Immigrants are largely behind Canada’s status as one of the best-educated countries

2018/02/05 Leave a comment

The difference among visible minority groups, including gender, is one of the more interesting aspects of this study:

Canada can credit immigrants for making it one of the best-educated countries in the world.

Not only do many newcomers arrive with university degrees, their high expectations for their children’s academic achievements also appear to lead to the pursuit of higher education among their children, according to a new internal government analysis.

The Immigration Department report, obtained through an access to information request, found 36 per cent of the children of immigrants aged 25 to 35 held university degrees, compared to 24 per cent of their peers with Canadian-born parents.

Among the top immigration source countries, more than 50 per cent of the children of immigrants from China and India graduated from university, while one-third of those born to Filipino immigrant parents finished their degrees.

By comparison, between 30 and 37 per cent of children to immigrants from Western Europe completed university, followed by those from Latin America and the Caribbean at a rate ranging from 23 to 28 per cent — about par with children with Canadian-born parents, the report said.

“The educational attainment of the parents matters; children with highly educated parents are more likely to be highly educated themselves. And immigrant parents in Canada tend to have higher levels of educational attainment than Canadian-born parents,” said the report by researcher Garnett Picot for the department’s research and evaluation unit.

“Parents’ expectations regarding education matters, and immigrant families, particularly Asian families, tend to have higher educational expectations for their children, on average, than families with Canadian-born parents.”

Picot, who declined the Star’s interview request, said family income did not seem to play a role in the gaps in educational attainment.

“This is important because many immigrant families struggle economically,” he wrote in his article, titled The Educational and Labour market Outcomes of the Children of Immigrants: A Success to be Preserved.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ranked Canada second only to Korea as the highest educated nation in the world in 2016, with over 60 per cent of Canadians with a post-secondary education.

An Immigration Canada spokesperson said Picot’s study was part of the government’s attempt to monitor the long-term performance of immigration policies and programs by looking at how the children of immigrants are doing in terms of their educational and economic outcomes.

via Immigrants are largely behind Canada’s status as one of the best-educated countries | Toronto Star

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M-103 report makes few recommendations about Islamophobia

2018/02/03 Leave a comment

One of the relatively few articles to date on the committee report (L’islamophobie divise encore le Parlement canadien being another). Have only glanced at the report but this article provides a reasonable summary.

Amused that the Committee advocated restoration of Canada’s Action Plan Against Racism. Apart from funding the collection of police-reported hate crimes data by StatsCan, most of the other initiatives were of limited utility (during the evaluation of CAPAR, I stated that it was too small in scope and impact and it would be no great loss if it was not renewed – save for hate crimes).

The policy and program capacity of the multiculturalism program has been greatly reduced so it will be interesting to see whether the government response is serious or, as previously with CAPAR, largely symbolic:

The report arising from the Liberals’ anti-Islamophobia motion, M-103, was made public on Thursday, and calls for a national action plan on racism and religious discrimination, better data collection on hate crimes and cultural sensitivity training for law enforcement.

But the report, titled “Taking Action Against Systemic Racism and Religious Discrimination Including Islamophobia,” makes almost no recommendations that specifically target Islamophobia, despite months of controversy over the use of the term in the motion tabled by Liberal MP Iqra Khalid in December 2016.

The report does recommend that Jan. 29 “be designated as a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Islamophobia, and other forms of religious discrimination,” in response to requests from Muslim groups after six Muslim worshippers were killed in a Quebec City mosque shooting on Jan. 29, 2017. On the one-year anniversary of the attack, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a statement about the shooting and the importance of fighting Islamophobia, but did not declare the day a national day of action. Last week, the heritage department told the Post the government “has received and noted the proposal” from the National Council of Canadian Muslims.

Of the 30 recommendations, only one other specifically mentions Islamophobia, and only to say that the government should “actively condemn systemic racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia.”

The report does not recommend the creation of any new laws. M-103 itself is a motion, not a law.

The original motion, which called on the government to conduct a study and come up with an approach to eliminate racism and religious discrimination “including Islamophobia,” generated a firestorm of controversy last year. Conservatives claimed the motion would restrict free speech because, they felt, the term Islamophobia is poorly defined. During committee hearings, several witnesses expressed concern that the motion would effectively stifle criticism of Islam.

But the recommendations outlined in the M-103 report target racism and religious discrimination in much broader terms. The report suggests the government should update the Canadian Action Plan Against Racism, published in 2005, and broaden it to include religious discrimination. Other recommendations call for the government to establish uniform guidelines and a national database for the collection of hate-crime data.

The report also recommends that federal, provincial and territorial governments take a closer look at the comparability of education and credentials obtained outside Canada, to combat employment barriers. Other recommendations call for more funding for research and for law enforcement to investigate Internet hate speech.

The report notes that the committee heard “differing views on the use of the term Islamophobia,” but does not offer an accepted definition of the term.

In a dissenting report, the Conservatives cast doubt on the premise of the whole exercise, calling into question whether Canadians are actually living in an “increasing public climate of hate and fear,” as the motion states. Their report suggests the per capita rate of hate crimes has declined since 2009.

The Conservatives also listed 26 different definitions of the term Islamophobia provided by different witnesses who appeared before the committee. “The concerns raised, regarding the dangers of an over-broad definition, or of attempting to condemn ‘Islamophobia’ without defining which thoughts and actions are thereby also being condemned, were widespread,” reads the Conservative report.

In their own list of recommendations, the Conservatives called on the government to “cease using the term ‘Islamophobia,’” and reiterate its support for freedom of speech and religion.

In an interview, Conservative MP David Anderson said communities and faith groups want to tackle issues of discrimination themselves, without government interference. “We don’t need the government to be overseeing every part of Canadian life,” he said. But he said the Conservatives agree with some of the report’s recommendations, including the need for better data collection. “No one is denying that (discrimination) exists.”

In a supplementary report, the New Democrats accused both Liberals and Conservatives of “political posturing” that diminished the committee’s work to tackle racism and religious discrimination. The report argues the government should have been more open to changing the language of the motion to include “an agreed-upon definition” of Islamophobia, but that “partisan politicking” got in the way.

“People wanted to know, in the context of the motion, what the term Islamophobia meant and what was the intent behind it,” NDP MP Jenny Kwan told the Post. “We could have all worked together to dampen the fear and the misinformation.”

Kwan said it made sense to include the term Islamophobia in the motion, because of the documented rise in hate crimes against Muslims. She believes the parties could have come up with a definition of the term that would have let all parliamentarians agree unanimously to the motion. But in an attempt from Liberals and Conservatives to appear to be on opposite sides of the issue, she said, that didn’t happen.

M-103 was passed by the Liberal majority last March, in the wake of the Quebec City mosque shooting. Throughout the hearings last fall, Liberal committee members frequently expressed frustration at the focus of some witnesses on the wording of the motion, and tried to steer the focus away from Islamophobia and onto racism and religious discrimination more broadly.

Anderson said the Liberals “misunderstood” how strongly Canadians would feel about the issue.

Source: M-103 report makes few recommendations about Islamophobia

Link to report: Committee Report No. 10 – CHPC (42-1) – House of Commons of Canada

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Marketed Multiculturalism Makes Canada A Hostile Homeland: Sarah Beech

2018/02/03 Leave a comment

Some valid points but a bit over the top in words and rhetoric, and too general with few concrete and implementable suggestions:

On January 30, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the Government of Canada will officially recognize the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent, which began in 2015 and runs until 2024. The objective of this recognition period is to highlight and celebrate the contributions people of African descent have made to Canada. But, what does that actually mean for black Canadians?

According to Trudeau, “This means learning more about the issues that affect black Canadians, including improving research and data collection, so we can better understand the particular challenges they face.”

In some respects, additional data is needed, but the collecting of more data will not necessarily produce new ways of thinking about historic problems, like anti-black racism.

Overall, Trudeau’s remarks were lackluster, peppered with symbolism to validate Canada’s selected brand of nationalism without explicitly delineating a strategic plan or any course of concrete action. I do not expect that he or his government would have been able to release a 10-point plan, but to make an address without any definitive next steps is futile in the fight against anti-black racism. His speech, the topic and the timing (two days before Black History Month, and three years late,) appear contrived and symptomatic of marketed multiculturalism.

Marketed multiculturalism occurs when racial and cultural diversity are used by social, political and economic discourses to validate state sponsored messages, amplified by news media, that Canada is a post-racial multicultural society. This marketed myth preserves the status quo, tokenizes racialized people and obfuscates the existence of racism and anti-black racism in this nation.

Within the marketed multicultural framework, when an acknowledgement of racism is made by institutions responsible for the systemic oppression of racialized people, the surreptitious ways in which racism operates become more nuanced. The prime minister’s announcement was a representation of this phenomenon. The particulars of his speech reinforced multiculturalism in Canada more than they declared a commitment to combatting anti-black racism. While the two are not mutually exclusive, in order for either to be fully realized the commitment has to be more than just promised.

For multiculturalism to be legitimately realized in Canada, the policy needs to go beyond the page. Acknowledgements need to be met with action. Cultural inclusion, equity and other principles upon which authentic multicultural ideology is premised must not conflate performance with progress. The absence of this distinction makes Canada a hostile homeland for black Canadians, Indigenous people, racialized immigrants and other people of colour.

As politicians make (more) policy, they both have a propensity to succumb to the effects of marketed multiculturalism, where acknowledgement and accountability are systemically destined to never meet within the status quo. While accountability is not impossible, it does require all Canadians to interrupt the political performance, forgo the politeness and promote political progress for racialized people in Canada.

via Marketed Multiculturalism Makes Canada A Hostile Homeland

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Antisemitic incidents in UK at all-time high

2018/02/03 Leave a comment

Latest UK data – not police-reported but CST plays a similar role as B’nai Brith does here:

Antisemitic hate incidents have reached a record level in the UK, with the Jewish community targeted at a rate of nearly four times a day last year, figures indicate.

There were 1,382 antisemitic incidents recorded nationwide in 2017 by the Community Security Trust.

This was the highest tally that the trust, a charity that monitors antisemitism, has registered for a calendar year since it began gathering such data in 1984. The figure rose by 3%, compared with a total, in 2016, of 1,346 incidents – a tally that itself was a record annual total.

There was no obvious single cause behind the trend, the trust said. “Often increases in antisemitic incidents have been attributable to reactions to specific trigger events that cause identifiable, short-term, spikes in incident levels. However, this was not the case in 2017. Instead, it appears that the factors that led to a general, sustained, high level of antisemitic incidents in 2016 continued throughout much of 2017.”

The report pointed to a rise in all forms of hate crime following the EU referendum as well as publicity surrounding alleged antisemitism in the Labour party. These factors may have caused higher levels of incidents as well as encouraged more reporting of antisemitic incidents from victims and witnesses in the Jewish community, the trust said.

The trust’s figures showed a 34% increase in the number of violent antisemitic assaults, from 108 in 2016 to 145 in 2017. The most common single type of incident in 2017 involved verbal abuse randomly directed at Jewish people in public.

There was a fall in the number of incidents that involved social media, from 289 in 2016 to 247 last year. Three-quarters of all the antisemitic incidents were recorded in Greater London and Greater Manchester, home to the two largest Jewish communities in the UK.

The trust’s chief executive, David Delew, said: “Hatred is rising and Jewish people are suffering as a result. This should concern everybody because it shows anger and division that threaten all of society. We have the support of government and police, but prosecutions need to be more visible and more frequent.”

The home secretary, Amber Rudd, said antisemitism was a “despicable form of abuse” which had “absolutely no place in British society”.

She said: “I welcome this report’s findings that the rise in reported incidents partly reflects the improving response to these horrendous attacks and better information sharing between the CST and police forces around the UK. But even one incident is one too many, and any rise in incidents is clearly concerning, which is why this government will continue its work protecting the Jewish community and other groups from antisemitism and hate crime.”

The shadow communities secretary, Andrew Gwynne, said the findings were extremely concerning and emphasised “just how important it is that we all make a conscious effort to call out and confront antisemitism”.

A spokesperson for advocacy group Hope Not Hate said the levels of antisemitism remained unacceptably high and it was concerning to see that incidents had not declined.

Stephen Silverman, director of investigations and enforcement at the Campaign Against Antisemitism, said the trust figures were indicative of official 2017 police statistics. “Antisemitic crime has been rising dramatically since 2014 and that rise is not explained by an increase in reporting, and we have seen no noticeable impact from Brexit,” he said.

Silverman added: “We believe that Jews are being singled out disproportionately and with increasing violence due to the spread of antisemitic conspiracy myths originating from Islamists, the far-left and far-right, which society is failing to address, as evidenced by the ongoing disgraceful situation in the Labour party, and because the Crown Prosecution Service declines to prosecute so often that antisemites no longer fear any consequences to their actions.”

Until the criminal justice system and political parties stopped “paying lip service to antisemitism,” he said, “the threat to the security of British Jews was at risk of reaching crisis point”.New data this week revealed that hundreds of hate crimes have been committed at or near schools and colleges in the last two years, most linked to race and ethnicity.

Source: Antisemitic incidents in UK at all-time high

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The rise of Indigenous members of the Baha’i faith

2018/02/03 Leave a comment

Interesting (the 2011 NHS shows that over three-quarters of Indigenous peoples are Christian, with most of the balance responding “no religious affiliation” – Aboriginal spirituality being under five percent):

As Canadian members of the Baha’i faith continue to bask in the glow of the 200th anniversary of the birth of their Persian founder, Baha’u’llah, they take particular pride in the many Indigenous people among their faith, which emphasizes the divine origins of all religions.

To that end one of Canada’s most prominent Baha’i, Bob Watts, former chief of staff to the Assembly of First Nations, will be taking part in festivities and discussions on Thursday, Feb. 2, at the Aboriginal Friendship Centre in East Vancouver.

Hailing from the Mohawk and Ojibway Nations, and residing at Ontario’s Six Nations Reserve, Watts recently completed his duties with the AFN. Before that he was the interim executive director of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which makes recommendations regarding the Indian Residential School era and its legacy.

The invitational event with Watts in Vancouver will include remarks from Chief Robert Joseph, one of the most truly reconciling voices in Canada’s truth and reconciliation process, which sometimes descends into politics and division.

Baha’i followers emphasize the ethnic diversity of their membership. When Metro Vancouver’s Baha’is marked their founder’s birthday last October, there was significant participation by large numbers of Baha’i who are Indigenous. (See drumming photo above.)

via The rise of Indigenous members of the Baha’i faith | Vancouver Sun

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Identifying radical content online: Ryan Scrivens

2018/02/02 Leave a comment

I only wish we could use some of these analytical tools to better understand overall integration and the role that social networks play in either increasing integration or allowing individuals and groups to remain within their own community or group?

Violent extremists and those who subscribe to radical beliefs have left their digital footprints online since the inception of the World Wide Web. Notable examples include Anders Breivik, the Norwegian far-right terrorist convicted of killing 77 people in 2011, who was a registered member of a white supremacy web forum and had ties to a far-right wing social media site; Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old who murdered nine Black parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, and who allegedly posted messages on a white power website; and Aaron Driver, the Canadian suspected of planning a terrorist attack in 2016, who showed outright support for the so-called Islamic State on several social media platforms.

It should come as little surprise that, in an increasingly digital world, identifying signs of extremism online sits at the top of the priority list for counter-extremist agencies. Within this context, researchers have argued that successfully identifying radical content online, on a large scale, is the first step in reacting to it. Yet in the last 10 years alone, it is estimated that the number of individuals with access to the Internet has increased threefold, from over 1 billion users in 2005 to more than 3.8 billion as of 2018. With all of these new users, more information has been generated, leading to a flood of data.

It is becoming increasingly difficult, nearly impossible really, to manually search for violent extremists, potentially violent extremists or even users who post radical content online because the Internet contains an overwhelming amount of information. These new conditions have necessitated the creation of guided data filtering methods, which may replace the laborious manual methods that traditionally have been used to identify relevant information.

Governments in Canada and around the globe have engaged researchers to develop advanced information technologies, machine-learning algorithms and risk-assessment tools to identify and counter extremism through the collection and analysis of big data available online. Whether this work involves finding radical users of interest, measuring digital pathways of radicalization or detecting virtual indicators that may prevent future terrorist attacks, the urgent need to pinpoint radical content online is one of the most significant policy challenges faced by law enforcement agencies and security officials worldwide.

We have been part of this growing field of research at the International CyberCrime Research Centre, hosted at Simon Fraser University’s School of Criminology. Our work has ranged from identifying radical authors in online discussion forums to understanding terrorist organizations’ online recruitment efforts on various online platforms. These experiences have provided us with insights we can offer regarding the policy implications of conducting large-scale data analyses of extremist content online.

First, there is much that practitioners and policy-makers can learn about extremist movements by studying their online activities. Online discussion forums of the radical right or social media accounts of radical Islamists, for example, are rich with information about how members of a particular movement communicate, how they construct their radical identities, and who they are targeting — discussions, behaviours and actions that can spill over into the offline realm. Exploring the dark corners of the Internet can be helpful in understanding or perhaps even predicting trends in activity or behaviour before they happen in the offline world. If, for example, analysts can track an author’s online activity or identify an online trend that is becoming more radical over time, analysts may be in a better position to assist law enforcement officials and the intelligence community. At the same time, it is important to note that online behaviour often does not translate into offline behaviour; authorities must proceed with caution to ascertain the specific nature of an instance of online activity and the potential threat it poses.

Second, practitioners and policy-makers can gain valuable information about extremist movements by utilizing computational tools to study radical online activities. Our research suggests that it is possible to identify radical topics, authors or even behaviours in online spaces that contain an overwhelming amount of information. Signs of extremism can be found by drawing upon keyword-retrieval software that identifies and counts a specific set of words, or sentiment analysis programs that classify and categorize opinions in a piece of text. Large-scale, semi-automated analyses can provide practitioners and policy-makers with a macro-level understanding of extremist movements online, ranging from their radical ideology to their actual activities. This understanding, in turn, can assist in the development of counter-narratives or deradicalization and disengagement programs to counter violent extremism.

We must caution practitioners and policy-makers that our work suggests there is no simple typology or behaviour that best describes radical online activity or what constitutes radical content online. Instead, extremism comes in many shapes and sizes and varies with the online platform: some radical platforms, for example, promote blatant forms of extremism while other platforms encourage their subscribers to tone down the rhetoric and present their extremist views in a subtler manner. Nonetheless, a useful starting point in identifying signs of extremism online is to go directly to the source: identifying topics of discussion that are indeed radical at the core — with language that describes the “enemies” of the extreme right, for example, such as derogatory terms about Jews, Blacks, Muslims or LGBTQ communities.

Lastly, in order to gain a broader understanding of online extremism or to improve the means by which researchers and practitioners “search for a needle in a haystack,” social scientists and computer scientists should collaborate with one another. Historically, large-scale data analyses have been conducted by computer scientists and technical experts, which can be problematic in the field of terrorism and extremism research. These experts tend to take a high-level methodological perspective, measuring levels of — or propensity toward — radicalization or ways of identifying violent extremists or predicting the next terrorist attack. But searching for radical material online without a fundamental understanding of the radicalization process or how extremists and terrorists use the Internet can be counterproductive. Social scientists, on the other hand, may be well-versed in terrorism and extremism research, but most tend to be ill-equipped to manage big data — from collecting to formatting to archiving large volumes of information. Bridging the computer science and social science approaches to build on the strengths of each discipline offers perhaps the best chance to construct a useful framework for assisting authorities in addressing the threat of violent extremism as it evolves in the online milieu.

via Identifying radical content online

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John Ivison: Senate amendments to gender diversity bill set to test Trudeau’s feminist principles

2018/02/02 Leave a comment

Find Ivison overly alarmist here. Requiring companies to have diversity plans but allowing them to set their own targets, with annual reporting, is a reasonable balance between doing virtually nothing and moving the yardstick.

There are likely some changes that may be needed (e.g., size of companies that are covered).

Bu is meritocracy really at risk as Ivison argues? Seem to recall same argument being used each time organizations want to increase diversity:

Are there any limits to how far Justin Trudeau will go to foster diversity and inclusion? We may be about to find out.

While he was in Davos, the prime minister made a big deal about the representation of women on corporate boards.

“Companies should have a formal policy on gender diversity and make the recruitment of women candidates a priority,” he said in his speech to the World Economic Forum.

To this end, the Liberal government has introduced a bill (C-25) to amend the Canada Business Corporations Act, which (among other things) requires companies to place their diversity policy before their shareholders, and if they fail to do so, to explain why (the widely adopted “comply or explain” approach).

Even that level of intervention has some free marketers wondering what business it is of the government to interfere in the running of private corporations.

But the current proposal is tame compared to amendments being proposed by a group of influential senators that will have many executives choking on their Porterhouse steak.

The six senators — Serge Joyal, Frances Lankin, Paul Massicotte, Lucie Moncion, Ratna Omidvar and André Pratte — have written to their colleagues saying they believe the current bill “lacks teeth.”

They would like to add amendments that would force the 270,000 companies incorporated under the CBCA to adopt diversity policies that set numerical goals and timetables on female, indigenous, disabled and visible minority board representation. Companies would have to report their progress not just to their shareholders but, “for the purposes of monitoring,” to the government. Ministers would be required to prepare and publish a report on the data – a clear indication that further corrective action could one day be taken.

“To be clear: our amendment would not set quotas,” the senators say.

Nonetheless, quotas would be set, even if, at this stage, by the companies themselves.

The senators are now rallying their colleagues and if they have the votes, bill C-25 will be sent back to the House of Commons. One source said there appears to be a critical mass of senators in favour of the amendments, which will likely be introduced next week.

At that point, Trudeau will have a decision to make. While the government has not looked kindly on Senate amendments, Trudeau charged senators to use their independent judgment to improve government legislation. He is unlikely to want to shirk what he sees as his moral duty to promote diversity and inclusion.

Carol Hansell, senior partner at the Toronto law firm Hansell LLP, is critical of the bill in its existing form for a number of reasons, principally because it will force companies to hold annual elections of individual directors — the concept of majority voting. She said she believes governance should flow from securities regulation, not corporate statute, which she deems too rigid to respond to changing circumstances.

Hansell thinks the same is true of the diversity issue and that many people would find the imposition of government oversight “objectionable.”

“I think everyone is uncomfortable with quotas. It’s too blunt a tool,” she said.

Even Trudeau shied away from anything that resembled a quota in the legislation. When Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains introduced the bill, he said it would “contribute to an inclusive economic growth agenda” but would not unduly burden business.

The bill was deemed sufficiently benign by the Conservatives that they supported it – pointing out much of it was based on their economic action plan.

The “comply or explain” model has already been adopted by the Canadian Securities Administrators, covering most of Canada’s publicly traded companies.

The dissenting senators point out the results have been unspectacular over the past few years — 14 per cent of board seats are now occupied by women, up from 11 per cent in 2015.

Only 1.1 per cent of board members are Indigenous, 3.2 per cent have disabilities and 4.3 per cent belong to visible minorities.

As a share of the population, all four groups are under-represented (women and girls make up 50.4 per cent of the Canadian population; three per cent are Indigenous; 19.9 per cent are visible minorities and 13.7 per cent report some kind of disability).

Smart companies are moving toward board representation that more accurately reflects their shareholders and customers.

But we are veering into dangerous territory when we reject the notion of meritocracy as a mechanism that merely re-inforces male privilege.

Change is happening before our eyes, even if it is not as rapid as some might like.

But it is simply not the role of government to dictate who should be running the nation’s businesses.

Source: John Ivison: Senate amendments to gender diversity bill set to test Trudeau’s feminist principles

Filed under gender, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Le Conseil des arts du Canada partage plus d’argent, selon des critères d’inclusion

2018/02/02 Leave a comment

More implementation of the diversity and inclusion agenda:

Inclusion de la relève, des arts autochtones et de la diversité. Augmentation générale des « subventions de base » — celles qui assurent, pour un cycle de quatre ans, le fonctionnement des compagnies artistiques. Le Conseil des arts du Canada (CAC) passe aux actes : ses nouvelles valeurs se reflètent dans l’attribution de ses subventions. En dévoilant les premiers bénéficiaires d’une subvention de base depuis qu’il a adopté, en 2015, son nouveau modèle, le CAC incarne sa nouvelle manière, et affirme son désir de moduler le paysage artistique.

Les changements sont nombreux dans la liste des « Bénéficiaires d’une subvention de base », dont Le Devoir a obtenu copie. À travers le pays, 1154 organismes ont reçu une subvention de base, ventilant quelque 117 millions en 2017-2018, comparativement à 92 millions en 2016-2017. Cent dix organismes reçoivent cette subvention pour première fois — soit 10 % des organismes — et accèdent ainsi à une possible pérennité. Environ trois organismes sur cinq voient leurs subventions augmenter pour ce cycle. Les arts autochtones, des artistes de la diversité, des sourds et handicapés, ou des communautés des langues officielles en situation de minorité sont fort encouragés. Quelque 62 % des organismes axés sur ces pratiques ont reçu des subventions à la hausse ; 24 nouveaux organismes en reçoivent pour la première fois.

Le CAC « vient d’attribuer à peu près 60 % de l’argent frais aux organismes », explique Simon Brault, directeur. « En ce moment, il reste encore 57 millions à dépenser d’ici le 31 mars. Ça va avoir beaucoup d’effets. Dans les prochaines semaines vont sortir les résultats par projet — par exemple, ceux du Fonds numérique, très importants sur le plan des investissements. » C’est donc seulement l’automne prochain, après une année entière, qu’un premier bilan pourra se faire de manière éclairée.

« Les compagnies les plus augmentées sont en général les plus pointues dans leur discipline », estime M. Brault, citant la compagnie Marie Chouinard et le Centre canadien d’architecture. « On voit apparaître de nouvelles disciplines : le cirque contemporain, avec le Cirque Éloize, qui entre pour la première fois au fonctionnement, ou des compagnies spécialisées en arts et handicap », telles Corpuscule Danse et Des pieds et des mains. Art Souterrain, qui propose des expositions temporaires en des lieux inusités, comme le métro, est aussi un des nouveaux financés. « De nouvelles pratiques sont soutenues. On fait des choses surprenantes ! » se réjouit le directeur. « Il y a une capacité de renouvellement importante. J’ai hâte de voir ce que va produire ce signal dans le soutien des autres conseils des arts, ce qu’ils vont donner ou pas à ces compagnies, au Québec et à Montréal. Le CAC a eu la chance de vraiment aligner ses investissements avec les principes annoncés. C’est rare qu’un conseil des arts qui reçoit de l’argent frais ces temps-ci, peu importe où dans le monde, décide de le distribuer autrement que de façon égale à tout le monde. Nous, on a choisi une voie différente. »

Pics et plateaux

David Lavoie, coprésident du Conseil québécois du théâtre, a salué « l’avancée des investissements : il y a dix ans, on ne l’imaginait même plus. Oui, il y a des attentes importantes des milieux artistiques, nourries par les crises de la succession, par la pression sur la nécessaire inclusion de la diversité et de la réalité autochtone. Il reste des investissements à venir. Il y a des gagnants ; présentement, on ne semble pas voir grand perdants, mais je pense qu’il est trop tôt pour faire un bilan. Il peut y avoir rééquilibrage des forces ».

Quelque 34 % des organismes n’ont pas reçu d’augmentation. En théâtre, l’Espace Go et le Nouveau Théâtre Expérimental sont de ceux dont les sous stagnent. Isabelle Gingras, directrice administrative de ce dernier, ne se l’explique pas. « On est extrêmement déçu. On revendique la création, la recherche, et ça veut dire parfois que les résultats ne sont pas artistiquement parfaits. Peut-être. Mais vraiment, je ne sais pas pourquoi on n’est pas augmenté. »

À l’inverse, le Théâtre de Quat’Sous voit sa subvention de base augmenter de plus de 100 000 $ par an. « Il y avait dans les critères le souci de représenter davantage la mosaïque culturelle de notre société », note Olivier Kemeid, directeur artistique, parlant de l’inclusion de la diversité. « Dans notre cas, ça n’a pas demandé d’effort particulier, c’est au coeur de notre démarche. Comme rayonner dans la cité, prendre des risques. Alors, on est choyé d’avoir un montant semblable pour les trois prochaines années. »

Au Regroupement québécois de la danse, on demandait plus de temps d’analyse avant de commenter. Les premiers calculs effectués laissent entendre, pour la danse, une augmentation en 2017-2018 de 22 % du financement et de 18 % du nombre d’organismes admis, a avancé Virginie Desloges, responsable des finances.

Alors que Québec attend la version définitive de sa nouvelle politique culturelle, son plan d’action et l’argent qui devrait permettre d’en appliquer les mesures, certains s’inquiètent que la province ne s’appuie trop sur l’investissement supplémentaire du fédéral en arts. « Si le Québec sait si bien tirer son épingle du jeu, c’est aussi parce que c’est la province qui investit le plus en arts, répond M. Brault. Quand je parle avec les ministres de la Culture, je rappelle que si le Québec fléchit dans son investissement, il n’ira pas ensuite chercher la même part au CAC, plus haute que la proportion de sa population. J’espère l’effet contraire : que nos investissements incitent le Québec à maintenir ses choix, et à continuer à investir dans les arts, au lieu de se retirer pour un même montant. »

via Le Conseil des arts du Canada partage plus d’argent, selon des critères d’inclusion | Le Devoir

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Extremists use schools to pervert education, says Ofsted head Amanda Spielman | The Times

2018/02/02 Leave a comment

Increasing muscular language by Ofsted. It would be helpful if she could cite some examples of other religions rather just highlighting legitimate concerns with some Muslim schools:

Religious extremists are “perverting” education by using schools to narrow children’s horizons and cut them off from wider society, the head of Ofsted is warning.

Parents and community leaders see schools as vehicles to “indoctrinate impressionable minds with extremist ideology” in the worst cases, Amanda Spielman says. In a speech today, she will call on head teachers to “tackle those who actively undermine fundamental British values”, facing them down using “muscular liberalism” rather than being afraid of causing offence.

Ms Spielman will also throw her weight behind Neena Lall, the head of St Stephen’s primary school in east London, who has tried to stop girls under eight from wearing the hijab in class and to prevent younger pupils taking part in Ramadan fasting during school hours.

Ms Lall was compared to Adolf Hitler in a video circulated by a group of parents and community leaders. Councillors also protested, accusing the head teacher of undermining the freedom to practise faith and insisting that it was up to parents to decide how to dress and bring up their children. The school, a secular state primary in a largely Pakistani and Bangladeshi community, was forced to reverse the decision.

In an unusual move, Ofsted inspectors arrived at the school yesterday to check on the welfare of staff and pupils and to show solidarity with the head. In a speech to be made today at a Church of England schools conference, Ms Spielman attacks those who opposed the stance taken by St Stephen’s, saying it is a matter of “deep regret” that the school, considered one of the best in the country, has been subjected to “a campaign of abuse by some elements within the community”.

Head teachers must have the right to set uniform policies as they see fit to promote cohesion, Ms Spielman says. “Rather than adopting a passive liberalism, that says ‘anything goes’ for fear of causing offence, school leaders should be promoting a muscular liberalism,” she says. “It means not assuming that the most conservative voices in a particular faith speak for everyone — imagine if people thought the Christian Institute were the sole voice of Anglicanism. And it means schools must not be afraid to call out practices, whatever their justification, that limit young people’s experiences and learning.”

Since starting the job as Ofsted’s chief inspector a year ago, Ms Spielman, 56, has made tackling religious extremism one of her main goals. Her speech is her most outspoken attack yet on religious communities who seek to limit the education and opportunities of youngsters in the name of faith.

“Ofsted inspectors are increasingly brought into contact with those who want to actively pervert the purpose of education. Under the pretext of religious belief, they use education institutions, legal and illegal, to narrow young people’s horizons, to isolate and segregate, and in the worst cases to indoctrinate impressionable minds with extremist ideology. Freedom of belief in the private sphere is paramount, but in our schools it is our responsibility to tackle those who actively undermine fundamental British values or equalities law.”

Ms Spielman has confronted unregistered faith schools when she believes they are not serving communities well. She also took legal action against Al-Hijrah, a state-funded faith school in Birmingham, to stop it segregating girls and boys on religious grounds. Another 25 mixed-faith schools will have to follow suit as a result of the ruling by judges in the Court of Appeal.

The Ofsted chief has challenged primaries that allow girls to wear a hijab or similar headscarf, saying that it could be seen as sexualising those as young as five or six. The practice of head covering is usually associated with modesty only after the onset of puberty. She said that inspectors would question girls seen wearing headscarves in primary schools to establish why they did so. As a result of her stance, she and other inspectors have received threats. Last year she told The Times that security measures had been put in place for herself and some Ofsted staff.

Ofsted says that zealous parents and community leaders dictating school policies is not widespread but happens “enough to be a cause of concern”. Its inspectors have identified at least 170 unregistered faith schools, attended by up to 3,000 children.

via Extremists use schools to pervert education, says Ofsted head Amanda Spielman | News | The Times & The Sunday Times

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Senate proposal would force companies to set diversity targets for board of directors

2018/02/01 Leave a comment

Clear from current data that a nudge needed, with annual reporting to provide accountability:

In an effort to bolster the number of women, Indigenous people and racial minorities sitting on corporate boards, a group of senators is poised to amend government legislation that would force companies to set internal diversity targets.

Independent Ontario Sen. Ratna Omidvar, one of six members of the Red Chamber backing the amendment, said the Liberal government’s current approach in Bill C-25, which would simply encourage companies to boost gender diversity without applying any sort of target, is too timid.

The amendment would compel all publicly traded Canadian companies — roughly 600 on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) — to set targets for increasing underrepresented groups, but would leave it up to each company to decide on what the target should be.

“The bill, as it currently stands, is just a tap on the shoulder, whereas our amendment turns the tap into more of an intentional nudge in the right direction,” Omidvar, an expert in diversity, said in an interview with CBC News. The amendment is expected to be introduced by Independent Sen. Paul Massicotte on Thursday, some 18 months after the bill was first tabled in the House of Commons.

Voluntary approach not good enough: senator

Under the government’s bill, a diversity policy is not mandatory. If a company does not develop one, they would simply have to tell their shareholders why, the so-called “comply or explain” approach adopted by other regulators in Canada.

“For us, that’s too soft a nudge,” Omidvar said. “What we may well get, as a result of this bill, is corporations developing diversity policies and putting them on the shelf and no action.”

Omidvar points to research from the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), an umbrella group of provincial securities regulators, which suggests a voluntary approach to diversity has led to little improvement.

Only 14 per cent of board seats are occupied by women, a three-percentage-point progress from 11 per cent in 2015. Forty-five per cent of all publicly listed companies do not have a single woman sitting on their board of directors. As for senior management, only 15 per cent of positions are filled by women, a proportion that has not progressed at all since 2015.

The research found that 1.1 per cent of board members are Indigenous, 3.2 per cent are persons with a disability and 4.3 per cent are members of a visible minority.

CSA also found that only 9 per cent of companies have internal targets for women on their boards, with a mere 2 per cent having targets for women in executive positions.

Omidvar said targets are not “quotas” per se as each company would be able to decide how many diverse candidates should be added to a board, but, at the very at least, they will have to commit to doing more.

Those targets, and a company’s success in meeting them, would then have to be reported to the federal government on an annual basis.

In turn, the minister responsible, the innovation minister, would prepare a public report documenting how well companies in Canada, writ large, have done in adding women and minorities to the seats of power at these companies. The company would also have to disclose progress to shareholders at their annual meetings.

Importantly, the amendment would actually define what exactly “diversity” is as the government’s bill, as currently written, is vague on that question.

If passed, the amended bill would compel companies to replicate definitions used by the federal government, namely that “diverse” candidates would include women, visible minorities, Indigenous people and those with disabilities. Notably, LGBTQ people would be excluded under such a definition.

Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains is unconvinced amendments are necessary and will not support this move to alter his bill.

“The minister has been clear that the act and the forthcoming regulations are an appropriate and balanced approach that will facilitate a conversation on diversity between shareholders and the management and boards,” a spokesperson said in a statement to CBC News.

The spokesperson pointed to the success of the “comply or explain” model in the United Kingdom and Australia, where the number of women on boards stands at more than 20 per cent in both jurisdictions.

“Given this, we believe Bill C-25 is a good bill for corporations, stakeholders, shareholders, and all Canadians, and hope for its quick passage through the Senate,” he said.

Opposition to quotas

There is a reluctance from some in the business community to set hard quotas — as has been done in Norway, for example, where 40 per cent of all seats must be occupied by a woman.

Paul Schneider, a senior executive at the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, one of the largest institutional investors in the country, told the Senate committee studying Bill C-25 last month that he’d like to see a culture shift rather than the imposition of quotas.

“To be truly impactful, boards must take ownership of diversity. With a quota, they can abdicate ownership to the government,” he said.

“In the short run, quotas can indeed lead to greater diversity, but we fear that while establishing a quota incents boards to hit a specific number, it may hinder any progress over and above that target … Diversity should be achieved because it is good, sound business, not because it is a rule,” he said.

Omidvar said many companies are naturally sceptical of more regulation. “Generally, this is not particular to this bill, business leaders feel the less encumbered they are, the more capacity they will have to succeed in their business goals … but, as I’ve pointed out, [the amendment] just takes the bill from a tap to a nudge.”

And yet the proposed reporting regulations have the potential to be onerous as the more than 600 companies would have to take stock of how each of their board members (some have more than 20) identify, and then report that information to the government where the data would then be analyzed and catalogued, taking up time, money, and other resources.

Others, including Conservative Sen. Betty Unger, have said appointments should simply be based on who is best for the business.

“People invest in corporations to get a return on their investment, and this is best accomplished by appointing merit-based people to boards … As a woman — and, as you can see, I am not young — I could never feel good about myself if I knew that I got a position simply because I am a woman,” she said at a Nov. 30 committee meeting on the bill.

via Senate proposal would force companies to set diversity targets for board of directors – Politics – CBC News

 

Filed under gender, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

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