Azrieli and Herscovitch: Take the lead in Holocaust education, Canada

2016/05/20 Leave a comment

Commentary by Alice Herscovitch and Naomi Azrielli on the need for Canada to take a more active role on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and the need to restore funding for the NGO experts. Agree – the value of IHRA discussions was more at the expert level and discussions than the governmental level during my time as head of delegation:

IHRA’s track record is excellent and includes the implementation of Holocaust education guidelines and a strategic, co-ordinated approach to teaching the Holocaust worldwide. IHRA also provides a critical opportunity for its members to reflect on universal issues – such as teaching without survivors.
The height of Canada’s involvement came during the 2013-2014 session, when we chaired IHRA. Following this, however, Canada’s commitment waned. Canada has not set a national agenda in two years, the delegation has not been given direction and it has lacked consistency and continuity in terms of participation and representation. The key developers of Holocaust education and remembrance initiatives in Canada are no longer the cornerstones of the delegation. This is a reflection of a government decision in 2014 to cease supporting delegate travel. The experts from voluntary organizations who contributed so much time and expertise sharing Canada’s innovative contributions internationally simply don’t have the financial means to assume additional responsibility for the country’s representation.  

This month, a new head of delegation to IHRA was appointed, Ambassador Artur Wilczynski. We welcome Wilczynski and, noting his personal family connection to the Holocaust and impressive track record of leadership, are hopeful that our international engagement will be renewed.

Wilczynski can do a number of things, such as regularly convening meetings between delegates, reinstating funding for delegate travel and, most importantly, defining, with the delegation, an agenda for Holocaust and human rights education in Canada and a set of national and international priorities.

The Holocaust survivors who settled in Canada have profoundly shaped our country. Survivors have been instrumental in creating Holocaust education centres and commemoration programs, and continue to contribute by writing memoirs, through video testimony and by speaking to thousands of Canadians each year. Their legacy directly connects to current discussions about the refugee crisis, respect for diversity and genocide prevention. 

It’s time for Canada to reaffirm its commitment to the Stockholm Declaration and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. With the community of Canadian survivors fast disappearing, we have a responsibility to honour their steadfast work and take it up as our own. 

http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/azrieli-and-herscovitch-take-the-lead-in-holocaust-education-canada

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1 Syrian refugee a week reports being a victim of domestic abuse, agency says

2016/05/20 Leave a comment

Another reminder of the challenges of integration:

That “trauma of migration” can be a trigger for violence, but there are other factors.

Among them, women asserting themselves more forcefully upon arriving in a country where they feel freer to do so, said Zena Al Hamdan, a program manager at the Arab Community Centre.

“It creates a backlash on the male partners. They become more aggressive and more defensive and they want to assert dominance more because of the perception that the West, that society will support the female,” she said.

When she arrived in Canada in 2011 from Syria, Hayat Zaid she wasn’t sure how she’d be received.

Then 14, she was scared of being bullied in school but also unsure how much freedom she’d actually have to pursue her own interests.

“When I came, I was really shy because I was a hijabi and I couldn’t do certain things like swimming or other things in my religion I’m not allowed to,” she told the Commons committee Wednesday.

“But my family was really supportive, and the Boys and Girls Club was really supportive too, and I overcame my shyness and I did what I loved.”

Now 18, Zaid has received a scholarship to study early childhood education at Algonquin College in Ottawa and has spent more than 800 hours volunteering with the Boys and Girls club in the hope others can benefit.

“It’s a really free place when you can overcome your shyness.”

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/05/19/1-syrian-refugee-a-week-reports-being-a-victim-of-domestic-abuse-agency-says.html

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Jean-François Lisée propose de réduire les cibles d’immigration

2016/05/20 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see where the other PQ candidates line up:

L’immigration massive est un échec, juge Jean-François Lisée. Le candidat à la direction du Parti québécois propose d’abaisser substantiellement le nombre d’immigrants admis au Québec et de demander au Vérificateur général (VG) du Québec de déterminer les seuils d’immigration optimaux.
« Cinquante mille immigrants par année [le seuil actuel], c’est la recette de l’échec, a affirmé Jean-François dans une entrevue accordée au Devoir. On ne rend service à personne. On ne rend pas service surtout à ces néo-Québécois à qui on doit donner les outils de la réussite. » Il a rappelé qu’en 2002, sous un gouvernement péquiste, le nombre d’immigrants admis ne dépassait guère les 37 000.

 C’est le gouvernement Charest qui a haussé les seuils d’immigration, d’abord à 45 000, puis à 50 000, puis à un maximum de 55 000, pour un retour sous le gouvernement Couillard à 50 000. Ce « chiffre magique » de 50 000 immigrants par année n’a jamais reposé sur une évaluation objective de la réussite des nouveaux arrivants, a déploré le député de Rosemont. « Ç’a été idéologique. Ç’a été peut-être poussé aussi par des organisations d’entreprises qui aiment avoir un bassin de main-d’oeuvre bon marché. »

Dépolitiser

Le troisième candidat en lice pour succéder à Pauline Marois propose de dépolitiser la fixation des seuils d’immigration. Il suggère qu’on demande au VG de les évaluer objectivement. « Si les libéraux veulent 50 000, et même Philippe Couillard disait que c’était intolérant de ne pas vouloir 60 000, ils sont soupçonnés de vouloir importer des électeurs. Et si le Parti québécois en veut moins, on est soupçonné de ne pas vouloir importer des électeurs libéraux », a-t-il fait valoir.

Jean-François Lisée estime que plusieurs données indiquent que le Québec accueille trop d’immigrants par rapport à sa capacité de les intégrer décemment. « Les signaux récents sont assourdissants », a-t-il dit.

http://www.ledevoir.com/non-classe/471433/lisee-propose-de-reduire-les-cibles-d-immigration 

Filed under Multiculturalism

It’s time for Canada to right historic wrongs against LGBTQ community: John Ibbitson

2016/05/19 Leave a comment

While the focus of Ibbitson’s article is with respect to LGBTQ issues, the broader discussion of apologies was the aspect I found most interesting.

When we were implementing the Conservative government’s historical recognition program for wartime internment and immigration restrictions, the legal aspects of apologies was raised regularly, and appropriately, by Justice Canada officials given fears over liability. At one point in time, we considered doing a policy paper on the question of apologies, their typology, and delivery. In the end, other priorities emerged, but good to see the work that has been done elsewhere:

The Government of Canada should also apologize to the thousands in the public service and military who were dismissed or otherwise discriminated against because they were homosexual, a practice that continued right up until the late 1980s.

The Liberals have been studying both questions for months. Justice Department lawyers often warn that political apologies can expose governments to expensive lawsuits from victims, with the apology serving as proof of guilt.

But as a leading authority in the field points out, not only are such fears overblown, “a meaningful, effective apology can have the opposite effect. Rather than encourage litigation, it can cause people to accept the past more easily.”

Leslie Macleod, a former assistant deputy attorney-general of Ontario, teaches dispute resolution at York University’s Osgoode Hall law school and is a leading authority in mediating and resolving disputes.

“The kind of apology that could be made here would address not only the emotional and psychological interests of those who suffered very dire consequences, it would also address the concerns that we as a society have about how people were treated in the past,” she says.

In that sense, people who see no reason for governments to apologize for acts that no one alive today committed miss the point: We apologize to remind each other of when we fell short in the past, so that we do not fall short in some other way going forward.

A meaningful, effective apology conforms to what could be called the Seven Rs. As described by Ms. Macleod, it involves the specific recognition of the harm caused; expresses remorse for that harm; takes responsibility and repents for the transgression; gives reasons for how the situation came about; offers reparation by way of making amends; and promises reform so nothing similar happens again.

The legislation to prevent discrimination against transgender people could be seen as in the spirit of fulfilling the seventh, and most important, of the seven Rs.

As for reparations, public servants I have talked to who lost their jobs because of their sexuality have, for the most part, gone on with their lives. They do not want money; they just want to be told that, on the terrible day when they were brought into a room, accused of being a homosexual and fired, the person on the other side of the table was in the wrong, not them.

Lawyer Dale Barrett has written about the apology laws on the books in most provinces, which make it easier for governments to apologize by reducing their liability. “It’s very important for government and society to reflect upon the changes in law and changes in sentiment and changes in attitude,” he says, “to acknowledge that society has changed, and to consider what changes we should be making in the future.”

With this new law protecting the rights of transgender people, Mr. Trudeau has advanced the cause of equality for Canada’s LGBTQ community. He should also acknowledge, on behalf of all Canadians, our collective responsibility for those in this community who suffered in the past at the hand of their own government.

Source: It’s time for Canada to right historic wrongs against LGBTQ community – The Globe and Mail

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Trudeau’s plan to apologize for the Komagata Maru is no solution to racism, say critics

2016/05/19 Leave a comment

Ujjal Dosanjh and others on the Komagata Maru apology:

Justin Trudeau, for instance, promised before the 2015 campaign to apologize in Parliament because some Punjabi-Canadians were upset that his predecessor, Stephen Harper, had tendered an apology on behalf of Canada at an event in Surrey.

“As Pierre Trudeau predicted, it’s becoming a slippery slope. There’s no end to it. And there are other apology-seekers at the gates now.”

He said his only exception is in accepting Harper’s apology to Aboriginal Canadians for residential schools in 2008 and Mulroney’s to Japanese-Canadians two decades earlier as both involved Canadian citizens.

But he said even in these cases, he is only accepting the reality of these apologies after the fact. In retrospect, Dosanjh said, he wishes Pierre Trudeau’s successors had followed his lead.

“Just because there’s an apology there won’t be an end to racism,” he said. “It’s not like we’re going to wake up tomorrow and there’s going to be no poverty or inequality or discrimination. That’s where the efforts need to be.”

Dosanjh also criticized Trudeau for announcing his pending apology last month at a Sikh religious event in Ottawa, saying it’s “dangerous” to mix religion and politics.

B.C. Liberal MP Randeep Sarai, whose wife’s great-grandfather was on the Komagata Maru and who was wounded and imprisoned after the riot, said he strongly disagrees with Dosanjh.

“This symbolizes who we are as Canadians, it’s hugely symbolic,” said the MP for Surrey Centre. “It helps heal wounds, and you feel more Canadian once a wrong has been righted.”

B.C. historian Hugh Johnston said Tuesday that both Justin Trudeau and Harper, rather than apologize for a single incident, should have focused instead on the policy that severely restricted immigration from “non-traditional” countries like India before the 1960s.

“The really big thing is the policy over half a century, not just one incident,” said Johnston, author of The Voyage of the Komagata Maru, the first authoritative book on the incident.

Canada went from a country of roughly 30,000 Sikhs in 1971 to about a half-million today, he noted.

“That strikes me as more significant than turning back a ship with less than 400 people aboard in 1914,” said Johnston, whose book was first published in 1979 and revised and expanded in 2014.

But Johnston, like Dosanjh, questions the notion that politicians should apologize over events in the past.

“I’m an historian. I share Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s view. You can’t rewrite history.

Source: Trudeau’s plan to apologize for the Komagata Maru is no solution to racism, say critics

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Don Macpherson: Quebec’s unfunny comics have no right to an audience 

2016/05/19 Leave a comment

Valid:

This year’s Oliviers awards show wasn’t the usual televised celebration of what some critics say is the overall mediocrity of Quebec humour. It was a protest rally against “censorship.”

There were stirring speeches by award presenters and winners. At one point, several comics dramatically mounted the stage, the lower half of their faces covered by dust masks with Xs in red tape on them, and stood in silence.

Were they demonstrating against the imprisonment and barbaric flogging by Saudi authorities of blogger Raif Badawi, whose wife and three children have settled in Sherbrooke? Or in support of the brave comics in other countries who risk imprisonment by using humour to criticize repressive regimes?

Neither. They were defending their own claim to a right to a television audience for jokes like this:

“Do you know why Jews give gold IUDs to their wives? Because they love to get into their money.”

That’s one of the jokes in an early version of the script, published in Le Journal de Montréal, for a presentation of an award during the Oliviers by star comics Mike Ward and Guy Nantel.

The theme of the script was freedom of expression, and that joke was an example of the ones about minorities, unattractive people and other underdogs in society that supposedly are no longer allowed on television.

The video opening of the show made it clear who was to blame for this situation: humourless pressure groups, including minorities.

Ward and Nantel didn’t perform their number in the show. They pulled out after failing in several attempts to rewrite their script to satisfy a lawyer for the company insuring the show’s broadcaster, Radio-Canada, and its producer, the Quebec comedy industry professionals’ association, against the cost of possible legal action.

(Yes, comedy is an industry in Quebec, supplied by a publicly supported “national comedy school,” of which Ward and Nantel are graduates.)

So what the comics were protesting against was that somebody else refused to put their money where the comics’ mouths were.

And while asserting their own freedom of expression, the comics in the audience applauded when one award winner, Louis Morissette, demanded immunity for them from criticism. The thin-skinned Morissette lectured the public that it must shut up and tolerate offensive humour, or change the channel.

Amid the adolescent tantrum, a rare dissenting voice was that of another winner, Martin Matte. “Artists or communications people who drape themselves in freedom of expression to get away with low nastiness or words that incite hatred make me uncomfortable,” he said in accepting his award. “I don’t support that.”

Adults know that freedom of expression isn’t absolute. And there is no fundamental right to a television audience or, for that matter, a newspaper column (I know, I’ve checked all the charters).

In my business, we have an expression: “lawyering.” It means to have a lawyer for the people who pay the bills go over an article before it’s published to suggest how to avoid legal action afterward.

Anyway, the advent of the Internet has made censorship futile in societies that don’t block their citizens’ Internet access, as Ward and Nantel themselves proceeded to demonstrate.

Source: Don Macpherson: Quebec’s unfunny comics have no right to an audience | National Post

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Descendants of Komagata Maru passengers ‘pleased’ by apology

2016/05/18 Leave a comment

Apologies if made should be done in the House. As former PM Harper discovered, doing so outside satisfies no one (see my earlier Komagatu Maru Apology). Will be particularly powerful with 17 Canadian Sikh MPs:

A century after her great-grandfather was turned away from Canada while on board the Komagata Maru, Sukhi Ghuman will be in the House of Commons this week to hear the Prime Minister apologize for the slight.

“It’s staggering. I don’t think [my great-grandfather] ever thought this moment would come,” says Ms. Ghuman, 36, who will join other descendants of passengers to witness Wednesday’s apology, along with B.C. Premier Christy Clark.

“We’re all just astonished and very pleased Prime Minister [Justin] Trudeau has decided to do a formal apology.”

 Mr. Trudeau will be seeking to make amends for what happened in 1914 when the Komagatu Maru arrived in Vancouver’s harbour from Hong Kong with 376 passengers, mostly Sikhs from India.

Only 24 were allowed to land, while the rest remained on board the ship for two months – victims of the era’s exclusionary laws. The ship’s passengers and crew then returned to India, where 19 people were killed on its arrival in Calcutta in a skirmish with British soldiers. Others were jailed.

Harnam Singh Sohi – Ms. Ghuman’s great-grandfather – came from Punjab hoping to work in Vancouver to provide funds for his family in India and bring them to Canada.

Once the ship returned to India, he forever ruled out returning to Canada.

Former prime minister Stephen Harper apologized in 2008, but not in Parliament. Some who were seeking an apology said few knew about Mr. Harper’s apology until it was over.

On Wednesday, Mr. Trudeau will follow up on a long-standing promise and deliver a formal apology in Parliament.

“The laws that were discriminatory against people considered undesirable were passed in Parliament. So the apology being given in Parliament is a circling back to rectify that original wrong,” says Naveen Girn of Vancouver, who has curated exhibitions about the Komagata Maru at Simon Fraser University and Lower Mainland museums.

Mr. Girn, who will also be in Ottawa for the event, notes that a parliamentary apology means the amends are forever preserved in Hansard, which is important.

Source: Descendants of Komagata Maru passengers ‘pleased’ by apology – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Historical Recognition, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Sorry, no sex-ed, please — we’re Canadians: Cohn

2016/05/18 Leave a comment

More balanced assessment than Heather Mallick’s (Sex-ed compromise is short-sighted: Accommodating body-shaming parents is a betrayal of Canadian multiculturalism):

The most maddening and exasperating aspect of last year’s protests was the attempt by a minority of people — motivated by religion, culture or ideology — to impose their views on the vast majority of parents who support modern sex education for their children. The protesters argued, absurdly and selfishly, that if they disliked the sex-ed curriculum, everyone else’s children should also be deprived of that education.

It was an utterly anti-democratic example of the intolerance (and tyranny) of the minority imposing its unsupported views on everyone else — aided by some opposition Progressive Conservative MPPs and abetted by their current leader, Patrick Brown. What made their anti-sex-ed campaign even more objectionable was that their protests were so pointless — for the simple reason that anyone with a religious objection could easily opt out, taking their child out of class.

Don’t like it, don’t take it. But don’t take away my child’s right to a modern education.

Despite that opt-out option, hundreds of parents escalated their protests by withdrawing their children from all classes last spring (not just sex-ed instruction). Many of them also delayed enrolment in the public school system last September to ratchet up the pressure.

Against that backdrop of disruptive protests, Thorncliffe Park principal Jeff Crane undertook extensive consultations. He proposed an alternative class for those first graders whose parents refused to let them see or hear any explicit references to their anatomy — exposing them, at least, to the rest of the health and physical education curriculum.

Did he go too far in acquiescing to unreasonable demands?

In sex-ed, as in sex itself, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Compromise can be a good thing if it minimizes the harm that might come from depriving first graders of any sex-ed at all should their parents persist with boycotts.

The religious objectors had the right, under our existing system, to deprive their children of essential learning. Now, these students will at least benefit from the rest of the curriculum, notwithstanding their parents’ obstinacy.

That’s better than the alternative of an outright boycott. The key point is that all other students, in this school and across the province, will still get unexpurgated sex-ed classes that don’t dilute the overall curriculum.

A child’s interests should always come first. In this case, a principled principal at Thorncliffe Park has shown us that “reasonable accommodation” with unreasonable parents can produce a rational compromise that serves society.

Source: Sorry, no sex-ed, please — we’re Canadians: Cohn | Toronto Star

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The anti-Trump: Sadiq Khan and triumph of mainstream Islam – iPolitics

2016/05/18 Leave a comment

Shenaz Kermalli on Sadiq Khan’s win:

Last year, we saw Muslims in Canada unite strategically for the first time in a non-partisan, grassroots organization to achieve a single goal — to increase the participation of Canadian Muslims in the democratic process. This, coupled with the former government’s crude anti-Muslim strategy (not unlike the tactics employed by Zac Goldsmith, Sadiq Khan’s Conservative Party competitor), was a key factor in bringing Justin Trudeau’s pro-immigration party to power. We’ve also seen Maryam Monsef, who came to Canada an as Afghan refugee, sworn in as minister of Democratic Institutions in Trudeau’s cabinet, and Ginella Massa, a hijab-clad journalist, become an on-camera reporter for the Toronto-based CityTV.

Britons, too, have seen a rise in the number of British Muslims taking on high-profile roles. From Nadiya Hussain — winner of the popular television program The Great British Bake-Off — to Somali-born and London-raised Mo Farah, winner of two Olympic Gold medals in 2013, it has been exhilarating to see Muslims make headlines in stories that were not about suicide attacks or beheadings.

In the U.S., we saw videos of Dalia Mogahed, director of research at a DC social policy institute, go viral after she smoothly took on contentious questions about the hijab and radicalization on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah — using U.S. polling figures as evidence that there was no correlation between the two. We also saw professional fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad become the first U.S. athlete to complete in the Olympics as an identifiable Muslim.

None of these people ever publicly condemned ISIS’s abhorrent actions during their moments of fame for a very simple reason: It wasn’t in their remit. They are all skilled professionals in their own right — recognized as Muslims but celebrated for the extraordinary skills they use to contribute to mainstream society.

Which is the way it should be. Muslims are no different from anyone else. For that reason, their achievements should be commended no more, or less, than anyone else’s.

Perhaps the next step in fostering genuine equity in society is for news outlets to drop the ‘Muslim’ descriptor altogether. Would it have made headlines across the world if a Jewish or Hindu mayor had won the London mayoral race, or The Great British Bake-Off?

Canadian journalist Muhammad Lila asked the right question after Sadiq won the mayoral race: “Wouldn’t it be nice if one day Muslims could just do stuff, without pointing out their religion?”

Source: The anti-Trump: Sadiq Khan and triumph of mainstream Islam – iPolitics

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France’s Weird Jihadi Re-Education Camps Could Become ISIS Incubators – The Daily Beast

2016/05/18 Leave a comment

Valid debate, given the prevalence of radicalization within French prisons:

Young men from the northern districts of this most Muslim city in France are expected be among the first to be called up when the government in Paris kicks off its Orwellian new plan to fight the so-called Islamic State.

The idea is to herd suspected extremists into mysterious “deradicalization centers” all over the country. There are an estimated 9,000 radicalized—or “potentially radicalized”—jihadis believed to be in France, officials say. Another 2,000 French nationals are thought to have gone to Syria or Iraq to fight for the Islamic State.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls said last week that France will establish as many as 13 centers all over the country—picture an odd mix of halfway house, prison, and sleepover camp—where Islamist radicals or those who show signs of wanting to join the jihad in Syria and Iraq will be housed and “re-educated.” Oh, and they’ll be monitored “day and night” for 10 months while wearing special uniforms, Valls said.

But will Valls’s centers help stem the rising tide of radicalism in France or will they become, as one Muslim leader in southern France put it, a “French Guantanamo”?

Some say it would be better to help French Muslim religious leaders police their own. Several are quietly teaching their adherents how best to fight ISIS. But since some of them adhere to fundamentalist Salafi doctrine, they often are labeled as Islamist political extremists.

The core, critical difference is that followers of ISIS are takfiris intent on waging their murderous version of jihad against those who do not share their beliefs down to the letter, including fellow Muslims.

Most Muslims, even the very devout and conservative, do not agree. Indeed, they see the takfiris as deeply dangerous and divisive for the global community of believers. But these are hard distinctions for an aggressively secular French government to make.

“My combat against Daesh [ISIS] is very well known but it doesn’t make the papers,” Sheikh Abdel Hadi, the Algerian-born imam at the Es-Sunnah mosque in a gritty area of Marseille, told The Daily Beast. “We know our people better than the politicians in France do.”

Abdel Hadi, 54, has been giving courses to young people all over France, Italy, and Spain about how best to explain to Muslims and non-Muslims that ISIS’s ideology has nothing to do with Islam, and he has shown them how to prevent ISIS from recruiting.

In contrast, Valls’s plan calls for specially trained psychological counselors and teachers who will administer a treatment program for men and women between the ages of 18 and 30 who haven’t been convicted of committing actual crimes but whom judges deem a threat to the republic.

“Each era has its challenges,” Valls said at a Paris press conference last Monday. “The fight against jihad is undoubtedly the big challenge of our generation. Radicalization and terrorism are linked. We are faced with a stubborn phenomenon that has widely spread through society and which threatens it because it could expand massively.”

Asiem el Difraoui, a political scientist known for his studies on jihadists, told Le Parisiennewspaper that he was against what he called “these jihadist academies” because the group setting might foster radicalism much the way the French prison system does, not discourage it.

“Some radicals are masters are dissimulation,” he said. “All you need is one leader in there to take over the group.”

Source: France’s Weird Jihadi Re-Education Camps Could Become ISIS Incubators – The Daily Beast

Filed under Radicalization Tagged with ,

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