‘Enough is enough’: new group aims to open path for Filipino-Canadian candidates in next federal election

2021/04/13 Leave a comment

Of note. Nine ridings have 10 percent or more Filipino-Canadians (Filipino population greater than 10 percent):

Ignore Filipino-Canadian candidates at your own peril: that’s the message a new political action group is sending to federal parties, as jockeying for nomination races for the next election gets underway in earnest.

The Filipino community could be a decisive political force for whichever party manages to rally it, say two of the founders of the Filipino Canadian Political Association, a new group devoted to breaking down barriers that have left the community without representation in Parliament since 2004.

“The numbers speak for themselves,” said Grant Gonzales, a second-generation Filipino-Canadian in Toronto who is serving as the chief spokesperson for the group.

More than 837,000 Canadians identified as having a Filipino ethnic origin in the 2016 census, about 2.5 per cent of the population. More than 100,000 people from the Philippines have been given permanent resident status in Canada since then.

The 2016 Filipino population was bigger than the margin of victory in the last election in 37 federal ridings, including nine of the 25 most competitive races, according to an FCPA analysis of data from Statistics Canada and Elections Canada.

The group issued a press release on April 6 calling on political parties to nominate Filipino-Canadian candidates in winnable ridings ahead of the next election, which could come later this year. The data analysis was included in the release.

“Parties have attempted to activate us [in the past], but it’s always to support another candidate from a different community, not necessarily one of our own,” said Paul Saguil, another co-founder of the FCPA who is also running for the Liberal Party nomination in Brampton Centre, in an interview with The Hill Times.

“The information is there for party organizers to now think about very carefully. Knowing these demographics, why wouldn’t you run a Filipino-Canadian to activate these populations in favour of your party?” he said.

The two men founded the group along with Joseph Guiyab last fall, after the Liberal Party appointed former TV broadcaster Marci Ien as its candidate for a byelection in Toronto Centre. That appointment shut the door on an open nomination contest for would-be candidates including Mr. Saguil, who later stepped back from another nomination contest in Don Valley East when Liberal MPP Michael Coteau announced that he would be running there.

Mr. Saguil said Ms. Ien’s appointment, as well as other unsuccessful attempts by Filipino-Canadians to secure party nominations, played a role in the formation of the group. Mr. Gonzales was more explicit.

“That [appointment] drove a lot of sentiment around how difficult it is for racialized communities, especially Filipino-Canadians, to get into office,” he said. “We thought, ‘enough is enough,’ let’s start more intentionally bringing attention to these issues, this gap in representation.”

Both men said they held no ill will toward Ms. Ien, who went on to win the Toronto Centre byelection. Ms. Ien is Black, and Black Canadians are also underrepresented in Parliament: Black Canadians account for 3.5 per cent of Canada’s population, but hold only five—or 1.5 per cent—of the 338 seats in the House of Commons.

Mr. Gonzales said he wants to see the parties make it easier for Filipino-Canadians to run, whether that means making an appointment, as was the case for Ms. Ien, or just doing more to recruit Filipino candidates.

Filipino-Canadians have won seats in provincial legislatures and municipal councils in Canada, including Mable Elmore, B.C.’s first Filipino MLA. Some have secured nominations to run for federal parties, including Julius Tiangson, who ran for the Conservatives in York Centre in a byelection last year, and is running to secure the party’s nomination in that riding for the next election. Mr. Tiangson did not respond to an interview request last week.

Federal ridings contain an average of about 112,000 people. A perfectly representative House of Commons would have eight MPs from the Filipino community. There are currently none, and there has been only one in Canadian history: Rey Pagtakhan, who represented Winnipeg’s north end for the Liberals from 1988 to 2004.

“It’s the same conversation we have when we’re talking about women in politics. The number of times they need to be asked to run for office, because of the barriers, the attitudes that they face when they run for office,” said Mr. Gonzales.

“If you have a political party reaching out to you and saying, ‘we’d be interested in having you run for a nomination contest,’ well that adds a lot of confidence already to a candidate.”

In the meantime, Mr. Saguil said he wants the FCPA to be able to fill some of that void left by the parties, providing information and connections to Filipino-Canadians who are thinking about a run in politics.

The FCPA is still in its infancy as an organization, and does not yet have a network of volunteers and supporters broad enough to move votes in swing ridings on its own. It has not yet begun to raise money, and does not have paid staff.

The three founders have reached out to leaders within the community and had conversations with some people in federal politics, including Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino (Eglinton-Lawrence, Ont.) and Green Party Leader Annamie Paul, said Mr. Gonzales.

FCPA will have to show community can be mobilized: NDP strategist Romeo Tello

All three founders of the FCPA are Toronto residents with Liberal ties. Mr. Gonzales said they want the organization to be cross-partisan, and operate across the country.

The organization isn’t aiming to sway votes toward one party or another, said Mr. Saguil, but rather draw political parties’ attention to the Filipino community’s power in closely-contested ridings.

“There’s a lot of pride in our community. And when they see someone putting their name forward, and when they see a party actively putting someone forward because they want the support of the Filipino-Canadian community, then it’s a natural expectation that they’ll want to rally behind someone, whichever standard that they’re representing,” he said.

“If I’m thinking strategically for these ridings, and I want to make sure that there is no margin of error for the next election, why wouldn’t I be asking the party leadership, ‘Where is our Filipino-Canadian candidate who would help rally this population?’” said Mr. Saguil.

To be effective, the group will have to show parties the political power held by the Filipino community, said Romeo Tello, a Filipino-Canadian who has worked on provincial and federal campaigns for the NDP.

“It’s all around having conversations, and growing a network of people who can move to action on any given issue,” said Mr. Tello, who is not a member of the FCPA.

Many Filipino-Canadians work in manufacturing or front-line service industry jobs, said Mr. Tello. Filipino women fill many of the country’s front-line health and care-giving jobs, as nurses, personal support workers, and live-in caregivers.  Data released by the province of Manitoba show Filipino-Canadians have been infected by COVID-19 at a higher rate than the general population.

Younger generation ready to run: Saguil

Mr. Gonzales wants the FCPA to follow the path charted by other ethnic political interest groups in Canada. Jewish Canadians have long been represented by effective lobby groups such as the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee. Ukrainian Canadians have the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. Punjabi Sikhs have become a political force in their own right in Canada.

The Filipino communities across Canada do not have some of the advantages that organizers in those other ethnic groups have wielded so effectively. Filipino-Canadians are numerous, but spread out across the country: Winnipeg North and Winnipeg Centre are the only ridings in which Filipinos account for 20 per cent of the population or more.

The Philippines has been among the top source countries for immigrants to Canada for most of the past 20 years. Still, the community is a relatively young one, and many of those who have immigrated to Canada from the Philippines have been focused on carving out a life for themselves in a new country, said Mr. Saguil.

Running for office requires financial resources, and connections with political parties and other communities. “All of those things take literally one person’s lifetime, if not more, to accumulate,” said Mr. Saguil.

“That’s what we mean by systemic barriers in the FCPA. Other communities in Canada have had generations to accumulate what we’ll call collectively this political capital.”

The younger generation who immigrated with their parents—including Mr. Saguil—or were born in Canada are now more ready and able to step into the political fray, he said.

Mr. Saguil will face tough competition for the Liberal nomination in Brampton Centre. The riding was created as part of the 2013 electoral boundary realignment. It is currently held by Independent MP Ramesh Sangha, who was kicked out of the Liberal caucus earlier this year over remarks he made about some of his fellow Liberal MPs. Mr. Sangha won it as a Liberal candidate by double-digit margins in both the 2015 and 2019 elections. All five of Brampton’s MPs are Indo-Canadian.

Two other Liberals have started a campaign for the nomination in Brampton Centre so far: Amin Dhillon, a multimedia personality and former Miss India Worldwide Canada, and businessman Nasir Hussain.

Indo-Canadians are the most numerous ethnic group in Brampton, outnumbering Filipinos almost 10-to-one in the city. The Brampton Indo-Canadian community includes veteran political organizers and fundraisers.

Mr. Saguil said he has built a “broad coalition” of support already for his nomination bid, including volunteers and organizers from the Punjabi, Black, and Pakistani communities, and Filipino-Canadians from across the country.

If his odds of winning the nomination are long, the payoff of a victory could be great for Mr. Saguil. The last two elections suggest that the next Liberal candidate in Brampton Centre will have a good chance at winning.

Mr. Saguil is the deputy head of TD Bank’s global sanctions compliance and anti-corruption program, as well as a lawyer and a gay rights activist. MPs from under-represented communities who have impressive resumes are often good candidates for a cabinet appointment, even as political rookies. Procurement Minister Anita Anand (Oakville. Ont.), who boasts a resume a mile long, and was made Canada’s first Hindu cabinet minister shortly after winning her first election in 2019, is one recent example.

Source: ‘Enough is enough’: new group aims to open path for Filipino-Canadian candidates in next federal election

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COVID-19 and essential workers at risk, some examples

2021/04/12 Leave a comment

Two classic cases, where private companies and weak government regulators have failed to protect workers from COVID-19 (largely immigrants, visible minorities or temporary workers), and the Ontario and Alberta governments only belatedly addressing risk in workplaces through vaccination of workers. Older stories, haven’t seen many updates:

Amazon Brampton Warehouse

An Amazon warehouse that was ordered to shut down last week due to a major COVID-19 outbreak is also being investigated for potential labour violations, the Ontario government said Monday.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Labour said the investigation was already underway when the local public health unit ordered thousands of workers at the Brampton, Ont., facility on Friday to isolate for two weeks,

“We continue to work closely with Peel Public Health and others to provide support, advice and enforcement as needed to ensure the health and safety of Ontario’s workers,” Harry Godfrey said in a statement.

Godfrey noted that penalties for labour violations could be as high as $1.5 million or imprisonment. He said the government would not hesitate to hold employers accountable if they fail to keep their employees safe.

Peel Region’s top doctor said the outbreak at the Amazon facility, which employs approximately 5,000 workers, began in October and has since been linked to more than 600 cases.

Dr. Lawrence Loh said nearly half of the cases were detected in the last few weeks, prompting the public health unit to issue a special order requiring the workers to self-isolate for two weeks starting March 13.

Workers were ordered to isolate until March 27 unless they’ve tested positive for COVID-19 in the last 90 days and have already completed their isolation period for that infection.

Amazon Canada said workers would be paid during the 14-day quarantine, but it disputed the data being used to support the plant closure, pointing to a round of tests that recently came back with a positivity rate of less than one per cent. It has said it plans to appeal the decision.

Peel Public Health said the closure will give the company further time to consider additional operational changes that may help prevent outbreaks in future.

The Ministry of Labour said its inspectors had visited the site 12 times and issued eight orders since March 2020.

Gagandeep Kaur, an organizer with Brampton-based Warehouse Workers Centre that advocates for workers’ rights in the sector, said conditions had been getting worse in the facility for months. She said workers “were kind of surprised” that it took so long for public health to get involved and force the shutdown.

Kaur said people reported that safety precautions like physical distancing have been impossible to maintain inside, especially as workers rushed to meet strict productivity targets.

She said workers are now concerned that they will be asked to push themselves harder once they return from quarantine.

“They are not at home right now enjoying this two week vacation,” Kaur said by phone. “They are more worried that once they are back … management might put higher targets for them to reach.”

Kaur said the pressures of the warehouse workplace, where employees’ time on floor is constantly measured and tracked, created safety issues before the pandemic. Those challenges only increased with the viral threat that also coincided with more hiring, and greater demands as more people relied on the delivery service.

She said the company should use the two-week shutdown to implement changes at the plant such as further separating work stations and reducing performance targets as workers are dealing with the added stress of the pandemic.

“Amazon must use it wisely,” she said of the shutdown. “Maybe implementing those changes inside the facility that will make the work safer so that we don’t end up with this crisis again.”

Last month, labour inspectors carried out a “blitz” operation on the warehouses and distribution centres in Peel Region – a COVID-19 hot spot with a high number of outbreaks in workplaces.

About 200 inspections took place and 26 tickets were issued, according the Ministry of Labour.

Source: https://www.cp24.com/mobile/news/ontario-labour-ministry-investigating-brampton-amazon-site-ordered-to-shut-down-over-outbreak-1.5348106?cache=

Alberta Olymel meat packing

Slaughterhouses. Meat packing. Sick and dead employees. The pandemic has sharpened our vision about a lot of things.

Such as: the workers who are key to making sure Canadians have plenty of steaks, hamburger, and bacon on the menu have become about as disposable as paper plates. This became more than evident over the past month as hundreds of workers in yet another meat packing plant in Alberta became infected with COVID-19.

Three employees have died. The first to die was 35-year-old Darwin Doloque, a recent immigrant from the Philippines who was found dead in his home at the end of January. 

At that point it was clear that infection was spreading among the 1,850 women and men at the Olymel slaughterhouse and pork processing plant in Red Deer. And yet neither government nor public health officials moved to it shut down.

It was only in mid-February after public pressure from the Union of Food and Commercial Workers, which represents the employees, that Olymel management decided to shut down for two weeks. Workers were laid off without pay and advised to apply for Employment Insurance so the government could pick up the bill.

And lest you think Olymel is owned by a U.S. or Brazilian mega-meat packer, it is not. It is a division of Quebec-based Sollio Cooperative Group, Canada’s largest agriculture co-op, which last year reaped $8.1 billion in revenue. Besides being the biggest pork and poultry producer in Canada, Olymel exports to China, Japan, South Korea and Australia.

Most of the workers at the Red Deer plant — midway between Calgary and Edmonton — are recent immigrants, refugees, or temporary foreign workers. They come from Sudan, Guatemala, the Philippines, Mexico, and Dominican Republic and usually don’t speak English. 

It’s the same story at most large slaughterhouses/meat packing plants because it is bloody, back breaking, and dangerous work that only people with limited employment options are willing to take. 

For most of us working at a job site where 45,000 hogs a week are killed is beyond imagination. But that is par for the course at the Olymel plant. Every week, the pigs just keep coming from hog farming operations in Alberta and Saskatchewan, which need to keep those pigs moving if they are to be profitable. They do not want processing plants to close down because it hits them right on the bottom line. 

So workers are pushed to keep working even after a quarter of them have been infected with the coronavirus; even though the majority of those workers have jobs outside the plant and could spread the virus in the larger community.

The COVID-19 outbreak at Olymel and the subsequent inaction on the part of government, public health officials, and plant management could be better understood if we were in the beginning stages of the pandemic and those in charge were still trying to figure out what to do about workplace outbreaks.

But this is hardly the case. In Alberta alone during the past year we have seen serious outbreaks in eight meat packing facilities.

In April, the Cargill plant in High River (owned by a U.S. mega-meat packer) had a total of 950 cases among 2,000 employees, the worst COVID-19 outbreak in Canada. Three people died, dozens were hospitalized. 

In the U.S, 50,000 meat packing workers were infected, and about 250 died. Communities around those facilities had some of the highest infection rates in the country. 

This was all known long before the outbreak at Olymel. The U.S Congress has launched an investigation into how the meat packing industry responded to the pandemic.

In Alberta, both Rachel Notley, leader of the official opposition, and the Alberta Federation of Labour have called for a public inquiry into the Alberta government’s handling of the outbreak at the Olymel plant. 

A public inquiry takes time but given the repeated performance of government agencies and meat packing companies during the pandemic we need to know more about why so many people became infected and died so it won’t happen again. 

In the meantime Olymel is re-opening the Red Deer plant and calling back workers. Bacon anyone?

Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/03/08/alberta-is-still-not-protecting-its-meat-packing-workers.html 

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CDC Director Designates Racism a ‘Serious Public Health Threat’

2021/04/10 Leave a comment

Of note:

Racism is a scourge in American society. It’s also a serious public health threat, according to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In a statement released Thursday, Dr. Rochelle Walensky pointed to the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color, as seen in case numbers, deaths and social consequence.

“Yet, the disparities seen over the past year were not a result of COVID-19,” Walensky said. “Instead, the pandemic illuminated inequities that have existed for generations and revealed for all of America a known, but often unaddressed, epidemic impacting public health: racism.”

As Pandemic Deaths Add Up, Racial Disparities Persist — And In Some Cases Worsen

 

 

“What we know is this: racism is a serious public health threat that directly affects the well-being of millions of Americans,” she added. “As a result, it affects the health of our entire nation. Racism is not just the discrimination against one group based on the color of their skin or their race or ethnicity, but the structural barriers that impact racial and ethnic groups differently to influence where a person lives, where they work, where their children play, and where they worship and gather in community. These social determinants of health have life-long negative effects on the mental and physical health of individuals in communities of color.”

The result, she says, are stark health disparities that have mounted over generations.

So what does it mean for the agency? Walensky has charged all of the offices and centers under the CDC to develop interventions and measurable health outcomes in the next year, addressing racism in their respective areas. And she’s made clear that is a priority for the entire CDC.

The CDC also launched a new web portal, Racism and Health, that’s designed to be a hub for public and scientific information and discourse on the subject.

The site notes that racism, in both its structural and interpersonal forms, has a negative effect on mental and physical health.

And Walensky isn’t trying to avoid hard conversations.

“The word racism is intentional in this [initiative] for the CDC,” she told Timemagazine. “This is not just about the color of your skin but also about where you live, where you work, where your children play, where you pray, how you get to work, the jobs you have. All of these things feed into people’s health and their opportunities for health.”

The CDC committed to continuing to study how racism affects health, and propose and implement solutions accordingly. It will expand its investments in minority and other disproportionately affected communities to create “durable infrastructure” to address disparities.

“It has to be baked into the cake,” Walensky told Time. “It’s got to be part of what everybody is doing.”

Source: CDC Director Designates Racism a ‘Serious Public Health Threat’

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Asian Canadians see flaws in federal anti-racism strategy

2021/04/09 Leave a comment

Not surprising. The challenge is that once you name one group, others understandably feel their circumstances should also be referenced, with recent increases in anti-Asian attitudes and actions prompting this latest call. Unfortunately, no magic bullets or solutions, just an all too long slog:

Advocates for Asian Canadians are calling for improvements to the federal government’s anti-racism strategy to confront a surge in anti-Asian racism.

Avvy Go, executive director of the Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic in Toronto, said the strategy failed to specifically mention anti-Asian racism in its foundational policy document. The document does cite anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia as key targets.

“It’s a serious flaw in the current strategy,” Go told CBC News.

“We hope that the government will amend the strategy and, more importantly, they will develop concrete actions to address racism of all forms.”

The call comes amid a reported surge in anti-Asian hate crimes across the country and abroad during the pandemic.

According to a report published in March by the Chinese Canadian National Council, more than 1,150 instances of anti-Asian racism were reported through two websites — COVIDRacism.ca and elimin8hate.org — between March 10, 2020, and Feb. 28, 2021. Misinformation and racist beliefs related to the fact that the novel coronavirus first emerged in China are behind the surge in attacks, the authors wrote.

In Vancouver, the police department reported that anti-Asian hate crimes climbed from just 12 cases in 2019 to 98 in 2020 — an increase of 717 per cent.

And data from Statistics Canada released in July 2020 suggest that Canadians with Asian backgrounds were more likely to report increased racial or ethnic harassment during the pandemic than the rest of the population. The largest increase was seen among people of Chinese, Korean and Southeast Asian descent.

Go, a Canadian citizen who was born in Hong Kong, said she’s had several frightening experiences herself.

Source: Asian Canadians see flaws in federal anti-racism strategy

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LILLEY: Feds’ anti-racism training deals with political agendas, nothing else

2021/04/09 Leave a comment

While not a great fan of Lilley’s commentary, I do give him credit for bringing this GAC/Foreign Service Institute guide to public attention.

While his criticism is overstated, some of the guide is overly simplistic, woke or splitting hairs (e.g., that reverse racism against white people doesn’t exist because of power dynamics, racism in Canada is the same as USA while there are both commonalities and differences) and doesn’t acknowledge some of the progress, albeit imperfect, that has taken place over the last few generations. Government training material should be more balanced in its treatment:

Wearing blackface is an act of white supremacy but so is seeking to be objective. These are some of the things you will learn if you happen to work for the federal government and are taking their latest anti-racism course.

Documents obtained under access to information show a real stretch on the definition of racism.

Source: LILLEY: Feds’ anti-racism training deals with political agendas, nothing else

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Ryerson University releases report card on student diversity. Which faculties pass, which receive a failing grade and how the school plans to improve

2021/04/08 Leave a comment

Kudos to Ryerson for collecting and presenting this data with an impressive response rate.

Reading this article, made me question whether and when Ryerson may have to broaden its diversity efforts not only in cases where women, visible minorities and Indigenous peoples are under-represented but also in programs where non-visible minorities are under-represented (e.g., arts, communications, community service, management):

Ryerson University graded its programs on student diversity and most faculties are skating by with Cs.

At a glance, some of the most under-represented groups in the school’s total population were Indigenous students, students with disabilities and racialized graduate students. 

And a further report-card-style breakdown of individual programs and faculties shows just how these equity groups are spread out across the university. 

Ryerson University graded its programs on student diversity and most faculties are skating by with Cs.

At a glance, some of the most under-represented groups in the school’s total population were Indigenous students, students with disabilities and racialized graduate students. 

And a further report-card-style breakdown of individual programs and faculties shows just how these equity groups are spread out across the university. SKIP

The school’s first ever breakdown of student identities, “The Student Diversity Self-ID Report” compares student representation from 2019 with the makeup of the GTA and Ontario across five equity groups: women, racialized people, Indigenous peoples, people with disabilities and LGBTQ people.

Ryerson is one of few Canadian universities that has collected and published this sort of information. Students and advocates have called for disaggregated data to better address equity gaps on campus for years. 

For undergraduate programs, the faculties’ average diversity scores were between 54 and just over 72 per cent. Graduate programs scored between 40 to 75 per cent.

The faculty averages give an overview, but the breakdown by programs reveals a detailed look at the exact programs where certain groups are severely under-represented.

For instance, Black students are 7 per cent of the undergraduate population in total, which is close to the GTA population. But some programs like accounting and finance, interior design, nutrition and most engineering programs scored Ds for Black student representation. 

And while women are 55 per cent of the overall student population, they are under-represented in business, computer science and engineering programs. 

“It provides a snapshot from 2019, to let us know where we are and where we need to go,” said Denise O’Neil Green, Ryerson’s vice-president of equity and community inclusion.

Green said the school’s long-term goal is “to see greater alignment with the community representation by 2030.”

How the report works

Students were able to share via an online questionnaire whether they identify with any of Ryerson’s five equity groups: women, racialized students, Indigenous students, students with disabilities and LGBTQ students.

The survey had a 96 per cent response rate with more than 40,000 students participating. 

Each program was then awarded a report-card-like letter grade for each equity group category with the racialized category further broken down to Black, Chinese and South Asian. 

Programs were awarded an A+ if the proportion of the students met or was greater than its population in the GTA or Ontario — although that grade won’t stop the university from continuing efforts to improve. The grades A to D+ show how much improvement is needed for the equity groups to be representative of the rest of the population. 

Based on the data, each program and faculty received an average percentage rating of its overall diversity across equity groups.

“The report is there to help inform our community and to help drive decision making and to help develop strategies, so that we can make education more inclusive for everyone,” Green told the Star.

There are more details in the report taking a detailed look at the Black student experience, the role financial barriers play in accessing education and how to measure the experiences and graduation rate of these students. 

It also outlines plans to create working groups to assess what supports, like scholarships and mentoring programs can be put in place to create more pathways for students. 

The need for disaggregated data

Disaggregated data collection has been long desired by students and equity advocates, but schools have been slow to move. 

In 2019, Universities Canada surveyed schools across the country about their equity, diversity and inclusion practices.When it came to student data collection, schools were more likely to collect data on age, gender and Indigeneity, but less likely to collect statistics on sexuality, ability or race more widely. 

In 2017, the CBC conducted an investigation where it asked Canadian universities if they collected data on how their students identify racially — 63 out of 73 did not, Ryerson included. 

Universities have been more likely to keep data on faculty and staff, in order to meet legislative requirements, like the Ontario Human Rights Code and Federal Contractors Program. 

But without a clear picture of what the student body looks like, it is less likely that schools will make structural changes to make post-secondary schools more accessible and inclusive once these students arrive.

Carl James, a York University professor and senior equity adviser, said he finds it ironic that most universities, which are research institutions, had not been using this sort of student data to inform their programs and policies.

Data collection, he said, is a useful advocacy tool, keeps institutions accountable and allows them to keep track of change from year to year. But the most important part he said is how it is used and interpreted. 

“Keep taking data for data sake,” without using it to bring about the necessary change “that’s not a good use of data,” he said. “How are you going to use it in the interest of the people?” 

James also points out that students had been advocating for disaggregated data collection for years.

In 2015, Black students at the University of Toronto and Ryerson University formed Black Liberation Collectives in solidarity with U.S. students at University of Missouri. One of many demands they made of administration was to collect race-based data on students, which U of T agreed to begin in 2016.

Elsewhere in the GTA, University of Toronto created a survey in November 2020 to collect data for a student diversity census.York University listed intentions to do so in a June 2020statement addressing anti-Black racism. These initiatives came after George Floyd’s death sparked a widespread reckoning on anti-Black racism. 

For schools collecting this data, James’ question is: “Now that you know, what are you going to do about it?”

Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2021/04/07/ryerson-university-releases-report-card-on-student-diversity-which-faculties-pass-which-receive-a-failing-grade-and-how-the-school-plans-to-improve.html

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A Novel Effort to See How Poverty Affects Young Brains

2021/04/08 Leave a comment

Interesting study and experiment:

New monthly payments in the pandemic relief package have the potential to lift millions of American children out of poverty. Some scientists believe the payments could change children’s lives even more fundamentally — via their brains.

It’s well established that growing up in poverty correlates with disparities in educational achievement, health and employment. But an emerging branch of neuroscience asks how poverty affects the developing brain.

Over the past 15 years, dozens of studies have found that children raised in meager circumstances have subtle brain differences compared with children from families of higher means. On average, the surface area of the brain’s outer layer of cells is smaller, especially in areas relating to language and impulse control, as is the volume of a structure called the hippocampus, which is responsible for learning and memory.

These differences don’t reflect inherited or inborn traits, research suggests, but rather the circumstances in which the children grew up. Researchers have speculated that specific aspects of poverty — subpar nutrition, elevated stress levels, low-quality education — might influence brain and cognitive development. But almost all the work to date is correlational. And although those factors may be at play to various degrees for different families, poverty is their common root. A continuing study called Baby’s First Years, started in 2018, aims to determine whether reducing poverty can itself promote healthy brain development.

“None of us thinks income is the only answer,” said Dr. Kimberly Noble, a neuroscientist and pediatrician at Columbia University who is co-leading the work. “But with Baby’s First Years, we are moving past correlation to test whether reducing poverty directly causes changes in children’s cognitive, emotional and brain development.”

Dr. Noble and her collaborators are examining the effects of giving poor families cash payments in amounts that wound up being comparable to those the Biden administration will distribute as part of an expanded child tax credit.

The researchers randomly assigned 1,000 mothers with newborns living in poverty in New York City, New Orleans, the Twin Cities and Omaha to receive a debit card every month holding either $20 or $333 that the families could use as they wished. (The Biden plan will provide $300 monthly per child up to age 6, and $250 for children 6 through 17.) The study tracks cognitive development and brain activity in children over several years using a noninvasive tool called mobile EEG, which measures brain wave patterns using a wearable cap of 20 electrodes.

The study also tracks the mothers’ financial and employment status, maternal health measures such as stress hormone levels, and child care use. In qualitative interviews, the researchers probe how the money affects the family, and with the mothers’ consent, they follow how they spend it.

The study aimed to collect brain activity data from children at age 1 and age 3 in home visits, and researchers managed to obtain the first set of data for around two-thirds of the children before the pandemic struck. Because home visits are still untenable, they extended the study to age 4 and will be collecting the second set of brain data next year instead of this year.

The pandemic, as well as the two stimulus payments most Americans received this past year, undoubtedly affected participating families in different ways, as will this year’s stimulus checks and the new monthly payments. But because the study is randomized, the researchers nonetheless expect to be able to assess the impact of the cash gift, Dr. Noble said.

Baby’s First Years is seen as an audacious effort to prove, through a randomized trial, a causal link between poverty reduction and brain development. “It is definitely one of the first, if not the first” study in this developing field to have direct policy implications, said Martha Farah, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Center for Neuroscience and Society who studies poverty and the brain.

Professor Farah concedes, however, that social scientists and policymakers often discount the relevance of brain data. “Are there actionable insights we get by bringing neuroscience to bear, or are people just being snowed by pretty brain images and impressive-sounding words from neuroscience? It’s an important question,” she said.

Skeptics abound. James Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago who studies inequality and social mobility, said he didn’t see “even a hint that a policy would come out of it, other than to say, yes, there’s an imprint of a better economic life.”

“And it still remains a question what the actual mechanism is” through which giving parents cash helps children’s brains, he said, adding that targeting such a mechanism directly might be both cheaper and more effective.

Samuel Hammond, director of poverty and welfare policy at the Niskanen Center, who worked on a child allowance proposal by Senator Mitt Romney, agrees that tracking the source of any observed cognitive benefits is tricky. “I have trouble disentangling the interventions that actually help the most,” he said. For example, policy experts debate whether certain child care programs directly benefit a child’s brain or simply free up her caregiver to get a job and increase the family’s income, he said.

Yet that is exactly why providing disadvantaged families with cash might be the most potent way to test the link to brain development, Dr. Noble said. “It’s quite possible that the particular pathways to children’s outcomes differ across families,” she said. “So by empowering families to use the money as they see fit, it doesn’t presuppose a particular pathway or mechanism that leads to differences in child development.”

Neuroscience has a track record for transforming societal thinking and influencing policy. Research showing that the brain continues to mature past adolescence and into a person’s mid-20s has reshaped policies relating to juvenile justice.

In another example, research on brain and cognitive development in children who grew up in Romanian orphanages from the mid-1960s into the 1990s changed policy on institutionalization and foster care, in Romania and worldwide, said Charles Nelson, a neuroscientist at Harvard and Boston Children’s Hospital who co-led that work.

Those studies demonstrated that deprivation and neglect diminish IQ and hinder psychological development in children who remain institutionalized past age 2, and that institutionalization profoundly affects brain development, dampening electrical activity andreducing brain size.

But that work also underscores how consumers of research, policymakers among them, are prone to give more weight to brain data than to other findings, as other studies show. When Professor Nelson presents these findings to government or development agency officials, “I think they find it the strongest ammunition to implement policy changes,” he said. “It is a very powerful visual, more so than if we said, well, they have lower IQs, or their attachment isn’t as strong.” (He is an adviser for Baby’s First Years.)

The vividness of such data isn’t necessarily bad, Dr. Noble said. “If we find differences and the brain data make those differences more compelling to stakeholders, then that’s important to include,” she said. Moreover, brain data provides valuable information in its own right, particularly in infants and young children, for whom behavioral tests of cognition are often inaccurate or impossible to conduct, she said. Brain differences also tend to be detectable earlier than behavioral ones, she said.

The field may simply be too young to clock its contributions to policy, Professor Farah said. But increasing understanding of how specific brain circuits are affected by poverty, along with better tools for gauging such circuits, may yield science-based interventions that get taken up at a policy level, she said.

Meanwhile, Baby’s First Years hopes to address a broader question that is already relevant at the policy level: whether cash aid to parents helps their children’s brains develop in a way that helps them for a lifetime.

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USA: African Immigrant Health Groups Battle A Transatlantic Tide Of Vaccine Disinformation

2021/04/07 Leave a comment

Of note:

Switching between Swahili and English, Dr. Frank Minja asked the African immigrants on the Zoom call if they had any questions about the COVID-19 vaccine.

Minja, who is originally from Tanzania, was asked how to get the vaccine, how it works, whether it’s safe.

Then one person asked him about a video promoting the conspiracy theory that the vaccine is part of a plot to reduce the Black race.

“That’s the realm of nonsense and misinformation,” he said.

Minja’s Q & A was hosted by the organization, African Family Holistic Health Organization (AFHHO), in Portland, Oregon. It’s one of a number of grassrootsorganizations across the country that are helping Africans in the U.S. get vaccinated.

In the United States, skepticism about the vaccine can be found in all segments of the population, including African Americans. However, efforts to address hesitancy among Black people often overlook African immigrants, who get much of their information from their countries of origin.

Minja has been paying close attention to threads of COVID-19 disinformation coming from Africa.

“We’ve seen the whole gamut of misinformation that basically started with the fact that Africans and people of African ancestry are not susceptible to COVID,” he said in an interview following the Zoom session.

Minja said many African immigrants do not rely on American media as trusted sources of information. Some do not speak English well enough yet. Others are used to getting information from friends and family back home through social media platforms, such as WhatsApp.

Chioma Nnaji, a health worker and community organizer for African immigrants and the wider Black community in Massachusetts, said it’s important to take into account that “certain communities live and operate in two spaces.”

“This is usually applicable to immigrants and refugees where they still have connections to their home countries while they are resettling in a new country,” she added.

A lot of what they hear from back home is helpful, she said. For example, traditional herbal remedies are popular. Minja said those can be useful for treating symptoms of non-severe forms of COVID-19.

However, there’s also quite a bit of misleading information about the vaccine that is spread through these channels, Minja said.

“And a lot of it is really about just planting the seeds of distrust,” he said.

For African immigrants, the distrust is partly rooted in the memory of being exploited by western countries, said Dr. Ifeanyi Nsofor. He’s a global health expert from Nigeria, who has also been battling vaccine misinformation on the continent.

“It’s almost like anything that you say is coming from the white man, people look at it with lots of suspicion, based on that experience of colonialism,” he said.

And that experience did not end with independence. Over the years, global health advocates have accused multinational pharmaceutical firms of using African countries as living laboratories for clinical trials of experimental drugs. In 1996, 11 children died and dozens were left disabled in Nigeria after being given an experimental anti-meningitis drug created by Pfizer — the developer of one of the COVID vaccines.

A year later, the U.S. government was accused sponsoring studies that gave pregnant women in developing countries a placebo during tests of the effectiveness of an antiviral drug for HIV.

 

And in April 2020, two French doctors sparked outrage when they suggested that a potential treatment for COVID-19 should be tested in Africa. The director of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, condemned the suggestion as a “hangover from a colonial mentality.”

“All this fear comes from a history,” said Haika Mushi, a health worker at AFHHO. She is also originally from Tanzania and moved to the U.S. 12 years ago. She has been helping organize the group’s Zoom calls since the pandemic began.

When the vaccine became available, AFHHO started helping people sign up for appointments. At first, it brought in a white doctor to answer questions, and people were still skeptical. She says the group had more success when it brought in Minja and a doctor from Zimbabwe. They also have translators speaking French, Swahili and Tigrinya.

“It makes sense to hear from our own,” she said.

Another type of disinformation that is being spread, according to Nnaji, is that immigration status affects a person’s ability to get the vaccine. She says that is why community-based organizations who can help people sign up for vaccinations, such as AFHHO, are so important.

AFHHO hopes that its sessions will also help curb disinformation in the countries of origin, too.

“We feel like if the people here are well enough educated about the vaccine, they will be able to educate our families back home — our friends, neighbors back home,” Mushi said.

Source: African Immigrant Health Groups Battle A Transatlantic Tide Of Vaccine Disinformation

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Mélanie Joly: révolutionner la fonction publique pour freiner l’érosion du français

2021/04/07 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see the details and how this understandable push will be balanced with efforts to increase representation at senior levels of Indigenous peoples and visible minorities:

Aux prises avec une fonction publique qui ne respecte « pas toujours » la Loi sur les langues officielles et un réseau diplomatique anglicisé, la ministre Mélanie Joly dit avoir donné un « coup de barre » et montré une« volonté politique claire » pour freiner l’érosion du français dans la machine fédérale, au pays et dans le monde. Passées plutôt inaperçues lors du dépôt de son « document de réforme » sur le français, des propositions spécifiques au secteur public pourraient, si elles se réalisent, créer une petite révolution au sein du gouvernement.

« Les gens savent très bien qu’il y a une culture qui fait en sorte que, normalement, quand une personne parle anglais autour de la table et qui ne parle pas français, tout le monde s’ajuste », dit la ministre Mélanie Joly pour illustrer des problèmes bien ancrés dans la culture de l’administration publique. En entretien téléphonique avec Le Devoir, celle qui a hérité du portefeuille des langues officielles fin 2019 dit vouloir envoyer un message aux fonctionnaires : cette culture doit changer.

Lors du dépôt, en février, de son « document de réforme », que la ministre appelle parfois son « livre blanc », le gros de l’attention médiatique a été consacré au fait que le gouvernement libéral exprime son désir d’utiliser désormais la Loi sur les langues officielles pour protéger le français aussi auQuébec, et non seulement comme langue minoritaire dans le reste du pays. Cela, pour atteindre une « égalité réelle » entre le français et l’anglais d’un océan à l’autre.

Or, de nombreux passages du document de 30 pages laissent entrevoir un changement assez radical dans la manière dont les deux langues sont appelées à être mises sur un pied d’égalité au sein des bureaux du gouvernement fédéral, dont presque la moitié des employés francophones des régions bilingues disent qu’ils se sentent mal à l’aise de s’exprimer en français. De grandes sections sont aussi consacrées à l’importance du rôle du français dans la conduite de la diplomatie canadienne dans le monde, après qu’une enquête du Devoir eut révélée que la haute direction d’Affaires mondiale Canada est constituée essentiellement d’anglophones faisant accéder d’autres anglophones aux postes les plus importants.

Exigence du français

Selon la vision de la ministre Joly, le gouvernement doit abolir le double standard des exigences linguistiques entre, d’une part, les francophones desquels on exige une excellente maîtrise de l’anglais écrit pour accéder à des postes de gestion et, d’autre part, les anglophones pour qui un français simplement fonctionnel peut très bien faire l’affaire. Pour ce faire, les exigences linguistiques sont appelées à être rehaussées, et plus de formation doit être offerte pour mettre à niveau les fonctionnaires. « Il faut aussi une bonne maîtrise du français écrit [en plus de la bonne maîtrise de l’anglais]. C’est ça, l’idée. C’est ça, le réel bilinguisme », explique Mélanie Joly.

Encore faut-il assurer un suivi auprès des différentes branches administratives du gouvernement fédéral. « Le problème qu’on avait, c’est que c’était une loi [sur les langues officielles] qui n’était pas toujours respectée », dit la ministre. Puisqu’ils sont isolés chacun dans leur coin, les ministères ont pris la mauvaise habitude de ne pas prendre toujours au sérieux leurs obligations en matière de langues officielles, a-t-elle constaté, rapports administratifs à l’appui. « C’est comme si, chaque fois, il fallait que j’appelle mes collègues pour savoir s’ils avaient fait le suivi, ou [comme si] l’équipe et moi voyions dans leurs propositions qu’il y avait des choses quine fonctionnaient pas au niveau des langues officielles », se rappelle-t-elle.

Dans sa nouvelle version, promise d’ici la fin de l’année 2021, la Loi sur les langues officielles devrait bénéficier non seulement d’un commissaire qui aura plus de pouvoirs pour faire appliquer ses recommandations, mais aussi d’une « unité » au sein du Conseil du Trésor qui aura pour mission de faire respecter la loi auprès de tous les employés.

« Il faut être capable de trouver une façon pour que, lorsqu’on est francophone, on puisse exercer notre travail en français au sein de notre fonction publique », fait valoir Mélanie Joly. Se basant sur les grands progrès réalisés au cours des 50 dernières années pour rendre l’État fédéral bilingue, alors qu’il peinait autrefois à donner des services en français, la ministre Joly croit que son document de travail donne un « coup de barre » à l’administration, lui indiquant les orientations du prochain chantier visant à l’égalité au sein des employés.

« Maintenant, on sait que le système n’est pas parfait, et on peut bâtir à partir de nos acquis pour nous assurer qu’il n’y a pas d’érosion du français au sein de notre fonction publique, alors que ce sont de nouvelles générations de fonctionnaires qui rejoignent les rangs des ministères et qu’elles ont eu accès à des cours d’immersion en français [au Canada anglais]. »

Dans le reste du monde

Le 18 mars dernier, les quatre sous-ministres d’Affaires mondiales Canada ont conjointement signé une lettre, envoyée à tous les employés, qui réaffirme que « le bilinguisme fait partie intégrante du Canada » et que l’organisation « a le rôle unique de représenter les intérêts et les valeurs du pays sur la scène internationale dans les deux langues officielles ».

« Nous incitons tous les employés à utiliser davantage le français et nous demandons à tous les gestionnaires de donner l’exemple dans leurs propres communications », peut-on lire dans le courriel obtenu par Le Devoir. Il ne s’agit pas d’un hasard. La conduite de la diplomatie en français est explicitée à de nombreuses reprises dans le document de réforme que la ministre Joly a présenté en février. « Ça a des impacts et c’est normal que notre fonction publique réagisse. Elle voit venir [les changements] et elle s’adapte parce qu’on a dit qu’on allait déposer un projet de loi », indique la ministre.

Tout en faisant le constat d’« une migration vers l’anglais pour tout le monde, pour tous les peuples », Mélanie Joly souhaite essentiellement tirer profit du caractère bilingue du Canada dans les relations avec les autres pays, ainsi que contribuer davantage aux instances internationales qui en font la promotion, comme l’Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF).

« On est dans un monde où, essentiellement, on a tout avantage à développer des accords de libre-échange, des ententes culturelles, à créer des ponts entre les nations. Si on ne le fait pas, d’autres vont le faire. Donc, pourquoi ne pas utiliser nos racines, ce qui nous unit comme francophonie ? »

Mélanie Joly précise que les nombreux éléments abordés dans son document de réforme ne se retrouveront pas nécessairement tous dans la nouvelle Loi sur les langues officielles promise par le gouvernement Trudeau, qu’ils pourraient prendre d’autres formes. Par exemple, le souhait de donner un coup de pouce à la vie en français dans la capitale, Ottawa, sera plutôt traduit par des aides financières. Il est également toujours trop tôt pour savoir si le droit de travailler en français dans les entreprises privées de compétence fédérale au Québec sera inclus au projet de loi ou s’il fera partie d’une éventuelle réforme du Code canadien du travail. Un groupe d’experts mandaté pour se pencher sur la question doit remettre ses conclusions le 8 mai.

Source: Mélanie Joly: révolutionner la fonction publique pour freiner l’érosion du français

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Akyol: It Is Time To Revive The Islamic Enlightenment

2021/04/07 1 Comment

Akyol’s commentary always relevant and interesting:

ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram… Beheadings, terrorist attacks, massacres in the name of Islam… Do these grim episodes show that there is something wrong in the Muslim world today?

In the West, there are two popular answers to this question, which are diametrically opposite: The first is that these terrorists reveal “the true face of Islam,” which is a hopelessly violent and intolerant religion. The second answer is that, quite the contrary, these terrorists “have nothing to do with Islam,” which is only a religion of peace, while all troubles are created by socio‐​economic problems or foreign interventions.

As a Muslim myself who has been struggling with issues of freedom, human rights, and tolerance in the contemporary world of Islam, I believe both answers are wrong.

The first answer is wrong—and awfully unfair—because terrorists acting in the name of Islam are extremely marginal among the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, most of which are peaceful people with normal lives. So, those terrorists are “extremists” indeed.

However, the second answer is also wrong, because the terrorists in question have something to do with Islam: they are referring to certain verdicts in Islamic jurisprudence—the interpretation of the Sharia—only by taking them to new heights.

Look at how ISIS justifies massacring Shiites: by declaring them “apostates.” In return, mainstream Islamic authorities condemn ISIS, by typically saying, “No, you can’t declare fellow Muslims apostates.” But most of these authorities don’t say that no apostate should ever be targeted—because they still believe in the authoritativeness of a dubious narration from the Prophet Muhammad: “Whomever leaves his religion, kill him.”

Or look at how Al Qaeda justifies killing “blasphemers”—people such as Charlie Hebdo cartoonists. They rely on medieval Islamic jurists who defined sabb al‐​rasul, or “insulting the prophet,” as a capital crime. In return, mainstream Islamic authorities oppose Al Qaeda, typically by saying, “No you can’t punish blasphemy on a vigilante basis, especially in a non‐​Muslim county.” That is helpful, but most of these mainstream authorities still see blasphemy as a capital crime. Hence they do not oppose the harsh blasphemy laws in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and many other Muslim‐​majority countries.

Here is the underlying problem that modern‐​day Muslims need to frankly face: Islam, as a religion, found political power right at its birth. Therefore, most early Muslims did not see anything wrong with using coercive power to advance their faith—just as their contemporaries, such as the Byzantines or the Sassanids, were also doing. This coercive power included military conquests; a political order based on the supremacy of Muslims over non‐​Muslims; the enforcement of piety; and the violent suppression of blasphemy, apostasy, and heresy.

None of these were shocking in the pre‐​modern world, when Islam in fact often seemed to be a more lenient religion than Christianity, whose own marriage with power was reflected in the horrors of the Crusades or the tortures of the Inquisition. No wonder, in that pre‐​modern world, many Jews fled from Christendom to the Muslim Ottoman Empire to find safety and freedom.

Yet the world has changed dramatically in the past few centuries, with the rise of liberal democracies and universal human rights. Christianity—and Judaism—adopted to these modern values, by revising some of their illiberal doctrines. But Islamic jurisprudence, and the mindset beneath, has not changed much.

Therefore, mainstream Islam indeed needs that much‐​discussed transformation: a major reform. The right analogy in Western history is not the Protestant Reformation, though, which has been often referenced, but only inappropriately.

The right analogy is the Enlightenment, in particular the kind of Enlightenment advocated by John Locke, who offered a new interpretation of Christianity—not a rejection of it—to save it from its own centuries‐​old marriage with coercive power.

In fact, this has been realized since the 19th century—in the late Ottoman Empire, Arab World, and India—by self‐​declared “Islamic liberals.” Their efforts led to liberal constitutions, feminist reforms, and religious reinterpretations. Recently, British historian Christopher de Bellaigue has summarized these significant efforts as the “Islamic Enlightenment.”

Yet this very drive provoked “Islam’s counter‐​Enlightenment,” spearheaded by a wide range of Salafis, Islamists, and rigid conservatives. (The terrorists mentioned above represent their most extreme fringe.)

My new book, Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance, is meant to be an intervention into this big crisis of Islam. It aims to revive and advance the Islamic Enlightenment, by presenting a comprehensive argument for it—and, perhaps more importantly, by dismantling the theological roadblock that obstructs it.

The main challenge is simple, but also a big one: Can Islam give up coercive power? Can it be a religion that proposes its truth claims, but does not imposethem?

Many Muslims, who are happy to live in free societies or aspire for them, already say “yes.”

Yet there are others who emphatically say “no.”

Their zealotry threatens the future of liberty. It also threatens the future Muslim societies, and, in fact, the future of the Islamic faith—my faith—as well.

Hence I wrote this book to show why they are wrong, and why there is a better way to understand Islam.

A way where faith is reconciled with reason, expressed in freedom, and crowned with tolerance.

Source: It Is Time To Revive The Islamic Enlightenment

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