How the word ‘terrorism’ lost its meaning: Neil Macdonald

2017/02/13 Leave a comment

More good commentary from Macdonald:

What appears to have qualified those attacks for inclusion on the Trump list was the fact that the attackers, Martin Couture-Rouleau and Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, had converted from their birth religion to Islam.

Similarly, Trump’s list did not include Dylann Roof, the young white supremacist who, in the summer of 2015, pulled out a gun in a black church in Atlanta and began killing. Roof was a practising Christian, a member of an evangelical Lutheran congregation. Reportedly, he sat and argued about scriptural issues with congregants at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church before murdering nine of them.

Still, like Bissonnette, Roof was not labelled a terrorist by law enforcement authorities, or charged as such. He was certainly not called a “radical Christian terrorist” or “white supremacist terrorist.” Those are phrases the mainstream media rarely find pronounceable.

The FBI even went to far as to say Roof’s killings were “not a political act.”

If that sounds outrageously hypocritical, that’s because it is. (Go ahead and imagine the official reaction had Roof or Bissonnette been Muslims).

Western concept of ‘terrorism’

But it’s perfectly consonant with the Western concept of “terrorism,” which is itself a form of hypocrisy deeply embedded in the American and Canadian psyches.

Terrorism is political invective, nothing more. It’s a great favourite of demagogues, widely accepted by audiences, and is almost always applied exclusively to the other, never to ourselves.

Take the Irish Republican Army. The IRA was an exclusively Roman Catholic organization, and had no problem killing civilians to advance its agenda. The British government characterized the IRA and all its offshoots as terrorists, but did not for decades apply the label to the equally murderous Protestant “loyalist” paramilitaries.

IRA flag Irish Republican Army Gerry Adams

The State Department’s list of designated terrorist groups has never included the IRA. (Paul McErlane/Reuters)

Some Irish Catholics in Canada and the United States, though, tended to regard the IRA’s behaviour as understandable, if not excusable. They preferred not to label it as terrorism, never mind “Christian terrorism,” even though the Troubles were all about a schism in Christianity, something like the violent Sunni/Shia fissure in the Middle East. Almost certainly because of domestic American sentiment, the U.S. State Department’s long list of designated terrorist groups has never named the IRA

Because the terrorist is always the other.

While working for CBC in Israel, I once searched the database of the Jerusalem Post for uses of the word “terror,” “terrorist” and “terrorism.”

There were thousands over the course of several years, all of them relating to Palestinians or other Arabs.

The newspaper had another term for Jewish settlers who targeted and killed Palestinian civilians: “Jewish extremists.”  Most mainstream Israeli journalists have just as hard a time with the phrase “Jewish terrorist” as Western media do with “Christian terrorist.”

Those two words simply seem a contradiction in terms to many Jews, although, to give the Israeli justice system credit for at least some consistency, authorities there have charged Jewish Israelis with terrorism-related offences.

Until the 9/11 attacks, there was at least an attempt in the West to define terrorism: the deliberate targeting of civilians by non-government players to advance a political agenda.

By that definition, of course, Alexandre Bissonnette, if convicted, and Dylann Roof would qualify.

War on Terror

But once America began its “War on Terror,” the word was stretched and adapted to mean anything Washington wanted it to mean, and the U.S. media fell obediently into line.

Any attack on any U.S. soldier anywhere became terror, even attacks by people whose country had been invaded.

Groups such as the Shining Path in Peru, or Kurdish ultranationalist groups, or fringe Irish diehards, or Tamil extremists, are relegated to trivial regional annoyances. The predations of militants or governments America approves of are overlooked or ignored.

Today, the word terrorism is so objectively meaningless that the only sensible definition is: “Violence we disapprove of.”

Source: How the word ‘terrorism’ lost its meaning: Neil Macdonald – CBC News | Opinion

Filed under Radicalization, Security Tagged with ,

Storm of reaction to news Syrian refugee charged with sex assaults

2017/02/13 Leave a comment

Good commentary by David Tait of Carleton University on how the media should and should not report on cases like this:

Reports that a man accused of sexual assaults on six Edmonton teenage girls was a Syrian refugee have ignited a firestorm of reaction, from anti-immigration diatribes to criticism about how the media dealt with the story.

Groups that work with refugees in the city have been inundated with calls and texts over the past 24 hours, some from people calling for an end to the refugee program and others from refugees themselves apologizing on behalf of their community.

Erick Ambtman, executive director of the Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers, said his organization received a message on Twitter from a white supremacist group that included a picture of a Syrian refugee, asking the centre to confirm whether the photo was the same man accused of the crimes.

“It may be just to scare us or to unnerve people,” Ambtman said.

“But around my office that’s what’s happening. People are starting to get really nervous, and the [English] language students are starting to get really nervous.

“And the Syrian students are apologizing for somebody who they don’t even know, because he’s got the same country of origin as they do.

“It’s really spiralling into a really ugly place.”

Soleiman Hajj Soleiman, 39, was arrested Saturday and charged with six counts of sexual assault and six counts of sexual interference after six teenage girls, all younger than 16, told police they were inappropriately touched while swimming at the West Edmonton Mall water park.

…When the media reports stories like this one, decisions about what information is relevant have to be made on a case-by-case basis and sometimes on a day-by-day basis, said David Tait, a professor at Ottawa’s Carleton University who has taught ethics courses at the journalism school.

“Journalists have to sort of go and look at a situation not from the standpoint of, ‘Is there public appetite for this information? Do people want to know it?’ But, ‘Is that detail relevant at this stage to this story?’

“And that’s a very difficult thing to determine as a journalist, because you also have to be careful that you’re not making your judgment for some sort of social engineering purpose.

“To say, ‘Oh I don’t want to make these sorts of people look bad’ or ‘I don’t want to make these sorts of people look good.’ You shouldn’t make your journalistic judgments based on how you want people to think about something, because that’s not the journalistic mission.”

‘Our job is to report what’s going on’

Tait said in this case, while reporting immediately after the arrest was made public, he would have questioned whether details about the accused’s background were relevant.

“My question would be, would we have run additional background details about this person if they were a gay man? A gun owner? If they were Jewish? If they were a fundamentalist Christian? If they were a recent arrival from the United States? If they were any number of other identifiers?”

It’s the responsibility of journalists to try to determine what the public needs to know to understand the story. Once the public has the information, people will make their own choices about what’s relevant to them, he said.

Some will seize on information that confirms their own views about the world and overlook other aspects of the story.

“Our job is to report what’s going on out there in the world,” he said.

The story about the water park allegation, Tait said, “is a classic example of where people these days are rushing to grab details, to use individual facts as weapons instead of looking at those details and saying, ‘How does this fit into my developing understanding of the world?'”

Ambtman said Soleiman came to Canada in January 2016 with his wife and six children, aged one to 13 years. The family was assisted by the Mennonite Centre.

Some commenters are exploiting the fact that a Syrian refugee has been charged with a crime, he said.

“They’re exploiting what’s happened to these girls to say something about immigration, and it’s just a really ugly thing to do. It’s been pretty awful to bear witness to.”

It will be up to the justice system to determine the facts of the case and, if a crime has been committed, punish the person responsible, he said.

“To make this about immigration is just absurd. What has happened is there has been a sexual assault at West Edmonton Mall and six girls are going to be traumatized likely for the rest of their lives because of a crime that somebody perpetrated on them. To me, that’s the concern.

Filed under Multiculturalism, Refugees Tagged with , ,

Michelle Rempel demands more from politics—on both the left and right

2017/02/11 Leave a comment

Impressive and thoughtful speech delivered at a McGill Institute for the Study of Canada event regarding immigration and Canadian exceptionalism:

During the 2015 campaign, I thought all political parties, my party included, acted shamefully on the issue of immigration, because we used the Syrian refugee crisis as a political wedge in a political campaign, and that was wrong. The response to the Syrian refugee crisis became a campaign issue of one-upmanship on numbers, rather than talking about people as human beings. “Who’s going to bring in more?” When the question should have been: “How do we do it in a way that achieves social license in the country in an expeditious way that shows compassion and addresses the situation, and how do we support the integration of people when we come to Canada, such that we build social license for more refugees in the future, and ensure that refugees that come to Canada have a better experience here than where they came from?” That is not a politically sexy conversation, because it’s easier to say, “I’m going to bring in 25,000 and you’re going to bring 15, ergo you’re racist and I’m more awesome.” Not helpful. Also not helpful is to frame the issue of gender isolation in new Canadian women in the term of a tip line.

And what happened out of all that? Where we are today is we had a parliamentary study that looked at the response to the Syrian refugee initiative, and we had Syrian refugees come in front of a parliamentary committee and said: “I’m in a hotel room that’s infected by bed bugs, and my wife can’t go out and learn English because she’s got five kids. How are we going to have any hope to do anything well here?”

It’s not an adequate response to say, “It’s a nation-building project and the provinces are responsible for it,” when I have a school board come to parliamentary committee and say, “We’ve absorbed in our one city the equivalent of a full elementary school of refugees this year, they have needs that we need to address and need to be compassionate to because they’ve been in a war zone for years and their education has been disrupted, and we received no new funding for it. So in a political campaign for any political stripe to say it’s fully costed when there is no plan … not helpful. Not exceptional.

The thought that populist rhetoric can’t happen in Canada is shocking. The reality is that there has been a narrative that has arisen where you have groups of people who feel that their voices aren’t being heard, and it’s easy through 140 characters and short visual soundbites and memes to say it’s someone else’s fault. And in Canada, that’s still here. But the reality is there’s no “them” and “us” anymore. That’s not how the globe operates. We are so interconnected, be it through trade, or simply the reality of understanding our humanity through Twitter, through YouTube. You can see the destruction in Aleppo. To have that narrative be used in political discourse is disgusting and wrong, and oversimplified.

We all have to demand better. Demanding better for someone who’s a centrist like myself has been a very unpopular position. Because it means there’s no real home for me as a politician on some days. But it’s where we all need to be. There’s many other examples of how Canada in public policy has sort of politicized the system—they might not be as firecracker or high-profile as the barbaric cultural practices tip line. It’s things like lifting a visa requirement on a country without a formal review for some unquantified economic benefit. It’s policy around immigration that is politically motivated that is unquantifed and unsubstantiated—and both parties are guilty of this—that diminishes the public confidence that immigration is a good thing, and we are unexceptional in that, especially in Parliament.

Why should we all be listening to these sorts of things with an open mind? It’s because if we don’t do that, I’m really deeply concerned as a legislator about the peace of humanity right now, and that’s not hyperbole. When I see nationalist parties rise and gain seats in European Parliament, we should be very concerned. When I see the level of nationalist rhetoric that is acceptable among people that are pretty educated and smart people, that’s cause for concern. When I see protectionism and the thickening of borders as a populist public policy response in a globalized economy, we should all be concerned.

The way forward is to ensure we have a public policy dialogue that is not alt-right or far-left. It has to be in the middle and we have to focus not on values, but on programming and outcomes that enable what we vision exceptionalism to be. Things like: where is the smart conversation around the burqa? Where’s that safe space? I don’t wear one—women who wear one, where’s their voice on this? And why don’t we talk about the fact there are equally as many other religious groups who use dress as a control for women? So rather than judging them and shaming them, how do we reach out to them, and give them hope? The fact that we can’t even talk about that—I find as a politician, for me as a camera, even saying that is a risk. I’ve done something terribly egregious, by bringing up both sides of that argument. But if we can’t have this argument, how can we ever reduce issues like Islamophobia? The fact that we can’t have a discussion because we’re so polarized is why we need to acknowledge that we’re not exceptional.

You, as the thought leaders on this? It can’t be 140 characters “You’re a racist; you’re a socialist. You’re conservative; you’re Liberal. Your party sucked; your party sucked.” Come on. If we are truly exceptional, we have to show the world we’re better than that. And I’ll be honest with you, after 18 months of banging my head in both my own party and in the House of Commons against the Liberals, you’ve got to help me out too.

Where we are as a country, for us to be having a conference on how exceptional we are and how much better we are than the United States and we’re welcome to refugees is such a disservice to the fact that we’ve got a long way to go.

For all of you, from the bottom of my heart: let’s try to be smarter about this. And let’s demand better from our leaders.

Source: Michelle Rempel demands more from politics—on both the left and right

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with

A week of kindness, then identity politics as usual in Quebec

2017/02/11 Leave a comment

Good piece by Yves Boisvert – how quickly old patterns reassert themselves:

In the aftermath of the Quebec City mosque killings, one would think the political debate around secularism and identity would be kinder and more reasonable. Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard was widely congratulated for his dignified behaviour, his call for unity, and for refusing to point fingers at political opponents or media who irresponsibly played identity politics over the past few years.

Parti Québécois leader Jean-François Lisée appeared with Mr. Couillard and admitted some wrongs. Yes, he went too far last fall when he said a provincial debate was needed on the wearing of burkas in Quebec, suggesting you could hide an assault rifle under clothing of that sort. He already had admitted in the past that the infamous so-called “Quebec Charter of Values” promoted by his government had “poisoned” the debate on secularism in Quebec.

It would, however, take a full-time job to track the fast-evolving thinking of Mr. Lisée on the matter. After losing power, he repudiated the bill banning religious signs for public servants. Just a few months before, as a minister in the PQ government, Mr. Lisée wrote an op-ed in The New York Times pretending Quebec was having a “Jefferson moment,” in its pursuit of secularism.

But politics, like gravity, adheres to inescapable laws. After a week of political kindness and introspection, Mr. Couillard tried to put the other parties on the defensive, by “reaching out” to them for quick approval of Bill 62, “an Act to foster adherence to State religious neutrality.” The small bill, an 18-section piece of legislation, states that members of public bodies have to exercise their functions “with face uncovered.” This would also apply to citizens seeking public services. An accommodation can be made except for identification or security matters.

The bill also offers a vague framework for religious accommodations, be it for employees or school children. It should respect gender equality and other basic principles.

The bill does not go far enough for the main opposition parties, who pretend the legislation should settle once and for all every case of religious accommodation that comes up in the future. The perception that Quebec is under pressure for an incredible number of demands from religious minorities (read: Muslims) is persistent. But, a Commission of inquiry by two prominent intellectuals, Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor, concluded in 2008 that no such crisis exists. But the PQ, since its identity shift, has worked hard to cultivate the myth.

Not as hard, though, as François Legault, the nationalist-but-not-sovereigntist leader of the Coalition Avenir Québec. If we are to believe Mr. Legault, religious compromise risks diluting Quebec’s identity, which is why Mr. Legault last summer was so concerned about the province’s so-called burkini problem.

Still, Mr. Legault offered to drop his demand that a ban on religious signs for teachers be included in the bill. He asks, as the PQ, that the Bouchard-Taylor recommendations be included, namely a ban on religious signs for officers of the law – judges, police officers, prison guards, prosecutors.

“Let’s legislate on what we agree on,” Mr. Couillard said, not willing to strip any theoretical (for now) law officer of their rights to please the opposition.

Meanwhile, left-wing Québec solidaire accuses the Premier of “systemic racism” because only 2 per cent of job appointments by the Executive Council are visible minorities.

And, the shock-media commentators are back on track, playing down the very idea that Islamophobia exists in Quebec.

The worst case of hate crime against Muslims in the country’s history has yet to inspire a more profound and painful conversation.

Source: A week of kindness, then identity politics as usual in Quebec – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Liberal MP’s anti-Islamophobia motion set for debate next week

2017/02/11 Leave a comment

Hate Crimes Comparison.004

Statistics Canada Annual Police Reported Hate Crimes

Canada already has hate speech laws (unlike south of the border) and tracks police reported hate crimes (although StatsCan stopped writing its analysis of the data).

While I favour tracking, analyzing and messaging that covers all forms of racism, prejudice and discrimination, community specific messaging can be part of raising awareness, addressing concerns and reassuring communities. The previous government paid particular attention to antisemitism given the concerns of Canadian Jews.

My reading of the motion is that it has an appropriate focus on data collection and analysis, places Islamophobia within the broader context of racism and discrimination. with the resulting policy recommendations to be developed within that context by Canadian Heritage:

Members of Parliament will debate a motion to condemn Islamophobia and track incidents of hate crime against Muslims in the House of Commons next week.

Motion 103 was tabled by Mississauga, Ont., Liberal backbencher Iqra Khalid last fall, but will be discussed in the  aftermath of last month’s mass shooting at a Quebec City mosque. It calls on government to “condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination.”

The text of the motion also asks the government to:

  • Recognize the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear.
  • Request the heritage committee study how the government could develop a government-wide approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination, including Islamophobia.
  • Collect data to contextualize hate crime reports and to conduct needs assessments for impacted communities and present findings within 240 calendar days.

The motion, scheduled for one hour of debate on Wednesday, has generated a backlash online, with petitions garnering thousands of signatures opposing the motion.

Some critics have mischaracterized M-103 as a “bill” or a “law” rather than an non-binding motion.

Some have warned that Canada is moving towards criminalizing Islamophobia or even to the implementation of Islamic law, called Shariah, in Canada.

Khalid declined requests for an interview from CBC News.

When she tabled the motion on Dec. 5, 2016, she described her experience as a “young, brown, Muslim, Canadian woman.”

“When I moved to Canada in the 1990s, a young girl trying to make this nation my home, some kids in school would yell as they pushed me, ‘Go home, you Muslim’ — but I was home. I am among thousands of Muslims who have been victimized because of hate and fear,” she said.

“I am a proud Canadian among hundreds and thousands of others who will not tolerate hate based on religion or skin colour. I rise today with my fellow Canadians to reject and condemn Islamophobia.”

E-petition condemning Islamophobia

On the same day Khalid tabled her motion, an e-petition with nearly 70,000 signatures was tabled that called on the House of Commons to join the signatories in recognizing that “extremist individuals do not represent the religion of Islam, and in condemning all forms of Islamophobia.”

Barbara Kay, a columnist for the National Post and contributor to The Rebel Media, worries about the potential impact on freedom of expression and special protections for a single religious group.

“There are a lot of countries in Europe where criticism of Islam, even if not entrenched in law as a hate crime, are being interpreted by police and law enforcement, social workers — the whole spectrum of the state apparatus. They have been internalized by those within the public service as wrong, and if not criminal then absolutely morally wrong, and therefore Muslims are a group that must be protected from this very offensive speech,” she said in an interview with CBC.

Kay said anti-hate speech laws have traditionally targeted human beings, not ideas. She questioned the need to single out Islamophobia, and argued there are more hate crimes against Jews than Muslims in Canada.

Hate crimes in Canada

According to Statistics Canada, in 2013 there were 326 police-reported hate crimes motivated by hatred of a religion or religious group, about 28 per cent of all hate crimes.

Those targeting Jewish populations were the most frequently reported, accounting for 56 per cent of religious hate crimes in 2013, according to the most recent data available. There were 181 hate-motivated crimes targeting the Jewish religion reported by police in 2013, compared to 65 crimes motivated by hatred against the Muslim religion.

In her report and a video for The Rebel website, Kay said blasphemy laws conceived according to Shariah law could creep into Canada.

She said that could have a chilling effect on free speech and ultimately mean some of her columns could be deemed Islamophobic and subject to penalties.

“I’m worried. All Canadians should be worried,” she wrote.

Push for broader discussion

B.C. Conservative MP Dianne Watts said she supports the motion but wants a broader discussion about how to end any act of hate or discrimination based on race or religion.

“We just look at what happened at the mosque in Quebec and it’s such a horrible thing to have happen in Canada because that’s not who we are, that’s not what we’re about and we have to do everything we possibly can as legislators and as a community to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” she said.

Source: Liberal MP’s anti-Islamophobia motion set for debate next week – Politics – CBC News

Motion text: Motion M-103

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism, Religion Tagged with ,

Shouldn’t Israel Care About Anti-Semitism? – The New York Times

2017/02/11 Leave a comment

This piece by Shmuel Rosner worth noting post-Trump International Holocaust Remembrance Day deliberately not mentioning Jewish victims:

Occasionally, there is even a temptation for Israel to benefit from anti-Semitism. In recent years, rather than focus on the need to fight anti-Semitism in France, Israel called on French Jews to come live in Israel.

Of course, when Israel encounters a clear-cut case of Holocaust denial, or of persecution of Jews, it does not shy away from making its voice heard. Two years ago, the Israeli foreign minister warned European far-right parties that they must shun neo-Nazis and described Hungary’s Jobbik and Greece’s Golden Dawn as “illegitimate.”

But most of the time, Israel attempts to delicately balance its wish to delegitimize anti-Semitism and its need to maintain foreign relations that advance its causes. Sometimes this means using attacks on Jews to attract Jewish immigration to Israel. Sometimes this means turning a blind eye to anti-Semitism in exchange for political support. Sometimes this means ignoring the trivialization of Jewish deaths in the Holocaust.

This is as unavoidable as it is troubling, even painful. Israel is a state with interests and priorities among which censuring anti-Semitism is one, but not the only one.

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father, understood this when he agreed to accept reparations from Germany, less than a decade after the Holocaust. Mr. Ben-Gurion’s opponents had a strong moral case against accepting money from the country that had just orchestrated the murder of millions of Jews, but the prime minister thought that his duty as the man in charge of building and defending a new state trumped such considerations. Then, as now, Israel sometimes agreed to help other countries and parties whitewash their images. It’s often a trade: We, Israel, will get what we need in the form of money or arms or political support. You will get the right to showcase Israel as proof that you aren’t an anti-Semite.

This could become much more uncomfortable when the country in question is the United States and when the person accused of tolerating anti-Semitism is the American president. Israel depends on the United States more than it does on any other country for aid, security and diplomatic support. And the American Jewish community is the other main pillar of world Jewry, alongside Israel. More than 80 percent of Jews live and thrive either in Israel or in the United States. This makes the United States the place in which official anti-Semitism cannot be overlooked — and the place where it must be overlooked.

That could result in an irreparable split between Jews. The statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day — provoking Jewish outcry in the United States, while provoking nothing from Israel — just proved it.

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Americans View Islam Less Negatively Than They Did A Year Ago | The Huffington Post

2017/02/10 Leave a comment

Not sure the extent to which this is positive (fewer negative views) or negative (greater political polarization) but ironic given the words of the Trump campaign and the words and actions of the Trump administration:

Americans’ view of Islam are, by and large, hostile. But negative opinions of the religion have dropped significantly during the past year, a new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds, despite ― or perhaps in response to ― the anti-Islam rhetoric often espousedby President Donald Trump and his advisers.

Last March, Americans were 42 points more likely to view the religion negatively than they were to view it positively. That gap dropped to 33 points by June, and to 20 points in the most recent survey, the lowest it’s been since HuffPost/YouGov surveys first asked the question nearly two years ago.

HUFFINGTON POST

At least one other pollster has noticed a similar shift. Shibley Telhami, the director of the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll, wrote in The Washington Post earlier this year about having seen attitudes toward “Muslim people” growing progressively more favorable between November 2015 and October 2016 ― even after Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric and the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, California, and Orlando, Florida.

He attributed some of the change to polarization, noting that the biggest driver was evolving opinions among Democrats, and, to a lesser extent, independents.

“As on almost all issues, partisan divisions intensified during a highly divisive election year,” he wrote. “The more one side emphasized the issue — as happened with Trump on Islam and Muslims — the more the other side took the opposite position. … Trump the president should have more sway. But he is starting at place where partisanship is not diminishing, and where his presidential rhetoric mirrors his words as a partisan candidate.”

Breaking down the two most recent HuffPost/YouGov surveys along party lines yields similar results, suggesting that the Trump administration’s rhetoric has actually galvanized Democrats, and some independents, into greater support of Islam.

HUFFINGTON POST

In June 2016, Democrats, Republicans and independents all held net negative views of Islam, although the gap was most pronounced among Republicans. Since then, Democrats’ opinions of the religion have improved significantly ― favorable opinions have risen by 11 points, while unfavorable opinions have fallen by 13 points.

Source: Americans View Islam Less Negatively Than They Did A Year Ago | The Huffington Post

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism, Religion Tagged with ,

Québec veut se rapprocher de Bouchard-Taylor

2017/02/10 Leave a comment

Bouchard-Taylor remains a good reference point for discussion:

Le gouvernement Couillard cherche une avenue pour se rapprocher des recommandations du rapport Bouchard-Taylor et donner plus de muscle au projet de loi 62, qui vise à proscrire le port du voile intégral pour donner ou recevoir des services publics.

Selon les informations obtenues par La Presse, on a planché sur une voie de passage qui ferait en sorte que le port de signes religieux serait interdit aux employés qui ont un «pouvoir de coercition» et qui doivent porter un uniforme – les policiers et les gardiens de prison tombent dans cette catégorie.

En revanche, en raison de l’indépendance du système judiciaire, les juges ne pourraient être soumis à cette directive. L’absolue indépendance des magistrats est même garantie dans la Charte des droits de l’homme, a rappelé hier un membre du gouvernement.

Mais du point de vue légal, des obstacles paraissent encore insolubles, la liberté de culte étant inaliénable du point de vue de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés. Certains proposent de faire un renvoi à la Cour d’appel pour tester la solution envisagée.

Proposition de compromis

La réflexion du gouvernement survient après une proposition de compromis soumise mardi par François Legault, chef de la Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ). La CAQ est prête à laisser tomber l’interdiction de signes religieux pour les enseignants et à revenir à la proposition de la commission Bouchard-Taylor, dans l’espoir de dégager un consensus. La CAQ maintiendrait cette disposition pour les enseignants dans son programme électoral. Le chef péquiste Jean-François Lisée avait aussi indiqué qu’une entente serait possible si Québec se rangeait derrière la proposition faite par la commission lancée il y a 10 ans maintenant.

Mais en dépit de ces propositions de compromis, Philippe Couillard avait soutenu qu’il restait sur ses positions. «Encore une fois, on est en train de mettre sur la table un débat sur un enjeu inexistant», avait-il affirmé. La position du gouvernement, jusqu’ici, était une totale liberté pour les juges, les policiers ou les gardiens de prison qui souhaiteraient porter des signes religieux visibles. Le refus de Philippe Couillard de saisir au bond l’offre de compromis a été critiqué par bien des observateurs.

Cette déclaration avait fait bondir le sociologue Gérard Bouchard. En entrevue à Radio-Canada, M. Bouchard a soutenu qu’au contraire, il est «urgent» d’intervenir «de manière énergique», même si c’est «préventif». «On se retrouverait en pleine soupe, encore une fois», si des juges ou des policiers décidaient de porter un signe religieux quand ils sont en fonction, a-t-il observé.

Possibilité de renvoi à la cour d’appel

La position du gouvernement est en mouvance. «On est en train de regarder ça», observe-t-on. La capacité du gouvernement employeur de prescrire l’uniforme pour les policiers et les gardiens de prison pourrait lui permettre de proscrire le port de signes religieux, croit-on. «Quand une autorité hiérarchique peut prescrire un code vestimentaire, cela pourrait faire l’objet de réglementation», explique-t-on au gouvernement.

Mais les experts constitutionnels croient qu’une telle disposition serait inévitablement testée par les tribunaux. «Mais cela pourrait prendre plusieurs années avant que la cour se penche là-dessus.» La Cour suprême a déjà indiqué que le port du turban pour un agent sikh de la Gendarmerie royale du Canada était légal, et la jurisprudence est tout aussi claire pour le port de la kippa juive.

Québec pourrait décider de soumettre de lui-même l’orientation choisie à sa Cour d’appel – seul le fédéral peut faire un renvoi directement à la Cour suprême. Cependant, les tribunaux n’aiment pas être ainsi consultés sur un principe en l’absence de faits pour donner du contexte à la requête.

Le port d’un uniforme est considéré comme une limite raisonnable à la liberté d’expression, mais le port du voile touche à la liberté de culte.

Source: Québec veut se rapprocher de Bouchard-Taylor | Denis Lessard | Politique québécoise

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New census technology under close watch as Statcan looks to the future

2017/02/10 Leave a comment

Looking forward to the results from the long-form census as they come out (short-form provides overview, long-form fills in many details). Makes sense to use existing government data to extent possible (CRA income data should be more reliable than self-reporting):

With just days to go before the very first release of data from the 2016 census, there is an unusual calm outside Marc Hamel’s Statistics Canada office.

A calm before the storm, perhaps.

After all, Wednesday’s release will be watched closely by federal officials, demographers and urban planners — all of whom use the data to help political leaders make myriad decisions that affect the daily lives of Canadians.

This time around, however, some of the keenest observers will be census director Hamel and his staff, watching to see if their new census data-collection methods are hitting their mark.

Statistics Canada has been quietly working on a plan for 2026 to eliminate the mandatory short-form census that goes to every household, instead using existing government databases to conduct a virtual count of the population. The plan, if successful, could mean millions in savings for federal coffers.

The closer the census numbers are to the tests being conducted by Hamel’s team, the more likely that multiple pages of the census questionnaire will be dropped during the next count in 2021, or replaced altogether one day in the future with an electronic count of the population.

This year, for instance, the agency cut two pages about income from the long-form questionnaire and replaced the questions with readily available and, arguably, more reliable Canada Revenue Agency data. Other questions, too, will eventually be replaced with information from existing administrative databases, making it easier to collect the details that comprise the census portrait.

Hamel said the challenge for his staff is to find a way to accurately reflect the Canadian population as it is at any point in time.

“The census as we run it now is very high quality, so anything that we would come up with in the future would have to be as high quality as it is today,” said Hamel.

One particular challenge for an electronic census: address information in various administrative files doesn’t always correspond to where people actually live, making it hard to be confident people are being counted in the right places.

And what about technology?

The majority of Canadians filled out their census questionnaires online, cutting down the time required to input data, and helping to speed up the release of information. Hamel said there might be other technological changes coming for future censuses, but it’s hard to predict what that might entail when census day rolls around again in 2021.

The question that guides planning for the next census and beyond is simple: will this work the same way next time?

“Four years in census terms — for me anyway — it’s short. It’s not a long time to prepare to make sure that we get it right. But at the same time, from a technological point of view, it’s fairly long,” Hamel said.

“It’s always a bit difficult to predict how technology will evolve in a short period of time and how that might have an impact on how the census might be rolled out.”

The questions on the census are also likely to change by 2021, with consultations starting this fall on what things Statistics Canada should and shouldn’t be measuring any more. One question likely to change is about sex and gender, which this year didn’t include a third option for transgender Canadians, Hamel noted.

“Society keeps evolving, so I think that from a census point of view, the census questions and questionnaire should be evolving with it.”

Source: New census technology under close watch as Statcan looks to the future | Toronto Star

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Census 2016: Western provinces’ populations are the fastest-growing in Canada – The Globe and Mail

2017/02/09 Leave a comment

The first batch of Census 2016 results are out from the short-form with basic demographic data. Waiting for the long-form more detailed data how Canadians are doing in relation to economic and social outcomes.

Have excerpted this from the Globe analysis, showing again that population growth continues to be increasingly dependent on immigration:

census_2016__western_provinces_populations_are_the_fastest-growing_in-canada_-_the_globe_and_mail

Roughly two-thirds of the growth in population is due to migration, or the amount by which the number of new immigrants exceed the number of people who leave Canada. The other third comes from what’s known as “natural growth,” the difference between births and deaths. Some countries, such as Germany, Italy and Japan, have already seen the annual number of deaths exceed births, meaning all their growth now depends on migration. Projections show that Canada may reach the point where migration accounts for all population growth around 2050.

Source: Census 2016: Western provinces’ populations are the fastest-growing in Canada – The Globe and Mail

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