ICYMI: Critics say TDSB rushed vote to suspend program that puts police in high schools | Toronto Star

2017/09/14 Leave a comment

Getting the process right, including gathering evidence, is as important as the substance. The Board failed in this regard (see Christie Blatchford: School policing program latest casualty of the tyranny of a minority):

The Toronto District School Board’s decision to suspend a controversial program that places armed police officers in high schools has come under criticism from officials who say the move was made in haste. But advocacy group Black Lives Matter said the decision marked a step forward.

TDSB trustees voted Wednesday night to discontinue the Student Resource Officer initiative, pending a review of the practice, due in November.

“It was felt that the presence of (officers) during the review when we were asking people to talk about them might be intimidating and create a potential bias,” TDSB Chair Robin Pilkey told the Star.

About 16 votes were cast in favour of suspension and six votes were cast against, said Pilkey, who voted to suspend.

The Student Resource Officer program, in place since 2008, has garnered a mix of praise and criticism since its inception. Some students, parents and school staff have said the presence of armed, uniformed police improves safety, and gives teens a chance to get to know local officers.

Others have expressed concern that the program leads to criminalization of relatively minor schoolyard problems and alienates marginalized students who may not feel comfortable around police.

In June, the TDSB ordered a review of the program to take place this fall.

A report on the planning for the TDSB review of the program was scheduled for Wednesday night’s board meeting, prompting Trustee Marit Stiles to draft a motion for the program suspension.

“Earlier in the day, I circulated to all trustees a motion I intended to introduce related to the report (on the review),” Stiles told the Star. “It was introduced during the meeting as business arising from the (review) report.”

The trustees debated the suspension issue for at least an hour, Stiles added.

The decision to suspend the program was “unfortunate,” Mayor John Tory told reporters on Thursday.

The Toronto Police Services Board, of which Tory is a member, has commissioned its own review of the SRO program, to be completed in Spring 2018.

“The school board decided they would take a different approach, and, before that review is done, cancel the program,” Tory said.

“I wasn’t prepared to rush to judgment to say the program was perfect or imperfect,” he added.

At least one trustee has said board officials should have been given time to consult their communities before the vote.

Trustees would normally have a week or two to discuss a motion like this, “but we had no chance to do any of that,” Trustee Pamela Gough, who voted against the suspension, said.

“My decision last night not to support it was basically a status quo until we hear the evidence and we hear the voices of the people actually in the schools,” she added.

“Evidence-based decision making is better than taking a stab in the dark on a topic, especially when the motion, came with such short notice.”

Stiles acknowledged that not all the trustees were comfortable with suspending the SRO program, but added that officials have had ample time to consider the public’s feelings about the practice.

“We’ve been talking about the future of the SRO program for quite some time,” Stiles said.

“I think if enough trustees were concerned about that we would have seen a vote against the motion,” Stiles added.

The controversy over the Student Resource Officer program erupted in May after a review of the nearly decade-old program was one of the items on the agenda of the Toronto police board meeting. A group of teachers and school workers presented a detailed report about the negative impact the program in schools. A motion to suspend the program was deferred to June.

Things became more heated at the June board meeting, where 74 people spoke against uniformed police officers in school. Protestors from Black Lives Matter and other groups filled the auditorium at police headquarters. The meeting was disrupted a couple of times as tensions rose and board members were heckled. At the end of a long night, the board decided to postpone the decision over the motion until the end of the year.

It was no different during the board’s August meeting where Toronto police chief Mark Saunders presented a plan to have Ryerson University perform a review of the contested program. Activists attended the meeting calling for board members to resign. They also carried signs saying “We’re here for Dafonte,” in reference to Black teen Dafonte Miller who was allegedly beaten by an off-duty Toronto police officer and his brother.

Responding to the decision of the TDSB to suspend the program, Black Lives Matter put out a statement: “Last night, Toronto District School Board Trustees voted to temporarily suspend the School Resource Officer (SRO) program for the start of the school year. The program will be suspended to allow for the TDSB to conduct a review of the program, its effectiveness, and hear from students from marginalized communities about their experiences with cops in schools.

“While this is not a full victory, this is an important step forward. After years of activism from groups like Education Not Incarceration (ENI), and the Latinx, Afro-Latin-America, Abya Yala Education Network (LAEN), the TDSB has undertaken a thorough review of the program to happen throughout the fall.

“Toronto Police Services Board are also conducting their own (questionable) review of the program. This review will be overseen by a committee comprised of TPS board chair, the Chief of Police, amongst others. We remain skeptical of any instance in which cops are reviewing other cops.

“It’s time to hear from students themselves about their experiences with police surveillance, criminalization, profiling, and their experiences with armed police officers in their classrooms. The work has only begun.”

Forty-six of the TDSB’s 113 high schools had student resources officers in 2016-2017, though one has since closed and three others suspended the program due to “schedule issues.”

Five schools have an officer assigned solely to them last year. The rest shared one or two officers with other TDSB and Toronto Catholic District School board institutions.

The SRO program has been in place since 2008, instituted in large part as a response to the murder of 15-year-old Jordan Manners, in the halls of C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute in North York.

As part of the TDSB’s review of the SRO program, the board’s research department will conduct a written survey of staff and students at participating schools.

Source: Critics say TDSB rushed vote to suspend program that puts police in high schools | Toronto Star

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Canada is a leader in public sector gender equality, says new report

2017/09/13 Leave a comment

Stay tuned for my upcoming analysis of current and historical EX diversity (women, visible minorities and Indigenous peoples):

Canada is a global leader when it comes to gender equality in the public sector’s senior levels, according to a recent report by Global Government Forum, a research group focused on issues facing civil servants.

At 46.4 per cent, Canada has the highest proportion of female senior civil servants of any G20 country, according to the report. Australia and South Africa trail close behind at 43.3 and 41.1 per cent, respectively.

“This kind of progress produces big rewards in terms of better decision-making, bigger talent pools and, ultimately, stronger public service delivery for the public,” Kevin Sorkin, Global Government Forum’s managing director said in a written statement.

“But there is more work to do: we hope that publishing this data will help senior officials both to make the case for change, and to identify the best ways to make progress.”

The index records the proportion of women employed in the top five grades of the senior civil service in each of the G20 countries. This group comprises of roughly the top one per cent of public officials, defined as non-elected senior executives across federal or national governments, or the executive ranks of the core civil service in central government.

In the report, Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick describes Canada as an early adopter of equal rights and anti-discrimination policies, arguing that the country is now experiencing a third wave of gender equality.

“First there were the real pioneers – the first women in jobs or at various tables – then the second wave was probably in the ‘90s, when you saw more and more women in positions of responsibility and the numbers started to move up quite a bit.

“So now we’re in the third wave, which is more about workplace culture: how meetings are conducted; avoiding ‘mansplaining’ and ‘manterruption’; tackling unconscious bias – that more subtle and nuanced stuff.”

Alongside the data on senior civil servants, the report includes figures about the proportion of women among the G20 member nations’ cabinet ministers, national parliamentarians, and directors on the boards of publicly-quoted private companies. A separate section tracks the proportion of women among the most senior civil service leaders of EU countries.

The research was supported by international business services firm EY, formerly known as Ernst & Young.

The top five G20 countries in the 2016-17 Index are:

  • Canada (46.4 per cent)
  • Australia (43.3 per cent)
  • South Africa (41.1 per cent)
  • U.K. (40.1 per cent)
  • Brazil (37.8 per cent)

Wernick said in a statement to the Citizen that “there has been some real leadership on increasing representation of women in positions across the full spectrum of public service jobs, starting with getting more women to the table and then into positions of responsibility.

“We are now tackling some tough issues with respect to inclusive workplaces, and the dialogue has shifted beyond representation and binary definitions of gender, to diversity as an asset that helps us better serve Canadians and creating a workplace where all employees feel engaged and respected,” Wernick said.

Source: Canada is a leader in public sector gender equality, says new report | Ottawa Citizen

Report link: Canada tops gender equality ranking – but Australia gaining fast. More…

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Québec condamne la milice d’extrême droite III%

2017/09/13 Leave a comment

Small numbers but worrisome tendency:

Le gouvernement du Québec condamne vigoureusement l’apparition de la milice armée d’extrême droite III%. «C’est vraiment une image du Québec qui ne reflète pas le Québec», croit Kathleen Weil, ministre de l’Immigration, de la diversité et de l’inclusion.

La ministre Weil s’est inquiétée lundi de la création de cette milice, dont l’existence a été révélée par Radio-Canada. «C’est très préoccupant, vraiment très préoccupant. On dirait que tous les jours on entend la création d’un autre organisme», a soutenu la ministre en marge d’une annonce à Québec sur le traitement accéléré des dossiers des travailleurs étrangers.

Sur Facebook, le groupe III% Québec se définit comme un rassemblement de «patriotes», mais se dit toutefois «non-violent».

Selon Radio-Canada, le premier groupe III% a été créé aux États-Unis il y a une dizaine d’années. Des chapitres québécois de ce groupe anti-immigration auraient commencé à apparaître il y a environ un an. Depuis peu, les membres en règle du Québec doivent détenir un permis d’armes à feu. Sur Facebook, ces membres publient des photos de leurs armes ou de leur entraînement de style militaire en forêt.

«On condamne vigoureusement la création de ces organismes et surtout le discours. On ne peut même pas parler de vision, il n’y a pas de vision-là» a commenté Mme Weil. La ministre assure que la Sûreté du Québec est au courant de l’existence du groupe et «fait un suivi» afin d’éviter «les risques».

Mme Weil déplore la prolifération des différents groupes qui rejettent l’immigration au Québec. «Il y a toujours des éléments un peu différents, mais le message commun, c’est un message d’exclusion et non d’inclusion.»

«Les sociétés gagnantes, c’est des sociétés qui cherchent justement ces talents venus d’ailleurs, parce qu’on pourra pas tout seuls combler nos besoins du marché du travail sans cette diversité. Donc, c’est un contre-message, c’est un message antiéconomique, antisocial, anti-Québec à quelque part, parce que ça vient freiner la croissance du Québec», déplore-t-elle.

À ses côtés lors de l’annonce, le ministre fédéral Jean-Yves Duclos n’a pas commenté directement l’apparition de ce groupe. «On doit être lucides, ouverts aux choses qu’on entend (…) Il y a des signes de haine et d’hostilité qui ont été manifestés au cours des dernières semaines», constate-t-il.

Par contre, M. Duclos demeure persuadé que ces groupes sont loin de refléter la population de la grande région de Québec. «J’ai beaucoup d’espoir qu’on va continuer à faire encore mieux que ce qu’on fait déjà très bien. C’est une région qui accueille, qui intègre qui valorise la diversité et l’inclusion.»

Source: Québec condamne la milice d’extrême droite III% | Patricia Cloutier | Politique

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ICYMI: Ontario to begin collecting data on students’ race, ethnicity, hoping to boost achievement

2017/09/13 Leave a comment

The Toronto District School Board has been doing this for some time – expanding this across the province makes sense given its overall high diversity:

The provincial government will begin collecting and analyzing data on the ethnicity of students in an attempt to improve school achievement, CBC News has learned.

The move will be announced today by Education Minister Mitzie Hunter as just one part of the province’s new equity action plan, according to a government source.

The decision to gather demographic data such as race and ethnicity and to analyze its relation to school achievement will help the government make better education policies, said the source.

Word of the decision comes just as students across the province return to the classroom — and after complaints of discrimination and racism made headlines during the past school year.

In April, Hunter issued a sweeping list of directives to the York Region District School Board after two high-profile incidents of racism and Islamophobia within the YRDSB: one in which a school trustee used a racial slur when referring to a black parent, and another in which a principal posted offensive material on Islam and refugees to her Facebook page.

Those two incidents were set against a backdrop of mounting complaints of systemic racism in the board.

That was followed by the YRDSB thanking the ministry for the report, albeit pointing out it contained “significant errors of fact,” and making assurances it would take action immediately.

Also in April, news emerged that almost half of Toronto District School Board students expelled over the last five years are black. That finding was one that TDSB executive superintendent Jim Spyropoulos said left him “alarmed.”

A report out of York University found that a similar phenomenon reverberated across the Greater Toronto Area, with black students routinely being streamed into applied programs rather than academic ones, and suspended at much higher rates than their counterparts.

Led by professor Carl James, the study made several recommendations which the TDSB said it would review.

And in June, an investigation into allegations that a high school teacher in Whitby, Ont., referred to a group of black students with a derogatory term using the N-word with no punishment for the teacher, according to a parent who attended a meeting with the Durham District School Board.

Source: Ontario to begin collecting data on students’ race, ethnicity, hoping to boost achievement – Toronto – CBC News

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Get real. Jagmeet Singh has been dealing with racist hecklers for months. Andray Domise and John Ivison takes

2017/09/12 Leave a comment

Good article by Domise on how Singh has been dealing with these issues over the year. I don’t have the same assessment of the political chatter as Domise – agree with Ivison below:

Yet taken as a whole, the response to his campaign from the political class seems to be that Singh should hang back in Brampton until the rest of the country—a country which prides itself on not being as despicably racist as America—has evolved enough to accept him. At a time when white nationalists have crawled out of the dirt to murder people in the streets, shoot up and firebomb mosques, and taint the office of the U.S. president, this is not a good look. Regardless of the NDP convention outcome, Jagmeet Singh has, so far, made his candidacy look like light work. But the way he handled Jennifer Bush wasn’t the true demonstration of his class and grace. It’s the way he’s handled Canada’s serious thinkers, who can’t help but find polite ways to explain why he doesn’t belong.

Source: Get real. Jagmeet Singh has been dealing with racist hecklers for months. – Macleans.ca

A ridiculous article in Macleans suggested the “political class” has been operating from a “racialized” script that urges Singh to return in ignominy to his native Brampton and wait until the country has evolved enough to accept his candidacy.

But no one is saying this. Even in pro-secular Quebec, the informed commentary has pointed out that Singh won’t automatically lose on religious grounds.

This country still has work to do integrating its most recent immigrants, and its original inhabitants, into the tossed salad that is Canada.

Singh said as much recently when he pointed out that, while Canada is known for celebrating multiculturalism, “as a kid growing up, it didn’t always feel that way … my turban and beard evoked a reaction in every room I walked into.”

He said fashion became his “social armour … insulating me from the negativity I faced.”

Yet, here he is — the front-runner to lead one of Canada’s national parties.

He has embraced his Sikh identity and had some fun with it in an attempt to make it cool — who else could get away with a pink turban?

He understands, as did Barack Obama, that race is more a social construct that a biological reality — and that he can shift the culture.

His ethnic background has proven to be a power base from which to launch those ambitions.

I first met Singh in his Brampton riding during the 2015 election, when he helped his friend Harbaljit Singh Kahlon campaign for the federal seat he holds provincially.

He pulled up in a convertible sports car, in matching turban, tie, socks, and proceeded to charm the voters of Brampton East on their doorsteps.

Against the background of a lacklustre national NDP campaign, Kahlon lost, but it was clear: a) that Singh is a charismatic campaigner; b) that he has built a powerful political machine in the very young, very brown suburbs of Canada’s biggest city.

The Liberals will be disquieted by a capacity to generate publicity that might rival the prime minister.

New Democrats will just be delighted that someone, anyone is paying them a little attention. The net effect of the heckler video is that it may convince enough of them that Singh has been transformed from “precariously electable” to “sufficiently electable.”

Source: John Ivison: Jagmeet Singh heckler video may be his Trudeau boxing match moment

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TIFF 2017: At film festival, the truth is out there – if you know where to look – The Globe and Mail

2017/09/12 Leave a comment

Interesting:

This year’s Toronto International Film Festival is filthy with films boasting socially progressive bona fides. Battle of the Sexes, starring Emma Stone and Steve Carell, tackles chauvinism in the sports arena. Kings, with Halle Berry and Daniel Craig, looks at racism through the prism of the Rodney King riots. The same-sex romance Call Me by Your Name aims to be this year’s Brokeback Mountain. Hollywood, don’t you know, is all about speaking truth to power.

TIFF itself is even positioning itself as more socially “woke” than usual, with its Share Her Journey campaign aimed at remedying the unbelievable gender imbalance in the industry (last year, only 7 per cent of the top 250 films were directed by women).

Yet year after year, it’s the less-glitzy documentary program that exhibits true social awareness. It makes sense; with smaller budgets, lowered aesthetic expectations, and a cinematic form built on real-time urgency, documentaries are better positioned to act as a mirror to the current culture.

It was a notion I kept returning to this past weekend, as TIFF lurched from one glitzy, questionable star vehicle to the next – where were the incendiary films that could unite audiences to stand up and cheer? Where were the movies that might actually make a difference in this heightened political climate? As ever, the doc lineup provided the answer, with one of the most culturally conscious selection of films in recent TIFF memory.

Even putting aside its achievement in near-gender parity – 41 per cent of 2017’s doc programming is directed by women, versus the festival’s total programming of 33 per cent – this year’s offerings are impressive, even intimidating, in their progressiveness.

There are films on iconic figures in the black community (Boom for Real, about Jean-Michel Basquiat; Grace Jones: Bloodlight & Bami; The Gospel According to Andre, focusing on fashion icon Andre Leon Talley; Sammy Davis Jr.: I Gotta Be Me; and Sighted Eyes / Feeling Heart, which chronicles the life of playwright Lorraine Hansberry); movies examining LGBT issues (Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood); and the expected, though no less appreciated, docs pivoting on here-and-now politics, including The China Hustle, Cocaine Prison, Silas and The Final Year.

On paper, that list might read like a compacted semester on the most liberal campus imaginable. Yet the films are more dynamic than didactic. It is a testament to the programming prowess of TIFF’s longtime documentary expert, Thom Powers – especially when the rest of the festival is crowded with temptations of glossier, more escapist fare.

“Sometimes these things come together as a coincidence,” says Powers, who has been programming docs for TIFF for the past twelve years, and has also worked with the IFC Center in New York, the DOC NYC festival and the Miami International Film Festival. “The Grace Jones film, I’ve been following that for ten years. And then there happened to be a cluster of films, like the Jean-Michel film and the Andre film.”

Although he prefers not to trumpet certain connective themes in his doc selection, Powers admits that this year offers a notable cluster of films that cannot escape the current political climate. “The films come in waves, and outsiders may not see the connections like I do, but there is a notable cluster of films in the program about figures of resistance,” he says. “They come from very different countries and very different filmmakers, but each of the central characters in something like Silas, they impressed me for their courage and eloquence in standing up to larger forces.”

“Right now, in North America, we see people hold up signs of ‘resist’ and rally around this idea of resistance,” he continues. “I think these figures, and these films, have a lot to teach us.”

On the issue of gender parity, Powers admits the doc medium simply makes it easier for female filmmakers to make headway in a notoriously hostile and sexist industry.

“There’s no question there, with budget being a very big factor,” he says. “It takes a lot less money and fewer gatekeepers for women to get started on a documentary project. Or any director, because you don’t have to wait for someone to give yourself permission. You can just get it going with less resources to begin with.”

Source: TIFF 2017: At film festival, the truth is out there – if you know where to look – The Globe and Mail

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Ontario school board promotes literature diversity to reflect student body

2017/09/12 Leave a comment

Makes sense and does not appear to being implemented in an either/or manner.

However, while the motivation is with respect to those from diverse backgrounds, the benefits will be the exposure of different voices for all students:

Students at a high school in Brampton, Ont., will not be reading about star-crossed lovers in Verona this year, or a feisty six-year-old girl in Maycomb, Ala., or a group of young boys marooned on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean.

Instead, they will read about protagonists who look more like them.

The move at Jean Augustine Secondary School, north of Toronto, comes as their district, the Peel District School Board, recently sent a memo to high-school principals, vice-principals and English departments, encouraging them to reconsider the novels being read in class so that the literature is more reflective of a culturally diverse student population.

It’s a bold step, educators say, especially for those who believe in the educational value of mainstays, such as Romeo and Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies.

But an increasing number of school officials both in Peel and in other districts are pushing hard to introduce new voices in literature, in addition to the old ones, to reflect a changing student body.

“There’s probably a small minority who still believe that there is a literary canon that we need to hold onto. I think it’s because it is the way we’ve always been taught,” said Poleen Grewal, associate director of instructional and equity support services at the Peel board. “[But] if we are focusing on equity and inclusion as a school board, the work around inclusion must be visible at the student desk.”

Ms. Grewal sent a memo to English department heads in June, asking them to explore culturally relevant texts after the school board heard from its students that their experiences were not being reflected in classroom literature. She attached a list of books, which includes A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry and Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse. Students in Ontario are required to take an English course every year of high school.

She acknowledged that books are costly, but Ms. Grewal said that funds are set aside every year for new purchases.

“We do not expect a clean sweep of texts in every school; however, we would like to see movement towards more culturally responsive texts that connect to the lived experiences and narratives of the students and communities we serve,” Ms. Grewal said.

In the Peel region, minorities have reached a critical mass and now make up 57 per cent of the total population. Close to half of Peel’s residents are South Asians.

Increasingly, school districts are looking at their curriculum to see if it reflects their culturally diverse student population – a shift that is becoming more pronounced by news events beyond the classroom walls.

A spokesman for the Halifax Regional School Board said teachers are looking to develop culturally relevant lesson plans.

Marilyn Manning, acting supervisor for curriculum and resource support at Edmonton Public Schools, said part of a project this summer involved developing guidelines for educators to consider when making book selections. “We’re not about banning books or telling teachers they can’t use these things. It’s really about broadening perspectives and developing the sensitivity to the social considerations,” Ms. Manning said.

This has also become a topic of discussion around North America and there’s sometimes backlash.

In 2015, The Washington Post detailed how a teacher in an inner-city school in Sacramento, Calif., no longer wanted to teach Shakespeare because she felt other works of literature better spoke to her ethnically diverse students. Many reacted negatively, with one teacher responding by saying that shared skin colour doesn’t equal shared experiences, and that Shakespeare still speaks to the human condition.

Closer to home, the Durham District School Board, east of Toronto, recently said that its students don’t necessarily have to read To Kill a Mockingbirdbecause a school official reportedly said it may make some uncomfortable.

At Jean Augustine, which opened its doors last fall and is named after a Canadian social-justice advocate, students in each grade are given a choice of books, ensuring that they answer an essential question around service, leadership, advocacy and innovation. (It is common in English courses for books to have an essential question.) Teachers at the school also decided to offer novels that are written by diverse authors and have characters more reflective of the students. This year, they are reading Indian Horse, Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman and How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon, among others.

Lynn Filliter, head of the school’s English department, said there is still a place for Shakespeare and other traditional novels in the classroom. But by adding new voices, she has found that even the most reluctant readers are engaged in learning.

“I think that it validates their own experiences and it empowers them to understand that their voice and their perspective is valued,” Ms. Filliter said. “We try to be thoughtful about having the characters in the novels be reflective of students in our classrooms. We’re a very diverse board. So our books should also be very diverse.”

Ann Lopez, an associate professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, has found in her research on culturally responsive pedagogy that students are more engaged when reading stories that reflect their communities. She said that literary canons are valuable, but she has seen schools make efforts to put other pieces of literature front and centre.

“It’s really about disrupting this idea that knowledge comes from a single space,” Prof. Lopez said. “Of course you must read Shakespeare. But you must read Shakespeare and Shabanu, Daughter of the Wind.”

Source: Ontario school board promotes literature diversity to reflect student body – The Globe and Mail

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Travelling. Blog restarts Tuesday 

2017/09/08 Leave a comment

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ICYMI – Attitudes to Islam in Europe are hardening: The Economist

2017/09/07 Leave a comment

Good summary of recent European polling and worrisome (and correct) fear of further polarization:

IF integration means doing a bit better in education and the job market, then there are grounds to be optimistic about the status of Muslim communities across western Europe. But when you ask Europeans how they feel about Islam and its adherents, then the picture is much harsher and in some ways getting worse.

Those are the broad impressions left by a raft of recently published surveys on the subject. The authors of a study by Germany’s Bertelsmann Foundation, focusing mainly on Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria, found some encouraging indicators on schooling and employment but still reported a big income disparity between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Professional progress was “not accompanied by an equal level of…social acceptance,” noted the report, which looked not at refugees but longer-standing Muslim residents. The authors were troubled by the finding that 20% of respondents did not want Muslim neighbours. That number would almost certainly have been higher if the study had looked at countries further south and east. A poll by Pew Research, an American think-tank, found that a majority of people in Hungary, Italy, Poland, Greece and Spain harboured hostile attitudes to Islam while only a minority of northwestern Europeans held similar views.

The Bertelsmann report welcomed the fact that in France, only one in ten Muslims leaves school before turning 17, compared with about a third of Muslim youngsters in Germany. But learning doesn’t seem to guarantee earning. In neither Germany nor Switzerland was there much difference between the employment rate of Muslims and non-Muslims. In France, by contrast, the jobless rate was 14% for Muslims compared with 8% for non-Muslims.

Moreover, there are some clear signs of hardening attitudes. In England, around four people in ten acknowledged that they have become more suspicious of Muslims following terrorist attacks in London and Manchester. That was one of the findings of the latest study published by Hope Not Hate, an anti-extremism lobby group.

Looking at a series of recent data, it concluded that in many ways sentiment in England was gradually becoming more liberal and tolerant of diversity, but Islam and the reactions it inspired were a clear exception. About half the population apparently thought Islam posed a “threat to Western civilisation” while a quarter regarded it as a “dangerous” religion because of its perceived capacity to incite violence. The picture changes depending on how the question is framed. The pool of respondents who opined (50% versus 22%) that the Muslim faith was a civilisational threat also agreed by a clear majority that it was wrong to blame an entire religion for a few extremists.

In Germany, a widely-quoted poll last year found that more than half the population believed that Islam did not belong in their country. But attitudes to Muslim people, as opposed to their religion, can sometimes be much more emollient, albeit varying a lot with the respondent’s political ideology.

Pew found that half the Germans who hewed to the political left thought Muslims were making a good effort to adapt to the country’s way of life, compared with one in five of those who leaned rightwards. The numbers for Britons of right and left were almost exactly the same. Given the many different ways in which progress (or regress) can be measured, the state of Islam in Europe may always be a vessel that some see as half-empty and others see as half-full.

What’s worrying is that almost every terrorist movement aims to polarise feelings in a way that drives people into opposing camps. The terrorist who claims to represent a certain community often hopes that the authorities, and perhaps society as whole, will stigmatise that community and provoke in it a defensive mood, so that violence starts to seem like a reasonable option. Historically, such polarising tactics have often worked.

Although things have not yet reached that point, these poll results suggest something sinister: it’s perfectly conceivable that the murderous van-drivers and knife-wielders who claim to speak for Muslims in Europe could enjoy a similar “success” in polarising sentiment across the continent.

Source: Attitudes to Islam in Europe are hardening

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ICYMI – UN calls out Ottawa over lengthy immigration detention stays

2017/09/07 Leave a comment

No major surprises:

A United Nations committee has urged Ottawa to limit the use of immigration detention and drop a bilateral pact that turns asylum-seekers back at the U.S. land border.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination makes the recommendations in its recent review of how Canada’s government policies and programs are affecting minority groups.

“The Committee recommends . . . immigration detention is only undertaken as a last resort after fully considering alternative non-custodial measures. Establish a legal time limit on the detention of migrants,” said the report released in Geneva this week.

Canada should also “rescind or at least suspend the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States of America to ensure that all individuals who attempt to enter the State party through a land border are provided with equal access to asylum proceedings,” the report said.

Ottawa has been under intense criticism for its handling of migrants in detention and the surge of asylum seekers attempting to cross into Canada at unmarked points along the U.S. border.

A Star investigation, Caged by Canada, this year into immigration detention in Canada found a system that indefinitely warehouses non-citizens away from public scrutiny in high-security criminal detention facilities.

Some of the detainees are former permanent residents who were convicted for crimes and await deportation. Others are failed refugees waiting for removal or people deemed inadmissible to Canada, flight risks or dangers to the public. More than 100 of the detainees had spent at least three months in jail, and one-third of them have been held for more than a year.

“We raised the issue of indefinite detention of non-status immigrants and their children, and the committee has listened,” said Shalini Konanur, director of the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario.

The Safe Third Country agreement, introduced in 2004, prevents refugees from making asylum claims in both the U.S. and Canada, which clogs the system. Claimants are barred from entering the other country for asylum unless they belong to one of four exemption groups.

However, the ban does not apply to those who sneak through unmarked points along the border, pushing some asylum-seekers to trek through no man’s land, mostly commonly in Quebec, B.C. and in Manitoba, where hundreds walked in the dead of winter this year, sometimes overnight, to Emerson.

“Given the current xenophobic political climate in the U.S.A., it is no surprise that the committee has called on Canada to rescind or at least temporarily suspend the Safe Third Country Agreement. Canada cannot turn a blind eye to what is happening down south,” said Debbie Douglas of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants.

A Harvard University Law School review in February also warned about the negative effect of President Donald Trump’s administration on refugees and urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to consider pulling out from the bilateral deal.

Hursh Jaswal, a spokesperson for Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen, said Canada has a robust asylum system and the Safe Third Country Agreement is an important tool for the orderly handling of refugee claims on both sides of the border.

“While the executive order affected the U.S. system for resettling refugees from abroad, it did not impact the U.S. system for handling domestic asylum claims,” Jaswal said. “Our government is monitoring the situation closely and will carefully evaluate any new developments for potential changes to the domestic asylum system in the U.S.”

On immigration detention, a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said the government is committed to improving the system.

“We need to minimize the use of provincial jails and try to avoid, as much as humanly possible, the holding of children in detention,” said Scott Bardsley, adding that Ottawa is investing $138 million to expand alternatives to detention, improving detention conditions, providing better mental health services and reducing reliance on provincial jails for immigration holding.

“Under the new government, the number of immigration detentions has decreased, despite an increase in visitors to Canada,” Bardsley said.

The UN committee also raised alarm over the treatment of migrant workers in Canada.

“Although the temporary foreign worker program conducts inspections, temporary migrant workers are reportedly susceptible to exploitation and abuses, and are sometimes denied basic health services, and employment and pension benefits to which they may make contributions,” it warned.

The report called on Ottawa to collect race-based economic and social data to improve monitoring and evaluation of its programs that aim at eliminating racial discrimination and disparities.

On a positive note, the committee praised Ontario for establishing the anti-racism directorate; Quebec, for passing a bill on combating hate speech and incitement to violence; and Ottawa for its condemnation of Islamophobia, as well as progress made in addressing discrimination against Indigenous peoples, resettling 46,000 Syrian refugees and restoring health care funding for refugees.

Source: UN calls out Ottawa over lengthy immigration detention stays | Toronto Star

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