The Pandemic Imperiled Non-English Speakers In A Hospital

2021/04/24 Leave a comment

Of note, both the findings and the measures the hospital took to address the problem:

In March, just weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic, the incident command center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston was scrambling to understand this deadly new disease. It appeared to be killing more black and brown patients than whites. For Latino patients, there was an additional warning sign — language.

Patients who didn’t speak much, if any, English had a 35% greater chance of death.

Clinicians who couldn’t communicate clearly with patients in the hospital’s COVID units noticed it was affecting outcomes.

“We had an inkling that language was going to be an issue early on,” says Dr. Karthik Sivashankar, the Brigham’s then medical director for quality, safety and equity. “We were getting safety reports saying language is a problem.”

Sivashankar dove into the records, isolating and layering the unique characteristics of each of the patients who died: their race, age, gender and whether they spoke English.

“That’s where we started to really discover some deeper, previously invisible inequities,” he says.

Inequities that weren’t about race alone.

Hospitals across the country are reporting higher hospitalizations and deaths for Black and Latino patients as compared to whites. Black and brown patients may be more susceptible because they are more likely to have a chronic illness that increases the risk of serious COVID. But when the Brigham team compared Black and brown patients to white patients with similar chronic illnesses, they found no difference in the risk of death from COVID.

But a difference did emerge for Latino patients who don’t speak English.

That sobering realization helped them home in on a specific health disparity, think about some possible solutions, and begin a commitment to change.

“That’s the future,” says Sivashankar.

Identifying the mortality risk is just the first step

But first, the Brigham had to unravel this latest example of a life threatening health disparity. It started outside the hospital, in lower-income communities within and just outside Boston, where the coronavirus spread quickly among many native Spanish speakers who live in close quarters with jobs they can’t do from home.

Some avoided coming to the hospital until they were very sick, because they didn’t trust the care in big hospitals or feared detection by immigration authorities. Nevertheless, just weeks into the pandemic, COVID patients who spoke little English began surging into Boston hospitals, including Brigham and Women’s.

” We were frankly not fully prepared for that surge,” says Sivashanker. “We have really amazing interpreter services, but they were starting to get overwhelmed.”

“In the beginning, we didn’t know how to act, we were panicking,” says Ana Maria Rios-Velez, a Spanish-language interpreter at the Brigham.

Rios-Velez remembers searching for words to translate this new disease and experience for patients. When called to a COVID patient’s room, interpreters were confused about whether they could go in, and how close they should get to a patient. Some interpreters say they felt disposable in the early days of the pandemic, when they weren’t given adequate personal protective equipment.

When she had PPE, Rios-Velez says she still struggled to gain a patient’s trust from behind a mask, face shield and gown. For safety, many interpreters were urged to work from home. But speaking to patients over the phone created new problems.

“It was extremely difficult, extremely difficult,” she says. “The patients were having breathing issues. They were coughing. Their voices were muffled.”

And Rios-Velez couldn’t look her patients in the eye to put them at ease and try to build a connection.

“It’s not only the voice, sometimes I need to see the lips, if smiling,” she says. “I want them to see the compassion in me.”

Adding interpreters and telemedicine tech

The Brigham responded by adding more interpreters and buying more iPads so that remote workers could see patients. The hospital purchased amplifiers to raise the volume of the patient’s voice above the beeps and machines humming in an ICU. The Mass General Brigham network is piloting the use of interpreters available via video in primary care offices. A study found lower use of telemedicine visits by Spanish-speaking patients as compared to white patients during the pandemic.

The Brigham’s goal is that every patient who needs an interpreter will get one. Sivashankar says that happens now for most patients who make the request. The bigger challenge, he says, is including an interpreter in the care of patients who may need the help but don’t ask for it.

In the midst of the first surge, interpreters also became translators for the hospital’s website, information kiosks, COVID safety signs and brochures.

“It was really tough. I got sick and had to take a week off,” saysYilu Ma, the Brigham’s director of interpreter services.

Mass General Brigham is now expanding a centralized translation service for the entire hospital network.

Seeing the inequities within the hospital workforce

Brigham and Women’s analytics team uncovered other disparities. Lower-paid employees were getting COVID more often than nurses and doctors. Sivashankar says there were dozens of small group meetings with medical assistants, transport workers, security staff and those in environmental services where he shared the higher positive test rates and encouraged everyone to get tested.

“We let them know they wouldn’t lose their jobs,” if they had to miss work, Sivashankar says. And he, along with managers, told these employees “that we realize you’re risking your life just like any other doctor of nurse is, every single day you come to work.”

Some employees complained of favoritism in the distribution of PPE, which the hospital investigated. To make sure all employees were receiving timely updates as pandemic guidance changed, the Brigham started translating all coronavirus messages into Spanish and other languages, and sending them via text, which people who are on the move all day are more likely to read. The Mass General Brigham system offered hardship grants of up to $1,000 for employees with added financial pressures, such as additional child care costs.

Angelina German, a hospital housekeeper with limited English, says she appreciates getting updates via text in Spanish, as well as in-person COVID briefings from her bosses.

“Now they’re more aware of us all,” German says through an interpreter, “making sure people are taking care of themselves. ”

Moving beyond the hospital walls to address disparities

The hospital also set up testing sites in some Boston neighborhoods with high coronavirus infection rates, including neighborhoods where many employees live and were getting infected. At least one of those sites now offers COVID vaccinations.

“No one has to be scheduled, you don’t need insurance, you just walk up and we can test you,” explained Dr. Christin Price during a visit to one of the testing sites last fall. It was located in the parking lot of Brookside Community Health Center, in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood.

Nancy Santiago left the testing site carrying a free 10-pound bag of fruits and vegetables, which she’ll share with her mother. Santiago said she’s grateful for the help.

“I had to leave my job because of [lack of] daycare, and it’s been pretty tough,” she said, “but you know, we gotta keep staying strong and hopefully this is over sooner rather than later.”

The Brigham recently opened a similar indoor operation at the Strand Theater in Dorchester. Everyone who comes for a coronavirus test is asked if they have enough to eat, if they can afford their medications, whether they need housing assistance and if they’re registered to vote.

The bags of free food, and the referrals to social support, are evidence of a debate playing out about the role hospitals will play, outside their walls, to curb health disparities rooted in racism.

“Poverty and social determinants of health needs are not going away any time soon, and so if there’s a way to continue to serve the communities, I think that would be tremendous,” says Price, who helped organize the Brigham’s community testing program.

Mass General Brigham leaders say they’ll take what they’ve learned dissecting disparities during the COVID-19 pandemic, and expand the remedies across the hospital network.

“Many of the issues that were identified during the COVID equity response are unfortunately pretty universal issues that we need to address, if we’re going to be an anti-racist organization and one that promotes equity strongly as one of our core strategies,” says Tom Sequist, chief of patient experience and equity for Mass General Brigham.

The Brigham’s work on health disparities comes, in part, out of a collaboration with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), and included a focus on gathering, analyzing and tracking data.

“There’s a lot of defensive routines into which we slip as clinicians, that the data can help cut through and reveal that there are some biases in your own practice,” explains IHI President and CEO Dr. Kedar Mate.

“If we don’t name and start to talk about racism and how we intend to dismantle it or undo it,” Mate adds, “we’ll continue to place Band-Aids on the problem and not actually tackle the underlying causes.”

But has the Brigham’s work lowered the risk of death from COVID for Spanish-speaking patients? The hospital hasn’t updated the analysis yet, and even when it does, determining whether (or how) the interventions worked will be hard to prove, Sivashankar says.

“It’s never going to be as simple as ‘We just didn’t give them enough iPads or translators and that was the only problem,’ and now that we’ve given that, we’ve shown that the mortality difference has gone away,” said Sivashankar.

But Sivashankar says more interpreters, iPads, and better messaging to non-English speaking employees, plus all the other steps the Brigham has taken during COVID have improved both the patient and employee experience. That, he says, counts as a success, while work on the next layer of discrimination continues.

Source: The Pandemic Imperiled Non-English Speakers In A Hospital

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Changing immigration trends colour ‘Minari’ reception in South Korea

2021/04/24 Leave a comment

Of interest:

The heartfelt Korean immigrant tale in “Minari” resonated with many Asian Americans, but for some in South Korea the film presented a far too dated view of immigration to the United States.

“Minari”, directed by a Korean-American and produced in the United States, was nominated for six Academy Awards, including best picture, best director and best supporting actress for Youn Yuh-jung, a historic first for a Korean actor.

Released in the midst of the pandemic, the film’s Korean elements and its Oscar nominations helped make it a commercial success in South Korea, where the film brought in $7 million of its total $11 million global box office receipts, compared with $2 million from showings in the United States, according to IMDb.

In “Minari,” the tale of a hard-luck immigrant farming family in rural Arkansas in the 1980s highlighted the heyday of immigration from South Korea to the United States. Today, however, it’s a tale that is increasingly foreign to many South Koreans, especially younger people.

“It is true that people are less interested in ‘Minari’ because of its topic, as these days it’s mostly rich people who immigrate to America,” said a 35-year-old teacher who only gave her surname, Jeong.

About 350,000 Koreans were estimated to have immigrated to the United States in the 1980s after the liberalisation of overseas travel and studies. The annual tally peaked in 1986, at 30,500, but it slowed to 8,000 a year in the 2000s, and then to about 4,000 after Washington tightened border controls after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, according to South Korea’s foreign ministry.

Most new Korean immigrants to the United States are there for jobs or satisfy an investment requirement of nearly a million dollars, the ministry data showed.

Racial tensions, highlighted by a recent Atlanta shooting in which four Koreans were killed, and the high numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths in the United States, have also cast a darker shadow on the idea of living there, said Park Soo-hui, 69, who said she has relatives in the United States.

Park said the film reminded of the hardships her relatives suffered after moving to the United States in the early 1990s. But her teenage granddaughter had a different thought.

“They left hoping for a better life as they were not doing well here, and they went through a lot in their early days, including racial discrimination and family disputes,” she said. “But as we watched the film together, my granddaughter was just envious, saying not everyone could go there.”

“Minari” is the second film in as many years to make history at the Academy Awards with its Korean connections, after the South Korea-produced “Parasite” took the 2020 awards by storm, snagging six nominations and four wins, including “Best Picture.”

It attracted more than 10 million viewers in South Korean theatres within two months of its release in 2019, becoming one of the most watched films in Korean history.

“Minari,” which opened in South Korea on March 3, has drawn about 925,000 viewers as of Wednesday, Korean Film Council (KOFIC) data showed.

More than “Minari” itself, South Koreans expressed more interest in the nomination for Youn, who plays a spunky grandmother who travels to the United States to take care of her grandchildren.

Jung Duk-hyun, a culture critic, said the domestic audience could be more focused on Youn because she not only earned the Oscar nomination but also embodied an “independent, mischievous and cool grandma,” an image of women increasingly pursued in Korean society.

Source: Changing immigration trends colour ‘Minari’ reception in South Korea

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Khan: In Quebec, an act of injustice receives no accountability

2021/04/23 Leave a comment

More good commentary:

Apr. 20 was a day marked by sharp contrasts in judicial verdicts relating to harm.

In Quebec Superior Court, Justice Marc-Andre Blanchard issued a ruling regarding Bill 21, Quebec’s “secularism” law, which bans the wearing of religious symbols for government employees deemed to be in a position of authority, such as judges, government lawyers, teachers and police officers. New hires must remove religious symbols, while those already employed with the government can keep their symbols and jobs; they cannot, however, get promoted or transferred.

And so systemic discrimination have been enshrined in law, in a province whose premier repeatedly denies the existence of systemic racism.

In contrast, we witnessed accountability for cruel behaviour in a Minnesota courtroom. There, a 12-member jury found former police officer Derek Chauvin guilty on three counts in the death of George Floyd. The sheer inhumanity of Mr. Chauvin’s actions – namely, kneeling on the neck of Mr. Floyd while he was prone, handcuffed and pleading for his life – was broadcast for all to see. Mr. Chauvin was held accountable for his actions, and now awaits sentencing for the three charges of which he has been found guilty. Elation was tempered with the knowledge that the fight against police brutality and systemic racism is far from over. U.S. President Joe Biden acknowledged as much, calling systemic racism “a stain on our nation’s soul.”

A life, to be sure, has not been snuffed out by Bill 21. But livelihoods are being waylaid all the same by systemic discrimination.

While Justice Blanchard affirmed the bulk of Quebec’s law, he struck down portions that applied to English school boards and the wearing of face coverings in the National Assembly. He also had harsh words for the bill: “There is no doubt that in this case the denial by Bill 21 of the rights guaranteed by the Charter has severe consequences for the persons concerned. Not only do these people feel ostracized and partially excluded from the Quebec public service, but in addition, some see their dreams become impossible while others find themselves stuck in their positions with no possibility of advancement or mobility. In addition, Bill 21 also sends the message to minority students wearing religious symbols that they must occupy a different place in society and that obviously the way of public education – at the level of preschool, primary and secondary – does not exist for them. On the other hand, the beneficial effects appear at least tenuous.”

Quebecers aspiring to one of these jobs now face a dilemma, Justice Blanchard added: “Either they act according to their soul and conscience – in this case their beliefs – or they work in the profession of their choice. It is easy to understand that this is a cruel consequence which dehumanizes those targeted.”

Nonetheless, such cruel dehumanization is legal because of the province’s deployment of the Charter’s notwithstanding clause.

Meanwhile, Quebec Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette, the law’s architect, will appeal the ruling, stating, “There are not two Quebecs – there is only one.” This is rich coming from a man who has himself created two Quebecs: One where opportunity is available for all, and another where opportunities are limited because of a person’s religious belief and expression.

Let’s not forget that the majority of Quebeckers approve of Bill 21 – cruelty, dehumanization and systemic discrimination be damned. Is it any wonder that Quebec has been facing a shortage of teachers? Lost is the irony that today everyone must cover their face in government institutions, including in the National Assembly.

Federal leaders, conscious of the significant number of seats in Quebec, have reacted along differing lines. Green Party Leader Annamie Paul and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh have each unequivocally opposed the law, while the Conservatives have thrown Quebec’s religious minorities under the bus, stating they will not challenge the law but assuring Canadians that they would never introduce a federal version of Bill 21. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been non-committal about intervening.

We must now take inspiration from the U.S., where activists have pushed for justice for Black lives and are now opposing new laws in Georgia that will affect voters of colour. We must publicize the systemic discrimination, dehumanization and cruelty of Bill 21 far and wide, and confer with activists about the best way forward to address discrimination enshrined in law.

Let Quebec explain Bill 21 to the world. After all, those who aspire to a more just society should remember the words of Martin Luther King Jr.: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It does not bend on its own.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-in-quebec-an-act-of-injustice-receives-no-accountability/

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Germany Grapples With Racism After Threats Derail Refugee’s Candidacy For Parliament

2021/04/23 Leave a comment

Sad:

Tareq Alaows was hoping to become the first Syrian refugee to win a seat in Germany’s parliament when the country goes to the polls in September.

Speaking to NPR in February after announcing his candidacy with the Green Party, the 31-year-old lawyer and human rights activist from Damascus was full of ambition to help make Germany a better place.

“From my own experience as an asylum-seeker, I know that Germany needs to improve its integration policies, because they impact everyone, not just refugees,” he said. “I want to effect change for everyone in Germany.”

When Alaows fled the war in Syria in 2015, he thought he was leaving the threat of violence behind him. “The whole reason I came to Europe was so that I could live in safety and with dignity,” he said.

That has not come to pass. Citing death threats and a racist offensive against him and people close to him, Alaows withdrew his candidacy to represent the constituency of Oberhausen, in North Rhine-Westphalia state, in parliament on March 30.

The intolerance and intimidation Alaows faces have been widely condemned but are nothing new for Muslim and nonwhite public figures, or for politicians who openly support refugees. His dramatic campaign ending follows a rise of ethnic discrimination and violence in Germany in recent years, according to the government’s Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency.

“We have a problem with racism”

Alaows is not currently talking to the press, although he has spoken to Green Party candidate Lamya Kaddor.

“I wasn’t surprised by the threats and abuse pitted at Tareq, but I think he was,” Kaddor said. “We have a problem with racism in this country, and not just with far-right extremists. Racism is widespread, even in the middle of society.”

Kaddor, who is running to represent a Duisburg district in the September election, said she too faces racism daily. She was born in Germany to parents who came from Syria several decades ago. She vows she won’t let intimidation stop her election campaign.

“I’m used to a certain level of hatred and hostility. It doesn’t scare me anymore,” Kaddor said. “But it’s frightening for Tareq, who’s experiencing such vehement racist abuse for the first time.”

Like Kaddor, journalist Ferda Ataman was saddened but not surprised by Alaows’ decision.

“Being the target of racist abuse and threats myself, I fully understand why Tareq Alaows has stepped down,” said Ataman, who was born in Germany after her parents emigrated from Turkey. “But it’s very bitter news. Effectively, he’s unable to take part in our democratic process, which is a damning verdict on our society.”

Ataman, who wrote the book Ich bin von hier. Hört auf zu fragen! (I’m From Here. Stop Asking!), is the director of Neue deutsche Medienmacher, an organization that advocates for diversity in the media and politics and offers support to journalists facing racist threats. She said they have a long way to go.

Shrugging off blackface

Two days after Alaows stepped aside, a public television station in the southern region of Bavaria aired an ostensibly satirical sketch about the election featuring a comedian in blackface. The comic was portraying a fictional Black dictator.

The public media network, Bayerischer Rundfunk, told NPR that the comedian stands behind his decision to appear in blackface because “as a satirist” it’s his “job to present things in an exaggerated way.”

Ataman said the broadcaster’s decision to air the sketch is indefensible.

“Unfortunately, blackfacing on television here is not that unusual, and it’s only just starting to be questioned,” she said. “I think that says everything about where Germany is when it comes to tackling racism.”

Ataman said another glaring sign that racism is ingrained in society is the disproportionate representation of minorities in politics. She said between 92% and 96% of state and federal lawmakers are white, even though people with what’s referred to here as a “migration background” make up 26% of Germany’s population.

Those are not the only issues. The latest annual report by the government’s anti-discrimination agency indicated racist attacks were on the rise. Ataman said racism is wide-ranging, from everyday microaggressions to institutionalized discrimination and racial profiling in policing to de facto segregation in schools. Germany has also seen anti-Muslim and anti-refugee protests by a group called Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, or PEGIDA. And it has witnessed far-right extremist attacks such as those the National Socialist Underground, a neo-Nazi group, got away with for almost a decade until its only surviving leader was convicted in 2018.

In 2019, Walter Lübcke, a pro-refugee regional lawmaker in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party, was assassinated by a far-right extremist outside his home following a series of death threats.

Journalists with minority backgrounds have also received threats. Die Zeit columnist Mely Kiyak — who was born in Germany to Kurdish parents — turned the hate mail she received into a theater show called Hate Poetry in which she and fellow journalists of color read the abuse in front an audience.

Another withdrawn candidacy

Another politician who has left the political arena because of racism is Sener Sahin. Last year, he dropped out of the race for mayor in the Bavarian town of Wallerstein. Sahin, who’s Muslim, was intending to run for the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to the CDU.

“When I announced my candidacy, there was a huge outcry from fellow CSU council members who said the C for CSU stands for Christian — not Muslim,” Sahin said. “So, I withdrew from the race before it really started. I didn’t want to cause a rift in our town.”

Sahin, an engineer whose parents are from Turkey, was born in Germany but said he is still considered an outsider.

“They didn’t like my name, my background or my faith,” he said. “That hurt, of course, because I knew that if I were named Thomas Müller, they’d have supported me.”

He said he’s not one to bear grudges though. He magnanimously jokes that a year later his last name is now trending because of Ugur Sahin, the immunologist and founder of the German company BioNTech, which developed a COVID-19 vaccine with U.S. drugmaker Pfizer. (The two men are not related despite their shared surname, he added.)

Filiz Keküllüoglu, co-founder of a group working to empower minorities, women, trans and other marginalized people in the Green Party, said cases such as Sener Sahin’s and Alaows’ are typical and that political parties need to take a hard look at themselves.

“Every political party in Germany is far whiter than society, and this is a major deficit in our democracy,” Keküllüoglu said. “We work with established politicians within the Green Party, people willing to question their own privileges who are open to power sharing.” With polls suggesting the Greens could win enough seats in September to enter a coalition government with the CDU and CSU conservative alliance, Keküllüoglu said their diversity initiative may end up working overtime.

Markus Söder, the state governor of Bavaria and leader of the CSU who just backed out of the race to succeed Merkel as chancellor, attended a carnival event in 2015 dressed as Mahatma Gandhi in brownface.

Similar incidents in countries such as the United States and Canada are considered offensive and spark public outcries. But Ataman said the fact that Söder’s appearance in brownface was barely raised during his candidacy is symbolic of a wider lack of anti-racist awareness within German politics and society.

As for Alaows, it was not just overt hate that prevented him from running in the election, he said, but also the racist structures the country has failed to question. In a statement announcing his withdrawal, he said, “My candidacy showed that in all parties in politics and across society, strong structures are needed to confront racism and help those affected.”

Source: Germany Grapples With Racism After Threats Derail Refugee’s Candidacy For Parliament

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What Does Vaccine Inequality Look Like? See Chart

2021/04/23 Leave a comment

In addition to inequalities within and between Western countries, not to forget the global ones:

Earlier this month, Namibia’s president Hage Geingob was invited to join the WHO’s weekly press briefing to talk about World Health Day. The idea was for him to help explain to the hundreds of reporters from around the world what was happening with COVID immunization efforts in his southern African nation.

In what has become all too common during the pandemic, the video connection was unstable. The Namibian president kept freezing on the screen. The audio would become muffled and incomprehensible, or the sound would drop out entirely.

Then at times there would be bursts of clarity. “It is COVID apartheid!” Geingob shouted.

“We already made our deposit!” He insisted. It became clear that the president was using his time not to speak to the press but to harangue WHO officials in the room to finally deliver the vaccine doses he’d already paid for through COVAX. That’s the WHO-led initiative to procure and equitably distribute vaccines, particularly for low- and middle-income nations.

“We have made the advance payment but there is this exclusion. COVID apartheid is now prevailing,” he said, comparing the inequity in global access to vaccines to the South African Apartheid system that divided the country along racial lines and trapped millions of Black Africans in poverty.

“Up until now, we didn’t get any,” he said of the vaccines Namibia has ordered. The few hundred doses that Namibia has been able to secure is “only because our good friends, China and India, gave us vaccines.”

So far Namibia has given fewer than 3,000 COVID jabs. This is a fraction of what a mass vaccination site in the U.S., like the Javits Center in New York City, administers every day.

In the United States nearly 40% of the population has now gotten at least one dose of a vaccine. In Namibia less than 0.1% of the population has gotten a shot.

The U.S. has administered more COVID vaccinations in to arms than any other country in the world. Ingrid Katz, the associate faculty director at the Harvard Global Health Institute, says the U.S. is now in “somewhat rarified air” in the global vaccination effort. “There are a few other nations out there who are with us.” Globally just 2.3% of the world’s population is now fully vaccinated. In Africa it’s fewer than 1%.

“It you look at the data globally,” Katz says. “You’ll see that about 75% of the vaccines have gone to only 10 countries globally. There’s massive, massive inequality.”

The countries that have managed to get a lot of people vaccinated — the U.S., the U.K., India — all happen to have manufacturing plants that are producing the vaccines. They also have had export restrictions which meant their own citizens have been at the front of the line to get immunized. Important regional players such as South Africa have fully vaccinated only ½ of 1% of their population. In the Philippines it’s less than 0.1%. Even wealthy nations in Europe such as Germany, Spain, Italy and France haven’t yet gotten above 7%.

Katz says this is no way to tackle a global health crisis. “If we assume that it’s fine just to vaccinate American citizens but no one else in the world, we’re going to be in big trouble,” she says.

Katz had a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine. In it she and her colleagues calculated that based on the vaccination rates happening globally at the end of March, it would take 4.6 years for the planet to reach herd immunity against SARS-CoV-2. Since then the number of shots being given each week has increased.

“But we’re still talking years. It’s not going to be months,” until this pandemic is under control, she says. And if the virus continues to spread and mutate for several more years, there’s a good chance that a variant could emerge to which the vaccines provide no protection.

At that point the U.S. would be in no better position than a country that hadn’t vaccinated at all.

Getting the whole world immunized “is an investment in our own self-interest,” Katz says.

Source: What Does Vaccine Inequality Look Like? See Chart

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Denmark raises the bar on citizenship

2021/04/23 Leave a comment

Ongoing trend:

Denmark plans to tighten the conditions for citizenship, after a deal struck between the government and three opposition parties. The country already has one of the most restrictive immigration policies in Europe.

The Danish government announced on Tuesday that it is tightening the conditions for naturalization, excluding people who have been convicted of crimes. The new rules follow an agreement reached between the Social Democrat government of Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and three right-wing opposition parties.

“Obtaining Danish citizenship is a great declaration of faith from Danish society, according to the parties to the deal. They are therefore in agreement that it is necessary to raise the bar for who can become a Danish citizen,” the migration ministry said in a statement.

Danish values

In future, applicants for Danish citizenship will have to show that they have had no criminal convictions and that they have been employed for at least three-and-a-half of the last four years.

The agreement also puts a strong emphasis on “Danish values.” Citizenship tests, which have been used since 2015, will now include five questions on these values.

“We want to be absolutely sure that those who receive Danish citizenship, with all the rights that go with it, are well integrated into Danish society and have also embraced it – including Danish values,” the migration minister, Mathias Tesfaye, told the public broadcaster DR. Danish values included freedom of speech and equality, he said.

The Liberal (Venstre) Party’s Morten Dahlen tweeted that there was “strong agreement” on the new rules.

Non-Westerners targeted

According to Statistics Denmark, 11% of Denmark’s 5.8 million inhabitants are of foreign origin – either born abroad or with parents born abroad. Of those, 58% are citizens of a country classified as “non-Western,” the AFP news agency reports. In 2020, of the approximately 7,000 people who became Danes, more than half were Europeans.

In March, the Danish government announced plans to swap controversial laws on “ghettos” that affect marginalized neighborhoods for tighter measures targeting “non-Western” residents. The move led to concerns expressed by human rights groups about discrimination against the country’s non-European ethnic communities.

Denmark is also the only European country to revoke the residency permits of Syrian refugees, having declared that Syria is a safe country for return.

Source: Denmark raises the bar on citizenship

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Quick Quotes: Reaction to Quebec court ruling on Bill 21, religious symbols law

2021/04/21 Leave a comment

Useful compilation:

Quebec Superior Court Justice Marc-Andre Blanchard on Tuesday upheld the bulk of the province’s secularism law, known as Bill 21, which bans many public sector workers from wearing religious symbols on the job. Blanchard, however, struck down clauses pertaining to English-language school boards and a ban on members of the provincial legislature wearing face coverings. Quebec has announced it will appeal the ruling.

Here’s a quick look at some of the reaction to the decision:

“Our position has always been that Bill 21 conflicted with our values and our mission and with those of all Quebecers as expressed in the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. Its very adoption was contrary to our societal goal of promoting our peaceful co-existence in a pluralistic and inclusive Quebec.” — Joe Ortona, chairman, English Montreal School Board.

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“Of course I’m happy, but this is one small victory because we live in a very big province. My colleagues who work in the French system, they don’t get to celebrate today, and all the other people who aren’t part of English schools, they don’t get to celebrate today.” — Furheen Ahmed, teacher, Westmount High School, in Montreal.

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“The laws of the National Assembly apply throughout Quebec. There is no question of dividing Quebec in the application of Quebec legislation. Quebec is united and it will remain so.” — Simon Jolin-Barrette, Quebec justice minister.

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“A complex decision was handed down by the Quebec Superior Court that recognizes the inordinate harms done to individuals who wear religious symbols and strikes down certain parts of the law as unconstitutional. The decision also keeps most of the law intact and many of the recognized harms in place.” — Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, director, equality program, Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

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“Well, I’m disappointed with the judgment. I find it illogical. Currently, it is as if secularism and values apply differently to anglophones and francophones. So, in Quebec, we protect the rights of anglophones to receive services in English, but now, that would protect different values for anglophones and francophones. I think that in Quebec, all Quebecers, and for all Quebecers, there must be common values.” — Francois Legault, Quebec premier.

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“A religious symbol is not a diversity, it is a religious choice, it is a religious message. In that judgment, and in general, there is a tendency in Canada to treat religious signs as an intrinsic part of the body or the person itself.” — Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, Parti Quebecois leader.

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“Quebecers who wear religious symbols such as the hijab, the kippa or the turban have been second-class citizens for 674 days. The decision today by the Superior Court of Quebec puts an end to this situation for some Quebecers, but not for all.” — Yusuf Faqiri, Quebec director, public affairs, National Council of Canadian Muslims.

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“I’m 100 per cent sure it’ll be appealed to the Supreme Court where I think it will go down and I don’t support the idea of discrimination against people on the basis of race, creed or colour and I believe that the charter is clear on that enough that I disagree with the Quebec court on the decision.” — Brian Pallister, Manitoba premier.

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“The result of the Legault government’s Law 21 is: Do you want your fundamental rights respected? Go work in English! Ouch, that hurts. Bill 21 is a law that is discriminatory that simply shouldn’t be there.” — Manon Masse, co-spokesperson, Quebec solidaire, via Twitter.

Source: Quick Quotes: Reaction to Quebec court ruling on Bill 21, religious symbols law

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Quebec court upholds law banning religious dress, with exceptions for English schools, MNAs

2021/04/21 Leave a comment

Don’t think anyone saw this split coming unless I missed it:

A Quebec Superior Court judge has upheld most of the province’s law banning religious dress in some public-service functions but carved out an exception for the anglophone education system, to the dismay of Premier François Legault and other Quebec nationalists.

Justice Marc-André Blanchard ruled Tuesday that Quebec’s “Act respecting the laicity of the State,” better known as Bill 21, infringes fundamental rights to religious expression under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and its Quebec equivalent. He found Bill 21 has “cruel and dehumanizing” effects on the targeted people.

But, he found, the Quebec government’s use of a blanket constitutional override power under Section 33 of the Constitution, known as the notwithstanding clause, prevents him from striking down most of the law.

The judge found an exception for anglophone school boards, which are protected under the Constitution’s minority language rights from having the override applied to them. The judge ruled language rights include cultural issues such as allowing religious expression among school staff.

The ruling cements Quebec’s debate over religious rights into a schism posing proponents of the Canadian model of multiculturalism, including many anglophones, against some Quebec nationalists, mostly francophone, who want to impose a more unitary vision of Quebec culture.

Justice Blanchard also overturned religious dress restrictions on members of the National Assembly who have a Constitutional right to run for election and sit in the legislature without such constraints.

The practical result of Tuesday’s ruling is Quebec’s English-language schools can hire teachers who wear Muslim veils or Jewish kippas, while the rest of Quebec’s school system cannot. Religious symbols will continue to be banned for police officers, judges, government lawyers and others the government has defined as people in positions of authority.

“I am elated and I’m proud of the English Montreal School Board,” said Furheen Ahmed, a high-school teacher who wears a headscarf, and works for the board that was a plaintiff in the case. “But it’s one small victory in a really big province.

“My French counterparts don’t get to celebrate today. And all the other people outside English schools don’t get to celebrate.”

Mr. Legault’s government has already said it will appeal the decision while most plaintiffs and advocacy groups who brought the challenge have strongly hinted they will do likewise. Many legal experts believe a showdown in the Supreme Court of Canada is inevitable.

Justice Blanchard found Mr. Legault’s legislation, passed nearly two years ago with the stated aim of promoting secular values in government institutions, has had serious negative consequences for Quebeckers who wear religious symbols, particularly Muslim women. “Law 21 steps more than minimally on the freedom to show or to practise religious beliefs,” the judge wrote. “This use of the prerogative seems to be imprudent and casual, and its sweep is far too large.”

But, the judge added, while the use of the constitutional exemption to shield the law from challenge appears to be excessive, it does not “violate the architecture of the Canadian Constitution nor primacy of the rule of law.”

The English Montreal School Board was about the only participant in the case declaring victory. While most of the law was upheld, Mr. Legault said he was disappointed and did not understand the judgment.

“I find it illogical. It’s like laïcité and those values are applied differently for anglophones and francophones,” Mr. Legault said. “Quebec and all Quebeckers should live with common values.”

Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette, the architect of the law, accused the judge of dividing Quebeckers. “Quebec is a nation. Some are trying to divide us but we are united,” Mr. Jolin-Barrette said.

Quebec’s law imposes state religious neutrality and includes a dress code prohibiting civil servants holding “positions of authority” from wearing visible religious articles. The jobs under the dress code include teachers, police officers and government lawyers, among others.

People in those jobs who wear the symbols and already hold those posts are allowed to keep working. They cannot be promoted or transferred and new hires must remove the religious symbol to work.

Carissima Mathen, a constitutional law professor at the University of Ottawa, said the ruling sets up an examination of just how far use of the notwithstanding clause can go at the Quebec Court of Appeal and likely the Supreme Court of Canada.

“It’s the first time in maybe 20 years or more that we will have this kind of detailed consideration of Section 33,” Dr. Mathen said. “Lower courts may feel constrained by existing case law. It’s a question more for the appellate court and the Supreme Court of Canada to weigh in and decide if they want to chart a new path or new approach to Section 33.”

Dr. Mathen said while scholars debate how widely the clause should be used, the issue hasn’t gone before the courts because Quebec’s broad use of it is “such a rare choice.”

Advocates for Jewish, Muslim and Sikh organizations who backed the court challenge all expressed disappointment and vowed to keep fighting.

“It came out very clearly there are fundamental problems with Bill 21,” said Yusuf Faqiri, director of Quebec issues with the National Council of Canadian Muslims.

“It’s not constitutional, it’s discriminatory. It has been 674 days that Quebeckers who wear religious symbols are second-class citizens. We will review it in the next couple of days and decide on next steps but one thing is clear. This battle is far from over.”

Source: Quebec court upholds law banning religious dress, with exceptions for English schools, MNAs

Robert Dutrisac in Le Devoir:

Dans sa décision rendue mardi concernant la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État, le juge Marc-André Blanchard, de la Cour supérieure, n’a pas chamboulé l’ordre constitutionnel canadien puisqu’il n’a pu invalider la protection que confère à la loi 21 le recours à la disposition dérogatoire de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés. Mais il crée deux régimes de droits religieux dans les écoles suivant une démarcation linguistique, sorte de partition juridique du Québec.

À la lecture du jugement, il est évident que c’est à son corps défendant que le juge a écarté les arguments présentés par les demandeurs, notamment l’aspirante enseignante Ichrak Nourel Hak et le National Council of Canadian Muslims, qui visaient à contourner l’article 33 de la Charte canadienne accordant à toute province le droit de dérogation. En fait, le juge Blanchard a invalidé les deux seuls éléments de la loi 21 sur lesquels la dérogation n’avait aucune prise. Il s’agit de l’article 23 de la Charte qui garantit les droits scolaires des minorités linguistiques, droits scolaires qui s’étendent désormais à l’expression de la foi religieuse, selon l’interprétation nouvelle du juge. L’autre élément invalidé, c’est l’obligation faite aux élus de l’Assemblée nationale d’exercer leur fonction à visage découvert. Selon le jugement, cette obligation prive des personnes qui se couvrent le visage du droit de se présenter à une élection québécoise, ce qui contrevient à l’article 3 de la Charte. On peut voir dans cette invalidation une intrusion inédite du pouvoir judiciaire dans la régie interne de l’Assemblée nationale. Dans les deux cas, le gouvernement caquiste va demander d’en appeler.

Quant au recours à la dérogation, le juge Blanchard s’en est tenu au jugement Ford c. Québec qui établit que le législateur n’a pas besoin de justifier l’usage qu’il en fait, et ce, afin « de traduire l’importance que continue de revêtir la souveraineté des législatures », a écrit la Cour suprême il y a plus de 30 ans, préservant ce restant de souveraineté parlementaire britannique que détiennent toujours les provinces. Le juge Blanchard admoneste le gouvernement caquiste qui « ratisse beaucoup trop large » en suspendant des droits qui n’avaient pas de lien avec la loi 21 alors qu’il aurait dû agir de « façon parcimonieuse et circonspecte ». C’est un point de vue, mais si cette suppression est sans objet, elle n’aura pas d’effet. Quoi qu’il en soit, le juge prend sur lui d’envoyer un message aux tribunaux supérieurs : en cas de contestation, le législateur devrait justifier l’existence d’une « certaine connectivité » avec la législation visée. C’est à « l’urne », c’est-à-dire aux citoyens lors d’élections, de décider du sort d’un gouvernement qui exerce ce pouvoir de dérogation, fait-il par ailleurs valoir. Les tribunaux « se doivent d’éclairer cette connaissance [de l’électorat] des fruits de cette expertise », ajoute-t-il. Le juge Blanchard apporte certainement de l’eau au moulin à ceux qui exècrent la Loi sur la laïcité et qui, contre la CAQ, voteront pour le Parti libéral du Québec ou Québec solidaire.

Sur la question de l’accroc aux droits fondamentaux, le juge Blanchard, sans surprise, repousse les arguments qui pourraient justifier cette atteinte « dans une société libre et démocratique », selon la formulation de la Charte. Il rejette du revers de la main les prétentions féministes du groupe PDF Québec voulant que le port du voile soit un symbole de l’asservissement des femmes par une religion patriarcale. Il rejette la position, plus sérieuse selon lui, du Mouvement laïque québécois qui veut que la loi 21 protège la liberté de conscience des enfants et des parents. Reprenant les termes d’un jugement de la Cour suprême, il estime que refuser d’exposer des enfants à différents faits religieux « revient à rejeter la réalité multiculturelle de la société canadienne ». Et le prosélytisme « passif » n’existe pas ; l’enseignante qui porte le voile n’en fait donc pas, à moins de s’y prêter activement. Le fait qu’une enseignante portant le hidjab pourrait l’enlever à l’école afin de respecter la loi est pour lui une aberration en raison de la « symbiose » entre le port de signes religieux et la foi ; l’un ne peut pas exister sans l’autre.

En étendant les droits linguistiques des minorités que protège l’article 23 de la Charte aux droits religieux, le juge Blanchard innove. Qui plus est, la Cour crée une situation inédite de partition juridique de l’État québécois dont on peut craindre qu’elle nuise à la cohésion sociale, à ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler le vivre-ensemble, et qui ne correspond certes pas à la volonté des parlementaires. Quelle que soit l’opinion qu’on peut avoir sur la loi 21, on doit donner raison au gouvernement caquiste de porter cette cause en appel.

Source: Deux régimes de droits au Québec Éditorial La cour entérine une forme de partition juridique.

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Budget 2021: Immigration and Multiculturalism/Anti-racism

2021/04/20 Leave a comment

Overall, significant increases in immigration and multiculturalism/anti-racism program spending, with the relevant budget section excerpts below. Encouraging that IRCC’s IT infrastructure modernization (GCMIS) received multi-year funding.

Most coverage to date has focussed on IRCC and immigration (see CIC news summary below).

What’s not there:

  • Citizenship fee elimination: The government has apparently decided not to implement its 2019 election commitment to waive citizenship fees; and,
  • International students: No measures to assist universities and colleges deal with the fall in revenues and other impact.

Some highlights of the multiculturalism/anti-racism measures:

  • $172 million over five years, starting in 2021-22, with $36.3 million ongoing, to Statistics Canada to implement a Disaggregated Data Action Plan that will fill data and knowledge gaps. 
  • $200 million to establish a fund to combat anti-Black racism and improve social and economic outcomes in Black communities.
  • $126.7 million over three years to prevent racism and discrimination in health-care systems. This funding will support patient advocates, health system navigators, and cultural safety training for medical professionals.
  • $75 million over five years, and $13.5 million ongoing, to the RCMP to combat systemic racism through new recruitment and training processes, community engagement and other measures.

CIC News summary:

The Canadian government has just tabled its first Budget since 2019.

This major announcement usually takes place in the first quarter of each year, however it did not take place last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Canadian federal budget receives a lot of attention domestically since it contains the policy priorities the government will pursue, the government’s spending and revenue projections, as well as an overview of the state of the Canadian economy.

Today’s Budget is of added importance for several reasons. It is the first in two years due to the unprecedented times we are living in. Moreover, the ruling Liberal party has a minority government, and is rumored to be considering calling an early election in 2021, which means it may need to rely on the Budget to convince Canadians to give them a majority.

Sometimes, the Budget contains major Canadian immigration policy announcements.

For example, Budget 2014 proposed terminating the popular federal Immigrant Investor Program and Entrepreneur Program. That same Budget outlined that the federal government would invest millions of dollars to ensure that Express Entrywould successfully launch in January 2015.

Here are the immigration priorities outlined in Budget 2021. It is important to note that these are proposals and the Budget needs to win the approval of the majority of Parliament for the Liberals to go ahead and pursue these priorities. It is likely that Parliament will pass this Budget since defeating it would trigger an election— an outcome that Canada’s federal parties likely do not want while the country continues to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

Nearly $430 million to modernize IT infrastructure

Perhaps the most important immigration proposal in the Budget is a nearly $430 million investment the federal government would like to make to modernize its information technology (IT) infrastructure. The Budget calls for the investment to replace the Global Case Management System (GCMS), which is used to manage immigration applications. The purpose of the investment, according to the Budget, includes allowing the federal government to respond to higher levels of foreign national arrivals in the future, better security, and improved application processing.

Reforms to Express Entry

The Budget notes that the federal government has an eye towards reforming Express Entry. The government would like to give the immigration minister more authority to “select those candidates who best meet Canada’s labour market needs.” What these changes may entail are not specified in the Budget.https://9c6b1105c6868e5597d2724aa137db10.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Express Entry is the main way that Canada selects economic class immigrants. It accounts for about one-quarter of all the immigrants Canada welcomes each year.

Enhancements to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program

The Budget calls for some $110 million in additional spending over the next three years on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP). The spending will go towards providing information and support to vulnerable foreign workers, increased inspections of employers to ensure they are treating foreign workers well, and improving service delivery to vulnerable workers so they can obtain open work permits if they have been abused by their previous employers in Canada.

Supporting Racialized Newcomer Women

Newcomer women sometimes face barriers to employment in Canada due to factors such as developing English or French skills, lack of Canadian experience, lack of affordable child care, and discrimination. The Budget proposes an additional $15 million in spending over the next two years to build on existing initiatives aimed at helping to improve the employment outcomes and career advancement of newcomer women.

Accelerated Pathways to Permanent Residence

Budget 2021 references the new immigration programs launched by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) last week to provide accelerated permanent residence pathways to essential workers and international graduates this year. Some 90,000 individuals living in Canada will be able to begin to apply for permanent residence beginning on May 6.

Source: https://www.cicnews.com/2021/04/budget-2021-what-it-means-for-canadian-immigration-0417836.html#gs.ynuthh

Budget immigration and multiculturalism/anti-racism sections

Immigration section

Diversity is our strength, including as a source of our economic strength. Net immigration contributed to half of Canada’s average GDP growth from 2016 to 2019, and nearly three quarters of its growth in 2019.

As our workforce ages, immigration ensures the Canadian economy continues to grow, that we attract more top talent and investment capital, and that we continue to create good jobs. Welcoming immigrants is an important part of Canada’s recovery.

A well-functioning immigration plan also enriches our communities, reunites families, and provides protection to asylum seekers and refugees.

Budget 2021 puts forward proposals that would ensure Canada stays competitive with its international partners and is prepared to take advantage of the resumption and growth in global travel, post-pandemic. The federal government also recognizes that Quebec shares responsibility for immigration and that certain initiatives will not apply to applicants seeking to reside in Quebec.page218image56412192

Delivering a Modern Immigration Platform

  • The digital infrastructure that supports Canada’s immigration system must be responsive and sustainable to ensure public confidence and support growing visitor, immigration, and refugee levels. A secure, stable, and flexible enterprise- wide digital platform that protects people’s information will improve application processing and help Canada remain a destination of choice.
  • Budget 2021 proposes to invest $428.9 million over five years, with
    $398.5 million in remaining amortization, starting in 2021-22, to develop and deliver an enterprise-wide digital platform that would gradually replace the legacy Global Case Management System. This will enable improved application processing and support for applicants, beginning in 2023.

Enhancing the Temporary Foreign Worker Program

  • For over 50 years, temporary foreign workers have been coming to Canada to help meet the needs of businesses. Recently, the pandemic has highlighted the critical role that these workers—the vast majority of whom are racialized and precariously employed—play in Canada’s economy, particularly at the farms that feed Canada and the world.
  • To build on recent actions taken in 2020 to support temporary foreign workers affected by COVID-19, the Government of Canada will continue to protect our most vulnerable and isolated workers, ensuring their health, safety, and quality of life are protected while working in Canada. To this end, Budget 2021 proposes to provide:
  • $49.5 million over three years, starting in 2021-22, to Employment and Social Development Canada, to support community-based organizations in the provision of migrant worker-centric programs and services, such as on-arrival orientation services and assistance in emergency and at-risk situations, through the new Migrant Worker Support Program.
  • $54.9 million over three years, starting in 2021-22, to Employment and Social Development Canada and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, to increase inspections of employers and ensure temporary foreign workers have appropriate working conditions and wages.
  • $6.3 million over three years, starting in 2021-22, to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, to support faster processing and improved service delivery of open work permits for vulnerable workers, which helps migrant workers in situations of abuse find a new job. The government has zero tolerance for any abuse of workers.page219image56589760page219image56587680page219image56587472page219image56589136

Supporting Racialized Newcomer Women

  • Many newcomer women face multiple barriers to employment, including language, lack of Canadian experience, and in some cases gender- and race- based discrimination. In Budget 2018, the Government of Canada launched a three-year pilot to support employment-related services for racialized newcomer women, such as networking opportunities, employment counselling, and paid work placements.
  • Budget 2021 proposes to provide $15 million over two years, starting in 2021-22, to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to extend the Racialized Newcomer Women Pilot initiative, which will continue to improve their employment outcomes and career advancement.

Accelerated Pathways to Permanent Residence

  • Canada’s immigration system is critical to supporting the economic recovery. That is why the Government of Canada recently announced the introduction of time-limited pathways to permanent residence for foreign nationals already in Canada. This includes recent international graduates and workers in essential occupations, such as health care or other critical sectors. These pathways would not only help retain the talent of those already in Canada, but would also recognize the significant contribution to Canada—and personal sacrifice—these workers have made during the pandemic. In Quebec, which shares responsibility for immigration, this initiative will not apply.

Streamlining Express Entry

  • Canada’s Express Entry system has been in place since 2015. It has a track record of bringing in highly skilled immigrants who succeed in Canada’seconomy and society. These newcomers fill needs in our economy that are critical for our growth and create shared prosperity for all. StreamliningCanada’s Express Entry system will allow the government to ensure our immigration system responds to Canada’s growing economic and labour force needs and help Canada reach its 2021-2023 Immigration Levels Plan.
  • The Government of Canada intends to propose amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to provide the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada with authority to use Ministerial Instructions to help select those candidates who best meet Canada’s labour market needs from among the growing pool of candidates who wish to become permanent residents through the Express Entry System.

Multiculturalism/Anti-racism

7.1 Fighting Systemic Racism and Empowering Communities

Systemic racism can have devastating consequences for the well-being of Canadians. Violence, harassment, discrimination, exclusion from opportunities, and myriad expressions of unconscious bias deny Canadians their freedoms and fair treatment. A more equitable and inclusive society demands all Canadians come together to address racism in all its forms and make permanent and transformative changes.

In the 2020 Fall Economic Statement, the federal government announced a series of policies and programs to fight against systemic racism and empower racialized communities. These were early steps.

Budget 2021 takes the next steps towards long-term, foundational change. Canada can and will do more to support racialized communities, improve understanding of racial inequities and barriers, build a more diverse and inclusive federal public service, and work with partners to build a more equal and just future.

Strengthening the Canadian Race Relations Foundation and Helping Communities Respond to an Increase in Racism

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unequal impact on Canadians, with the increase in reports of harassment and attacks against Asian Canadians being an especially disturbing trend.

The work to address systemic racism is ongoing and must be done alongside engaged and knowledgeable partners. Their invaluable on-the-ground knowledge, experiences, learned best practices, and networks are crucial in the work to create foundational change. And their efforts can effectively bring Canadians together in the common purpose of building a fairer, safer, and more equal Canada where all are free from discrimination.

The Canadian Race Relations Foundation is a Crown corporation created in 1996, as part of the Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement. The foundation has a quarter century of history working to eliminate racism, reaffirm the principles of justice and equality for all in Canada, and uphold the principles of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Over the past year, the foundation has focused on supporting specific racialized communities impacted by dramatically rising cases of racism. In Vancouver, for example, there has been a 700 per cent increase in reported cases of anti-Asian racism since the pandemic began.

Budget 2021 proposes to provide $11 million over two years, starting in 2021-22, to expand the impact of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. This investment would allow the Canadian Race Relations Foundation to scale up efforts to empower racialized Canadians and help community groups combat racism in all its forms. This investment will also enable the foundation to facilitate initiatives like the establishment of a national coalition to support Asian Canadian communities, and create a fund to support all racialized communities directly impacted by increasing acts of racism during the pandemic.

All Canadians should feel safe and be free of discrimination. Sadly, certain people are at risk of racially motivated violence, threatening their personal safety and the security of their communities.

Budget 2021 proposes to provide $2 million in 2021-22 to Public Safety Canada to enhance its Communities at Risk: Security Infrastructure Program. This program helps protect communities at risk of hate-motivated crimes, by providing not-for-profit organizations such as places of worship, schools, and community cultural centres with funding to enhance their security infrastructure.page228image56375312page228image56369904

Supporting Black Canadian Communities

Events over the last year have shone a light on the complex and unique lived realities of Black Canadians. Data show that Canada’s Black population remains one of the most disadvantaged, with a higher prevalence of low-income households, lower employment rates compared to the Canadian average, as well as a much higher likelihood of discriminatory treatment at work.

COVID-19 has only exacerbated these inequities linked to anti-Black racism, and many Black Canadian communities, and the organizations that support them, are increasingly vulnerable to economic hardship.

To continue to support the work of community organizations that empower, advocate for, and lift up Black Canadians:

Budget 2021 proposes to provide $200 million in 2021-22 to Employment and Social Development Canada to establish a new Black-led Philanthropic Endowment Fund. This fund would be led by Black Canadians and would create a sustainable source of funding, including for Black youth and social purpose organizations, and help combat anti-Black racism and improve social and economic outcomes in Black communities.

Budget 2021 proposes to provide $100 million in 2021-22 to the Supporting Black Canadian Communities Initiative at Employment and Social Development Canada.page229image56261872page229image56258128

The Supporting Black Canadian Communities Initiative

The Supporting Black Canadian Communities Initiative is administered by Employment and Social Development Canada. The program supports capacity-building of Black-led non-profit organizations so they can better serve Black Canadian communities.

Organizations that recently received funding include:

  • Black Wellness Cooperative of Nova Scotia (Bedford, Nova Scotia): This organization provides expertise, knowledge, and training to promote health, wellness, and fitness among the African Nova Scotian and Mi’kmaq communities.
  • Association Francophone de Brooks (Brooks, AB): 90 per cent of the francophone community of Brooks is of African origin. This organization offers activities for young people, community celebrations, and social activities for families in the francophone community of Brooks.
  • Youth Stars Foundation (Montréal, QC): This organization supports vulnerable youth populations, including Black youth, by offering a variety of programs and workshops that use the arts, sports, dance, and music to foster life skills, promote self-esteem, and strengthen interpersonal skills.

Mobilizing the reach and expertise of community-based organizations is an important tool for empowering Black communities and confronting systemic economic barriers. It also ensures that federal investments best serve the needs of their communities. New research published by the Network for the Advancement of Black Communities and Carleton University found that Black- led and Black-serving charities receive significantly less grant funding than other charities in Canada.

Better Data for Better Outcomes

For every Canadian to reach their full potential, we need to properly understand the circumstances in which people live and the barriers they face. We cannot improve what we cannot measure.

At present, Canada lacks the detailed statistical data that governments, public institutions, academics, and advocates need in order to take fully informed policy actions and effectively address racial and social inequities. From a detailed understanding of demographic trends to economic and employment data, Statistics Canada has a vital role to play in providing the evidence-based foundation upon which good, effective policies can be built—policies that bring the impacts on marginalized groups into the heart of decision-making.

Journalists and researchers have long worked to tell the stories of where and why disparities in our society exist—whether among racialized groups or the power gap that exists between men and women that leads women’s careers to stall. Better disaggregated data will mean that investigative efforts or research projects like this will have more and better data to analyze.

Budget 2021 proposes to provide $172 million over five years, starting in 2021-22, with $36.3 million ongoing, to Statistics Canada to implement a Disaggregated Data Action Plan that will fill data and knowledge gaps. This funding will support more representative data collection, enhance statistics on diverse populations, and support the government’s, and society’s, efforts to address systemic racism, gender gaps—including the power gaps between men and women—and bring fairness and inclusion considerations into decision making.

Building on other investments in Budget 2021, this provides a combined $250 million over five years to Statistics Canada, ensuring Canada has the data it needs to make evidence-based decisions across priorities including disaggregated data, health, quality of life, the environment, justice, and business and the economy.page230image56253344

To modernize Canada’s justice system, support evidence-based policies, and ensure accountability within the criminal justice system, the government needs to update and fill gaps in its collection and use of data.

Budget 2021 proposes to provide $6.7 million over five years, starting in 2021-22, and $1.4 million ongoing, to Justice Canada and Statistics Canada to improve the collection and use of disaggregated data. This is part of ongoing efforts to address the overrepresentation of Indigenous peoples and racialized groups in the justice system.

Comprehensive academic research enhances our understanding of the causes of discrimination, the impact of oppression on Canadians and our communities, and strategies to support greater justice, equity, and accountability.

Budget 2021 proposes to provide $12 million over three years, starting in 2021-22, to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to fund academic research into systemic barriers facing diverse groups. This research will help inform actions to address social disparities related to race, gender, and other forms of diversity.

Making the Public Service More Diverse

Canadians should have confidence that their public sector workforce is representative of the communities it serves. In the 2020 Speech from the Throne, the government committed to implementing an action plan to increase diversity in hiring and appointments within the public service.

Budget 2021 proposes amendments to the Public Service Employment Act to affirm the importance of a diverse and inclusive workforce and avoid biases and barriers in hiring.

Source: https://www.budget.gc.ca/2021/report-rapport/toc-tdm-en.html

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Liberals pledge $300 million to support Black-led community organizations in 2021 federal budget

2021/04/20 Leave a comment

Of note:

The federal government plans to put $300 million forward to support Black-led charitable organizations in 2021-22.

“We know the pandemic has exacerbated systemic barriers faced by racialized Canadians,” finance minister Chrystia Freeland said in her budget announcement Monday.

The budget proposes $200 million to endow a philanthropic fund dedicated to supporting Black-led charities and organizations serving youth and social initiatives.

As well as $100 million for the “Supporting Black Canadian Communities Initiative.”

Both of which will be administered through Employment and Social Development Canada for the 2021-22 year.

Freeland also announced additional funding for the existing Black entrepreneurship fund.

The Foundation for Black Communities put the proposal forward for an endowment to be written into the 2021 budget.

“This investment will allow for the financial infrastructure to ensure Black communities have long-term, self-directed and self-sustaining resources,” said Rebecca Darwent, a co-steering member of the Foundation for Black Communities. Darwent added that endowing the organization would ensure funding is sustained regardless of changing priorities of future governments.

In a report released at the end of last year, it found that for every $100 of grant funding dispensed by Canada’s leading philanthropic foundations, only 30 cents go to Black community organizations.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted Black Canadians, and the Foundation for Black Communities has said that Black-led community organizations will be crucial to the response.

“The aftershocks of COVID over the next five to 10 years are what we as a community have to prepare ourselves for,” co-founder Liban Abokor previously told the Star.

Source: Liberals pledge $300 million to support Black-led community organizations in 2021 federal budget

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