Amazon Is Pushing Facial Technology That a Study Says Could Be Biased

2019/01/28 Leave a comment

Of note. These kinds of studies are important to expose the bias inherent in some corporate facial recognition systems:

Over the last two years, Amazon has aggressively marketed its facial recognition technology to police departments and federal agencies as a service to help law enforcement identify suspects more quickly. It has done so as another tech giant, Microsoft, has called on Congress to regulate the technology, arguing that it is too risky for companies to oversee on their own.

Now a new study from researchers at the M.I.T. Media Lab has found that Amazon’s system, Rekognition, had much more difficulty in telling the gender of female faces and of darker-skinned faces in photos than similar services from IBM and Microsoft. The results raise questions about potential bias that could hamper Amazon’s drive to popularize the technology.

In the study, published Thursday, Rekognition made no errors in recognizing the gender of lighter-skinned men. But it misclassified women as men 19 percent of the time, the researchers said, and mistook darker-skinned women for men 31 percent of the time. Microsoft’s technology mistook darker-skinned women for men just 1.5 percent of the time.

A study published a year ago found similar problems in the programs built by IBM, Microsoft and Megvii, an artificial intelligence company in China known as Face++. Those results set off an outcry that was amplified when a co-author of the study, Joy Buolamwini, posted YouTube videos showing the technology misclassifying famous African-American women, like Michelle Obama, as men.

The companies in last year’s report all reacted by quickly releasing more accurate technology. For the latest study, Ms. Buolamwini said, she sent a letter with some preliminary results to Amazon seven months ago. But she said that she hadn’t heard back from Amazon, and that when she and a co-author retested the company’s product a couple of months later, it had not improved.

Matt Wood, general manager of artificial intelligence at Amazon Web Services, said the researchers had examined facial analysis — a technology that can spot features such as mustaches or expressions such as smiles — and not facial recognition, a technology that can match faces in photos or video stills to identify individuals. Amazon markets both services.

“It’s not possible to draw a conclusion on the accuracy of facial recognition for any use case — including law enforcement — based on results obtained using facial analysis,” Dr. Wood said in a statement. He added that the researchers had not tested the latest version of Rekognition, which was updated in November.

Amazon said that in recent internal tests using an updated version of its service, the company found no difference in accuracy in classifying gender across all ethnicities.

The M.I.T. researchers used these and other photos to study the accuracy of facial technology in identifying gender.

With advancements in artificial intelligence, facial technologies — services that can be used to identify people in crowds, analyze their emotions, or detect their age and facial characteristics — are proliferating. Now, as companies begin to market these services more aggressively for uses like policing and vetting job candidates, they have emerged as a lightning rod in the debate about whether and how Congress should regulate powerful emerging technologies.

The new study, scheduled to be presented Monday at an artificial intelligence and ethics conference in Honolulu, is sure to inflame that argument.

Proponents see facial recognition as an important advance in helping law enforcement agencies catch criminals and find missing children. Some police departments, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have tested Amazon’s product.

But civil liberties experts warn that it can also be used to secretly identify people — potentially chilling Americans’ ability to speak freely or simply go about their business anonymously in public.

Over the last year, Amazon has come under intense scrutiny by federal lawmakers, the American Civil Liberties Union, shareholders, employees and academic researchers for marketing Rekognition to law enforcement agencies. That is partly because, unlike Microsoft, IBM and other tech giants, Amazon has been less willing to publicly discuss concerns.

Amazon, citing customer confidentiality, has also declined to answer questions from federal lawmakers about which government agencies are using Rekognition or how they are using it. The company’s responses have further troubled some federal lawmakers.

“Not only do I want to see them address our concerns with the sense of urgency it deserves,” said Representative Jimmy Gomez, a California Democrat who has been investigating Amazon’s facial recognition practices. “But I also want to know if law enforcement is using it in ways that violate civil liberties, and what — if any — protections Amazon has built into the technology to protect the rights of our constituents.”

In a letter last month to Mr. Gomez, Amazon said Rekognition customers must abide by Amazon’s policies, which require them to comply with civil rights and other laws. But the company said that for privacy reasons it did not audit customers, giving it little insight into how its product is being used.

The study published last year reported that Microsoft had a perfect score in identifying the gender of lighter-skinned men in a photo database, but that it misclassified darker-skinned women as men about one in five times. IBM and Face++ had an even higher error rate, each misclassifying the gender of darker-skinned women about one in three times.

Ms. Buolamwini said she had developed her methodology with the idea of harnessing public pressure, and market competition, to push companies to fix biases in their software that could pose serious risks to people.

Ms. Buolamwini, who had done similar tests last year, conducted another round to learn whether industry practices had changed, she said.CreditTony Luong for The New York Times

“One of the things we were trying to explore with the paper was how to galvanize action,” Ms. Buolamwini said.

Immediately after the study came out last year, IBM published a blog post, “Mitigating Bias in A.I. Models,” citing Ms. Buolamwini’s study. In the post, Ruchir Puri, chief architect at IBM Watson, said IBM had been working for months to reduce bias in its facial recognition system. The company post included test results showing improvements, particularly in classifying the gender of darker-skinned women. Soon after, IBM released a new system that the company said had a tenfold decrease in error rates.

A few months later, Microsoft published its own post, titled “Microsoft improves facial recognition technology to perform well across all skin tones, genders.” In particular, the company said, it had significantly reduced the error rates for female and darker-skinned faces.

Ms. Buolamwini wanted to learn whether the study had changed overall industry practices. So she and a colleague, Deborah Raji, a college student who did an internship at the M.I.T. Media Lab last summer, conducted a new study.

In it, they retested the facial systems of IBM, Microsoft and Face++. They also tested the facial systems of two companies that were not included in the first study: Amazon and Kairos, a start-up in Florida.

The new study found that IBM, Microsoft and Face++ all improved their accuracy in identifying gender.

By contrast, the study reported, Amazon misclassified the gender of darker-skinned females 31 percent of the time, while Kairos had an error rate of 22.5 percent.

Melissa Doval, the chief executive of Kairos, said the company, inspired by Ms. Buolamwini’s work, released a more accurate algorithm in October.

Ms. Buolamwini said the results of her studies raised fundamental questions for society about whether facial technology should not be used in certain situations, such as job interviews, or in products, like drones or police body cameras.

Some federal lawmakers are voicing similar issues.

“Technology like Amazon’s Rekognition should be used if and only if it is imbued with American values like the right to privacy and equal protection,” said Senator Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has been investigating Amazon’s facial recognition practices. “I do not think that standard is currently being met.”

Source: Amazon Is Pushing Facial Technology That a Study Says Could Be Biased

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Diversity Votes — February By-elections: Matching Census Data with Ethnic Media Coverage (16-23 January 2019)

2019/01/28 Leave a comment

For background data on the riding demographic, economic, social and political characteristics, see: February By-elections: Matching Census Data with Ethnic Media Coverage (1-18 January 2019).

Ethnic Media Coverage

In contrast to coverage in the previous weeks, which included coverage of the general by-election announcement by more different language ethnic media, the past week was almost exclusively focused on Burnaby South and the ongoing controversy over the divisive remarks by former Liberal candidate Wang and overall issues related targeting ethnic votes, with only 41 media items compared to the 97 earlier in the month  .

Media coverage was overwhelmingly in Punjabi (39 percent) and 43.9 percent in Chinese, Cantonese and Mandarin language media. There was only one tangential media reference to Outremont in the context of NDP prospects.

The focus of candidate specific coverage was former Liberal candidate Wang and her efforts (unsuccessful) to distance herself from her comments on WeChat that basically said vote for the Chinese Canadian candidate, not the Indo-Canadian candidate. Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel’s revealing that Wang had sought being nominated and being rejected as a Conservative candidate was covered, as were Rempel’s press conference criticizing the Liberal government immigration record, including her statement that poor vetting had resulted in the killing of Burnaby teen Marrisa Shen by a Syrian refugee (charged, not yet convicted). The announcement of Wang’s replacement, Richard Lee, a former provincial politician was covered in summary fashion.

While NDP leader Singh’s housing, immigration (withdrawal from the Safe Third Country Agreement with the US)  and other policy proposals were covered, there was still some lingering coverage of his apparent unawareness of the implications of the Canadians detained in China in retaliation for the extradition proceedings against Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.

Svend Robinson’s nomination as the NDP candidate for Burnaby North-Seymour after an 11 year absence was covered in Chinese media (the largest visible minority group in the riding). 

In terms of commentary (including analysis and opinion pieces), Punjabi media predominated with seven items and Chinese three. 

While most of these were neutral in tone, there were three critical pieces. Two of these were in Chinese media, which were highly critical of Wang and how ethnic politics was playing out among Chinese Canadians, and one in Punjabi media, making similar points with respect to Canadian Sikhs. There was one more positive piece on ethnic politics, noting that all candidates seek support from their ethnic group and that the Wang controversy was  “not a big deal.”

Related issues such as the ongoing dispute between Canada and China over the extradition request of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou and the inappropriate comments regarding her possible extradition by Canada’s now former ambassador to China have not seen much by-election related coverage but are being covered by ethnic media separately.

See the MIREMS blog for some of the stories being covered: MIREMS blog.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Race or class irrelevant in intelligence of babies, groundbreaking Oxford study finds

2019/01/26 Leave a comment

The basics make the difference – medical care and nutrition:

Babies born in similar circumstances will thrive regardless of race or geography, Oxford-led research has found, quashing the idea that race or class determines intelligence.

In a scientific first, the team of researchers tracked the physical and intellectual development of babies around the world from the earliest days after conception to age two.

“At every single stage we’ve shown that healthy mothers have healthy babies and that healthy babies all grow at exactly the same rate,” said Professor Stephen Kennedy, the co-director of the Oxford Maternal and Perinatal Health Institute. “It doesn’t matter where you are living, it doesn’t matter what the colour of your skin is, it doesn’t matter what your race and ethnicity is, receiving decent medical care and nutrition is the key.”

The INTERGROWTH-21st Project, jointly led by Prof. Kennedy and Prof. Jose Villar at Oxford, involved nearly 60,000 mothers and babies worldwide, tracking growth in the womb, then followed more than 1,300 of the children, measuring physical growth and development.

The mothers – in locations as diverse as Brazil, India and Italy – were chosen because they were in good health and lived in similar environments. Their babies scored similarly on physical and intellectual development: in fact, researchers found more variation within racial groups than between them.

The study should help settle the ongoing debate genetics as a determination in intelligence which has been rumbling since the publication of Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve in the 1990s. The book argued that a “cognitive elite” was becoming separated from the general population.

“There’s still a substantial body of opinion out there in both the scientific and lay communities who… believe that intelligence is predominantly determined by genes and the environment that you’re living in and that your parents and grandparents were living in and their nutritional and health status are not relevant,” said Prof Kennedy. “Well, that’s clearly not the case.”

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Yes, a MAGA hat is a symbol of hate: Domise

2019/01/26 Leave a comment

Good commentary by Andray Domise:

A few years ago, a very close friend of mine was hailing a cab off Spadina street, in downtown Toronto. He, a tall and broad-shouldered Black man, was on his way to a social event with an acquaintance, a blonde white woman. They were both well-dressed for nightlife, which is a normal sight for that neighbourhood on a Friday evening. What was not normal, however, was the gaunt white man approaching them wearing Doc Martens boots, a bomber jacket, and a clean-shaved scalp. My friend registered danger just before the skinhead opened his mouth twice, first to shout “Don’t trust that nigger” at the blonde woman, and again to spit in my friend’s face.

Being a dark-skinned man whose personal experience with hate crime stretches back to his childhood (when he was introduced to that ugly word right after being shot in the head by a white teen armed with a pellet gun), my friend didn’t need to have a conversation to assess the character of the man before the assault happened. He knew right away he’d just encountered a skinhead, a self-ordained social enforcer who believes the human species can be ordered by a racial hierarchy—one which places Black people like us below the cutoff.

If the man hadn’t given the game away with the racial slur, it would be ridiculous to try and convince my friend that was, perhaps, not a hate crime. When a person wearing the visual markers of a neo-Nazi passes every other human being on a busy street without incident, but singles out a Black man and a white woman for violence, there aren’t many questions to be asked.

And yet, supposedly sensible people and media outlets are willing to debase themselves by proposing that the Make America Great Again hat, that bright red beacon of racialized aggrievement, is somehow not a hate symbol. The perennial conversation bubbled to the surface again this week after an altercation between members of the Omaha nation (led by longtime activist Nathan Phillips), and a mob of students from now-infamous Covington Catholic high school.

In a nearly two-hour video shot at the Lincoln Memorial, students wearing MAGA hats shouted at the elders, danced mockingly, and pantomimed tomahawk chops. One of them, Nick Sandmann, made his way to the front of the crowd to stand almost nose-to-nose with Phillips and smirk in his face as the elder drummed and sang the American Indian Movement (A.I.M.) song.

By now, nonwhite groups are all too familiar with hate groups and what they’re about. The similarity in their tactics is not an accident. Hate groups typically construct an extremist kinship through shared values, language, and an aesthetic that serves a twofold purpose: to visually signal themselves to allies, and to let their enemies know they intend harm. The skinhead aesthetic—black boots, weathered denim, suspenders, and shaved heads—is one of these. Proud Boys—khakis, beards, and Fred Perry polo shirts—are another.

These aren’t political organizations that happen to attract the occasional radical, or unpolished community groups that happen to have a large platform. There is no driving sociopolitical force behind these movements outside of white nationalist ideology, which is why they’re designated hate groups. And they understand this, which is why they’ve spent so much time lately cultivating an everyman aesthetic. Even David Duke famously tried to rebrand the Klan with a kinder, gentler image before leaving in frustration that the message wasn’t catching on. His movement had long passed beyond plausible deniability of their motives.

We know this, yet when people quite logically connect the people who wear MAGA hats with the white supremacist ideology of Donald Trump, this is considered painting with too broad a brush. The same Donald Trump who egged on violence against Black protesters at his rallies, stereotyped Mexicans as rapists, referred to African and African-descended nations as “shithole countries,” referred to Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas,” and for years has rattled off a near-endless litany of ad-libbed comments that place him squarely in the white nationalist camp – that is the Donald Trump with which a person openly signals kinship when they put on that garish red hat in public.

So when a restaurant manager refuses to serve a MAGA hat-wearing patron, or Omaha elders confront a crowd of MAGA hat-wearing students to try and diffuse an escalating conflict before it gets out of control, they’re not making assumptions out of whole cloth. Neither is Alyssa Milano, who tweeted “The red MAGA hat is the new white hood.” They’re justifiably responding the way that my friend responded to that skinhead, moments before that skinhead spat in his face, and the way decent people should be expected to respond to those who publicly align themselves with hate movements. If the people who wear the hat feel unfairly maligned, that’s just plain unfortunate for them. Maybe they should examine their politics, and their own hearts.

In other words: if the hood fits, wear it.

Source: Yes, a MAGA hat is a symbol of hate

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

Laïcité: des professeurs se posent en censeurs

2019/01/26 Leave a comment

Group think without allowing for discussion of other perspectives. And it should be possible to have respectful discussion of different perspectives:

À quelques semaines du dépôt probable d’un projet de loi sur les signes religieux, la laïcité reste un sujet « explosif » qui divise profondément les enseignants. La professeure Nadia El-Mabrouk, bien connue pour son opposition au port de signes religieux, a été bannie d’un colloque syndical auquel elle avait pourtant été invitée à livrer son point de vue.

Selon ce que Le Devoir a appris, la direction de l’Alliance des professeures et professeurs de Montréal a annulé l’invitation faite à Mme El-Mabrouk après l’éclatement d’une controverse chez les enseignants. La simple présence prévue de la professeure de l’Université de Montréal au colloque de l’Alliance a provoqué un « malaise » au sein de la profession, et même des « commentaires violents » dans un groupe de discussion Facebook.

L’assemblée des délégués du syndicat a voté à la majorité l’annulation de la conférence de Nadia El-Mabrouk sur la laïcité au colloque de l’Alliance, prévu les 18 et 19 février 2019. La professeure a aussi été bannie d’une table ronde sur le féminisme où elle devait prendre part avec la journaliste Pascale Navarro.

Ce colloque, qui célébrera le 100e anniversaire de l’Alliance des professeurs, doit regrouper une quarantaine de conférenciers de renom, dont Françoise David et le Dr Jean-François Chicoine. Ils aborderont une série de thèmes plutôt consensuels, comme l’école de demain, la gestion de classe, les jeux vidéo, le déficit d’attention, et ainsi de suite.

Les deux événements auxquels devait participer Nadia El-Mabrouk ont cependant mis le feu aux poudres. Cette expulsion de la conférencière sur fond de désaccord idéologique soulève la grogne au sein de l’Alliance. Des enseignants dénoncent cette « censure » digne des curés du siècle dernier. D’autres se réjouissent de ne pas être exposés à des idées contraires aux positions officielles du syndicat.

Des sujets « assez sensibles »

« Je vous écris pour vous faire part du malaise que certains profs ont ressenti en recevant le programme du colloque, hier matin, dans leur milieu. En effet, dans le résumé de votre conférence, il est question de sujets assez sensibles chez les profs ; port de signes religieux, cours d’ECR [éthique et culture religieuse], cours à la sexualité, bref, tout cela est assez explosif en ce moment. Nous n’avions évidemment pas prévu que la CAQ serait portée au pouvoir au moment où nous vous avons demandé votre intérêt à participer à ce colloque », indique l’Alliance dans un courriel à Nadia El-Mabrouk daté du 11 décembre 2018.

La présence de la professeure au colloque a été annulée le soir même par l’assemblée des délégués. Le conseil d’administration du syndicat s’est plié à la décision des délégués, même s’il avait recommandé de maintenir la conférence et la table ronde où Nadia El-Mabrouk était invitée.

« Le conseil d’administration a expliqué que cette personne-là avait été choisie même si elle n’avait pas nécessairement les mêmes opinions et orientations que notre organisation syndicale », explique Catherine Renaud, présidente de l’Alliance.

« On n’est pas toujours obligés d’entendre des gens qui pensent comme nous. Ça permet d’échanger et de faire progresser notre réflexion, ajoute-t-elle. On n’a jamais l’unanimité sur des sujets comme ça qui sont polarisants. Il y a des pour et des contre, et pour certains, c’est viscéral. Ce n’est pas différent de ce que pense la population de ces enjeux-là. »

Les syndicats d’enseignants, dont l’Alliance, s’opposent officiellement à l’interdiction du port de signes religieux que le gouvernement Legault a promis d’étendre à la profession enseignante. « On ne veut surtout pas que ces personnes-là soient congédiées non plus », précise Catherine Renaud.

« Censure » syndicale

Luc Charlebois, enseignant de francisation à l’école secondaire Louis-Riel, dans l’est de Montréal, est fâché. Il s’insurge contre ce qu’il considère comme de la « censure ». « La proposition [de retirer l’invitation à la professeure El-Mabrouk] a été amenée sur le plancher à la dernière minute, sans consultation des membres. Il y a un gros problème de démocratie syndicale », dit-il.

La professeure a été officiellement mise au ban à cause de ses positions sur l’identité des genres. Dans une chronique dans La Presse +, elle a déjà dit craindre que les cours d’éducation à la sexualité enseignent « l’idéologie queer ». Elle estime que ce phénomène devient une véritable « religion ». Elle déplore que cette seule mise en garde lui vaille d’être traitée de transphobe.

« Une accusation de transphobie, c’est une attaque à ma réputation. Ces gens n’ont sûrement pas lu mes articles », dit Nadia El-Mabrouk au Devoir.

« La vérité, c’est qu’on me censure. Si ma vie n’est pas en danger en allant au colloque, il n’y a pas de problème à ce que j’y sois. Il y a un débat sur la laïcité qui s’en vient [avec le dépôt promis du projet de loi du gouvernement Legault], et là, on est en train de faire de l’intimidation. Les gens n’osent pas s’exprimer sur les signes religieux par crainte d’être taxés de racisme », dit la professeure d’informatique.

Source: Laïcité: des professeurs se posent en censeurs

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Why are we paying people to sue the government? [court challenges program]

2019/01/25 Leave a comment

The group that managed the court challenges program reported to me when I was at Canadian Heritage 2007-8. It was essentially managed as a arms-length G&C program but, like many other Canadian Heritage programs, with considerable assistance by program officers in the preparation of submissions. If I recall correctly, submissions were approved at the official level, unlike multiculturalism which required ministerial signature.

It always was controversial and my tweeting this story provoked considerable reaction, most opposed but not all. Personally, I felt somewhat ambivalent. While I recognized the role that it could play in supporting groups with limited resources to bring these before the courts, it did seem paradoxical to be funding challenges that government lawyers would be obliged to fight.

When the Conservatives cancelled the program, they faced a backlash, in particular by official language minorities, where they had to back track and reinstate that aspect of the program.

But the issue is less the social change and partisan charges made in this article but whether or not such a program does result in a more equal capacity to bring challenges to government policies and laws:

When a Muslim woman decided to challenge the Harper government’s policy forbidding face-coverings during the oath of citizenship, a feminist non-profit group called Women’s Legal Action Fund (LEAF) sought to intervene on her behalf.

When the Harper government cut extended health-care benefits like drugs and dental to refugee claimants, LEAF argued that the change had a “discriminatory effect upon refugee women.”

When homelessness advocates claimed that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was being violated unless the government implemented policies to “eliminate homelessness and inadequate housing,” LEAF supported the fight against lawmakers.

This week, LEAF is in court fighting a group of Christian doctors who oppose a policy by their regulator requiring them to refer patients who seek abortions or euthanasia.

There’s nothing wrong with groups of citizens pooling their money to intervene in court cases. That’s healthy in a democracy. But these kinds of activist legal groups shouldn’t be getting taxpayer funding.

Yet that’s what’s happening under the Trudeau government. The new Department of Women and Gender Equality (formerly Status of Women Canada) just awarded LEAF $880,000 to develop a new five-year plan for “strategic litigation.” The project “will undertake a needs assessment with feminist groups and other key stakeholders to identify intersectional gender equality issues that can be effectively addressed through feminist strategic litigation.” It’s a big boost to their budget.

The Liberals have also restored funding to the Court Challenges Program that will hand out grants to groups who claim their human rights or minority language rights have been violated. The committee doling out the money is stacked with prominent left-wing advocates, including former LEAF director and Ottawa law professor Joanne St. Lewis, labour activist and McGill law professor Adelle Blackett, and University of Windsor francophone services proponent Emmanuelle Richez.

Harper had scrapped the program, created in 1978 by Pierre Trudeau, as one of his first acts. John Baird, then president of the Treasury Board, argued that it didn’t make sense for the government to pay people to fight its own laws in court. Indeed, it did not.

So, why are the Liberals eager to use taxpayer dollars to fund these legal challenges?

University of Waterloo political scientist Emmett Macfarlane suggested at the recent Law and Freedom conference in Toronto that Canada has a growing “culture of deference to courts,” in which politicians would rather wait for judges to make law than work to build consensus on controversial issues.

If so, then giving money to lawyers to sue the government is a backdoor way for Liberals to force the policy changes they want without the political risks. Assisted-death is a good example. It was popular with Canadians at large but many Catholics were opposed, which made it difficult for the Liberals to support legalization without risking seats in Quebec … until a successful Charter challenge allowed the Liberals to say that the courts forced their hands.

This type of funding may be particularly concerning to those with strong views on abortion. The Liberals wouldn’t dare legislate a right to abortion but they do like to claim it’s a Charter right. It’s easy to imagine someone seeking to firmly establish abortion as a Charter right through the Court Challenges Program or the newly bolstered LEAF. This type of funding should also concern those who support abortion. If the practice of funding activist legal groups becomes normalized, a future Conservative government could conceivably hand out grants to anti-abortion groups to do their bidding.

Canadians shouldn’t put up with this. If our politicians want social change, they should campaign on making those changes and introduce bills to make it happen. Funding activist groups risks becoming a backdoor way to have politicized lawyers doing their dirty work.

Source: Why are we paying people to sue the government?

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with

Asian-centric household goods brands set sights on expansion across Canada

2019/01/25 Leave a comment

Interesting (we also discovered Muji when travelling):

When discount store Oomomo flung open the doors to its first Toronto location in early December, customers lined up well in advance to scoop up everything from low-cost origami paper and shrimp-flavoured chips to vegetable peelers and toothbrushes.

Oomomo’s president Andy Cheng expects the scene will repeat dozens of times as the Vancouver-based purveyor of Japanese goods expands beyond its current four stores in Canada to open about 30 in the country over the next three years.

“We have customers asking us if we can open as many as possible and make it as huge and giant as possible,” he said of the brand that sells mostly Daiso and Seria products for $2, but prices some up to $15. “We are not trying to take over the market, but we want to focus on bringing Oomomo to every major province and city.”

Oomomo is part of a growing group of Asian-centric retailers selling affordable household goods that are expanding in Canada, quickly conjuring up loyal customer bases with big plans to conquer the market in little time.

Miniso — a Chinese discount brand masquerading as a Japanese company — has the most ambitious goal in mind: 500 stores by the end of 2020. Despite a recent court case threatening to force the Canadian operators into bankruptcy over allegations that they fraudulently transferred registered trademark rights to third-party corporations and disposed of inventory, Miniso has already opened 50 stores in Canada since its December 2017 launch in the country.

Muji, whose stores are more fashion-centric and expensive than Miniso but still marketed as affordable, has more pared down expectations. Vice-president Shogo Okazeri said Muji hopes to grow the eight stores it has opened in B.C. and Ontario to 30 by 2025. Okazeri named Alberta and Quebec as target markets for the expansion.

Experts say such rapid growth in the market is being fuelled by Canada’s diverse population and the increasing demand for both innovations and discounts — a hallmark of items produced in Asia, where labour is much cheaper and access to inexpensive manufacturing materials is greater.

“I picked up a couple of things that I hadn’t seen before at Muji that solved a little problem for me because I hadn’t seen anything quite like it,” said Michael LeBlanc, a senior retail adviser at the Retail Council of Canada.

“Canadians love a good value proposition and (at these stores) the price points are right, the assortment is unique and they offer different solutions.”

The expansion of Asian retailers has been no surprise for LeBlanc because he said the country has really transformed itself into a top shopping destination.

Canada welcomed a record 50 new international retailers in 2017 alone and Toronto outranked several U.S. cities to be named North America’s most popular market for international expansion, according to commercial real estate business CBRE Group Inc.

That excitement around Canada came even as retailers’ cross-border expansion into new markets declined by 2.9 per cent from the year before, CBRE said.

Oomomo’s Cheng was keen on starting his company in Canada instead of Asia because of Canada’s multiculturalism. Half of Canada’s foreign-born population hailed from Asia in 2016, according to Statistics Canada.

“We have a lot of Asian population and also a lot of local, Canadian customers that like to learn about the lifestyle of other cultures and how they do little things around the house,” said Cheng.

It’s an observation he shares with Muji’s Shogo Okazeri, who said Muji quickly discovered Canada has “a growing interest for a simple lifestyle and for products without branding, a trend that is found in traditional Japanese culture.”

He also found multiculturalism was playing a large role in retail.

“We didn’t expect that it would have such an impact, but after expanding in Canada, we realized that many people actually knew MUJI because they discovered it when travelling abroad,” he said in an email to The Canadian Press.

“As a result, we have been receiving requests to open stores in various areas we didn’t necessarily think about at first.”

Oomomo has also been seeing demand to expand to new cities and suspects the market can sustain further growth because of the success enjoyed by companies like Dollarama Inc.

However, Cheng is insistent he doesn’t consider Dollarama a competitor because he said both suit different kinds of customers that will shop at both stores.

“When I need something quick I go into a dollar store, but when I am at a store like Oomomo, I spend an hour at the store just to stop and look around at stuff I haven’t seen before.”

He similarly brushed off concerns about rivals including Miniso and Muji.

“I haven’t talked to anyone who after purchasing something from our store said we are not going to go to the other store,” he said. “We are not in direct competition.”

Source: Asian-centric household goods brands set sights on expansion across Canada

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Metro Vancouver voters value issues more than ethnicity

2019/01/25 Leave a comment

I would be cautious in drawing parallels between municipal and federal/provincial elections. The former tend to under-represent visible minorities and other minority groups whereas federal and political parties tend to recruit candidates from the larger visible minority or ethnic groups, as well as developing policies to attract minority voters (e.g., the Conservatives Chinese head tax historical recognition program when they first formed the government).

And nobody I know is suggesting that groups vote as a block. However, exit polls do suggest that groups have overall political leanings (e.g., Chinese Canadians lean conservative, Canadian Sikhs Liberal or NDP).

So the reality is more complex than presented here.

Byelection campaigns can be extremely complex events.

Voter turnout tends to be lower than in a regular electoral contest, when all the seats in a particular legislative body are at stake. Potential voters are often disengaged and disenchanted, and the lack of deep media coverage leads to citizens not even knowing that they have a chance to exercise their franchise.

In the case of the federal vote that will take place on February 25 in British Columbia’s Burnaby South constituency, the presence of the leader of the federal New Democratic Party (NDP) in the ballot has certainly added some interest. Jagmeet Singh seeks to be the first leader of the main three Canadian federal parties to represent a B.C. riding since Stockwell Day headed the Canadian Alliance.

The Burnaby South byelection was supposed to be an early test of strength for the NDP leader, as well as an indicator of whether the newly created People’s Party would eat into some traditional support for the federal Conservatives.

The race took a wild swing earlier this month, after a poorly worded statement from Liberal candidate Karen Wang was posted to social media platform WeChat and uncovered by the staff at Star Vancouver. In a span of 32 hours, Wang resigned, asked to be reinstated and flirted with a run as an independent. The Liberals have now named former provincial lawmaker Richard T. Lee as their standard bearer.

Wang’s demotion by the Liberal Party has precipitated a much-needed debate on the way political campaigns in Canada operate when it comes to courting so-called “multicultural” voters.  Political consultants charge fortunes pretending to create a magic potion to engage with particular ethnic communities, and messages are crafted to make candidates appear more in touch with voters who immigrated to Canada. This can backfire quickly, as demonstrated in British Columbia by the 2013 “quick wins” scandal.

In elections of all types – municipal, provincial and federal – there is a tendency to make assumptions based on the demographic characteristics of a particular population. These assumptions are usually incorrect.

Just last year, we were treated to illusory media commentary that suggested that being married to a Filipino woman would propel a Vancouver mayoral candidate to victory. The candidate finished in fifth place, as the supposed Filipino constituency that seemed discernible looking at census data never materialized.

In first-past-the-post elections, the futility of this misleading analysis becomes evident. There is more to a community than the origin of its residents. In Richmond, where 53 per cent of residents are of Chinese descent, three Chinese-Canadian candidates garnered 4,794 votes together. Incumbent Mayor Malcolm Brodie was re-elected with 30,452 votes.

The ability of an electoral contender to connect with voters of a particular ethnicity cannot measured by a last name, origin or ability to feature foreign languages in campaign paraphernalia.

A survey I conducted a few weeks before the 2015 federal election showed that voters in Metro Vancouver of East Asian, South Asian and Southeast Asian descent placed “the candidate’s ethnicity” as the least important motivator for their vote. These “multicultural” voters were moved primarily by two issues: the candidate’s position on issues and the political party they represented.

Contrary to what data-less pundits believe, voters of a particular ethnicity do not cast their ballots as a block. In addition, the efforts of politicians to appear inclusive and mindful do not always move the needle. Last year, 69 per cent of British Columbians said that politicians who show up at ethnic festivals and celebrations are merely pandering for votes and are not truly interested in engaging with people from different backgrounds and cultures.

The proportion of voters who are not amused by public servants suddenly showing interest in ethnic celebrations included 76 per cent of residents of South Asian descent, 70 per cent of Europeans and 62 per cent of East Asians – something to ponder the next time politicians don traditional garb for Vaisakhi.

Regardless of the result in Burnaby South, a conversation about treating “multicultural” voters as a commodity has started. It will be interesting to see if political parties learn from Wang’s demise and work harder on policy development and meaningful community outreach, instead of trying to score points with their last names or birthplaces.

The political climate of the country has evolved to a point where candidates do not need to advertise themselves as “the only [insert ethnicity here] in the race.” Let’s hope that situations like the one that led the Liberals to replace their Burnaby South byelection candidate are the exception – and not the norm – in the next federal campaign.

Source: Metro Vancouver voters value issues more than ethnicity

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

François Legault veut davantage d’immigrants français

2019/01/24 1 Comment

I wonder whether he realizes that some of these may well be of other ethnicities than French (e.g., from Magreb, where issues around laicité could emerge):

Alors qu’il amorçait sa première visite officielle en France, le premier ministre du Québec a déclaré que, même s’il avait l’intention de réduire les quotas d’immigration, il souhaitait attirer encore plus d’immigrants français au Québec. François Legault a fait cette déclaration au Devoir au premier jour de sa visite en France à l’occasion de laquelle il rencontrera lundi le président, Emmanuel Macron, et le premier ministre, Édouard Philippe.

Pour le premier ministre, il est clair que la réduction des quotas d’immigration ne doit pas nuire à l’immigration en provenance de la France. Au contraire, dit-il. « Actuellement, il y a beaucoup trop d’immigrants au Québec qui ne sont pas qualifiés ou qui ne parlent pas français, dit le premier ministre. Donc, des Français, on en prendrait plus. De même que des Européens. »

François Legault rappelle son « inquiétude » de constater que, l’an dernier, 53 % des immigrants accueillis au Québec ne parlaient pas français. Avec l’immigration française, dit-il, il n’y a généralement ni problème de qualification ni problème de langue. C’est aussi pour recruter du personnel qualifié que l’Union des municipalités du Québec participait la semaine dernière au grand Salon du travail et de la mobilité professionnelle à la grande halle de La Villette à Paris.

On l’aura compris, c’est une visite surtout économique qu’entend mener le premier ministre québécois en France, durant laquelle il doit d’ailleurs rencontrer une douzaine de dirigeants de grandes entreprises françaises afin de les convaincre d’accroître leurs investissements au Québec. Le premier ministre est d’ailleurs accompagné du ministre de l’Économie et de l’Innovation, Pierre Fitzgibbon, ainsi que de la ministre des Relations internationales Nadine Girault.

« Ma priorité est économique, dit-il. Je ne veux rien soustraire [dans la relation France-Québec]. Mais je pense qu’on peut en faire plus en économie en augmentant les exportations. […] Je veux aussi augmenter les investissements des entreprises françaises au Québec, même si je comprends que M. Macron veut le contraire. »

François Legault n’hésite pas à qualifier de « ridicule » le chiffre des exportations québécoises en France, qui ne représente que « trois jours sur une année » comparativement aux exportations en direction des États-Unis. Il dit vouloir « doubler » les échanges économiques. « Il est plus que temps que l’on diversifie nos exportations, dit-il. Nos entreprises n’ont pas le réflexe d’exporter en Europe. Il va falloir changer ça. » Le premier ministre entend notamment augmenter le nombre d’agents commerciaux de la Délégation générale du Québec à Paris. Il compte aussi, en réorganisant Investissement Québec, mieux arrimer le travail de cette agence à celui de la Caisse de dépôt et des délégations à l’étranger.

Entre Matignon et l’Élysée, François Legault se rendra au siège de L’Oréal rencontrer son p.-d.g., Jean-Paul Agon. La multinationale des produits de beauté compte déjà 1474 employés au Québec et une usine à Saint-Laurent. Immédiatement après, il s’entretiendra avec le p.-d.g. du groupe agroalimentaire Fleury Michon, Régis Lebrun, qui emploie 350 personnes à Rigaud. Lundi soir, il mangera avec une demi-douzaine de dirigeants d’entreprises inscrites à la Bourse de Paris, dont David Layani, fondateur du groupe Onepoint, spécialiste de la transformation numérique des entreprises, et Jean-Laurent Bonnafé, directeur général de la grande banque BNP-Paribas.

Le volet politique de cette première visite à l’étranger sera pour sa part plus classique. Lundi midi, François Legault aura un repas privé avec le président Emmanuel Macron. Pour le reste, il rencontrera le premier ministre, Édouard Philippe, et les présidents du Sénat, Gérard Larcher, et de l’Assemblée nationale, Richard Ferrand. Il n’y aura ni conférence de presse commune avec le premier ministre français, ni signature d’ententes, ni non plus de rencontre avec les leaders des partis politiques, comme avaient l’habitude de le faire certains de ses prédécesseurs. « C’est déjà beau que, dans le contexte des gilets jaunes, on nous accorde tout ce temps », dit-on dans l’entourage du premier ministre.

Source: Legault veut davantage d’immigrants français

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

February By-elections: Matching Census Data with Ethnic Media Coverage (1-18 January 2019)

2019/01/23 Leave a comment

As some of you may be aware, I have been working through census data to develop profiles of all 338 federal ridings that focus on key demographic, economic, social and political indicators.

I have been  working with Canada’s multilingual media monitoring service, MIREMS (www.mirems.com) to test out matching their ethnic media coverage with the census data.

The current by-elections provide an ideal opportunity to test out this approach and to assess how useful this could be for this year’s October 19th general election.

Table 1 contrasts some of the key indicators for the three ridings, two urban and one rural. Burnaby South has the greatest number of immigrants and visible minorities, York Simcoe the least, with Outremont in the middle. None of these ridings have a significant Indigenous population. Outremont has the youngest population with the least number of married or common law relationships and the lowest average household size.

York Simcoe, given its lower number of immigrants, has the highest number of citizens of voting age.

Outremont has the highest number of men and women with university degrees, York Simcoe the lowest. Unemployment rates for men and women are highest in Outremont. Median total annual income is highest for men in York Simcoe and lowest in Outremont; for women, it is also highest in York Simcoe but lowest in Burnaby South. The percentage of low income individuals (Low income measure after tax) is lowest in York Simcoe and highest in Outremont for both men and women.

Burnaby South and Outremont elected NDP MPs in 2015, York Simcoe a Conservative. 

The detailed riding profiles are here: 59003 – Burnaby South, 24054 – Outremont, and 35119 – York Simcoe.

The language most often spoken at home, the indicator that correlates most closely with ethnic media readership, is captured in Table 2. Predominate non-official languages are Mandarin and Cantonese (about 25 percent) whereas Outremont and York Simcoe have few non-official languages most often spoken at home.

Ethnic Media


As one would expect, Chinese and South Asian media dominate in the by-election coverage  given riding demographics, mainly Chinese Canadians, and the highly visible candidacy of NDP leader Jagmeet Singh. The ill-advised remarks of former Liberal candidate Karen Wang, her forced resignation and replacement by Richard Lee have further increased the riding visibility.

As a result, of the 97 media articles monitored 1 to 18 January, one third of ethnic media coverage is in Punjabi, with an additional 8 percent in the South Asian English media. Written Chinese media forms one fifth, with radio and TV in Cantonese forming 8 percent and in Mandarin, three percent.

In terms of candidate specific coverage, NDP leader Singh was covered in about two-thirds of the media, with many articles focussed almost exclusively on his campaign and related challenges (e.g., his inability to answer questions regarding the detention of Canadians in China). His Liberal and Conservative opponents were only mentioned in about 15 percent of media, with of course the controversy over former Liberal candidate Wang’s divisive remarks being mentioned. PPC candidate Tyler Thompson was mentioned by close to six percent.  

There was only one article (reprint really of her website bio) focussed on Outremont, a profile of Liberal candidate Rachel Bendayan in Arabic, with no coverage of the Conservative and NDP candidates (Jasmine Louras and Julia Sanchez respectively). Outremont has a significant Jewish population (11 percent in 2011). Bendayan is Jewish (likely Sephardic given her surname) as appears is Louras. Overall voting preferences of Canadian Jews have shifted from Liberal to Conservative reflecting the previous government’s focus on combatting antisemitism and a more overt pro-Israel policy.

Basic news reporting and reprinting of mainstream media news article form the majority of ethnic media articles. However, close to 40 percent of the Punjabi and South Asian English, and about 13 percent of the Tamil media  media are commentary. Only Punjabi talk shows featured by-election coverage (Burnaby South).

Out of the 16 commentaries analyzed, 12 were in Punjabi, three in South Asian English and one in the Tamil media. For the most part, these were more in the form of neutral analysis than presenting opinions. Only three commentaries expressed opinions. All were negative, two were in the Punjabi media (NDP leader Singh’s ignorance of China’s arrest of Canadians in relation for the extradition case of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, former Liberal candidate Wang’s divisive ethnic appeal on social media) and one in the South Asian English media (the same critique of NDP leader Singh).

Next week will likely feature more commentary on ethnic politics given the debate is has provoked among many Canadians, including those in the language groups covered.

See the MIREMS blog for some of the stories being covered: Karen Wang and the ethnic vote: Multilingual media weighs in.

In related election coverage, the Supreme Court of Canada’s striking down the five-year limit for Canadian expatriate voting received coverage, particularly in Cantonese, Chinese and Mandarin media but also with significant coverage in Tamil media.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →