Saskatchewan: A special report on race and power

2016/08/01 Leave a comment

Good in-depth piece by Nancy Macdonald on the lack of diversity in Saskatchewan. Well worth reading in its entirety:

Right now, 22 per cent of Saskatchewan’s population is non-white: 16 per cent Indigenous, and 6.3 per cent visible minority—figures that are expected to jump when new census figures are released early next year. And yet Saskatchewan’s power structure does not reflect its changing face.

In the course of reporting a story earlier this year about the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in provincial jails,Maclean’s heard complaints of representational deficiencies in the province’s power structure; the magazine undertook a survey that looked at the 265 most powerful people in government, justice, business, and education. Just 17 positions were filled by non-white people—1.8 per cent by visible minorities, and 4.5 per cent by Metis or First Nations peoples. The mayors of Saskatchewan’s nine biggest cities are white. So are all but one of the chiefs of police and 18 of 19 city councillors in its two major cities, Saskatoon and Regina, the presidents of its two universities and its biggest college, its six major sports teams.

Saskatchewan has never elected a visible minority candidate to the House of Commons, or to the council chambers of Saskatoon or Regina, say academics, political staff and city clerks in Regina and Saskatoon. In the last election, the province made history when it elected Muhammad Fiaz, the first visible minority to sit in the province’s Legislative Assembly, a milestone that surprised even Fiaz, he tells Maclean’s. (Neighbouring Manitoba did this nearly four decades ago.)

Just one of the province’s 21 Crown corporations and one of the six Saskatchewan-based, publicly-traded businesses are headed by a visible minority: Rupen Pandya is president and CEO of SaskBuilds, which manages the province’s large-scale infrastructure projects, and Murad Al-Katib is president and CEO of agribusiness giant Alliance Grain Traders.

In perhaps the most glaring omission of minority voices, just two of the 101 judges in the province—where 81 per cent of those sentenced to provincial custody are Indigenous, higher than in any other province—is either First Nations or Metis.

Therein lies the rub, says Saskatchewan MLA Nicole Sarauer, formerly a lawyer with Pro Bono Law Saskatchewan. The problem isn’t just the unrepresentative power structure, it’s the vast “disconnect” between those making decisions and those most impacted by them. Without adequate representation, the concerns of Indigenous voices are more easily overlooked, which helps spur the growth of the appalling socioeconomic gap dividing Saskatchewan’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations.

Indigenous people in Saskatchewan are, for example, 33 times more likely to be incarcerated than a non-Indigenous person—higher odds than an African American in the U.S., or a black South African at the height of apartheid.

Source: Saskatchewan: A special report on race and power – Macleans.ca

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Justice Rosalie Abella: Doing justice to her father’s dream

2016/08/01 Leave a comment

Good profile of the background and values of Justice Abella:

She came to national prominence before her 40th birthday, when Liberal cabinet minister Lloyd Axworthy asked her to head a national commission on employment and minorities. After coining the term “employment equity,” she was attacked by critics coast to coast, but had the last laugh when a Progressive Conservative prime minister, Brian Mulroney, implemented many of her recommendations in the federally regulated work force (at such institutions as banks, Crown corporations and communications companies). The system she recommended is still in place today.

But there were no “quotas” in her recommendations – not after her father and others like him had faced quotas. In any event, quotas have a way of becoming a ceiling, she felt.

…Her philosophy as a judge is rooted in her parents’ experiences. She is a defender of human rights, of the rights of children, refugees, religious minorities, women.

She was the only judge to defend a Muslim woman’s right to wear a niqab (face veil) in almost all cases while testifying in a criminal trial. Determined to hold states accountable for human-rights violations, she was the only judge who said the family of Zahra Kazemi could sue the government of Iran for its involvement in the Iranian-Canadian photojournalist’s violent death. (The other judges said that Canadian law gives foreign officials immunity.)

Appointed to the Supreme Court by prime minister Paul Martin in 2004, she’s an activist judge, although she rejects the label. (Conservative judges have been activist, too, she says, in striking down laws protecting minorities.) “It’s not what you stand for; it’s what you stand up for,” she likes to say.

She has been reading Hitler’s Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich by German lawyer Ingo Müller, on the complicity of German judges in the Holocaust. She says they applied the letter of the law not to be seen as “activist.”

She scorns critics of judicial activism. “The plea for judicial deference [to elected legislators] may be nothing more than a prescription for judicial rigor mortis,” she said in a 2002 speech. The ubiquitous phrase “rule of law” annoys her: The Holocaust, apartheid and U.S. segregation unfolded according to law. She has an expansive view of the judge’s role, calls the Charter of Rights the “finest manifestation” of Canadian democracy.

“Of all the public institutions responsible for delivering justice, the judiciary is the only one for whom justice is the exclusive mandate,” she says. “This means that, while legislatures respond of necessity to the urgings of the public, however we define it, judges, on the other hand, serve only justice.”

This winter, she stood up for a more inclusive approach to marginalized people in two cases. In one, she wrote a majority ruling making it easier for refugee claimants to stay in Canada on “humanitarian and compassionate” grounds; in the other, she wrote the court’s unanimous ruling that requires the federal government to recognize the rights of Métis and non-status Indians, saying they have been living “in a jurisdictional wasteland.” Two weeks ago, she stood up for 500,000 non-unionized federally regulated workers, writing a majority ruling that strengthened their job security.

Source: Justice Rosalie Abella: Doing justice to her father’s dream – The Globe and Mail

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Australia: Why multicultural policy looms as a Senate bargaining chip

2016/08/01 Leave a comment

Commentary on how the Australian Liberal party appears to be playing on the multiculturalism file, following the recent election of anti-multiculturalism hardliners Pauline Hanson and Eric Abetz:

[Liberal senator Zed[ Seselja [multiculturalism portfolio], in interviews with ABC Radio National and SBS, has revealed he supports multiculturalism – by which he means honouring ethnic community tradition while joining the Australian mainstream.

As he is a member of the government, and for as long as the government position is to leave Section 18C alone, he will stand by that position – though he may still push internally to change it.

Seselja said “it’s reasonable that people feel unease” about Islamic terrorism in response to TV personality Sonia Kruger calling for an end to Muslim migration. However, he did reiterate the government’s position that the immigration program does not discriminate on religious grounds.

But Seselja did not publicly voice his support for members of the Muslim community who may feel intimidated or victimised by calls for Muslim immigration to be banned – a call now echoed by right-wing Tasmanian senator Eric Abetz. Nor did he distance himself from Kruger’s endorsement of Bolt’s “understanding” of the drivers for potential vigilante attacks on the Muslim community and its institutions.

Seselja indicated that reworking “Labor’s multiculturalism policy” was on his to-do list. This is bizarre, as the current policy was taken almost unchanged by Labor from the considered policy of containment and minimisation developed during the Howard era.

Multiculturalism will clearly be one of the trading goods carried in the saddlebags of the government’s peacemakers in the Senate. How it will be shed, and for what deals, remains to be seen. That its components will be among the first sacrifices offered seems most likely, but the multicultural communities that defended Section 18C are alert to the dangers.

Source: Why multicultural policy looms as a Senate bargaining chip

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When does Islam generate Western anxiety? – The Washington Post

2016/07/30 Leave a comment

Interesting and relevant analysis, an interesting suggestion for further research and some likely controversial advice for Muslim groups in terms of their use of words:

In recent years, the United States and its “Western” allies have faced countless foreign policy choices involving the Islamic world, from engaging with Islamist governments in Egypt and Tunisia to negotiating with Iran to managing drone campaigns in at least three countries. While foreign policy decisions are shaped by many factors, public opinion is a major input. So how does the perceived Islamic character of actors influence foreign policy attitudes toward them?

Unfortunately, our existing understanding of these perceptions is limited. Research shows that religious differences are an important ingredient in foreign policy attitudes — recent survey experiments have shown that Western citizens were more willing to start a war against “Muslim” than “Christian” adversaries. But religious differences are often more complex.

Consider the key participants in the Syrian civil war: The Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra, the “moderate” Free Syrian Army, Kurdish rebel groups, Hezbollah and the Bashar al-Assad regime are all broadly “Muslim,” but their Islamic character is portrayed — by themselves as well as by Western media — quite differently. Do these differences shape foreign policy attitudes toward them? When are Western populations really fearful and mistrustful of Islamic political actors?

Our new study in Political Research Quarterly explores these dynamics. In an original survey experiment, we randomly assigned subjects different news stories about the ongoing Syrian conflict in which we manipulated the Islamic character of a fictitious yet realistic foreign actor — the “Free Syria Movement” (FSM) — seeking U.S. military assistance. Specifically, we examined whether giving the actor common Islamic language like “Allahu akbar,” policy goals such as sharia law, and/or labels including “Islamist” affected the respondents’ social affect, political attitudes and foreign policy preferences toward the group. Conducted in May 2015 via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform, the survey was completed by 1,095 respondents, with at least 120 in each of the eight conditions.

1. Islamic cues do indeed matter.

Under normal circumstances, we found that respondents’ attitudes towards the FSM were relatively benign. Although they knew the group was Muslim, they tended to give neutral or mixed responses about its level of trustworthiness, compatibility with American values, emotional impact on them and potential role as an American regional ally. Likewise, respondents had mixed views about sending FSM the requested American military aid, although they leaned slightly against doing so overall.

In contrast, with the three cues incorporated, all of these responses shifted in a significantly negative direction. Respondents tended to see the group as untrustworthy, incompatible with their values and interests, a source of fear and a potential regional adversary. Their willingness to give it aid moved firmly toward opposition, dropping on average by more than seven percentage points. And other attitudes saw even larger negative shifts, with the average trust in the group dropping by 10 percentage points. Essentially, respondents did not inherently have hostile attitudes toward the Islamic actor, only when “cued” to do so.

2. Some cues matter more than others.

Yet we also found that some of the Islamic cues harmed attitudes toward the group far more than others. Of the three, insertion of “sharia law” as a policy goal had the most harmful impact, while use of the “Islamist” label did not yield any statistically significant negative effects on any of the outcomes. This is not wholly surprising. Although sharia can have many different meanings in the Muslim world — from inclusive welfare states to punitive morality codes — Western elites have characterized this concept solely in terms of violence and oppression. In the words of Newt Gingrich, sharia is “a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the rest of the world as we know it.” In fact, anti-sharia legislation had been proposed in 23 American states by 2011. This “sharia-phobia” is not unique: other broad Islamic political goals such as the pursuit of a caliphate have been received with similar apprehension in Western political discourse.

3. The influence of these cues depends on partisanship.

Finally, we found that the impact of the cues depends on party identification. With all three cues activated, for example, we see a 22 percentage point drop in trust in the group among Republicans, a 10 percentage point drop among independents and a 5 percentage point drop among Democrats. This also is not wholly unexpected. Republican political elites often describe national security threats in more explicitly Islamic terms — with a greater willingness to label terrorist groups as “Islamic” and invoke concepts such as sharia and the caliphate to characterize their goals. We interpret this mostly as Republican identifiers taking cues from their elites. Yet, as indicated above, independents and Democrats are not immune from these reactions either.

Western anxiety toward Muslim political actors is not just automatic. It is stoked by the rhetorical choices of Western elites who politicize Islamic terms and ideas and by the Islamic actors themselves who use these terms and are either ignorant or indifferent to this politicization. Contested Arabic-language terms such as sharia, khilafah (caliphate) and jihad may make the easiest targets.

This study suggests at least two promising areas of future research. First, we can examine the flip side of the coin: how adopting Christian language, policies and labels in the West influences foreign policy views in the Islamic world. This could help determine whether these processes mirror each other, in a Sisyphean cycle of religious politicization. Second, we could research whether and how these negative reactions to Islamic cues can be effectively countered. Does including brief translations and explanations of these cues that highlight their positive aspects, diverse meanings and/or Judeo-Christian equivalents ameliorate Western apprehension?

For now, we know that politicized Islamic cues such as sharia spark deeply negative Western perceptions and preferences toward their users. In the foreseeable future, Muslim actors seeking Western assistance or support would be wise to use them with great care.

Source: When does Islam generate Western anxiety? – The Washington Post

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization, Religion Tagged with , ,

TDSB’s plan to tackle racial disparity

2016/07/30 Leave a comment

John Malloy, director of education for the TDSB, on what they are doing to improve outcomes for all groups. Always like to see data and evidence-driven approaches.

Look forward to any comments from readers in Toronto:

The Toronto District School Board has heard the critiques and acknowledges there are racial disparities in our school system, which we must continue to work on.

It is correct to point out white students in the TDSB are more likely to be found in high-income neighbourhoods, while black students are more likely to be found in low-income neighbourhoods. And while we do face issues of poverty, our job is to provide schools in every neighbourhood that create conditions for all children to succeed.

In particular, Sachin Maharaj’s recent opinion piece in the Star on black students in Toronto schools makes some valid points and defines the challenges many school boards face. It’s important, however, to recognize that the TDSB has taken, and will continue to take, steps to ensure that all students are able to succeed.

The TDSB’s Model Schools for Inner Cities Program, launched in Toronto’s most needy neighbourhoods 10 years ago, has shown that schools can be essential equalizers. With extra resources, such as additional staff, iPads for students, after-school programs, unique field trips and Parenting and Family Literacy Centres, the program has given a great number of students the tools and encouragement they need to succeed.

TDSB research on the impact of Model Schools over time shows evidence of improved academic achievement and student well-being. We have also seen higher credit accumulation by the end of Grade 10 than before the program was in place (from 50 per cent to 64 per cent of students in priority neighbourhoods attaining the expected number of credits). Many of these factors help explain the TDSB’s rising graduation rate from 78 per cent in 2005 to 85 per cent in 2015 — our highest ever.

Having said that, we do recognize achievement levels among some black students are lower than their peers. Our data shows this and we have been open about it. In fact, we collect more data than most school boards across the country and for good reason. We want to know where the gaps are and where extra supports are needed.

Over the past number of years, we have been using this data to boost improvement. This work has been overseen by board-wide and community-driven Equity and Inner-City advisory committees, which bring a collaborative, school-community focus to addressing opportunity, participation and achievement gaps. This work needs to continue and we must also take a more deliberate approach to responding to this data.

In the past, our research has shown opportunity, participation and achievement gaps for historically marginalized student populations and we have acted in direct response with, for example, pre-kindergarten readiness, after school programs and in-school health clinics for students. More of these intervention strategies must be done and they need to have a more direct impact on classroom teaching and learning.

More recently, trustees voted to establish a Black Student Achievement Advisory Committee to examine and make recommendations on strategies to create more equitable outcomes for black students.

We have also put in place a new Learning Centre model across the city that will improve the speed with which we identify and respond to learning gaps. The Learning Centres strategy will place resources closer to schools, decentralize decision-making and reduce bureaucracy so we can get the support students need in the hands of principals and teachers and impact the classroom sooner.

This fall, the TDSB will prepare an Integrated Equity Plan that will spark tough and challenging conversations system-wide and in each and every school. It will engage principals and ultimately classroom teachers to respond more directly to key questions, such as:

  • What barriers exist in the school that might be keeping students from achieving?
  • What bias might persons in the school possess about what certain groups of students are able to achieve?
  • What needs to change in terms of the instruction, the environment in the school and the relationships in the school?

Under the plan, senior management and central departments will oversee the implementation. Their mandate will be to ensure principals and vice principals are engaging staff, students, and parents/guardians to work together to build action plans for schools that promote a sense of belonging, support and well-being and help eliminate barriers to success. As with many TDSB initiatives, we will closely monitor and evaluate this new model’s effectiveness to ensure it’s having the impact we intended.

We recognize that patterns of systemic racism and discrimination exist within our society and this has to stop. For our part, the TDSB is committed to working within our schools, and with our parents, communities, the city and province to reduce and eliminate racism and discrimination in all forms.

Source: TDSB’s plan to tackle racial disparity | Toronto Star

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Australia: Study shows dearth of multiculturalism at the top 

2016/07/30 Leave a comment

Canadian numbers of corporate boards largely comparable – see Don Cayo: Time for corporate boards to take diversity seriously, but Canadian public service and political representation stronger (see my “Because it’s 2015 …” Implementing Diversity and Inclusion):

A study released by the Race Discrimination Commissioner shows senior leaders in Australia remain overwhelmingly Anglo-Celtic or European in heritage.

It found, out of 201 chief executives at ASX 200 companies, only 10 were of non-Anglo-Celtic, non-European heritage.

None had an Indigenous background.

In federal parliament and the public service and among university chancellors, cultural diversity was also found to be dramatically under-represented.

The report’s author, University of Sydney Business School dean Greg Whitwell, says bias and discrimination on selection committees remains a barrier to equal opportunity.

“The tendency is to have a bias towards choosing people whom you think are ‘just like us,’ who have a similar background, a similar attitude, just a similar sense of humour, a similar sense of looking at the world.”

Professor Whitwell says the prevailing belief that leaders should be dominant and aggressive is another roadblock.

“In a sense, you can’t win. If you’re the stereotypical quiet, respectful Asian, then you’re damned, because you’re too quiet, you’re too respectful. But if you’re too aggressive, speaking loudly, you’re forthright, then you’re violating the stereotype, which, in turn, leads the selection committee to think negatively towards you.”

Australia Post and Optus are among the few Top 200 companies in Australia to have appointed culturally diverse leaders.

DAWN, an organisation that advocates for diverse leadership, says there is a pool of diverse talent ready to utilise.

Chief executive officer Dai Le says organisations need to look into how to harness it.

“I think we need to look at quality. I think we need to look at capability. Because we just cannot have just one group of people on boards, because there’s no diversity of thought, no diversity of perspective.”

The study calls for senior leaders to make it their personal mission to advance cultural diversity and for organisations to set diversity targets and gather data to track their progress.

Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane says Australia needs to be honest with itself and recognise it still has work to do to be truly inclusive.

Source: Study shows dearth of multiculturalism at the top | SBS News

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Those who focus on police reform are asking the wrong questions: Amanda Alexander

2016/07/30 Leave a comment

Agree, police reform is only part of the solutions and approaches:

….Reformers are asking the wrong questions. They have turned to increased police training and altered use-of-force protocols to end this nightmare. Fortunately, some among us demand another way. Young black activists are not just asking, “How do we make cops stop shooting us?” but instead, “What do our communities need to thrive? How do we get free?” They’re not begging for scraps; they’re demanding the world they deserve. If there’s a future for any of us, it’s in asking these questions, demanding fundamental shifts in resources and organizing like hell.

So far reform has brought little outside of multimillion-dollar investments in police departments for body cameras. It remains to be seen whether they will be effective in reducing brutality and deaths. But one thing is clear: We’ve decided that doubling down on investment in the police, rather than the communities they patrol, is the best solution to ending the slaughter of black people.

Ultimately, the real beneficiaries of these reforms are not the residents of Oakland, Chicago and Ferguson, Mo., but San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

Meanwhile, cash-strapped cities continue to raise revenue from policing and fining the poor. And because of insufficient social service investment, Americans rely on police to be first responders to crises of mental health, addiction and homelessness. The results are tragic: Half of those killed by police have a disability.

It’s no wonder that mainstream discussions of police reform seem to miss the mark. Yet black movement activists remain bold. Organizers with Black Youth Project (BYP 100) and the Movement for Black Lives held more than 80 actions last week under the banner of #FreedomNow. BYP 100 renewed its demand to “fund black futures,” calling on Americans to divest from the police state and invest in communities to promote economic sustainability.

This call to fund black futures is not a call for reform. Instead, it understands the futility of our current path. It’s ultimately a call to a future where policing will never take us.

And they’re organizing to make it so. In Chicago, Fearless Leading by the Youth demanded – and won – a state-of-the-art trauma centre to serve their community. In Cleveland and Chicago, organizers removed prosecutors who failed to act on police shootings. Advocates are testing alternatives to police –gun-free zones, 911 alternatives, restorative justice – and also fighting for health care and education.

These young people are fighting to do more than breathe, more than reform. From grief and pain, they’re offering a dream of something more.

Source: Those who focus on police reform are asking the wrong questions – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

France wants to feel safe – whatever it takes. But what if it takes too much? Dominique Moisi

2016/07/29 Leave a comment

Another good piece on the limits of what can and should be done:

There is plenty that can and must be done to strengthen security in France and elsewhere. But the ultimatum that some French are now implicitly presenting – guarantee absolute security, or watch us cast aside the rule of law and basic principles of openness and equality – does more harm than good.

The French, like all people, deserve to feel safe whether they’re going to church, enjoying a concert or celebrating a holiday. The question is how to restore that sense of security at a time when the risk of a terrorist attack cannot be fully eliminated.

The answer lies with civil society. Citizens should become more alert to the signs of radicalization, and more educated on how to respond. People should be encouraged to report the possible radicalization of those close to them to relevant authorities, whether mental-health professionals or the police. The goal is not to have people making unsubstantiated accusations against neighbours and friends; it is to create channels through which people who recognize radical or violent leanings in someone they know can report their concerns.

This model has worked for Israel. Despite regular exposure to terrorist attacks, Israelis retain a sense of relative security, owing partly to the ability of civil society to contribute to their own safety. As a result, citizens are willing to respect what Max Weber called the state’s “monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force.”

France is not on the verge of collapsing into chaos, with vigilantes attempting to take on the terrorists. But the relentless fear-mongering of populists, together with genuinely terrifying, tragic, and infuriating experiences, is undermining people’s better judgment, causing them to fall prey to inflammatory rhetoric. With a presidential election next year, there is strong incentive for self-serving politicians to use the victims of Nice as instruments of campaign strategy.

This cannot be allowed to happen. If the French ultimately succumb to fear and elect populist bigots, the struggling Islamic State will have scored a victory. Make no mistake: the Islamic State is losing. Its territories in Syria and Iraq are dwindling, but it has a last-ditch strategy to prop itself up: rapid recruitment. And that would receive a major boost from intensification of anti-Muslim rhetoric or, worse, the election of those who would turn rhetoric into policy.

Islamic State recruiters are achieving success; from Orlando to Istanbul to Dhaka, it has found plenty of supporters who are eager to kill in its name. But as long as the West remains united and principled, IS cannot emerge victorious.

For France and others, the key is collective action, at home and abroad, which will require improved links between internal and external security agencies, together with greater risk awareness within civil society, along Israeli lines. Add that to continued strikes against IS sanctuaries, and its dream of an Islamic caliphate will soon be dead.

Regaining control over our lives and our destinies means being realistic. Instead of demanding a return to a time before terrorism, we must become more alert to the risks it poses – not only to our safety, but also to our values and commitment to the rule of law – and do our part to minimize them.

Source: France wants to feel safe – whatever it takes. But what if it takes too much? – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Radicalization Tagged with ,

Security agencies face ‘real challenge’ fighting terrorism: London police head

2016/07/29 Leave a comment

Worth noting:

Identifying and tracking people who could turn into terrorists remains a challenge. At least 800 people from Britain went to Syria in recent years, with many joining the Islamic State and others in the fight against the Syrian government. Roughly 400 have returned to Britain and the police now have to assess their potential threat. They are ranked on a scale of 1 to 4, with 1 being the most dangerous.

Many of those who returned from Syria were legitimate aid workers or IS fighters who became frightened of the conflict, he said. “You could, therefore, regard them as a lower-risk group. But we can’t absolutely guarantee that,” he added. “They remain a continuing concern.”

He had praise for controversial programs such as Prevent, which obliges teachers and others in Britain to report people engaging in radical behaviour. Critics have said Prevent stigmatizes those who have been reported and unfairly targets Muslims. Sir Bernard said that while it isn’t perfect, the program can offer help to vulnerable people and families.

Putting guns in the hands of police officers isn’t a solution, he added, because that only increases barriers between cops and communities. The Metropolitan force remains one of the few in the world where the vast majority of officers do not carry guns. Of the city’s more than 32,000 officers, only 2,100 are armed. However, that number is slated to increase by 600 because of the attacks in Paris last November that killed 130 people.

“Just arming all police is not always the answer,” he said. “And our way is to have well-trained specialist officers, well equipped, well led, who we’d be deploying in large numbers to deal with that type of attack.”

One of the most effective tools to combat terrorism, and most other crimes, is the city’s vast network of CCTV cameras. After rioting in 2011, which spread across several parts of London, police gathered 250,000 hours of camera footage to seek out the culprits. About 800 officers spent a year combing through the material, leading to 5,000 arrests. Of those charged with a crime, 90 per cent “pleaded guilty because [the video footage] was such powerful evidence,” he said.

Britons have become so accustomed to the proliferation of cameras in the subway, on buses, across public places and in some taxis that the country has not had a major debate about privacy issues.

Sir Bernard said that is because the cameras were introduced at the local level. “It wasn’t the government saying you’re all going to have CCTV cameras. This was local authorities saying we want it in a public space, in shopping centres, and buses wanted it,” he said, adding that for police work, the cameras are “incredibly powerful.”

Source: Security agencies face ‘real challenge’ fighting terrorism: London police head – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Radicalization, Security Tagged with ,

When a Canadian is not a Canadian: Pardy on consular services

2016/07/28 Leave a comment

While Pardy is correct to note that policies have not kept up with increased mobility, he downplays the need to recognize that a “Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian” does not necessarily apply abroad.

To my mind, a policy framework for consular services needs to distinguish between Canadian citizens only, dual nationals travelling to countries where dual nationality is recognized, dual nationals travelling to countries where dual nationality is not recognized, and Permanent Residents.

The first two categories are where providing consular services is a given and where this will be recognized in the other country.

Where dual nationality is not recognized, while Canada can try to provide consular services, the other country will likely be unhelpful given that the person entered as a national of that country, not Canada.

And I see no reason to provide consular services to Permanent Residents, as consular services are related to citizenship.

For people in such situations, our missions abroad can make representation on international human rights ground.

So while theoretically there are no limits to what Canada can do, there are in practice.

Of course, media, family and political pressure will undoubtedly favour wider, rather than narrower interpretations, but it is important, from both a policy and operational perspective, to understand the differences:

Unlike historical migrations to Canada that involved a one-way trip and the ending of familial and other connections, people born abroad but living in Canada now have more chance to stay connected with their homelands. Other migratory countries face a similar situation. It is a common aspect of modern migration with, for many, a former life only several air-hours away, or seconds for direct communications.

Unfortunately, affected governments have had trouble adjusting, and international law even more so, to these increasingly common aspects of international travel.

Many countries are not willing to accept Canada has a legitimate interest in ensuring such Canadians (or foreign-born residents) are treated in accordance with international norms and standards. Equally troubling is that many countries are unwilling to recognize the Canadian citizenship of those who hold it.

International law is weak to non-existent in this area. While there is an international convention on the provision of consular services, its weak provisions offer very little comfort in many of these situations.

Equally, there are no specific international agreements or understanding outside of broad international human rights law of the right of Canada and other migratory-destination countries to offer protection to persons who are not citizens.

Canada does not help itself in these matters. There is a reluctance to intervene in cases when a Canadian resident encounters serious difficulty in a foreign country. Usually in response, ministers and officials state: “There are limits to what any country can do for individuals who are not citizens of that country.” But they piously iterate that “the government continues to monitor the situation closely.”

In fact, there are no limits to what a country can try to do to assist such persons. Whether the other country will accept such efforts by Canada is an entirely separate issue; but not to try is an abdication of an appropriate responsibility.

Complicating assistance in such cases is the continuing existence of the historical convention of “Crown prerogative.” It provides discretion to the government for the denial of assistance to even Canadian citizens in difficulty overseas.

There were indications earlier this year that the Trudeau government might be willing to disavow the use of this discretion, but so far nothing specific has been announced.

The continued existence of this discretion undermines the ability of the government to provide consular services generally. It is particularly ironic that the discretion continues even though Canadians specifically pay for such services to the tune of approximately $100 million annually. This is a serious anomaly since the government collects monies for a service it admits to no compulsion to provide.

Source: The Hill Times

Filed under foreign policy, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

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