Globe editorial: The Liberals open the door to foreign interference

2025/01/09 Leave a comment

Absolutely. Shameful, and almost disqualifying given all the reports and the ongoing enquiry. Will see whether the caucus meeting Wednesday injected some common sense and reality:

…As we’ve said before, all the parties are guilty of having lax rules that increase the possibility of foreign interference in their nomination and leadership races. But the Liberal Party’s are particularly lax and not up to the moment, given what is at stake in its upcoming leadership race.

Only Canadian citizens normally have a say in which party forms government and who will serve as prime minister; permanent residents aren’t allowed to vote in federal elections.

If the Liberals want to extend that right to permanent residents in the case of their leadership race, so be it; other parties do that as well. But for the sake of the integrity of the process, they should stop there, and also increase the age limit to 18 out of deference to regular eligible voters.

Doing so would send the message that the Liberal Party won’t brook foreign interference, and that it respects the significance of the outcome of its leadership race.

On the other hand, it could do nothing and reinforce the view held by so many Canadians that the party is out of touch with this country – the very thing that made the leadership race necessary in the first place.

Source: The Liberals open the door to foreign interference

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Beijing is harassing diasporas in Canada – and victims need better protection

2025/01/07 Leave a comment

Not new but better documentated:

…But for many diaspora communities in Canada, threats from Beijing are not new. Canadians of Chinese, Hong Kong, Taiwanese, Tibetan and Uyghur heritage have long raised alarms about foreign interference – and our responses should take their needs into account.

To better understand the experiences of diaspora communities targeted by the Chinese government, Digital Public Square, in collaboration with the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy’s China Governance Lab and Abacus Data, fielded a national survey last June. In particular, we wanted to better understand the scale of transnational repression targeting these communities. Transnational repression is when governments reach across borders to silence diasporas and exiles, including through threats, abductions and – at the most extreme level – assassinations.

The survey found that 14 per cent of people in Canada who identify as having Chinese, Hong Kong, Taiwanese, Tibetan or Uyghur heritage – one in seven – have experienced threats from a foreign government or know someone who has. Respondents who personally experienced such threats cited online harassment, physical threats, threatening phone calls and harassment of family members as the most common forms.

Understandably, those who have experienced transnational repression feel less safe in Canada. Seventy-nine per cent of respondents agreed that “Canada is a safe and secure place for people like me,” but only 43 per cent of those who personally experienced threats agreed. This suggests that victims are not getting the support they need.

Investigating and raising awareness about the problem are necessary first steps but are not sufficient to make affected communities feel more secure. Our survey found that 68 per cent of ethnically Chinese respondents were worried that reports on foreign interference would lead to more anti-Asian racism. Without measures offering tangible support to affected communities, raising the alarm of Chinese government interference risks heightening feelings of insecurity among those at the greatest risk….

Alexander Chipman Koty is a project lead at Digital Public Square.

Source: Beijing is harassing diasporas in Canada – and victims need better protection

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Stockman: Diversity Can Be the Superpower’s Superpower

2025/01/06 Leave a comment

Good reminder:

…The Biden administration’s decision to draw on talent from different walks of life, rather than the well-connected few, has served America well.

The incoming Trump administration is taking shape, stocked with combatants in the bitter offensive against D.E.I. — championing choices whose main qualifications for running a major government agency or representing America abroad seem to be willingness to lie about an election, Trump family ties and looking good on television.

At least some immigrants, along with Mr. Musk and Mr. Krishnan, will have a place in the federal government under Mr. Trump. Even the person picked to run the civil rights division at the Justice Department, Harmeet Dhillon — who is expected to wage war on wokeness — is a Sikh born in India.

Even MAGA needs immigrants, it seems.

Source: Diversity Can Be the Superpower’s Superpower

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A Long Fight to Keep a Closer Eye on Madrasas Unravels in Pakistan

2025/01/06 Leave a comment

Not exactly great preparation for the future and progress:

They draw millions of poor Pakistani children with the simple promise of free education, meals and housing. For devout families, they offer Islamic learning rooted in ancient tradition.

But to the Pakistani government and Western counterterrorism officials, the religious seminaries known as madrasas also represent a potential threat. The institutions have long been accused of contributing to violence and radicalization, supplying recruits for the Taliban, Al Qaeda and other militant groups.

Now, Pakistan’s Islamic schools are at the center of an intense political clash — one that jeopardizes years of hard-won progress toward bringing the seminaries under the government’s regulatory umbrella.

The conflict goes back to 2019, when the government enacted a sweeping overhaul requiring madrasas to register with the Ministry of Education. The effort, meant to increase accountability for institutions that have historically operated with minimal state oversight, was strongly backed by Pakistan’s military but faced vehement resistance from Islamist political parties.

In October 2024, the largest of those parties, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, secured a deal with the government to end the registration requirement. Under the agreement, madrasas would be registered as they had been before 2019, under a colonial-era law governing charitable, scientific and educational groups. That law provides little oversight of curriculums, activities or funding.

In exchange, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam agreed to support unrelated constitutional amendments on judicial appointments that had set off a firestorm of controversy.

As the end of the year approached, however, the government had still not implemented the change. It cited concerns that reverting to the older system could undermine counterterrorism efforts, weaken oversight and breach international commitments to combat money laundering and terrorism financing.

The delay triggered threats of anti-government protests in Islamabad, the capital, adding to the government’s challenges amid frequent marches by supporters of Imran Khan, the ousted prime minister.

“We are firm on the agreed madrasa registration terms and will ensure they are upheld,” Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the chief of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, warned in Parliament last month. “If the government deviates, the decision won’t be made in Parliament, but on the streets.”

Late last week, the government finally approved the new registration provision, allowing madrasas to choose between modern oversight and the colonial-era framework. The move, in effect, discards the 2019 efforts to reform religious schools in favor of short-term political stability.

When Pakistan was created 77 years ago, madrasas numbered in the dozens. They gained prominence and grew significantly in the 1980s, when U.S. and Arab funding transformed them into recruitment hubs for Islamic volunteers to fight Soviet forces in neighboring Afghanistan. Today, there are about 30,000 madrasas in Pakistan…

Source: A Long Fight to Keep a Closer Eye on Madrasas Unravels in Pakistan

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DEI commentaries, emboldened by Trump and Poilievre

2025/01/03 Leave a comment

Seems like the discourse South of the border on DEI has emboldened right leaning media in Canada, with three articles in the National Post over the last week or so. Most of these ignore the necessity to improve representation and assume that “old stock” backgrounds are inherently stronger than other backgrounds. However, there are legitimate concerns regarding viewpoint diversity.

Starting with the overly partisan, Terry Newman: Poilievre’s plan to ‘defund’ woke antisemitism can’t come soon enough:

This week marks the 10th Christmas Canadians have endured under Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government — 10 years of our Dec. 25th-born prime minister acting as if he’s our very own personal Jesus, without the humility, common sense, or moral clarity his birthday might suggest. From the get-go, Trudeau’s been a means to an end for Liberal party power — a famous name, flowing hair, a convenient professionally-good-looking object many lonely Canadian wives cast their adoring gazes upon — but otherwise, intellectually and morally vacuous. Thankfully, there is a solution. Pierre Poilievre will bring the common sense and moral clarity Canada so desperately needs.

On Christmas eve, Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Opposition, tweeted out a promise to Canadians and we should hold him to it: “I will defund wokism and fight antisemitism. And stand with our friends in Israel against terror.” It included a link to a statement from a telephone interview he gave last week to the Winnipeg Jewish Review.

An even sharper ideological focus can be found in Leigh Revers: Universities better get prepared for Poilievre’s anti-woke agenda, almost pathological in his salivating over the “Mump administration” crusade against DEI:

Pull the other one. Recent propaganda sheets such as The Bulletin of the Canadian Association of University Teachers and Academic Matters, the journal of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations, which purport to represent professors like myself, are awash with racist DEI and tout a slavish fealty to obsessive and damaging social justice ideology. If you belong to the editorial team of either of these absurd political pamphlets, please drop me from your mailing list.

There is hope for students. Jordan Peterson has lately launched his academy, which, though limited to the social sciences so far, has breached the universities’ monopoly and comes at a bargain price. And the content is excellent, featuring such stellar authorities as Andrew Roberts, James Orr, John Vervaeke, Eric Kaufmann and a host of others. I’ve signed up.

Time is running out for legacy universities across Canada. I have a fancy next year we will see the same wave of comedy meltdowns that followed Trump’s re-election, just this time by an army of capitulating academics. “We didn’t mean to indoctrinate you with our untested ideology — Please give us more money.” Clink-clink. Too bad. It’s not in the cards.

Lastly, a more evidence-based approach to criticizing left-wing predominance at universities, Stéphane Sérafin: Defunding threats will not be enough to rid universities of systemic wokeism, who however cites the flawed survey and analysis of Dummitt, The Viewpoint Diversity Crisis at Canadian Universities (see following note):

Students have also suffered as a result of the ideological monoculture that now reigns on most university campuses. During the “great awokening” of 2020-2021, many students who refused to conform were subjected to attacks from their classmates and even formal disciplinary proceedings, as was the case with a student at my own faculty who dared to make Facebook posts mocking the Canadian federal public service’s affirmative action-style hiring policies.

Still more concerning incidents took place over the past year that appear to confirm the confluence between wokeism and antisemitism that Poilievre referenced. According to reports, Jewish students at multiple universities were subject to harassment on campus, their only apparent crime being that they were cast as members of an “oppressor” group and thus held to be personally complicit in “genocide” under the prevailing “woke” intersectional framework.

So, while some hold out hope that Canadian universities can bring themselves back in line with prevailing public opinion, there are significant reasons to doubt that this is possible, at least in the short term. This is highly unfortunate, given that it could cause them to lose funding.

While universities play an essential role in Canada’s intellectual and cultural life, the value that should be ascribed to that role is directly dependant on their ability to act in a manner that is conducive to the overall public good. We can hope against all hope that Canada’s universities will get their houses in order, but we should not be surprised if they face a reckoning instead.

HESA valid critique of the Dummitt/MLI study:

Look, this is a bad study, full stop.  The methodology and question design are so obviously terrible that it seems hard to avoid the conclusion that its main purpose was to confirm the authors’ biases, and clearly whatever editorial/peer review process the Macdonald Laurier Institute uses to oversee these publications needs major work.  But if a result is significant enough, even a bad methodology can find it: might this be such a case?

Maybe.  Part of the problem is that this paper spends a lot of effort conflating “viewpoint diversity” with “party identification diversity”, which is absurd.  I mean, there are countries which allocate academic places based on party identity, but I doubt that those are places where many Canadian academics would want to teach.  Further, on the specific issues where people apparently feel they have a need to “not share their opinions” on issues concerning race and gender, there are in addition to a censorious left a lot of bad faith right-wing concern trolls too, which kind of tempers my ability to share the authors concern that this is a necessarily “bad thing”.  And finally, this idea that the notion of being an academic means you should be able to say whatever you want without possibility of facing criticism or social ostracism – which I think is implicitly what the authors are suggesting – is a rather significant widening of the concept of academic freedom that wouldn’t find universal acceptance.

I think the most you can say about these issues really is first that viewpoint diversity should be a concern of every department, but that to reduce it to “party identification” diversification or some notion of both-sidesism (anti-vaxxers in virology departments, anyone?) should be seen for the grotesquerie that it is.  Second, yes, society (not just universities) is more polarized around issues like gender and race and finding acceptable and constructive common language in which to talk about these concepts is difficult, but, my dudes, banging on about why someone who happens to have a teaching position is absolved from the hard work of finding that language because of some abstract notion of academic freedom is not helpful. 

Source: Viewpoint Diversity




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Biden Made the Judiciary More Diverse—but Not More Liberal

2025/01/03 Leave a comment

Interesting analysis. Would be useful to have a similar systematic analysis of Canadian judicial appointments under Trudeau (may have missed one:

President Biden left his mark on the federal judiciary by installing a large number of appointees from diverse backgrounds, but he made few inroads on changing the ideological balance of courts that Donald Trump made more conservative during his first term.

Now, Trump’s return to office could ensure that the federal courts lean solidly in a conservative direction for years to come.

In terms of raw confirmation numbers, Biden edged Trump’s first term by a nose, appointing 235 judges to Trump’s 234. But the Democrat had the opportunity to appoint just one Supreme Court justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and he installed nine fewer judges than Trump to the powerful U.S. courts of appeals, which sit one level below the high court. 

Many of Biden’s appointees to those courts succeeded other like-minded judges, meaning that the overall ideological dynamics didn’t change much.

Where Biden made a lasting impact, however, was in appointing judges that represent a broader swath of America. About 60% of the judges he installed were people of color, according to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. And more than 60% were women. 

Biden noted in December that he appointed more Black women to the courts of appeals than all other previous administrations combined. He also appointed the first openly LGBTQ woman to the appeals courts, as well as the first Muslim-American to a life-tenured judicial post.

Another Biden priority was selecting nominees with a broader array of professional experience, including by appointing former federal public defenders to a judiciary that has been disproportionately represented by former prosecutors. 

That focus resulted in a new batch of judges who are distinctly different “in terms of the types of clients they’ve represented and the cases they have been exposed to,” said retired federal judge Jeremy Fogel, who now directs the Berkeley Judicial Institute, a center at the UC Berkeley School of Law….

Source: Biden Made the Judiciary More Diverse—but Not More Liberal

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Idées | 2024, une année centrale pour la laïcité de l’État

2025/01/03 Leave a comment

Useful overview:

Plusieurs étapes ont été franchies au cours des ans pour une laïcité de l’État au Québec. On n’a qu’à penser à la création du ministère de l’Éducation lors de la Révolution tranquille, à la déconfessionnalisation des Commissions scolaires en 2000, ou encore à la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État (Loi 21) en 2019. Cette grande épopée n’est pas encore arrivée à terme. Voici, en rappel, quelques événements survenus en 2024.

5 février 2024. Le Bloc québécois dépose un deuxième projet de loi pour éliminer l’exception religieuse du Code criminel canadien, lorsqu’il s’agit de propagande haineuse (C-373). Le 14 juin dernier, ce projet de loi a été ajouté à l’ordre de priorité du gouvernement, mais il est toujours en attente d’une date pour être considéré en deuxième lecture.

29 février 2024. La Cour d’appel du Québec confirme la constitutionnalité de la Loi 21 et rejette ainsi le jugement de la Cour supérieure qui en avait exempté les Commissions scolaires anglophones.

21 mars 2024. La Cour supérieure autorise Droits Collectifs Québec et le Mouvement laïque québécois (MLQ) à intenter un recours en justice (via un mandamus) contre le Conseil de la magistrature du Québec pour lui enjoindre d’établir des règles traduisant les exigences de la laïcité de l’État auprès des juges. Cette cause est importante car elle concerne le droit de toute personne vivant au Québec de bénéficier d’institutions judiciaires laïques.

26 avril. Le gouvernement fédéral crée tout un émoi au Québec en indiquant, dans son budget 2024, explorer de nouvelles mesures pour élargir l’accès aux prêts hypothécaires islamiques. La Coalition avenir Québec, le Parti québécois, le Bloc québécois à Ottawa et des organisations civiles, dont le Rassemblement pour la Laïcité (RPL) montent aux créneaux pour s’opposer à cette initiative contraire aux principes de la laïcité de l’État.

29 avril. La décision de la Fédération autonome de l’enseignement (FAE) d’amener la Loi 21 devant la Cour suprême est vivement critiquée par des enseignants qui s’opposent à ce que leurs cotisations syndicales servent à financer ce recours juridique et réclament une véritable consultation sur cette démarche.

19 juin. L’arrondissement d’Ahuntsic-Cartierville autorise un groupe religieux à organiser une prière collective musulmane dans un parc, en contradiction avec son règlement qui y interdit toute cérémonie religieuse. Cette décision crée des remous puisque l’événement, réservé aux adeptes de cette religion tout en reléguant femmes et fillettes dans un espace cloisonné loin derrière les hommes, prive les citoyens de leur espace public.

9 juillet. À la demande du gouvernement du Québec et du MLQ, le juge Mahmud Jamal de la Cour suprême se retire du dossier sur la Loi 21.

Juillet. Le choix de la Ville de Montréal d’inclure une femme voilée sur le panneau de bienvenue de son hall d’entrée crée polémique. Selon le MLQ et Pour les droits des femmes du Québec, cette affiche porte atteinte à la laïcité de l’État et au droit des femmes à l’égalité. La mairesse Valérie Plante annoncera, en octobre, que cette affiche sera retirée en raison du « malaise » qu’elle suscite, mais essentiellement pour réitérer que le Québec est une société laïque.

Septembre. Les manuels du nouveau programme Culture et citoyenneté québécoise, qui devaient faire la « promotion de l’État de droit laïque » dans nos écoles, comportent de sérieuses lacunes. Ils contiennent des définitions et principes de la laïcité qui ne reflètent pas les principes de la Loi 21 et ils ne s’appuient pas sur les considérants de la loi pour expliquer ses motifs.

22 octobre. À la suite de la publication du rapport de l’école Bedford, le premier ministre Legault confie aux ministres Drainville et Roberge le mandat de trouver des moyens de renforcer les contrôles et la laïcité dans les écoles du Québec. Ce rapport faisait état de plaintes et de signalements concernant des enjeux liés au non-respect d’obligations en matière de laïcité. Le PM a aussi mentionné être disposé à débattre de bonne foi de l’abolition du financement des écoles privées religieuses quoique ce ne soit pas sa priorité. Quelques jours plus tard, les ministres amorcent des vérifications dans 17 écoles du Québec.

27 novembre. Le Comité consultatif sur les enjeux constitutionnels du Québec au sein de la fédération canadienne recommande de doter le Québec d’une constitution codifiée qui inclurait les lois fondamentales actuellement en vigueur, dont la Loi 21.

29 novembre. Le gouvernement du Québec demande au fédéral la fin de l’exemption religieuse inscrite au code criminel concernant la propagande haineuse, demande aussitôt appuyée par RPL et le Centre consultatif des relations juives et israéliennes (CIJA). Comme le dit si bien la philosophe Louise Mailloux : « cette immunité accordée aux croyants est une aberration et rien ne peut justifier que ceux-ci puissent jouir d’un pareil privilège au détriment de tous les autres citoyens ».

6 décembre. Le premier ministre Legault dit songer à légiférer pour interdire la prière dans l’espace public et à un projet de constitution pour inscrire la laïcité, l’égalité entre les femmes et les hommes et l’intégration des immigrants en toutes lettres dans un texte fondamental.

Il n’y a pas à dire, l’année 2025 s’annonce fructueuse en discussion quant à la laïcité de l’État.

Marie-Claude Girard L’autrice est retraitée de la Commission canadienne des droits de la personne. Elle signe ce texte à titre personnel.

Source: Idées | 2024, une année centrale pour la laïcité de l’État

Several steps have been taken over the years for a secularism of the state in Quebec. We only have to think of the creation of the Ministry of Education during the Quiet Revolution, the deconfessionalization of School Boards in 2000, or the Law on the Secularism of the State (Law 21) in 2019. This great epic has not yet come to an end. Here are, as a reminder, some events that occurred in 2024.

February 5, 2024. The Bloc Québécois is filing a second bill to eliminate the religious exception of the Canadian Criminal Code when it comes to hate propaganda (C-373). On June 14, this bill was added to the government’s order of priority, but it is still waiting for a date to be considered in second reading.

February 29, 2024. The Quebec Court of Appeal confirms the constitutionality of Bill 21 and thus rejects the ruling of the Superior Court, which had exempted the English-speaking School Commissions.

March 21, 2024. The Superior Court authorizes Droits Collectifs Québec and the Mouvement laïque québécois (MLQ) to bring an action (via a mandamus) against the Conseil de la magistrature du Québec to order it to establish rules reflecting the requirements of the secularism of the State with judges. This cause is important because it concerns the right of any person living in Quebec to benefit from secular judicial institutions.

April 26. The federal government is creating a stir in Quebec by indicating, in its 2024 budget, to explore new measures to expand access to Islamic mortgages. The Coalition avenir Québec, the Parti québécois, the Bloc québécois à Ottawa and civil organizations, including the Rassemblement pour la Laïcité (RPL), are stepping up to oppose this initiative contrary to the principles of state secularism.

April 29. The decision of the Fédération autonome de l’enseignement (FAE) to bring Bill 21 before the Supreme Court is strongly criticized by teachers who oppose their union dues being used to finance this legal recourse and call for a real consultation on this approach.

June 19. The borough of Ahuntsic-Cartierville authorizes a religious group to organize a collective Muslim prayer in a park, in contradiction with its regulations that prohibit any religious ceremony. This decision creates a stir since the event, reserved for followers of this religion while relegating women and girls to a compartmentalized space far behind men, depriving citizens of their public space.

July 9th. At the request of the Government of Quebec and the MLQ, Justice Mahmud Jamal of the Supreme Court withdrew from the Bill 21 file.

July. The City of Montreal’s choice to include a veiled woman on the welcome sign in its entrance hall creates controversy. According to the MLQ and Pour les droits des femmes du Québec, this poster violates the secularism of the state and the right of women to equality. Mayor Valérie Plante will announce in October that this poster will be removed because of the “unease” it causes, but mainly to reiterate that Quebec is a secular society.

September. The manuals of the new Quebec Culture and Citizenship program, which were supposed to “promote the secular rule of law” in our schools, have serious shortcomings. They contain definitions and principles of secularism that do not reflect the principles of Bill 21 and they do not rely on the recitals of the Act to explain its reasons.

October 22. Following the publication of the Bedford School report, Prime Minister Legault entrusted Ministers Drainville and Roberge with the mandate to find ways to strengthen controls and secularism in Quebec schools. This report reported on complaints and reports regarding issues related to non-compliance with secular obligations. The PM also mentioned that he was willing to debate in good faith the abolition of the funding of private religious schools whatever was not his priority. A few days later, the ministers began checks in 17 schools in Quebec.

November 27. The Advisory Committee on the Constitutional Issues of Quebec within the Canadian Federation recommends that Quebec be given a codified constitution that would include the fundamental laws currently in force, including Bill 21.

November 29. The government of Quebec asks the federal government to end the religious exemption inscribed in the criminal code concerning hate propaganda, immediately supported by RPL and the Advisory Center for Jewish and Israeli Relations (CIJA). As the philosopher Louise Mailloux says so well: “this immunity granted to believers is an aberration and nothing can justify that they can enjoy such a privilege at the expense of all other citizens”.

December 6th. Prime Minister Legault said he was thinking of legislating to prohibit prayer in public space and a draft constitution to include secularism, equality between women and men and the integration of immigrants in full in a fundamental text.

There is no need to say, the year 2025 promises to be fruitful in discussion about the secularism of the State.

Marie-Claude Girard The author is retired from the Canadian Commission on Human Rights. She signs this text in a personal capacity.

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Order of Canada Appointments: 2024 Update

2025/01/03 Leave a comment

This analysis, conducted over the past decade, examines the diversity of Order of Canada appointments. Appointments are contingent upon nominations and typically reflect contributions over an extended period. This updates the analysis in my analysis of last year, How diverse are Order of Canada appointments? Key findings include:

  • Women are significantly underrepresented across all periods.
  • Visible minorities are underrepresented, while Indigenous peoples are slightly overrepresented relative to their population share.
  • Visible minority representation has increased over time.
  • Contributions to the arts have generally constituted the largest share of appointments, followed by health, business, public service, and activism.
  • The share of appointments by rank and group follows the typical pattern in most diversity analyses, where diversity decreases with increasing rank. However, this pattern is only observed for women. In contrast, the share of Indigenous companions is higher than for officers, which in turn is higher than Indigenous members. The share of visible minority officers is greater than the share of visible minority members.
Order of Canada 2013-24 Diversity – Key slidesDownload

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A new generation of judges is redefining what Canada’s top courts look like 

2025/01/02 Leave a comment

Really good and thorough analysis of judicial appointments under the Liberal government. My 2016 analysis of the Harper government appointments referenced. Legacy achievement of the Liberals and their first minister of justice, Wilson-Raybould. The next needed analysis would be to assess their impact on jurisprudence and decisions, a much harder task.

Likely that there will be a contrary shift under the likely Poilievre government in terms of process, appointments and transparency (i.e. FCJAC reports):

…A decade ago, and forever before that, a clear majority of judges on Canada’s most important courts were white men. That began to change after the federal government’s 2016 reshaping of the judicial hiring process, which in part focused on increasing diversity.

Now, among 1,180 federally appointed judges, 47 per cent are women, 6 per cent are racialized and 2 per cent are Indigenous, according to data compiled by the Office of the Commissioner of Federal Judicial Affairs in 2024. It is the first time the agency has compiled statistics on the varied backgrounds of all judges who decide the biggest cases.

Underrepresentation remains an issue, especially among Indigenous and racialized people, but recent gains are significant. In unofficial data from 2016, compiled by a former senior federal civil servant [me!] in Policy Options magazine, 30 per cent of judges at the time on federally appointed benches were women, 2 per cent were racialized and 1 per cent were Indigenous…

Up until 2016, the top judicial ranks were dominated by white men, chosen by Liberal and Conservative governments alike. From 2007 through 2015, when Stephen Harper was prime minister, two-thirds of 701 appointments were men, according to earlier data on gender from Federal Judicial Affairs. For several years, almost all new judges appointed by Mr. Harper’s government were white, a 2012 Globe story reported.

The federal Conservative Party did not respond to requests for comment.

In the new data compiled by Federal Judicial Affairs, with numbers as of February, 2024, the shift under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is distinct….

Source: A new generation of judges is redefining what Canada’s top courts look like 


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Snyder: The Mump Oligarchy — A Glossary

2025/01/02 Leave a comment

Snyder is providing some of the best macro-level analysis of the incoming administration and its acolytes. The recent infighting over H1-B visas being a recent example:

  1. Mump regime. Musk plus Trump. Mu…mp. The real centibillionaire and the fake rich person in the proper order.
  2. Mump oligarchy. The regime is an oligarchy, rule by the wealthy few. Trump is the oligarchs’ spokesman. He might stay or go. The oligarchs will remain.
  3. Mump as illness. Physical illness: we are made sick and scammed blind (think of RFK Jr and Ramaswamy). Mumps is one of the diseases that will return without vaccines. Mental illness: Musk’s idea of prosperity is that he hurts you and you thank him. See my work on sadopopulism. 
  4. In Mumptopia, Americans spend our time in front of screens, instructed whom to hate and worship by algorithms curated by immigrant software engineers. We die pointlessly young on an overheated Earth with the word “Mars” on our lips. The Mump mage performs a ritual rocket dance, leaping a few inches over our graves. 
  5. Mump not MAGA. The MAGA folks somehow did not realize that they were giving power to a an illegal immigrant South African centibillionaire. This is not their regime.
  6. Mumpers. South Africans, Russians, and others close to power. Musk, Putin, Thiel, Sacks, Trump (today), Vance (tomorrow) and their closest circles.
  7. Mumpery. Behavior typical of the Mump regime. Gaslighting, theft, scams, tax avoidance, disinformation, Putinism, dictator worship, threatening U.S. allies, submitting to U.S. enemies, persecuting Americans, suppressing speech with threats of violence and lawsuits, promoting pollution and global warming, ending public services.
  8. Mumpets. Those who choose to submit to Musk. For example, senators who ignore their constitutional responsibilities and vote for Trump’s Cabinet nominees, whose buffoonery and fascism are meant to weaken the state so Musk can profit. Compare: puppet, pet.
  9. To mumpify. To become a mumpet. Nouns can be formed from this verb. For example: “Senator Fetterman is pretty far along in his mumpification.” Or adjectives: “Yep, I’d say he’s mumpified by now.” Compare: zombify, zombification.
  10. Mumpy, or mumpish. People influenced by the Mump regime, or actions that tend towards a mumpified world. “That’s mumpier than I would have expected.” “She’s gone all mumpy on me.” Supercedes: trumpy.

Source: The Mump Oligarchy — A Glossary

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