Uncovering the roots of discrimination toward immigrants

2019/07/31 Leave a comment

Interesting study and approach:

All over the world, immigration has become a source of social and political conflict. But what are the roots of antipathy toward immigrants, and how might conflict between immigrant and native populations be dampened?

His newest research on identity politics, an experimental approach that explores the causes of discrimination against Muslim immigrants in Germany, was just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Opposition toward immigration can be due to economic reasons because of competition for jobs or due to the perceived cultural threat that immigrants pose to their host country by challenging dominant norms and changing the national identity,” he says.

He finds arguments centered on cultural threat more convincing than economic explanations of opposition to immigration, especially in Europe.

“Most previous research is limited to presenting survey-based attitudinal measures of antipathy toward immigrants or refugees and correlating them with socio-economic characteristics of the survey respondents or their political beliefs,” Sambanis says. “We wanted to go beyond that and measure actual behavior in the field. We wanted to figure out what particular aspects of refugees or immigrants generate more hostility. Is it racial differences? Ethnic differences? Is it linguistic or religious differences? Is there merit to the idea that discrimination toward immigrants is due to the perception that they do not follow the rules and threaten dominant ?”

There’s very little experimental research, Sambanis says, on the causes of anti- bias and even less research on how to reduce it.

Working with University of Pittsburgh assistant professor Donghyun Danny Choi, a former PIC Lab postdoc, and Mathias Poertner, a PIC Lab fellow and postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley, Sambanis designed the experimental study. They targeted Germany because of the high influx of immigrants and refugees and the political salience of immigration issues in recent elections there and because Germans are strongly inclined toward conforming with social norms, especially around keeping order.

Their hypothesis: If it is true that opposition to immigration is driven by the perception that immigrants threaten valued social norms and pose a cultural threat, then in a country that values norm adherence they would see a reduction in discrimination toward immigrants if immigrants show that they respect local social norms and care about their new society.

They staged an intervention against a native male German who littered in a public space, since not littering is a social norm there. A female researcher would approach the person littering, asking him to pick up his trash and dispose of it properly. Bystanders, unaware that they were being studied, observed the interaction. Shortly thereafter, the woman would take a call and while speaking on the phone would drop a bag of groceries, causing oranges to spill out on the floor. The observing researchers recorded whether the bystanders who had witnessed this entire interaction helped the woman pick up her oranges.

In some versions, the woman dropping the oranges would have sanctioned the norm violator, signaling her integration with the German culture. In others, she did not intervene so as to seem indifferent to the littering.

Researchers also used the woman’s identity as a variable: In some versions, she was a native German, in others a Muslim immigrant wearing a hijab. Her degree of religiosity, her ethnic background, and her linguistic assimilation to German society were all manipulated as part of the experiment.

This allowed the researchers to measure whether immigrants who are more socially distant than the average German receive less assistance and whether following social norms offsets any bias toward them.

They ran this experiment more than 1,600 times in train stations in 30 cities in both western and eastern Germany using multiple teams of research assistants, with more than 7,000 bystanders unwittingly participating. Then, the researchers measured whether women who wore a hijab received less assistance than native Germans, whether ethno-racial differences between immigrants matters less than religious differences in generating bias, whether immigrants who wore a cross received more help than those who did not wear any outward symbols of religiosity, and whether good citizenship—enforcing anti-littering norms—generated more help from bystanders, eliminating any bias against immigrants.

“We found that bias toward Muslims is too pronounced and is not overcome by good citizenship; immigrant women who wore a hijab always received less assistance relative to German women, even when they followed the rules,” Sambanis says.

“But we also found that good citizenship has some benefit, as the degree of discrimination toward Muslims goes down if they signal that they care about the host society. And ethnic or racial differences alone do not cause discrimination in our setup. Nor is religious assimilation—wearing a cross rather than a hijab—necessary to be treated with civility.”

On average, women wearing a hijab who did not enforce the norm got help in about 60% of cases, whereas “German” women who did scold the litterer got help in 84% of the cases. The rates of assistance offered to a Muslim who enforced social norms by scolding the litterer were equivalent to those for a German who did not enforce the norm.

“The reason to run such an experiment focusing on everyday interactions is that it gives you a sense of the accumulated impact of discrimination in shaping perceptions of identity and belonging,” Sambanis says. “Getting help to pick up something you drop on the floor seems like a small thing. But these small things—and small slights—add up to form lasting impressions of how others perceive you and, in turn, can inform the immigrants’ own attitudes and behavior toward the host society.”

Now, Sambanis, Choi, and Poertner are extending their research to new questions trying to understand the mechanisms underlying the effects they picked up with their experiments in Germany.

They found gender was a key factor, as it was German women who discriminated against Muslim women. Sambanis says he didn’t expect this result since existing research implies that men are more likely to discriminate, and certainly media portrayals of anti-immigrant backlash tend to center on men.

“We puzzled over the fact that German women withheld assistance from Muslim women who needed help. Based on survey data we collected after our experiment, it seemed that this effect was particularly due to secular women, women who do not register a religious preference,” he says. “This led us to hypothesize that part of the reason we observed this behavior is that German women who might otherwise be open to immigration have developed hostile attitudes toward Muslims because they perceive their cultural practices as threatening to hard-won advances in women’s rights. It’s basically a feminist opposition to political Islam.”

The team has now designed a new experiment that explicitly tests this hypothesis. Two new experiments test whether signaling one’s political ideology regarding key issues related to women’s rights can offset discrimination toward Muslim women.

This collaborative effort between Sambanis, Choi, and Poertner will become a book on how conflict between immigrants and native populations can be managed and whether norms can form the basis for the reduction in discrimination. The German experiments will be expanded next year and applied to a different social context in Greece, which also faces an intense political crisis due to unsustainably high levels of immigration and which differs from Germany with respect to the degree of public adherence to laws and rules.

Individuals there are less likely to follow rules and contribute less to the public good. So Sambanis and his co-authors think they may observe even lower effects of the ability of social norms to offset discrimination due to ethno-religious differences. That research will provide a useful comparison to better understand the existing experimental results.

“A key idea in socio-biological theories of inter-group conflict is that there is an almost innate antipathy or suspicion toward members of “out groups” [immigrant], however those groups are defined. But clearly societies can manage sources of tension and avoid conflict escalation since there is very little observed conflict relative to how many different types of inter-group differences exist out there,” Sambanis says. “A lot of the literature on immigration has suggested that assimilation is the key to reducing conflict between natives and immigrants: Immigrants must shed their names, change their religion, or hide their customs so they can be more accepted.

“Is this really necessary? Or is it enough for immigrants to just signal credibly that they care about being good citizens as much as everybody else?”

Understanding these types of questions is at the heart of the PIC Lab’s mission. A unifying theme of Sambanis’ work has been reducing inter-group conflict, particularly inter-ethnic conflict.

His interests were shaped by the wars in Bosnia and Rwanda, which were going on when he was in graduate school and pushed him away from international economics and toward studying peacekeeping. At the PIC Lab, researchers tackle questions both at the larger country level and at the smaller individual and group level, integrating ideas from political science, social psychology, and behavioral economics to understand human behavior and explore the outcomes of different policy interventions to reduce conflict. The lab conducts data-based, mostly quantitative research that can inform policy design but also theory-building in political science, Sambanis says.

“Ethnic differences, religious differences, —they all matter for politics, but they do not need to produce conflict,” he says. “When people are faced with the hard realities of ethnic wars, separatist conflicts, genocides, or hate crimes, they usually assume that these are inevitable outcomes of innate human prejudices or fears and that people just can’t get along because of deep differences in their preferences or their customs.

“A lot of the work that I do shows that ethnic conflict is not inevitable. The key is to understand the conditions that make salient and then find ways to defuse or manage conflict.”

Source: Uncovering the roots of discrimination toward immigrants

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FATAH: Bernier’s problems with multiculturalism cannot be dismissed

2019/07/29 Leave a comment

As usual, Fatah conflates populist discourse on multiculturalism with what the original policy, the subsequent act and the related policy instruments (e.g., employment equity) actually mean both in policy and practice.

The policy is all about integration through:

  • Assisting cultural groups to retain and foster their identity;
  • Assisting cultural groups to overcome barriers to their full participation in Canadian society;
  • Promoting creative exchanges among all Canadian cultural groups; and,
  • Assisting immigrants in acquiring at least one of the official languages.

And while identity politics is overly played, this is not new. After all, part of the historical playing out of French and British relations often involved identity politics and many critics of multiculturalism are playing on “white” identity.

Moreover, while there are pockets, analysis of Census level data by people such as Hiebert and Hulchanski confirm that fear of enclaves is exaggerated:

On Wednesday, Maxime Bernier, leader of the People’s Party of Canada, announced his party’s platform on immigration, calling for a 50% cut in the annual number of immigrants admitted.

Justifying this massive cut, Bernier cited figures from a 2011 study by the Fraser Institute that said the net “cost” to Canada per immigrant was $6,051, estimating an annual burden of about $24 billion. He told the cheering audience, that “is a lot of money.”

He then opined that “one reason for this is that immigrants generally have lower wages than non-immigrants” and thus pay less tax.

In arriving at his figure of $24 billion, Bernier did not take into account the fact that immigration is a way of importing consumers without paying a penny to the society that manufactured us. We are the only goods that arrive duty free with no price tag.

When I arrived as an immigrant, Canada paid zero for my degree in biochemistry and 20 years of experience as a journalist and advertising copywriter. Neither did my wife’s postgraduate degree in English Literature cost a penny to the Canadian taxpayer, yet we were both contributing to the economy of Canada as taxpaying consumers and renters from day one.

Having said that, it would be foolish to outright dismiss Bernier’s very sincere fears about the integration of immigrants like me into Canadian society. It is true that most of us who come to Canada from developing countries in Asia and Africa arrive with religious-cultural baggage that includes archaic values bordering on racism, tribalism, casteism and superstitions that have little to do with the values that shaped Canada in the last 400 years of Western civilization.

Bernier said, “in the past, immigrants who came here gradually integrated into our society. They kept some aspects of the culture of their country of origin, of course. And that influenced and changed our society. They became Canadian, but with a distinct flavour.”

“This is a type of multiculturalism that enriches our society. And it is perfectly fine,” he added.

However, Bernier expressed a problem with immigrants “living permanently in an enclave apart from the larger Canadian society,” a problem he said that gets exasperated by “being officially encouraged by the government to continue to do so rather than to integrate into Canadian society and adopt Canadian culture and values.”

A nation must be based on a sense of belonging, of participating in a common national project, sharing the same values, being different from the rest of the world.

As an example, Bernier cited the way ‘ethnic politics’ has become the norm among Canada’s political parties. “They don’t talk to Canadians. They address themselves to ethnic voting blocs. To Ukrainian Canadians, Italian Canadians, Chinese Canadians, Muslim Canadians, Sikh Canadians.”

Bernier is right to point out this slow disintegration of Canadian society into vote banks. As he said, “even our foreign policy now depends on appealing to these ethnic political clienteles, instead of being based on the interests of Canada as a whole.”

The Multiculturalism Act must be revoked for the simple reason that not all cultures are equal. The culture that treats my autistic daughter with the utmost respect, love and care is not equal to the culture that treats autistic children as a punishment by God for sins committed by others.

The culture that calls for slaying gays, permits polygamy, and imprisons women in black burkas is medieval and misogynist and is certainly not equal to the culture of gender equity and LGBTQ rights.

Bernier is right when he told his party faithful: “Among the threats to our values and way of life is political Islam, or Islamism, the fastest-growing and most dangerous radical ideology in the world today.”

Canadians dismiss Bernier’s fears at their own peril.

Source: FATAH: Bernier’s problems with multiculturalism cannot be dismissed

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Former PPC candidate ‘no longer confident’ in Bernier after being replaced

2019/07/29 Leave a comment

Of note (the riding profile can be found London North Centre).

A former candidate of the People’s Party of Canada (PPC) says he’s lost confidence in the party’s leadership after being replaced by a Muslim candidate, who he claims Maxime Bernier told him would be better suited to address the “topic of radical Islam.”

Braeden Beller says he learned he was being replaced as the PPC candidate for the riding of London North Centre by political science professor Salim Mansur less than two weeks before the party held one of its largest events to date in downtown London.

Beller spoke with PPC Leader Maxime Bernier and PPC executive director Johanne Mennie about the party’s decision to substitute Mansur in as the candidate in the riding.

He says Bernier told him that “it was very valuable to have a Muslim giving the message that would speak more adequately to other Muslims on the topic of radical Islam.”

Bernier also said that Mansur would be a higher profile candidate with a larger local following in London than Beller, who said he had no political experience prior to being involved with the PPC.

Mennie said Bernier “absolutely (did) not” tell Beller that Mansur’s perspective on Islam as a Muslim would be valuable, instead pointing to Mansur’s local notoriety as the reason for the party’s choice.

“(Mansur) is well known through his work as a columnist, his work as a professor, in terms of his professional career, and that was the extent of (Bernier’s) discussion with Braeden,” Mennie said.

Mennie and Beller both said there was one conversation that he and Bernier had that she was not a part of.

When Bernier announced that the PPC had begun its cross-country candidate search, he said the party wouldn’t do “anything special” to attract a diverse range of candidates.

“I hope that our candidates will represent our country, but … we won’t do anything to attract people with different backgrounds. I think these people are coming right now,” Bernier told reporters in March.

On Wednesday, Bernier praised Mansur as a “star candidate” shortly after introducing him as “one of the main critics of Islamism in Canada,” in a speech about the PPC’s immigration platform.

Mennie says that all potential PPC candidates were told during the selection process that the party could replace them with someone else, under “exceptional circumstances.”

Mansur’s appointment has been the only case the party has invoked that policy, according to Mennie.

Mansur had first tried to run for the Conservatives. While Beller had been presented by the PPC as its candidate, both on Facebook and on the party’s website, Mansur had been vying for the candidacy of the Conservative party in London North Centre. In a statement on his website, Mansur says he was told on June 10 that he had been “disallowed” to run for the Conservatives for unspecified reasons. Five days later, he appealed the party’s decision but was rejected because he had waited too long. The Conservatives haven’t announced their candidate for the riding yet.

Beller said only running for the PPC after failing to run for the Conservatives means Mansur’s choice was “out of self-interest.”

Beller had been the lone applicant for the PPC candidacy in London North Centre and had been acclaimed before Mansur replaced him. When Beller was replaced in the riding he was offered the candidacy in the bordering riding of London Fanshawe, and according to Mennie, was told by Bernier that the leader would help his campaign by personally canvassing for him. Beller said he declined the offer because he was no longer confident in Bernier.

“What made me lose faith in Bernier is because he decided to ignore his principles when it benefited him,” Beller said.

“It’s disappointing but unsurprising,” Beller said about his short-lived experience as a federal candidate.

“I won’t be voting for the PPC, let’s put it that way,” Beller added.

Source: Former PPC candidate ‘no longer confident’ in Bernier after being replaced

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Political incivility is a losing strategy

2019/07/27 Leave a comment

Although I wish it were not so, I am not convinced, based on discourse to date:

With a federal election approaching, Canadians seeking elected office might be wondering about messaging strategies and whether the rules of engagement have changed. After all, Donald Trump, who has insulted 598 people, places and thingson Twitter alone (as of May 24), is president of the United States. Crowds at his political rallies go wild when he calls his opponents names or insults their character, “feeding red meat to his base.” Michelle Obama responded to Trump’s incivility with the slogan “When they go low, we go high” — but her preferred candidate lost. Canadian candidates for office may now be wondering if there is a lesson to be learned from south of the border. If insulting people worked for Trump, might it work for Canadian politicians?

As an experimental social psychologist, I have spent the past few years systematically testing this idea. The results from my experiments surprised me: insulting people remains a losing strategy in 2019. Even a politician’s most diehard and adoring followers do not react positively to uncivil political attacks. My advice to those aspiring to public office is to remain civil and win votes the old-fashioned way: on their merits.

It might seem obvious that onlookers would disapprove of someone personally attacking a political opponent. However, when people are grouped together into teams, the normal rules of engagement don’t always apply. For instance, body checking is usually not an acceptable thing to do, but it is sure to draw cheers at a hockey game (when the visiting team is on the receiving end, that is.) Like hockey, politics can be deeply personal for some people; it can set up a sense of “us” and “them.” At times, political opponents can seem threatening. Their policies can look callous and harmful. This sort of intergroup conflict can alter the rules of engagement by giving group leaders (politicians) a social licence to attack the other side as a means of thwarting the perceived threat. Whether this licence applies to insulting political opponents in the Information Age remained to be seen until we conducted our experiments.

Yes, Donald Trump insults people. And yes, he is President of the United States. But those two facts do not necessarily mean that Trump’s insults in some way helped him win the election. His insults and electoral victory appear to be correlated, but correlation does not imply causation. To get to the bottom of this question, my collaborator at the University of Illinois, Chicago, Linda Skitka, and I conducted a series of experiments. In each one, we randomly assigned about 1,000 Americans (from an internet panel) of varying political stripes to read either a real and insulting tweet by President Trump or a more civil version of the same. They then indicated how they felt about the President. Americans across the political spectrum approved of Trump more after reading a civil tweet than after reading an uncivil tweet, meaning that incivility uniformly backfired.

Even people who self-identified as “diehard Trump supporters” either reacted negatively to Trump’s incivility or were unmoved by it. It didn’t matter if Trump’s opponent insulted him first and his incivility was a means of restoring his honour; Americans still preferred civility. An analysis of the pattern of Trump’s uncivil tweets over time confirmed that they have a subsequent depressing effect on his public opinion polls, meaning that the results from our experiments and evidence from the real world converged. Simply put, Donald Trump probably won the US presidency not because of his incivility, but in spite of it. With the US economy humming along, just imagine what his approval ratings would be if he were to be civil more often. If insulting opponents backfires for Trump, it surely would backfire for Canadian politicians.

Why do insults backfire? Psychologists have worked out that people’s impressions, favourable or otherwise, tend to be rooted in two general categories: warmth and dominance. It is generally better to be seen as warm than as cold. And it is generally better to be seen as dominant than as submissive. We suspected that insulting an opponent would make a politician seem more dominant (a positive impression) but perhaps less warm (a negative impression). For diehard supporters of the politician, we wondered if the dominance boost might be larger than the warmth deficit, leading to a net boost in approval. However, we found no evidence that insults make a politician seem more dominant in the first place. Rather, insults only made a politician come across as cold. This perception of coldness explained why insults were universally frowned upon.

Along with its strategic shortcomings, political incivility can have larger, more ominous consequences. In their book How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt make the case that a formal system of checks and balances is necessary but not sufficient to prevent the collapse of a democracy into one-party totalitarianism. It is also necessary for members of different political parties to remain civil with and tolerant of one another (while still disagreeing about policy matters). Incivility can create a sense that subjugating the rights of a political party is both justified and necessary, and thus leads to democratic collapse. When it comes to civility, the interests of politicians and of our democracy are aligned.

Based on what I’ve learned so far from the science of persuasion, Canadians aspiring to public office would be wise to mind their manners and focus their attention on remedying the most important issues facing our nation, such as climate change, the economy (including affordable housing, the cost of living, the wealth gap between the rich and poor) and health care (including the opioid crisis). Insulting political opponents hasn’t helped Trump and it probably won’t help Canadian politicians either.

Source: Political incivility is a losing strategy

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Muslims Over-Represented In US State Prisons, Report Finds

2019/07/27 Leave a comment

Unfortunately, we do not have comparable data for Canada although I suspect we are better at accommodation (however, it does not appear that the Liberal government restored the Conservative cuts in 2012 to non-Christian chaplaincy services, or at least couldn’t find any evidence they had):

Muslims make up about 9% of state prisoners, though they are only about 1% of the U.S. population, a new report from the civil rights organization Muslim Advocates finds. The report, released Thursday, is the most comprehensive count of Muslims in state prisons so far.

The report also sheds light on the obstacles some incarcerated Muslims face in prison while practicing their faith.

“Getting a picture of the religious preference of state prisoners is, we think, really important and unique,” said Yusuf Saei, the author of the report.

Muslim Advocates requested religious preference data from every state, and based its report on the records it received from 34 states and Washington D.C. Previous data on the religious preference of federal prisoners show that Muslims make up about 12% of that population, but that’s just a small slice of a much bigger picture.

“There are roughly 200,000 federal prisoners and more than 1.3 million state prisoners,” Saei said. “We can say with a high degree of confidence this is one of the most comprehensive looks at religious preference data.” The report only focused on the Muslim population in state prisons.

Knowing how many Muslims are in state prisons, Saei said, helps prison officials understand the importance of respecting religious practice for a significant and growing portion of people in prison. The report also compiled 163 lawsuits between October 2017 and January 2019 in which Muslims alleged their right to practice was being violated.

“Incarcerated Muslims are asking for very basic things: religiously compliant food, books, prayer mats. But they’re not receiving them in many states,” Saei said. “This idea of religious liberty is baked into the U.S. Constitution and federal law specifically protects the religious liberty of prisoners. But our report shows that many state prisons are arbitrarily and illegally preventing incarcerated Muslims from practicing their faith.”

The report compared state policies and found they were inconsistent. Some are very accommodating; others are not accommodating at all. For example, the report finds that only 17 states specifically allow religious head coverings. It also finds that more and more states are fully accommodating Muslim dietary requirements–halal-certified meals. But there are states that still make access to alternative meals difficult or impossible.

“Many state policies do provide for full accommodation of Muslim diet requests. Others, however, provide diminished diet substitutes or no substitutes at all,” the report said. “And in some cases, the paucity of diet accommodations may coerce individuals into violating their dietary beliefs.”

The report provides examples of the inconsistent and in some cases burdensome state policies for Muslim prisoners. In Nevada, for example, to get a meat-substitute diet a prisoner has to pass a diet accommodation interview. In North Dakota, there is a “60-day sincerity test” for anyone who changes religions and has a new religious dietary requirement as part of the practice.

The report recommends some straightforward policies for prisons to facilitate Muslim religious practices such as permitting individual and group prayers for Muslims and training officers on how to make that happen. It also recommends giving prisoners with works assignments days off on their religious holidays, creating clear policies on burial practices that allow for Muslims to be buried within their faith traditions and allowing religious head coverings for men and women.

Prisoners’ religious practice is legally protected by the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, passed by Congress in 2000. That law states the government can’t impede a prisoner’s free exercise of religion without a compelling reason.

“Things that I want to do or congregate activities that I might want to engage in with other prisoners, if they’re done in the name of religion have a higher degree of protection than those same activities such as gathering together or studying together if they’re not done in the name of religion,” said Martin Horn. He teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and is the former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.

He said for the most part, state prisons respect federal law that protects religious practice for prisoners. And when prisoners sue over violations of religious practice, it’s difficult for the state to win.

“The state has a very high burden to overcome to avoid allowing them to practice their faith at all and that means not allowing the prayer books, not allowing them to gather for prayer, not allowing access to services of an Imam,” Horn said. “Once something is considered a religious practice, it has to be allowed unless there is a substantial burden on the state and there is no other way to mitigate that burden.”

But advocates point to cases like the recent execution of a Muslim prisonerin Alabama earlier this year. His request for an Imam to be present when he was put to death was denied by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision. The majority opinion said the prisoner had waited too long to make the request. In the dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the decision was “profoundly wrong.”

And Muslim prison chaplains say the current political climate affects the treatment of Muslim prisoners. That’s problematic for people with so little control over their lives.

Tariq Aquil, the Muslim chaplain credited with developing the halal meal program in California’s state prisons, said he saw that play out before he retired in 2017. Like when a Muslim prisoner’s prayer time coincided with the inmate count.

“The guard sees that he’s literally praying and he sees that he’s actually in his cell so he could literally count him right there, ‘I can see you, you’re praying so I know you haven’t escaped,” Aquil said. “But they would stop, they would yell at him and they would curse him.”

Because he was praying rather than responding to the roll call.

Some decisions made by the prisons that are obstacles to Muslims practicing their faith come out of ignorance, concerns about costs, like meal plans, or real security concerns like an emergency in the middle of Friday prayer, Aquil said.

But corrections officers live in the real world, he said, and the anti-immigrant, racist and anti-Muslim rhetoric spouted by the current administration has an impact.

“Those of us who’ve worked in an environment where we’re trained are told that we should leave our political and any other attitudes that we have at the front gate when we come to work and that we should treat everyone equal,” Aquil said. “Very few human beings that I know of have this on and off switch where they simply can disengage from hearing last night ‘lock her up’ or ‘send her back’ and then come into the prison and see the people who are attired in the same way or have the same face or something like that. So sometimes it’s subtle and sometimes it’s much more overt.”

Also, Aquil said it’s important to note that over-representation of Muslims in prison isn’t indicative of a lot of Muslims being arrested and convicted.

“About 90 percent of incarcerated Muslims in the United States become Muslims during their incarceration,” he said. “Most of the people that are in prison tend to be repeat offenders and so at some point in time they seem to become aware that they have run the gambit and maybe it’s time for a change.”

Source: Muslims Over-Represented In State Prisons, Report Finds

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , ,

Fêtes juives et scrutins: Élections Québec a reconnu des ratés

2019/07/27 Leave a comment

Useful background to the federal case and a reminder of the importance of preparation for advance polls in those ridings with large Jewish populations should Elections Canada stick with October 21st (as I think is justified):

La fête juive au centre du débat sur l’éventuel report de la date du scrutin fédéral a été célébrée, l’an dernier, au moment des élections provinciales. Et Élections Québec a eu beau se préparer en conséquence, l’organisme a été pris de court par les répercussions des célébrations, si bien qu’il s’est excusé auprès de la communauté juive et d’une association libérale, a appris La Presse.

Le déroulement du scrutin dans la circonscription montréalaise de D’Arcy-McGee, où habite une forte concentration d’électeurs de confession juive, a été perturbé à l’automne 2018, lors du vote par anticipation, alors qu’un nombre record de citoyens se sont rendus aux urnes, ce qui a engorgé les bureaux de scrutin.

L’attente a parfois été si longue que l’association libérale de la circonscription ainsi que le Centre consultatif des relations juives et israéliennes (CIJA) ont déposé des plaintes au Directeur général des élections (DGE).

« Les délais d’attente pour voter à certains moments de la journée se sont avérés relativement longs considérant les expériences antérieures », a convenu l’adjoint au directeur général des élections et directeur des opérations électorales, Jean-François Blanchet, dans une lettre adressée à l’Association libérale de D’Arcy-McGee, dont La Presse a obtenu copie.

« Nous tenons à nous excuser des inconvénients que cette situation a pu engendrer aux membres pratiquants de la communauté juive, mais aussi à l’ensemble des électeurs. »

– Jean-François Blanchet, dans la lettre datée du 18 mars dernier

Le CIJA a aussi confirmé avoir reçu une lettre, au nom du DGE, de Pierre Reid. « On nous disait être navré des inconvénients subis par les électeurs juifs », a indiqué le directeur de la recherche et des affaires publiques, David Ouellette.

De façon plus précise, dans la lettre de M. Blanchet, le DGE reconnaît que le vote par anticipation en 2018 a connu des ratés dans D’Arcy-McGee. Le nombre d’électeurs qui ont voté de façon anticipée a « plus que quintuplé » par rapport à 2014, passant de 500 à plus de 2500.

Cet « achalandage record » doublé d’un ralentissement informatique a eu des conséquences qu’il était « difficile d’anticiper », plaide M. Blanchet dans sa missive. « Même en organisant nos bureaux de vote de façon à accueillir un plus grand nombre de personnes, il était difficilement prévisible que l’augmentation soit si importante », ajoute-t-il.

Le DGE sensibilisé

Pourtant, le député libéral actuel, David Birnbaum, et le CIJA ont confirmé qu’ils avaient sensibilisé le DGE, plusieurs mois avant les élections, à la tenue de fêtes religieuses juives pendant la période électorale. « J’étais très conscient du défi qui était devant nous », a indiqué M. Birnbaum en entrevue à La Presse.

Parce que dans une circonscription où 42 % des électeurs sont de confession juive (estimation de l’Association libérale de D’Arcy-McGee), il n’était pas difficile d’envisager, selon le député, que le vote par anticipation allait être fort populaire. Il faut dire que lors des élections de 2018, trois des cinq journées prévues pour le vote par anticipation coïncidaient avec la fête juive de Souccot.

Ce qui ne laissait aux juifs pratiquants, contraints au repos et à la prière lors de ces rituels, que deux jours pour voter par anticipation, étant donné qu’ils ne pourraient pas non plus se rendre aux urnes lors du scrutin général du 1er octobre en raison de la fête de Chemini Atseret, la même qui fait couler l’encre à Ottawa.

Une candidate conservatrice de la région de Toronto, de confession juive, s’est adressée à la Cour fédérale pour qu’Élections Canada reporte d’une semaine les élections générales. Mardi, le tribunal a ordonné à l’organisme fédéral de se pencher à nouveau sur la possibilité de modifier la date du scrutin, ce qui provoquerait tout un branle-bas.

Taux de participation à la baisse

Dans une lettre de l’Association libérale de D’Arcy-McGee, adressée au DGE en janvier dernier, la conseillère juridique de l’organisation signale « plusieurs plaintes » formulées par des électeurs libéraux.

Dans sa missive, que La Presse a pu consulter, l’association libérale fait un rapprochement entre la situation vécue et l’effondrement du taux de participation dans D’Arcy-McGee, qui est passé de 72 % en 2014 à 46,56 % en 2018. Il est à noter que le taux de participation aux élections de 2018 a été, à travers la province, le plus bas depuis 2008.

« À la suite de notre évaluation de plusieurs plaintes, nous constatons qu’il y a eu des erreurs commises et des lacunes de planification qui ont potentiellement mené à un affaiblissement du taux de participation dans notre circonscription. »

– Me Meena Khan, conseillère juridique

Elle déplore « l’attente déraisonnable » à laquelle des électeurs ont été soumis et affirme que cela en a découragé beaucoup, qui sont repartis sans avoir voté, notamment au centre communautaire et aquatique de Côte-Saint-Luc, bureau de vote décrit comme l’« épicentre de la communauté juive » de la circonscription.

Pas de changement de date

La célébration de fêtes religieuses juives coïncidant avec des élections est « une situation bien réelle » avec laquelle tant les électeurs que les candidats et les bénévoles impliqués de confession juive doivent composer, estime David Birnbaum, lui-même membre de la communauté juive. Il est d’avis que la tenue d’élections à date fixe doit maintenant faciliter la préparation de celles-ci.

C’est dans ce sens qu’il dit avoir sensibilisé le DGE afin qu’il prenne des mesures additionnelles, comme l’ajout de personnel, pour pallier le fort achalandage estimé lors du vote par anticipation.

« Le principe de base du DGE est de rendre le vote le plus accessible possible à l’intérieur des contraintes [raisonnables]. »

– David Birnbaum, député libéral de D’Arcy-McGee

« Je n’ai jamais proposé un changement de la date électorale », précise-t-il, voulant faire écho au débat actuel.

Le CIJA a confirmé avoir fait des démarches similaires à celles de M. Birnbaum.

Élections Québec a indiqué dans un courriel transmis à La Presse avoir mis en place « du personnel en nombre suffisant » lors du vote par anticipation « ainsi que des mesures adaptées pour assurer la fluidité et le bon déroulement du vote » notamment lors des journées des 21, 22 et 23 septembre 2018 en raison de la célébration de la fête juive.

L’organisme n’a pas été en mesure de confirmer l’existence de plaintes officielles.

Dans sa lettre à l’association libérale, Jean-François Blanchet assure qu’Élections Québec « prendra en considération les problèmes rencontrés [en 2018] dans la préparation des prochaines élections » et « poursuivra [ses] efforts pour faciliter la participation électorale » de la circonscription de D’Arcy-McGee.

La date des célébrations des rituels juifs est établie en fonction du calendrier hébraïque. Les élections générales québécoises de 2014 ne coïncidaient avec aucune fête religieuse juive. Il en sera de même aux prochaines élections de 2022.

Pour un amendement à la loi

L’ex-ministre libéral et ancien député de D’Arcy-McGee Lawrence Bergman a confié à La Presse souhaiter un amendement à la Loi électorale québécoise ainsi qu’à la loi canadienne afin d’éviter la situation dans laquelle se trouve actuellement Élections Canada.

« Il faudrait que la loi soit plus claire, il faudrait apporter des nuances pour préciser, non pas que le DGE peut [changer une date], mais quand le DGE doit le faire, et ce, peu importe la religion », explique-t-il. Il est d’avis que la tenue d’élections à date fixe, tant à Ottawa qu’à Québec, devrait permettre d’éviter des conflits importants.

Lawrence Bergman, qui est membre de la communauté juive, estime également que le vote par anticipation ne doit pas être la seule solution, puisque faire « sortir » le vote lors de ces journées présente aussi son lot de défis.

Source: Fêtes juives et scrutins: Élections Québec a reconnu des ratés

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , ,

Frum: American Jews Are Being Tested By Trump

2019/07/26 Leave a comment

As are all groups:

It’s becoming almost a daily occurrence: President Donald Trump denouncing anti-Semitism and expressing solidarity with the state of Israel.

Gone are the days when Trump tweeted out a Star of David atop stacks of money. The Trump White House has purged itself of oddballs with troubling backgrounds and even more troubling friends.

The larger MAGA universe may still pulse with anti-Semitic animus. Pro-Trump trolls may traffic in grotesque online slurs and threats. Hate crimes against Jews seem on the rise. A deadly anti-Jewish mass killing occurred on Trump’s watch. Although the Pittsburgh killer is often described as despising Trump, that’s not quite accurate. It would be more correct to describe the Pittsburgh killer as disappointed in Trump, whom he viewed as a promising racist naively duped by Jews. In one of his postings, a word bubble is drawn over a photograph of Trump receiving a visitor dressed in Orthodox garb. “Your character will appear to the public as a white racist,” the visitor seems to say to Trump. “It’s how we control Whites.”

“Anti-Semitism has no place in our country or anywhere in our world.

The Trump Administration is working every day to oppose and eradicate anti-Semitic hate crimes and ideology.”

The Trump presidency seethes with hostility toward many different minority and subordinated groups. But Jews have been elevated to a special protected category, exempt from the lines of attack deployed against Muslims, non-Norwegian immigrants, women Trump deems unattractive, and so on and on.

This special exemption poses a moral quandary for communally concerned Jews quite unlike anything in our collective experience.Jewish collective life in America has been built on the assumption that people who espouse any form of bigotry—whether against African Americans, or gays, or the disabled—will, sooner or later (and probably sooner!), also turn upon Jews. The famous Martin Niemöller poem begins, “First, they came for the socialists”; only in the third line do they “come for the Jews.”

But what if a new generation of bigotry arose, attended by a strong, take-it-to-the-bank guarantee: This time, they are not coming for the Jews—not sooner, not later. That ancient obsession is laughably out of date. Today we have other concerns. Here’s a photograph of me posing alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He likes George Soros even less than we do!

What if American Jews found themselves facing people who practiced a politics of incitement, but not against Jews—indeed, who found it more useful to cast themselves as allies of Jews?

Trump usually has, at most, a perfunctory word for mass shootings and hate crimes. But Trump traveled in person to pay respects to the victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter. Vice President Mike Pence had led the way, personally helping to restore a desecrated Jewish cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri, early in 2017.

When Trump attacked Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, he specifically cited her record of tweets and statements about Jewish money supposedly swaying Congress in favor of Israel. Among other pieces of classic anti-Semitic language, Omar had said, “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”

Statements like that goaded President Barack Obama’s former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to write here in The Atlantic: “No one is questioning the right of members of Congress and others to criticize Israeli policies. But Omar is crossing a line that should not be crossed in political discourse. Her remarks are not anti-Israel; they are anti-Semitic.” Her words set in motion a resolution in the House of Representatives to condemn anti-Semitic and other bigoted speech.

By contrast, the Trump administration has more than fulfilled the wishes of many American Jews on issues from moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem to condemning Palestinian incitement to countering the Iranian nuclear program. At the Department of Justice’s conference last week, Barr said:

“Far too often, Jews and Jewish communities in America suffer outside the spotlight. New York City, this past year, has seen a sharp uptick in attacks on Orthodox Jews, particularly in the Crown Heights neighborhood. People are attacking Jews in the streets and vandalizing synagogues. In Massachusetts in March, vandals desecrated 59 gravestones in a Jewish cemetery, knocking over headstones and scrawling swastikas and hateful graffiti.

While the tragic attacks in Pittsburgh and Poway appropriately drew national attention, these attacks and others like them in communities across the country are, sadly, less well known outside the Jewish community. But they form the daily background of concerns about security and safety that many in the Jewish community feel.

As attorney general and a fellow citizen, I want to assure the Jewish community that the Department of Justice and the entire federal government stands with you and will not tolerate these attacks.”

As measured by polls, the large majority of American Jews recoil from Trump and his administration. Yet if you spend time in the organized Jewish world, you have probably noticed an early but unmistakable warming to the president. The warming is most pronounced among the older, more communally committed, and more Israel-focused part of the Jewish world.

In western Europe, Jews have been pushed away from their historic home on the secular left toward new alliances on the nationalist right. Under Jeremy Corbyn, the British Labour Party has been stained by anti-Semitism—to a point where past leaders such as Gordon Brown have taken a public stand against Corbyn.In the United States, mercifully, Omar remains a marginal figure within the Democratic Party. On July 23, all but 17 members of the House of Representatives voted to condemn Omar’s project of anti-Israel boycotts; the “squad” member Representative Ayanna Pressley voted with the House majority. But an important part of Trump’s plan for 2020 is elevating Omar’s profile, and prodding American Jews to compare him not with the actual Democratic nominee, but with the target he has singled out for attention.

It’s part stunt and scam, as James Kirchick recently argued. But it’s not all stunt and scam.

At a conference in Washington, D.C., last week, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri delivered a speech denouncing cosmopolitan elites. Some who listened to the speech thought they heard a slight against Jews. Yet the conference had been organized by an American-born Israeli, Yoram Hazony—and at every turn, the conference communicated Jewish inclusion in the new cross-border nationalist movement Hazony hopes to create. Hawley replied to his critics: “You’ll have to carry me out on a slab before I compromise my defense of the Jewish people, their greatness, their history, their safety, and the state of Israel.” That’s the language of committed friendship.

There is a message for American Jews in all this: These attacks on the other are not aimed at you. You can be part of us. We’d like you to be part of us. All you have to do is stop worrying about them. And after all, they don’t worry about you!

The comedian Chris Rock performed a classic comedy sketch about how bigotry always accelerates toward the Jews at the end. “That train,” he quipped, “is never late!” But what if that train is late? What if it’s been canceled altogether, at least insofar as it departs from Trump Station? What if the old community of interest between American Jews and other minorities is dissolving, leaving only the weaker tie of a community of values?

And not only American Jews! Many illiberal authoritarians around the world have tried to gain indulgence for other hatreds by friendship with Israel. Even the Viktor Orbán government in Hungary—which often theatrically glorifies violently anti-Semitic figures from the nation’s past—quietly assures that country’s still surviving Jewish community: None of this will translate into real-world actions against you. And indeed, thus far, that assurance has been honored.

Jews generally believe ourselves to be bound by an ethical code of tolerance and decency larger than our own parochial interests. Trump seems intent on putting that belief to the test. Will we meet it? Will we meet it as a united community? Or by tempting Jews with privileges denied to other, more marginal groups, will he split religious Jews from secular; more communally minded Jews from more universalist; more conservative from more liberal—embittering American Jews against one another, as he has sought more generally to embitter American against American?

Source: American Jews Are Being Tested By Trump

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Maxime Bernier says his party would cap immigration levels at 150K

2019/07/26 Leave a comment

Rather than just printing an article, I thought his fund-raising message provides a more concise version:

——-

Friend,

Yesterday, I unveiled our party’s platform on immigration, multiculturalism, and Canadian identity.

You can read my speech here.

We will reduce immigration levels, from 350,000 each year under the Liberals, to between 100,000 and 150,000.

We will focus on skilled immigrants who bring economic benefits to Canada.

We will limit the number of immigrants accepted under the family reunification program, including abolishing the program for parents and grand-parents.

We will accept fewer refugees and focus on persecuted minorities.

We will declare the whole border an official port of entry and send back to the US anyone trying to enter illegally.

We will repeal the Multiculturalism Act and eliminate all funding to promote multiculturalism.

We will emphasize the integration of immigrants into Canadian society.

We will only accept immigrants who share fundamental Canadian values.

We will make birth tourism illegal.

We will take Canada out of the UN’s Global Compact for Migration.

Our immigration laws will be made in Canada, for the interest of Canadians.

Friend, it’s time to end the taboos and have a real debate about these issues.

Do you like this platform?

I need your help to make sure every Canadian hears about it before voting in October.

Show your support with a $1 donation today!

A huge thank,
-Maxime

The notable further hardening of his positions – e.g., reduction of proposed levels to 150,000 from 250,000 previously – is notable, as are the number of nominated candidates who appear to have been rejected by the Conservatives (e.g., Salim Mansur).

Although to date support for the PPC is just a few percentage points, particularly interested to see if any repetition of the Burnaby South results, where the PPC candidate obtained almost 11 percent in other ridings with relatively large numbers of Chinese Canadian social conservatives and the degree to which that affects the Conservative vote.

And an example of articles on his policy:

A People’s Party of Canada government would lower the number of immigrants Canada accepts to between 100,000 and 150,000 per year — a level not seen since 1986 — party leader Maxime Bernier pledged in a policy speech Wednesday evening.

That’s a number significantly lower than the 250,000 cap Bernier pitched while running for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada two years ago.

In a speech in Mississauga, Ont. Wednesday night, the MP for Beauce took aim at what he called a policy of “extreme multiculturalism” and accused the Liberals of “putting Canada on a road to destruction” through Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “globalist vision.”

“Support for immigration will continue to diminish and social tensions are likely to rise,” Bernier told the crowd in a speech delivered entirely in English. “We need to slow down.”

Bernier who often struggled with pronunciation and timing in English, said his party would prioritize economic immigrants, accept fewer refugees, “considerably limit” those accepted under the family reunification program and scrap the option to sponsor parents and grandparents.

Bernier’s more bold statements, such as his pledge to repeal the Multiculturalism Act, withdraw from the UN’s Global Compact for Migration and promise to reject immigrants that do not share Canadian values, garnered loud applause and cheers from the crowd.

The federal Liberals plan to increase the yearly number of immigrants accepted into Canada to 340,000 by 2020. Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer hasn’t said how many immigrants Canada would accept if his party forms government in October, calling the emphasis on a number “a little bit of a red herring.”

‘Societal norms’ or ‘Canadian values’?

Bernier said he also wants to submit every person hoping to immigrate to Canada to an in-person interview with immigration officials to answer questions to determine whether their values and ideas correspond to Canada’s “societal norms.”

“Immigrants whose responses or background checks demonstrate that they do not share mainstream Canadian values will be rejected,” he said.

The policy is eerily similar to the ‘Canadian values test’ proposed by Kellie Leitch during her own failed run for the Conservative leadership — a proposal that led Bernier at the time to wonder aloud why Leitch was offering up a “karaoke version of Donald Trump.”

In his speech, Bernier also calls for action to stop the flow of migrants walking into Canada at unauthorized crossing points by declaring the entire Canada/U.S. border an official point of entry, which would allow border officials to turn back anyone trying to cross on foot from the United States.

Jean-Pierre Fortin is national president of the Customs and Immigration Union, which represents front-line customs and immigration officers. He said turning the entire 8,891-kilometre border into an official point of entry would impose a “huge burden” on short-staffed Canada Border Services Agency officers.

“Right now, there are not enough officers at every port of entry,” he said.

The economic argument

Bernier also took direct aim at economic arguments for maintaining or increasing immigration levels, arguing that immigration doesn’t affect the aging of Canada’s population because new immigrants have not been shown to have a noticeable impact on aging demographics.

Pedro Antunes, chief economist at the Conference Board of Canada, said that while an aging trend is hard to reverse, immigration keeps Canada’s workforce from shrinking further.

“Because there are so many baby boomers leaving the workforce, without immigration we’d have a net decline in labour force growth,” he said, adding that the decline would be especially pronounced with the current low unemployment rate.

And anyone who thinks immigration isn’t tied to higher economic growth need to take a close look at Atlantic Canada — a slow-growth region with low levels of immigration — said Kareem El-Assal, a researcher with canadavisa.com, a platform for immigration legal services.

“This is not a hypothetical conversation,” he said, adding that there’s “plenty of evidence” showing immigrants to Canada integrate socially and express high levels of pride and happiness in being Canadian.

Bernier spent a portion of his speech pushing back against what he claims is a political taboo surrounding the topic of immigration and claimed he’s been falsely accused of racism by the media.

“As soon as you raise a concern about the level of immigration, someone will accuse you of harbouring anti-immigrant views and being racist or xenophobic,” he said.

He pointed to PPC candidates hailing from diverse ethnic backgrounds — and told journalists who “keep coming back with questions about bigotry” to “take a hike.”

Bernier’s young party has come in for controversy over matters of race and religion, however. The People’s Party has been dogged by racist tweets, photos with unsavoury groups and tales of disillusioned founding members.

Earlier this month, the entire People’s Party of Canada board in a Winnipeg riding resigned in disgust, claiming the party is being taken over by racists, anti-Semites and conspiracy theorists.

Source: Maxime Bernier says his party would cap immigration levels at 150K

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Reporter un vote pour des motifs religieux? Scheer s’en remet au DGE

2019/07/26 Leave a comment

Of note. Will see how Elections Canada responds to the court ruling to re-examine the issue:

Le chef du Parti conservateur du Canada, Andrew Scheer, se garde d’appuyer publiquement les efforts de sa candidate Chani Aryeh-Bain qui visent à repousser les prochaines élections générales afin qu’elles ne coïncident pas avec la fête juive Chemini Atseret.

Il laisse le soin au Directeur général des élections du Canada, Stéphane Perrault, de recommander, s’il le juge opportun, le report du scrutin, qui est actuellement prévu le lundi 21 octobre.

Mme Aryeh-Bain, qui brigue les suffrages dans la circonscription ontarienne de Eglinton-Lawrence sous la bannière du PCC, soutient que la Loi juive interdit aux juifs orthodoxes comme elle de faire campagne ou encore de voter de la soirée du 20 octobre à la soirée du 22 octobre.

« Il est important que tous les électeurs sachent qu’il y a beaucoup d’autres façons de voter pendant l’élection, comme le vote par anticipation et le vote directement aux bureaux d’Élections Canada dans chaque circonscription, et ce, durant toute la durée de la campagne électorale », a fait valoir M. Scheer lors de son passage au Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean mercredi.

« Il y a eu une décision de la cour et maintenant c’est à Élections Canada de prendre une décision. Nous respectons l’indépendance d’Élections Canada », a aussi dit l’homme politique en précampagne électorale au Québec.

Mardi, la Cour fédérale a demandé à Élections Canada de reconsidérer sa réponse à la demande de changement de date de scrutin soumise notamment par Mme Aryeh-Bain, la jugeant « déraisonnable ». D’ici le 1er août, l’organisme doit trouver « un équilibre » entre les droits garantis par la Charte des droits et libertés et le mandat qui lui est conféré par la Loi électorale, a soutenu la juge Ann Marie McDonald dans une décision d’une vingtaine de pages.

« Jour de rechange »

Le directeur général des élections « peut » recommander au gouvernement de tenir les élections générales soit le mardi qui suit le jour qui serait normalement le jour du scrutin, soit le lundi suivant lorsque le jour du scrutin — le troisième lundi d’octobre — « coïncide avec un jour revêtant une importance culturelle ou religieuse ou avec la tenue d’une élection provinciale ou municipale », prévoit la Loi électorale du Canada.

Ne disposant pas de liste exhaustive des journées « revêtant une importance culturelle ou religieuse » au sens de la Loi électorale, le directeur général d’Élections Canada a sollicité les avis de différents groupes, dont le Centre consultatif des relations juives et israéliennes (CIJA), avant de recommander au gouvernement fédéral de convoquer les Canadiens aux urnes le lundi 21 octobre prochain, a expliqué le porte-parole d’Élections Canada, Ghislain Desjardins.

Que fera Élections Canada différemment cette fois-ci ? « L’équipe est au travail », s’est contenté de répondre M. Desjardins.

Le Nouveau Parti démocratique (NPD) encourage toute personne persuadée que ses droits fondamentaux sont lésés à recourir aux tribunaux, comme l’a fait la conservatrice Chani Aryeh-Bain. « Il est important que les Canadiens et Canadiennes puissent consulter les tribunaux chaque fois qu’ils estiment que leurs droits garantis par la Charte pourraient être violés », a dit le porte-parole en matière de réforme démocratique, Daniel Blaikie.

L’élu manitobain demande aujourd’hui au patron d’Élections Canada, Stéphane Perrault, de « prendre au sérieux la décision du tribunal et déterminer la ligne de conduite qu’il juge la plus appropriée dans les circonstances actuelles ».

M. Blaikie dit se fier au « jugement des institutions indépendantes [comme Élections Canada] afin de s’assurer que le processus ne soit ni politisé ni perçu comme tel ».

De son côté, le chef du Bloc québécois, Yves-François Blanchet, demande sans détour à M. Perrault de « garder le cap » et de maintenir la tenue des élections le lundi 21 octobre prochain. « Le multiculturalisme canadien tel qu’interprété par la Cour fédérale donnerait préséance aux demandes d’une religion ou d’une autre sur l’autorité législative de l’État en ce qui a trait au mode de fixation du jour d’un scrutin. Le directeur général des élections doit refuser ce recul de l’État laïque. La religion ne doit pas interférer avec le fonctionnement de l’État civil », a affirmé l’ex-ministre québécois.

Le président et directeur général du Centre consultatif des relations juives et israéliennes (CIJA), Shimon Koffler Fogel, se range aussi du côté d’Élections Canada. « Changer la date à ce stade entraîne des implications logistiques et financières considérables », a-t-il soutenu dans la foulée de la décision de la Cour fédérale. À ses yeux, Élections Canada « a pris d’importantes mesures, en consultation avec la communauté juive, pour que chaque électeur juif puisse voter ».

Mais, selon B’nai Brith Canada, « les implications et coûts opérationnels ne constituent pas une justification convaincante pour bafouer des droits et des libertés reconnus par la Charte ». L’association demande à Élections Canada de différer de sept jours la tenue du scrutin.

L’an dernier, des juifs orthodoxes avaient tenté de repousser les élections générales québécoises, puisqu’elles coïncidaient également avec la Chemini Atseret, mais en vain.

La ministre des Institutions démocratiques, Karina Gould, a refusé de prendre position dans le débat sur la date du prochain scrutin. Elle dit s’en remettre à Élections Canada dont la « recommandation est faite […] en toute indépendance du gouvernement ». « Il ne faut pas confondre notre respect de la loi — dans ce cas, seul le DGE a la capacité de réviser sa décision et, si besoin est, sa recommandation — avec de l’indifférence », a souligné une membre de son cabinet. « La Loi électorale du Canada ne nous permet tout simplement pas de politiser cette décision, ni de substituer notre point de vue à celui du DGE ou de la Cour », a-t-elle ajouté.

Source: Reporter un vote pour des motifs religieux? Scheer s’en remet au DGE

Article in English: Federal court orders review of election date that coincides with Jewish …https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-court-orthodox-jewish-1.5222279

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , ,

Mistrust And Lack Of Genetic Diversity Slow Gains In Precision Medicine

2019/07/26 Leave a comment

Of note, with considerable implications in all diverse countries:

Precision medicine is the field of dreams for human health — drugs and treatments that would take into account a person’s individual DNA configurations, as well as lifestyle and environment, would presumably be better tailored to each person’s needs. Still, while the goal of precision medicine is to help everybody, the current research available has a major flaw — it’s largely based on the genes of people who are predominantly of white and European descent.

That’s an issue with implications both ethically and scientifically, says anthropologist and bioethicist Sandra Soo-Jin Lee. She heads up Columbia University Medical Center’s new Division of Ethics, and is leading a $2.8 million study, funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute, that will take a look at precision medicine research at academic medical centers around the U.S., and help researchers figure out ways to expand the diversity of the genetics data gathered.

Lee recently wrote about ethics in personalized medicine research for Science magazine, and we spoke with her about why increasing diversity is important. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Where are we currently with precision medicine research? In your article, you say it’s the “early phase.”

Precision medicine depends on the accumulation of a lot of data and biospecimens (such as blood, urine, saliva and health surveys) and access to health records from individuals. Over the last couple of decades — ever since the Human Genome Project, which was completed in 2003, — we have been, as a society, investing in all kinds of data collection activities.

Some of these have been quite large-scale … like the All of Us program, organized by the National Institutes of Health, which aims to recruit one million people to share their genetics and health information for research. Other organizations have created their own bio-repositories to be used, presumably, for research that will enhance precision medicine.

So we’re building the infrastructure right now for the research enterprise — creating essentially these large libraries of individuals’ information and samples, and making decisions about how they’re going to be stored and curated. And that has triggered a lot of questions about how you ethically recruit individuals into these types of large-scale projects, when it’s unclear how the samples and the data might be used in the future.

What is the current diversity of the gene pool, in terms of what’s being collected for research?

Right now, our genetic resources are predominantly made up of DNA from individuals who have European ancestry; the proportion of individuals from non-European ancestry represent less than 20 percent, in most studies. So this is a bias that exists in our repositories right now.

The scientific problem is that it doesn’t represent the diversity that you would see across the human species. Because of the migration of human populations across the globe, African populations reflect a greater band of diversity than other populations, and yet we’re not seeing this in our genetic resources.

Is the lack of diversity strictly a problem in research institutions in the U.S., or is it global?

That’s a really good question, particularly since there is a lot of sharing of data and samples across the globe. There are certain centers of genome research globally. … [They] tend to be in the United States, Europe, and East Asia. So I think the skew is actually global, in the sense that researchers who have been doing this type of work have been sampling mostly from individuals of European ancestry and we just don’t see the kind of diversity that you would see if you were going to do it systematically across the globe.

There are exceptions — some large-scale efforts in Africa, funded by federal agencies like the NIH, that are trying to address some of the skew we’re seeing. But, by and large, this is a global problem.

What are some of the reasons that the genetic research pool is mostly white?

There’s been this emphasis on historical exclusions of certain populations. But I think this framing of the issue may not address the fact that populations historically have been included — but in an unethical way.

Examples of this could be the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, as well as the studies that were conducted with Havasupai tribalbiospecimens more recently.

These are cases in which populations have been enrolled in studies but have not been treated in a way that they felt was ethical. What this does is create mistrust toward the research enterprise. …

Then there are questions about whether the research, even if it produces interventions that are more targeted for individuals, will be fairly and equitably distributed to all populations. Will they be within reach of those who might not be able to afford the health care they’re receiving now?

In your article, you mention the recent assertions from white nationalists who are looking at ancestry to claim racial superiority. Aren’t there valid reasons why people mistrust the intent and the use of medical information?

Absolutely, and I think that affects precision medicine research in particular, because it requires such intrusive data collection.

“Who’s going to use it? What will be shared? Will I have a say if I don’t feel comfortable with how it’s being used in the future?” I don’t think we’re we’re set up to address some of these questions.

The lack of information and accountability makes individuals — particularly those that are most vulnerable in our society — very uncomfortable. And it’s not unreasonable for them to be concerned.

What does good, meaningful diversity and inclusion look like?

I think it begins with a willingness on the part of researchers to address the role of history, and the ongoing mistrust certain groups have of the research enterprise.

There’s also this tendency to believe there’s a sharp boundary between clinical care and research; I think we’ll find that the way people are treated in the health care system spills over to their attitudes about research. So there may be points of intervention and improvement there.

To be able to enlarge our framework to think about the implications for this research on group harm and group benefit will be very important.

And I think we have to go beyond informed consent — a practice in which research subjects learn about the risks and benefits of participating in a study before deciding whether to sign on — as we think through oversight protections that would address participants’ desire for some sense of responsibility and accountability for how their biospecimens and data are used and shared. We need to give folks a sense that their interests and concerns are being attended to, beyond the point of recruitment.

Why is it important for the gene research pool to become more diverse? Is diversifying the gene pool something that only really benefits underrepresented populations?

We’re making a public investment in these resources. And the goal is to address health disparities, which are an enduring concern in our society. Health disparities are most significant among those who are underrepresented in our research databases. … and so it becomes an important moral issue.

The greater diversity would be brought in by African, Hispanic and Latin American ancestry. But it’s not as if the benefits would only flow to those populations — it actually benefits everyone.

If we only use the database we have right now, we run the risk of not identifying rare variants that would be identified if we had a broader spectrum of diversity in the genetic databases. … Perhaps [there are] variants that were thought to be causal of disease but then, because of the greater diversity, you would find that perhaps that was only because it was more frequent in that particular population, and so it was a confounder.

In recent studies, where scientists are using more diverse resources, they’ve been able to find different variants that they were not aware of, that might be important in terms of understanding disease. So there are good indications that more diversity will actually make us more precise in terms of our precision medicine.

Source: Mistrust And Lack Of Genetic Diversity Slow Gains In Precision Medicine

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