not offer appropriate accommodation to their employees who have facial hair for religious reasons. The complaint was sent to city staff to resolve, sources said. Now, Toronto says it will allow the guards to wear “under-mask beard covers” as a “reasonable accommodation.”

That covering uses a “tight-fitting mask over a beard that covers the chin and cheeks, and ties in a knot at the top of the head,” the city’s release said.

“An N95 mask is then worn over the cover. The technique, also known as the Singh Thattha Method, is used by many Sikh people in the medical community and has been found to be highly effective in respirator fit testing.”

Before his 4 p.m. phone call to Anand, the release said Tory called the WSO to say the under-masking practice will go into effect “immediately.”

“This option was proposed by the World Sikh Organization of Canada and the City is grateful for this information. The City is also committed to followup meetings with the organization,” the release said.

Balpreet Singh Boparai, the lawyer for the WSO, said the organization received a call on Tuesday from Tory.

“He confirmed that the security guards could return to their jobs and the City would work with the security contractors to make it possible,” Boparai said.

The job losses may not be so easily resolved, he added.

“We are still waiting for the security contractors to get this message. A number of Sikh security guards had their shifts cancelled and they have not been invited to return to their positions.”

Source: City apologizes, seeks to rectify job loss after ‘clean-shave’ policy under fire by Sikh advocacy group

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Ali-Khan: Finding the American Dream in Canada

2022/07/06 Leave a comment

Of note, getting some coverage in major US media:

This is a festive period for Muslims around the world. One Eid, or Muslim celebration, has just passed, and another is coming up in July. I’ve left strings of starry lights in the tall windows of our family room, where they can be seen twinkling from the street in our neighborhood outside of Toronto. There’s a shadowbox-like window by the front door, where I’d hung a colorful garland of star ornaments at the start of Ramadan in April.

I wasn’t always willing to mark my family publicly as Muslim. In fact, we were three years in to becoming Canadian when I first realized that I could put up lights for our celebrations without any of the trepidation I’d felt in my hometown in Pennsylvania. There is a huge contrast between being Muslim in Canada and being Muslim in America today and it has a lot to do with Canada’s decision to tell the truth about its history, while America buries its own.
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We left America in 2017, eight months into Donald Trump’s term in office. That was not a coincidence. There was something malignant about the leap from ordinary, private Islamophobia to a state sponsored anti-Muslim agenda that made leaving feel urgent, for me and for my husband, but especially for our children. We worried for their physical safety, but also for the sense of themselves they were developing at four and six years old.

Recent studies and surveys by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) tell us our concerns were justified. ISPU has been a boon to American Muslims, who had previously lacked good data about themselves, helping us see more clearly how we’re faring. In 2020, half of all Muslim parents reported having a school aged child who experienced bullying related to their religious identity in the previous year. In almost a third of those cases, the perpetrator was a teacher or school official. In 2021, Muslims reported experiencing institutional discrimination at levels much higher than other religious groups, for example 25% of Muslims vs. 5% among those of other religious affiliations reported religious discrimination while receiving health care. At the airport, those figures are 44% for Muslims contrasted with 5% of the general public, applying for jobs, it’s 33% for Muslims and 8% for the general public. It’s increasingly clear that the appropriate comparison for the rate at which American Muslims are experiencing discrimination is not with other religious groups, but other racialized groups. It is also increasingly clear that anti-Muslim attitudes in America are durable, as attitudes towards other racialized groups have also been.

All of the myriad ways in which American Muslims experience anti-Muslim bias, threats, and discrimination appear to be having serious impacts on our mental health. A study published in JAMA Psychiatry in 2021 found that American Muslims are now twice as likely to have attempted suicide than Americans of other religious affiliations. It attributes this spike to religious discrimination and a reluctance among American Muslims to seek mental health treatment.

I first noticed the uptick in these trends after 9/11 and then again in 2015, when my kindergarten-aged daughter was told not to say she was Muslim at school. The teacher who told her this was Muslim herself, the only other Muslim at the school in any capacity. While it was likely the instruction was meant to be protective, it was nonetheless worrying. Unwilling to navigate a landscape in which it was dangerous for my six-year-old to be openly Muslim at school and seeing that this sentiment was increasingly normative in our nation’s culture, we began to plan our departure.

It’s not that Canada is utopian for Muslims. Even non-Canadians likely remember the Quebec City mosque shooting of 2017, in which 6 men were killed and 5 others injured by a 27-year-old named Alexandre Bissonnette. The number of anti-Muslim hate crimes in Quebec tripled that year.

There was another mosque shooting just last week in Toronto. In 2019, Quebec passed Bill 21, banning certain public workers from wearing visibly religious symbols, widely understood as an attempt to prevent Muslim women in such positions from wearing hijab, though also affecting those who wear turbans, for example, or kippas.

Nor is Canada utopian for other racialized groups. Recent surveys and reports all suggest that Black and Indigenous Canadians continue to experience widespread discrimination in jobs, education, and social services, health disparities, and disproportionate rates of incarceration and violence. Like America, Canada has a legacy of Black enslavement and Indigenous genocide, as well as a long history of residential schools and police brutality. Like America, Canada interned ethnically Japanese people during World War II. When I was a child visiting cousins in Toronto, the epithet “Paki,” for South Asians, was ubiquitous. These aspects of Canadian history have driven modern racist attitudes and continuing disparities in wealth, land ownership, and political power.

So why move our children here? Why not make our stand where we have a large, layered community of friends and family? There is a specific element of Canadian governance that made us hopeful that our American dreams might be better realized in Canada. If you go to Canada’s Department of Justice website today, you’ll find this remarkable statement: “The Government recognizes that Indigenous self-government and laws are critical to Canada’s future, and that Indigenous perspectives and rights must be incorporated in all aspects of this relationship. In doing so, we will continue the process of decolonization and hasten the end of its legacy wherever it remains in our laws and policies.”

The Canadian government’s acknowledgement of itself as a colonial project that must be actively undone is a dramatic contrast to political discourse in America today. Americans rarely acknowledge the essential thefts of land and labor from Native and Black people that have made America possible. Certainly, America’s government has never articulated an intention to decolonize. Americans are taught that their country has already had its revolution, freeing its people from colonial domination.

Years ago, in preschool, my children brought home a flyer about how to make an apology. The first step, the flyer said, is to acknowledge wrongdoing. With its history of slavery and colonial genocide, Americans yet find this step so controversial that, today, we cannot even agree to teach our own history in public schools. In the years since my family moved to Canada, we find that while imperfect, this nation’s fundamental intention towards justice does, in fact, make it a better place for our children to live. Their elementary school curriculum, for example, includes a discussion of what it means to be a settler on land that was promised to First Nations peoples in treaties. It challenges our children to reckon with what human rights for all of us, newcomers from many waves of immigration, descendants of those trafficked in slavery, and Indigenous peoples, might look like.

The children know whose traditional land they live and study on. They think about where the descendants of those people are, and what debt they might owe to them. In the process they are developing the capacity to navigate competing interests, diverse identities, and unfamiliar traditions. They are building the tools for a better future through honest study of their nation’s past. They recognize that this model secures space for them, too. Recently, their teachers applied the same principles to create a meditation space in the gym for fasting children to use over lunch during Ramadan.

I don’t fully understand why Canada has chosen to confront its colonial legacy while America continues to minimize and deny its own. I continue to hope that America will eventually unite around a plain telling of its own history in choosing a path forward. It is, after all, the only path that is wide enough for us all.

Source: Finding the American Dream in Canada

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Paré: Le mot en n et les deux solitudes

2022/07/06 Leave a comment

Contrast:

Une fracture se dessine clairement entre le Québec et le reste du Canada à la suite d’un controversé jugement du Conseil de la radiodiffusion et des télécommunications (CRTC), qui somme CBC/Radio-Canada de présenter des excuses pour une chronique où a été cité à quatre reprises le titre du livre de Pierre Vallières, Nègres blancs d’Amérique.

En 2020, la journaliste vedette de CBC Wendy Mesley avait été suspendue pour avoir nommé le titre complet du même livre, non pas en ondes dans ce cas-ci, mais bien lors d’une réunion de production. Elle s’en est excusée, mais la tourmente ne s’est jamais estompée ; tombée en disgrâce, Wendy Mesley a fini par annoncer sa retraite l’an dernier.

Rien de tel au Québec, malgré le blâme du CRTC. Personne n’a publiquement exigé la tête de l’animatrice Annie Desrochers et du chroniqueur Simon Jodoin pour avoir prononcé en ondes le mot en n dans un échange en août 2020 où il était question de la saga autour de la professeure Verushka Lieutenant-Duval à l’Université d’Ottawa. Au contraire, les lettres ouvertes s’accumulent depuis la décision du CRTC pour implorer CBC/Radio-Canada de ne pas s’excuser et de plutôt porter la cause en appel.

« Wendy Mesley n’a ni plus ni moins été congédiée de CBC. Et à l’époque, il n’y a pas beaucoup de monde au Canada anglais qui s’en était scandalisé. Il y a eu une sorte d’acquiescement. Maintenant que cette histoire se produit au Québec, on peut très bien voir les deux solitudes », observe Marc-François Bernier, professeur au Département de communication de l’Université d’Ottawa.

Dans cette université bilingue, on a constaté le même clivage entre anglophones et francophones lors de l’affaire Lieutenant-Duval, ajoute-t-il. Rappelons que Verushka Lieutenant-Duval, qui y enseignait l’histoire de l’art, avait été sanctionnée pour avoir mentionné le mot en n. S’en était suivi un long battage médiatique, principalement au Québec, où plusieurs avaient exprimé des craintes pour la liberté universitaire. Dans la foulée, 34 professeurs de l’Université d’Ottawa, pour la plupart francophones, avaient publié une lettre ouverte pour s’insurger du sort réservé à Verushka Lieutenant-Duval.

« Plusieurs professeurs anglophones étaient d’accord avec nous, mais c’est beaucoup plus difficile pour eux de parler, surtout dans les départements de sciences humaines. Ceux qui veulent dénoncer ce genre de censure ont peur, car ils peuvent être la cible d’intimidation », avance Marc-François Bernier.

Réalités parallèles

Cette polarisation semble teinter aussi la manière dont a été traitée la récente décision du CRTC dans les médias. Au Québec, l’affaire fait grand bruit depuis plusieurs jours. La plupart des chroniques et des éditoriaux dénoncent avec vigueur le jugement du CRTC.

Mais le portrait est tout autre au Canada anglais, où l’affaire n’a pas donné lieu à une mobilisation extraordinaire de la classe médiatique au nom de la liberté d’expression. Dans les rares articles qui portent sur le sujet, le nom du livre de Pierre Vallières n’est jamais retranscrit dans son intégralité. Qui plus est, CBC a publié le jour même de la décision du CRTC une entrevue avec Ricardo Lamour, l’artiste montréalais à l’origine de la plainte, qui a par ailleurs été très peu cité jusqu’ici dans les médias québécois.

« Le N word a une lourde connotation en anglais, que le mot français n’a pas […]. Avec la traduction, il y a des nuances qui se perdent, et je pense que ce sont ces nuances qui ont échappéau CRTC », conclut Guy Gendron, ancien ombudsman de Radio-Canada.

Existe-t-il le même fossé culturel au sein de la haute direction de CBC/Radio-Canada, où se côtoient francophones et anglophones ? Chose certaine, la réaction officielle du diffuseur public se fait attendre depuis plusieurs jours. La société d’État réitère « prendre le temps nécessaire pour étudier la décision rendue par le CRTC », en insistant sur la « complexité de la question ».

Source: Le mot en n et les deux solitudes

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Quebec and the rest of French-speaking Canada are at a crossroads

2022/07/06 Leave a comment

Interesting contrast on how Francophones outside Quebec are embracing Francophone immigration and multiculturalism:

A rebelle and rêveur, my father was a young audacieux, venturing from Sudbury, Ont., the Nickel City where he had come of age, off to the Université Laval in pursuit of graduate studies in 1978.

But after he arrived in la ville de Québec (a wonderful city, he insists), he was excluded by his Québécois peers — “from Ontario,” he had lived among les anglais. Among the Anglos. 

It did not matter that he was born and raised in la belle province, that he was French Canadian and Catholic, or that he spoke eloquent French and then-incomprehensible English. He was, as René Lévesque said in 1968, a dead duck. A “cadavre encore chaud,” the still-warm corpse of a Francophone outside Quebec. A spectre that (falsely) reminded this société distincte of what would happen if it did not seek refuge from the empire and its dominion, which had worked to uproot the fait françaisin Canada over centuries. 

A rebelle and rêveur, my father was a young audacieux, venturing from Sudbury, Ont., the Nickel City where he had come of age, off to the Université Laval in pursuit of graduate studies in 1978.

But after he arrived in la ville de Québec (a wonderful city, he insists), he was excluded by his Québécois peers — “from Ontario,” he had lived among les anglais. Among the Anglos. 

It did not matter that he was born and raised in la belle province, that he was French Canadian and Catholic, or that he spoke eloquent French and then-incomprehensible English. He was, as René Lévesque said in 1968, a dead duck. A “cadavre encore chaud,” the still-warm corpse of a Francophone outside Quebec. A spectre that (falsely) reminded this société distincte of what would happen if it did not seek refuge from the empire and its dominion, which had worked to uproot the fait français in Canada over centuries. 

It was, said my father years later, une mentalité de paroisse — a parish mentality. One that excludes, prompting the question: who has a right to be Québécois? Who has a right to be Franco-Canadian? Who has a right to belong? 

It’s a question that Francophone communities across Canada, at a crossroads in the expression of our identities, are contemplating with vastly different outcomes. We, Quebec and the rest of French-speaking Canada, are following divergent paths as we define what we aspire to be.

On the eve of la Fête Nationale last month, celebrated on June 24 under the banner of “our language of a thousand accents,” Quebec Premier François Legault threw oil on the traditional feu de joie, or bonfire. “It’s important that we don’t put all cultures on the same level; that’s why we oppose multiculturalism,” said Legault. “We prefer to concentrate on what we call interculturalism, where we have one culture, the Quebec culture.”

Quebec’s notion of predatory multiculturalism intertwines with its secularism law (which impacts Muslim women in particular) as well as its problematic new language law (a notable transgression on truth and reconciliation with Indigenous nations). Coupled with obstinate denials of the existence of systemic racism in the terrible aftermath of Joyce Echaquan’s death, this all conspires to put the province on a path to a narrow and exclusionary definition of who is truly Québécois. 

By contrast, Franco-Canadians are choosing a different path — one that rejects the notion of our provincial and national identities as being pure laine, instead connecting us back to a mosaic that is multiracial, multifaith, multilingual and multicultural. Our communities and institutions have recognized that, despite our unbreakable spirit, our declining demographic dividend may not sustain the French language over generations to come. Francophone immigration can ensure that the French language continues to thrive in Canada, opening us to an incredible “francophone galaxy.”

Despite my determined idealism, our communities in Franco-Canada are far from utopian. In my hometown of Sudbury, a “welcoming francophone community,” advocates are calling out systemic barriers to employment for francophone immigrants and the need for a northern anti-racism strategy in pursuit of equity for immigrants and First Nations, Inuit and Métis nations. We Franco-Ontarians have our work cut out for us.

And so, who belongs? 

After over 50 years in northern Ontario, my father continues to speak eloquent French and still-incomprehensible English. The jeune audacieux would grow to become a leader of la Franco-Ontarie, among the youth involved in the creation of the beloved Franco-Ontarian flag. 

He wasn’t from Sudbury, from the north, or even from Ontario. Yet he became Franco-Ontarian. On ne naît pas Franco-Ontarien — on le devient. You aren’t born Franco-Ontarian — you become one.

As Franco-Canadians, we benefit immensely from multiculturalism. Our Francophonie is ripe with a thousand accents, persuading us that there is much to be gained in global citizenship — and as a mosaic of global sociétés distinctes in our own right.

Isabelle Bourgeault-Tassé is a Franco-Ontarian writer.

Source: Quebec and the rest of French-speaking Canada are at a crossroads

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Prominent Radio-Canada personalities urge broadcaster to fight CRTC N-word decision

2022/07/06 Leave a comment

Of course, there was bound to be a complaint. And equally, of course there would be a counter complaint. But context matters in the use of the N word after all Vallières used it to drive home his arguments of francophone Quebecers being second class citizens prior to the Revolution tranquille, just as the University of Ottawa Professor Verushka Lieutenant-Duval looked at how the word has been reclaimed by Blacks:

Black Montrealer who filed a complaint against Radio-Canada over the on-air use of the N-word says he’s disappointed but not surprised by the pushback against a recent CRTC decision ordering the public broadcaster to apologize.

Ricardo Lamour, a social worker and artist, filed the complaint with the broadcasting and telecommunications regulator after hearing a journalist and a commentator repeat the offensive word several times on air in 2020.

Some 50 Radio-Canada personalities said in an open letter published Monday in La Presse that last week’s CRTC decision in Lamour’s favour threatens journalistic freedom and independence and “opens the door to the dangers of censorship and self-censorship.”

“Also, if we are alarmed, it’s not only for us, at Radio-Canada, but for all communications companies regulated by the CRTC,” wrote the signatories, which included prominent news anchors, such as Céline Galipeau and Patrice Roy, and Guy A. Lepage, host of the talk show “Tout le monde en parle.”

Radio-Canada’s former ombudsman, a Quebec cabinet minister and groups representing journalists have also denounced the decision as a blow to freedom of expression or freedom of the press.

When asked if he was surprised by the backlash, Lamour quoted American author and activist James Baldwin, who wrote, “The power of the white world is threatened whenever a Black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.” Lamour noted that most francophone Quebec media figures are white and he questioned how many of the letter’s signatories are Black.

He said he was motivated to file a complaint two years ago after hearing two on-air radio personalities repeatedly use the full name of a book that has the N-word in the title, “without adequate warning and contextual discussion.”

Lamour had been waiting to go on air to discuss his work mentoring Black youth, and heard the comments in the Radio-Canada studio through a pair of headphones. He said he was troubled by the “careless and callous” use of the word.

“I found it offensive and upsetting,” he said.

He filed a complaint with the CRTC after first being told by Radio-Canada’s ombudsman that the use of the word in that specific context — quoting a book title — did not contravene the public broadcaster’s journalistic standards and practices.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission sided with Lamour. While it recognized that the word was not used in a discriminatory manner, it found the public broadcaster nevertheless violated Canadian broadcasting policy objectives and values.

Radio-Canada did not do enough to mitigate the effect the word could have on its audience, “particularly in the current social context and given its national public broadcaster status,” the CRTC decision read.

In addition to a written apology to the complainant, the broadcaster must also put in place internal measures and programming to ensure that it better addresses similar issues in the future, the CRTC said.

Signatories of the open letter in La Presse acknowledged that the N-word is “loaded,” but they said it is used rarely on air and only in a factual context “that is neither offensive, insulting or dehumanizing, which respects the journalistic standards and practices of Radio-Canada but also the intelligence of our institution and its employees.”

The province’s professional journalists association, the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec, denounced the decision as a “dangerous precedent that imposes upon media a censorship that is as exaggerated as it is unjustified.” Quebec’s culture minister also expressed concern over the decision, tweeting that it was a serious violation of freedom of expression.

Lamour says he sees the backlash against the N-word decision partly as a fight “to assert some rights to not be accountable” by broadcasters who are resistant to making the necessary changes to better reflect an evolving society.

“We’re not seeing some form of introspection here; we’re seeing offensive things,” he said.

Instead of fighting, he said, broadcasters should read the reasoning behind the decision and try to do better.

In an email, a spokesperson for Radio-Canada said the broadcaster was aware of the “wide range of opinions” on the CRTC decision.

“Radio-Canada acknowledges that use of the ‘’N-word’ is offensive; that’s why we have limited its use on our airwaves,” the statement read.

The broadcaster said it was still studying the decision and considering how it would respond.

Source: Prominent Radio-Canada personalities urge broadcaster to fight CRTC N-word decision

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QS permettrait les signes religieux « pour tout le monde »

2022/07/05 Leave a comment

Welcome position:

« On va permettre le port de signes religieux pour que tout le monde puisse travailler au Québec, peu importe ses croyances. On va ajouter des dispositions à la loi pour que la laïcité au Québec soit rassembleuse et cohérente », affirme le chef parlementaire de QS en entrevue avec La Presse.

À l’heure actuelle, la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État (« loi 21 »), que le gouvernement Legault a fait adopter sous bâillon en juin 2019, prévoit que les enseignants, les directeurs des écoles primaires et secondaires publiques, les agents de la paix, les procureurs de la Couronne, les juges de nomination québécoise ainsi que le président et les vice-présidents de l’Assemblée nationale ne peuvent porter de signes religieux dans l’exercice de leurs fonctions. Le Parti québécois (PQ) a appuyé la loi, mais le Parti libéral du Québec (PLQ) et QS ont voté contre.

« Un signe religieux est tout objet, notamment un vêtement, un symbole, un bijou, une parure, un accessoire ou un couvre-chef, qui est soit porté en lien avec une conviction ou une croyance religieuse ou qui est raisonnablement considéré comme référant à une appartenance religieuse », selon la définition du gouvernement du Québec.

De nouvelles balises

M. Nadeau-Dubois propose de modifier la loi pour y ajouter des balises « simples, claires et faciles à interpréter » afin d’encadrer le port de signes religieux, en conformité avec les dispositions prévues par la Charte québécoise des droits et libertés de la personne. Sous un gouvernement solidaire, il serait uniquement permis d’interdire le port d’un signe religieux à un employé de l’État pour des raisons de sécurité, promet-il, ou s’il l’empêche de bien faire son travail.

« Pour prendre un exemple très simple, une personne qui souhaite enseigner au Québec ne peut pas le faire pleinement et ne peut pas le faire convenablement si elle a un signe religieux qui couvre son visage. C’est un élément élémentaire et important. Même chose pour un policier qui interpelle quelqu’un dans la rue. Les citoyens s’attendent à pouvoir identifier l’agent qui les interpelle », explique le chef parlementaire de QS.

Ainsi, Québec solidaire appuie les parties du texte législatif en vigueur qui disent que « tout membre du personnel d’un organisme [public] doit exercer ses fonctions à visage découvert » lorsqu’il rend un service.

« Il faut en avoir le cœur net »

Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois propose également de demander à la Cour d’appel du Québec — le plus haut tribunal de la province – d’indiquer si les dispositions actuellement prévues par la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État respectent la Charte québécoise des droits et libertés de la personne. Cette charte a été adoptée à l’unanimité par l’Assemblée nationale en 1975 et ne relève pas du gouvernement fédéral.

« Il faut tourner la page sur ce débat-là. Il faut en avoir le cœur net. Il faut, une bonne fois pour toutes, savoir si interdire à une jeune femme d’enseigner parce qu’elle porte un foulard [comme l’a fait la Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ)] respecte notre Charte québécoise des droits et libertés de la personne », estime M. Nadeau-Dubois.

« Il y a en ce moment une contestation judiciaire et François Legault vient de recruter le rédacteur de la charte des valeurs pour faire partie de sa prochaine équipe gouvernementale », poursuit-il en faisant référence à l’ex-chroniqueur et ancien ténor souverainiste Bernard Drainville, qui se présente pour la CAQ dans la circonscription de Lévis.

« Une femme qui enseigne à l’école, si on voit bien son visage et qu’elle respecte les normes professionnelles de son emploi, il n’y a pas de raisons d’interdire qu’elle enseigne. […] Ce sont les mêmes critères pour tout le monde. Ce qu’on veut, c’est de revoir la loi 21 pour permettre de manière générale le port de signes religieux tout en affirmant des balises pour encadrer la question du visage couvert », dit-il.

Les groupes religieux visés

Dans son projet de réforme de la loi 21, Québec solidaire propose également de mettre fin au financement public des écoles religieuses et aux exemptions fiscales pour les organisations religieuses.

Face au premier ministre caquiste qui affirme que la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État définit une valeur québécoise, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois réplique qu’il ne comprend pas « le lien que fait François Legault entre la loi 21 et la fierté québécoise ».

« Des lois sur la laïcité, il y en a dans plusieurs pays. Ce qui me rend fier, c’est notre langue, notre culture, notre territoire, pas le fait qu’on encadre des signes religieux pour quelques employés de l’État », dit-il.

Source: QS permettrait les signes religieux « pour tout le monde » 

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UK: Universities to defy government pressure to ditch race equality group

2022/07/05 Leave a comment

Of note:

Universities in England have launched a fightback against government attacks on their autonomy, telling ministers they “crossed a line” by pressurising them to abandon a scheme designed to improve equality on campus.

In what may be a turning point in the so-called “culture wars” over free speech, Universities UK (UUK) took on the education minister Michelle Donelan after she warned them to reconsider membership of a race equality charter, run by the charity Advance HE.

The scheme – which counts the majority of Russell Group universities among its members – aims to identify barriers to success for black, Asian and minority ethnic students. But in a letter to vice-chancellors this week, Donelan claimed that membership of the charter was “in tension” with universities’ duties to uphold free speech.

In its letter of response on Thursday, Universities UK said: “An important line has been crossed with the letter appearing to direct universities to take a specific approach” on equalities.

In a later statement, UUK confirmed that it intended to ignore Donelan’s request and remain affiliated with Advance HE.

A spokesperson for UUK said: “Universities take their responsibilities to promote and protect free speech very seriously. We have yet to see any evidence of how this voluntary, non-prescriptive scheme works against this.

“The scheme is voluntary and provides a means through which universities can address racial inequality within the sector and we will continue our work with Advance HE to support this goal.”

The row comes as the higher education freedom of speech bill is being debated in the Lords, where it has come under fire from Conservative, Labour and cross-bench peers. It has been criticised for imposing a new free speech regulator with new powers to fine universities for failing to comply with free speech provisions.

Vice-chancellors said Donelan’s letter was a chilling forerunner of how a regulator could interfere with internal university affairs if the bill is passed in its current form, with one describing it as “an unambiguous attack on university autonomy”.

David Willetts, the Conservative peer and former universities minister, said: “I do wish to see protections for freedom of speech, but it’s very odd to protect freedom of speech at the same time as further intervention.

“I think one of the reasons why universities in Britain are so internationally respected is because of their autonomy. I don’t think it’s as much a line being crossed as a slippery slope that we are on, in which the autonomy of our universities is gradually eroded.”

The letter to Donelan, signed by Prof Steve West, vice-chancellor of the University of the West of England, reminded the minister that racism remained “a pervasive societal issue” that affected students from ethnic minority backgrounds.

But it added: “Universities, as autonomous institutions, must also remain free to decide how best to foster inclusivity and tackle societal issues such as racism which have a serious and detrimental impact on staff and students.”

The letter continued: “We do not believe that free speech and voluntary external assurance frameworks are at odds with each other – rather they can help to address power imbalances and ensure a more diverse range of voices are empowered to speak up.

“We understand from our members in England that a number will likely respond to you directly, both to restate their commitment to ensuring free speech and to highlight how external assurance schemes play an important role in tackling serious issues such as harassment and degree awarding gaps.”

While Donelan’s letter noted that universities were autonomous and free to join schemes such as the race equality charter, she went on to say they should “reflect carefully” on membership.

While Advance HE’s race equality charter was the only example mentioned by name, Donelan went on to say that “there are of course a number of other, similar, schemes, and this letter invites careful consideration in respect of all these”.

Advance HE also administers the Athena Swan charter that seeks to improve gender equality within higher education and research. Donelan has previously described the scheme as “at worst a dangerous initiative that undermines scholarship”.

“Bearing in mind the substantial sums invested by the taxpayer into higher education, I would ask you to consider whether membership of these schemes; the initiatives that flow from them; and the creation of new, highly paid, management roles in these areas truly represent good value for money for taxpayers or students,” Donelan said.

Criticising the higher education freedom bill when it was debated this week, Shami Chakrabarti, a Labour peer and a former director of Liberty, said: “How can it be a protection of academic freedom to give more and more power over independent institutions of scholarship to the government’s Office for Students and the new director for freedom of speech?”

Willetts said that the current bill was heavy-handed and questioned how the bill’s freedom of speech regulator could balance the government’s demands that some forms of legal speech, such as holocaust denial, would not be allowed on campus.

“They are expecting the regulator to be more restrictive than simple lawful, freedom of speech. We need to know exactly what things he or she is not going to protect despite them being lawful,” Willetts said.

Willetts said he hopes the government would make “significant” amendments to the bill, pointing out that universities could find themselves punished for suppressing some forms of speech at the same time as tech platforms were punished under the government’s new online safety bill for transmitting the same opinions.

Source: Universities to defy government pressure to ditch race equality group

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Dyer : Judeo-Christian America: Why scholars reject GOP’s use of ‘Judeo-Christian’

2022/07/04 Leave a comment

Interesting and informative read:

On the right, the phrase “Judeo-Christian” has become like a password: It’s a short, fast way to prove your conservative ilk.

“We believe that America’s destiny depends on upholding the Judeo-Christian values and principles of our nation’s founding,” said former President Donald Trump recently at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

“We know that this is a nation with a deep Judeo-Christian footing. We must defend it at every turn,” said Mike Pompeo at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February.

Explaining his decision to start the National Association of Christian Lawmakers in 2020, Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert remarked, “Our ultimate goal and intent is that we restore the Judeo-Christian foundations of our government that were intended from the very beginning.”

And, in Idaho in 2015, a group of Republican politicians cited the “Judeo-Christian bedrock of the founding of the United States” in their proposal to make the state formally Christian.

But experts say the phrase is problematic at best, with critics describing it as a sort-of “marketing campaign” that outstayed its welcome.

“The phrase is … a modern one arising from a contemporary political setting that elides a painful history between Jews and Christians in which there was a huge power differential,” said Malka Simkovich, Crown-Ryan chair of Jewish Studies and director of the Catholic-Jewish Studies Program at Catholic Theological Union.

She and others believe the term “Judeo-Christian” papers over the history of violent antisemitism that Jews faced in Christendom and collapses important theological differences between Judaism and Christianity, erasing Jews in the process.

“There isn’t such a thing as Judeo-Christian anything,” said Meredith J.C. Warren, a senior lecturer in Biblical and Religious Studies at the University of Sheffield.

Critics also say that the inclusion of “Judeo” gives a false sense of multiculturalism when the term actually serves to exclude Muslims, atheists and members of many other faiths. They’re hoping the phrase “Judeo-Christian” will soon be retired in favor of a more inclusive — and accurate — alternative.

What is the history of the term ‘Judeo-Christian’?

The origin of the phrase “Judeo-Christian” isn’t entirely settled: European scholars have noted that German theologians used the term in the early 1800s. Today, the term is sometimes used — problematically, Simkovich said — in reference to the “early followers of Jesus who lived in the Jewish community.”

In the American context, the term “Judeo-Christian” was part of “a redefinition of democracy that began in the ’30s in response to totalitarianism around the globe,” said K. Healan Gaston, author of “Imagining Judeo-Christian America: Religion, Secularism, and the Redefinition of Democracy” and a lecturer on American religious history and ethics at Harvard Divinity School.

In the wake of massive Catholic and Jewish immigration to what was then an overwhelmingly Protestant country, the phrase “Judeo-Christian” was also a response to anti-Catholic sentiment and antisemitism. It can be understood as an attempt to create tri-faith unity among the three religious groups that were, at the time, at the center of American life, Gaston said.

This unity was instrumental to the war effort and post-war nation building, becoming deeply linked to the American concept of democracy. The phrase became ubiquitous during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, though Eisenhower later backed away from the term privately when he realized how exclusionary it was, according to Gaston.

The term was handy during the Cold War as a way of differentiating America from our supposedly nonreligious, communist enemies, said Marc Zvi Brettler, a Jewish studies professor at Duke University and co-author of “The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently.”

“One of the times the term was really ascendant was as an anti-communist term,” Brettler said.

Some of that anti-communist residue lingers on the word today as the right often falsely depicts Democrats — a group that includes the majority of American Jews as well as Black Americans, one of the country’s most religious demographics — as godless, secular humanists at best and radical socialists at worst.

For the most part, from the 1930s to 1970s, it was liberals that used the term “Judeo-Christian,” said Gaston. But by the 1970s, the phrase began to gain currency with the right. And it took off in the 1980s with conservatives. Ronald Reagan included the term in his presidential platform, said Gaston, who explained that Reagan imprinted a “Judeo-Christian framework on top of deep-seated anti-communism and free market economics.”

After Reagan, Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority picked up the phrase and it came to be used in five subsequent Republican presidential platforms, Gaston said, but never on the Democratic side. It remains a shorthand for all of those ideas that Reagan loaded into the term, including free market capitalism, family values and other conservative ideals.

How do Jews feel about the phrase Judeo-Christian?

For some Jews, the inclusion suggested by the phrase “Judeo-Christian” has been comforting, said Gaston, adding that the Conservative movement has historically been somewhat more amenable to the term than the Reform and Orthodox movements.

But many American Jews have a complicated relationship with the term, said Brettler, a practicing Jew

While it’s “fine to talk about the commonalities between Judaism and Christianity,” he said that current usage of the term represents a “problematic construct that makes things much more hunky dory than they should be.”

The expression emphasizes “the similarities and almost entirely (denies) the differences,” between Christianity and Judaism, Brettler added.

There’s also a risk that people who embrace the phrase “Judeo-Christian” will deny the antisemitism experienced by early Jewish immigrants to the U.S.

Invoking the so-called “Judeo-Christian” foundations of the country, Brettler said, is “a type of fake nostalgia.”

Has the phrase caught on outside the U.S.?

The phrase “Judeo-Christian” — with an exclusionary meaning — has also caught on among the European right, particularly in France, according to Nadia Malinovich, author of “French and Jewish: Culture and Politics of Identity in Early Twentieth Century France” and a researcher affiliated with the Groupe Société Religions Laïcités at the French National Centre for Scientific Research.

“Jews have been re-centered as white societal insiders Europeans while Muslims are now cast as the primary others,” said Malinovich. The phrase, she added, is “being bandied about” as a cover for Christian nationalism

“Rather than saying ‘Christian civilization,’ it’s Judeo-Christian. … It’s a way of trying to cover up the fact that it’s just Christian by somehow getting the Jews involved ex-post facto,” she said.

Obliterating the theological differences and contemporary and historical tensions between Jews and Christians, Malinovich said, is, among other things, “disrespectful of the Jews who died in the Holocaust.”

Moving away from Judeo-Christian

The term “Judeo-Christian” omits the third Abrahamic faith — Islam — and erases its contributions to European history and, by extension, Western culture. The phrase ignores the fact that, historically, Jews lived with greater freedom and security in the Muslim world than they did in Christendom, said Warren.

In the American context, not only does “Judeo-Christian” exclude Muslims, Warren added, but also Indigenous communities.

“In North America specifically it’s important to foreground the rights and traditions of the continent’s First Peoples rather than erase them, too, with the phrase Judeo-Christian,” she said.

Many religion experts say the term should scrapped in favor of something more inclusive, like “interfaith.”

“Judeo-Christian” was “a brilliant civic invention that widened the country’s understanding of itself and reduced antisemitic and anti-Catholic bigotry,” Eboo Patel, founder and president of Interfaith America, recently told the Deseret News.

“Now that America’s demographics have changed further — there are just as many Buddhists and Muslims in the country as there are Lutherans — it’s time to write the next great chapter in the history of American religion. And we think ‘interfaith America’ is the right title for that chapter.”

Rather than trying to create a melting pot in which individuals’ identities are subsumed into a larger national identity, we should strive for a potluck, Patel said, “where people’s unique identities are welcome contributions to the feast.”

Source: Judeo-Christian America: Why scholars reject GOP’s use of ‘Judeo-Christian’

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

Shmigel: Australia: Multiculturalism is in, and that’s a good thing

2022/07/04 Leave a comment

On the need in Australia for a conservative case for multiculturalism, learning from the Canadian experience:

According to the latest Census results, for the first time, more than half of Australians (51.2 per cent) are now either born overseas or have at least one parent born overseas.

Ethnics and migrants, dear Speccie readers, now have the numbers. Multiculturalism – broadly defined – is in the majority.

If there’s one word or concept that gets many conservatives and many libertarians ‘highly focused’ that is definitely it: multiculturalism. In some ways, that’s understandable when we consider ‘progressive’ ills rightly or wrongly associated with it.

Given the demographic facts of Australia, it may be time for people on the centre-right of Australia’s political spectrum to think anew about what’s historically been positioned by some as a necessarily bad thing.

Perhaps it is time for the conservative case for multiculturalism.

But first, let’s step back. What’s been the critique of multiculturalism in the past? These points might summarise it:

  • Multiculturalism segregates Australians into different types – the ghetto argument.
  • Multiculturalism undermines mainstream Australian values – the cultural subversion argument.
  • Multiculturalism is social engineering – the ‘collectivism is bad’ argument.

While familiar, do these arguments actually stand up against factuality? Not so much.

In the first respect, after many decades of diversity and of pro-multicultural policies, the reality is that the vast majority of everyday interactions between Australians of up to 200 different ethnic, religious, and linguistic backgrounds are entirely civil and respectful. Inter-ethnic relations are in most respects completely normal and unremarkable. They’re in fact dead-set boring 99 per cent or more of the time.

Migrant groups have always tended to both geographically and culturally assimilate more than they tend to segregate. The trend, as driven by migrants themselves, isn’t toward any ghettos or enclaves, but toward the new outer suburban and multi-ethnic residential developments that dominate our major cities’ real estate sales. (Home ownership is greatly valued by our largest and fastest growing ethnic group – Indians – in particular.)

The truth is that, regardless of settlement status or ethnic background, much more binds us than drives us apart. The number of formal complaints to various human rights bodies or government agencies, no less criminal charges via the legal system, based on internecine hatred or ethnic violence between Australians is tiny. In 2020, in a culturally diverse society of some 23 million, there were some 100 complaints about racial hatred to the Human Rights Commission of which 20 per cent were between neighbours and 30 per cent were workplace-related.

Truth be told, migrants tend to readily settle and integrate, and their non-migrant neighbours and workmates tend to readily accept them. Think of the Vietnamese migration of the 70s and the once-prevalent mythology around Cabramatta and other ‘enclaves’ that accompanied that wave. Many in that era were convinced that was the end of our culture as we know it. Those are now but distant memories. We don’t even think twice about our Vietnamese origin neighbours or our child’s schoolmate. If we do, it’s likely to consider ourselves lucky to have such respectful and hard-working neighbours and their smart kids.

In the second respect, unlike many European countries, we actually have very little disagreement – beyond some squeaky media grabs from time to time – about our beliefs. English is uncontested as our language; in fact, it’s the legislated language in some states. We generally abide by the same norms; our settlement and citizenship system, unlike those of France or Germany for example, encourages that. People may well practice their home cultures in their homes, houses of worship, and community centres, but, if we’re honest, there’s little evidence of a substantive impact on our home-grown and common one.

In the third respect, it’s hard to deny the individual aspiration of the majority of people from migrant and ethnic backgrounds. In fact, they tend to own more small businesses than ‘non-ethnics’; they tend to succeed in higher education to a greater extent than ‘non-ethnics’, as any quick look at the annual HSC or VCE results shows.

Those on the centre-right need to consider this evidence that many people from migrant and ethnic backgrounds are about taking responsibility, working hard, and getting ahead at the individual and family levels – rather than counting on some hand-out mentality targeted at ‘groups’ or ‘victims’. Their presence, and indeed now predominance, in Australian society, is reinforcing social goods that our side values.

While there are vast differences between ethnic backgrounds – say Indian people and Chinese people – and vast differences within any given ethnic group itself, a generalisation is possible: people from migrant and ethnic backgrounds exemplify the characteristics that many of us on the centre-right see as positive and constructive. Multiculturalism is working in favour of our model of society.

For some more depth, consider the pro-business behaviours of our migrants and ethnics. In recent years, small businesses have contributed around $400 billion to Australia’s GDP (or about a third of the total economy) and employed some 40 per cent of the business workforce. Less known is that a third of small businesses are run by first or second-generation migrants, some 80 per cent of whom didn’t own a business before coming to Australia. Migrant business owners employed 1.4 million people across Australia and had an annual revenue that was 53 per cent higher than for non-migrant businesses.

If we more broadly consider ethnic connection, the numbers are even bigger: the clear majority of small businesses in Australia are owned by Australians with a non-Anglo surname.

That is a fine level of entrepreneurialism that the centre-right should embrace and admire. And, in purely political marketing terms, migrant and ethnic small business is a significant constituency to respect and work with (read: not pander to).

And, both major parties do in fact ‘get it’ in part. It’s standard practice for there to be specific election campaigning on both sides with regard to ethnic communities and the way that they communicate. Both parties are also smart enough to realise that there isn’t an ‘ethnic vote’ per se and that people, regardless of background, vote on similar issues such as the economy and social services. You can, though, certainly lose large swathes of voters if you don’t show you are respectful of people’s origins or treat them as second-class citizens.

Participation, rather than communications, will be the key going forward. Canada, for example, with a similar multicultural dynamic has for a few generations now had Ministers of significant ethnic background (putting aside Francophone politicians) from both sides of politics. While there were further changes at the last election, Australia’s parliament is yet to significantly look like its suburbs.

To get to that point, and the centre-right would be purely electorally dumb not to aspire to it, we need to drop some of our misconceptions. That starts with avoiding semantic slippage and not so automatically labelling specific policy concerns as somehow solely products of ‘multiculturalism’. That kind of generalisation has hints of a deeper institutional racism and, therefore, the centre-right would want nothing to do with it.

It might be better to think of multiculturalism not as policy or policy objective, but rather as what my old boss, Barry O’Farrell, thought of it. He said: ‘Multiculturalism is simply a way of life.’

If its strong features are pro-opportunity and pro-family, the centre-right should be welcoming that way of life.

As I was writing this piece, I walked past a theatre in western Sydney where a citizenship ceremony was taking place. There were dozens of people and family units who were clearly not ‘Anglo’ for a lack of a better term. All were impeccably dressed; all held Australian flags; all were intensely proud of this the day they became Australians. They are winners and the centre-right should back them.

Source: Multiculturalism is in, and that’s a good thing

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Ontario judge upholds Tamil Genocide Education Week in battle ‘over who gets to write the history of the war’

2022/06/30 Leave a comment

Interesting case and verdict. With respect to Judge Akbarali, any such act can never be purely “educative,” as it reflects politics and relative strength of particular communities:

A court has dismissed a constitutional challenge over Ontario’s proclamation of Tamil Genocide Education Week — concluding that its purpose is purely “educative.”

In a case that cast a spotlight on tension between diasporas, several Sinhalese-Canadian groups took Ontario to court for designating the seven-day period each year ending May 18 — the date the Sri Lankan civil war ended in 2009 — to raise awareness of the Tamil genocide and other genocides in world history.

The Sinhalese applicants claimed that no Tamil genocide has been recognized under international law, arguing that the provincial government didn’t have the authority to adopt the term “genocide” and that the designation would promote hatred for one group over another.

In quashing the claim by the Sinhalese applicants, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice said the 26-year-old civil war ravaged Sri Lanka, but the fight has not ended.

“A new battle has emerged over who gets to write the history of the war,” wrote Justice Jasmine Akbarali in a ruling released Tuesday. “While this new battle does not intuitively seem like an issue for the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, it has in fact become one.”

The Tamil-Canadian diaspora welcomed the decision, saying education is one of the only ways available for the community to pursue justice and healing because the Sri Lanka government has been reluctant to recognize the atrocities and punish those responsible.

“Tamils across the province can now focus on what matters — commemorating and remembering the countless lives lost,” said Katpana Nagendra, a member of the Tamil Rights Group, one of the organizations granted intervener status in this case.

The Tamil Genocide Education Week Act, a private member’s bill tabled by Conservative MPP Vijay Thanigasalam, who is of Tamil descent, was passed unanimously in the Ontario legislature last year.

The preamble of the proclamation of the Tamil Genocide Education Week states that Tamil Ontarians have lost loved ones and have been physically or mentally traumatized by the genocide that the Sri Lankan state perpetrated against the Tamils during the civil war, which lasted from 1983 to the Tamil Tigers’ defeat in 2009.

Akbarali said the court heard evidence from “dueling” witnesses about the Sri Lankan civil war, and specifically, whether or not what occurred amounted to a genocide of Tamils.

“I am not deciding who bears the blame, or who bears more of the blame, for the tremendous suffering and trauma that occurred as a result of the Sri Lankan civil war,” the judge wrote in the 18-page decision.

“Nor am I deciding whether it was wise for the Ontario Legislature to pass the TGEWA. The wisdom of the legislation is a question that belongs solely to the Legislature, and more indirectly, to the voters of the province. The question before me relates only to the constitutionality of the TGEWA.”

While the court agreed with the claim that the proclamation recognizes a Tamil genocide, it said the act is in the spirit of educating the public about the event and other genocides to prevent such atrocities from occurring, and helping create an opportunity for Tamil Ontarians to share their stories and the intergenerational trauma the legislature has recognized.

“The TGEWA does not require any particular educational initiatives to be undertaken by any particular institution,” said Akbarali. “The dominant characteristic of the law is to educate the public about what the Ontario Legislature has concluded is a Tamil genocide.”

The province did not infringe on the federal jurisdiction in relation to the designation of genocide because the act didn’t contain a penalty or claim to determine that genocide has taken place “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

“The perpetrator of the genocide recognized by the Legislature is … to be the Sri Lankan government. A claim or a finding of genocide perpetrated by a government or a state does not tar individuals who may be members of the same nationality, ethnicity, or religious affiliation as those people who dominate the government or state,” said the court.

ation of Tamil Genocide Education Week — concluding that its purpose is purely “educative.” In a case that cast a spotlight on tension between diasporas, several Sinhalese-Canadian groups took Ontario to court for designating the seven-day period each year ending May 18 — the date the Sri Lankan civil war ended in 2009 — to raise awareness of the Tamil genocide and other genocides in world history.

Source: Ontario judge upholds Tamil Genocide Education Week in battle ‘over who gets to write the history of the war’

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

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