Lawyer’s lawsuit highlights Ottawa’s court clashes over Charter rights

2015/09/22 Leave a comment

A case worth watching and the fine balance between ‘fearless advice and loyal implementation.’ Watching the Government’s track record before the Courts suggests that he may have a point:

Edgar Schmidt was once a lawyer earning $155,000 a year for the federal Justice Department, examining proposed laws for consistency with the Charter of Rights. But he felt uneasy about the way he was told to do his job, believing that officials in his own department – and the Justice Minister himself – were involving him in breaking the law. So he sued his employer.

Monday, in an Ottawa courtroom, his lawsuit against the Justice Minister, deputy justice minister and the department comes to trial, calling attention to an issue that has received little notice thus far in the federal election campaign: the Conservative government’s frequent clashes with the courts over the Charter of Rights.

The Justice Minister is required under a 1985 law to tell Parliament if a proposed law is not “consistent” with the Charter. To Mr. Schmidt, a law is either consistent or it is not. But his superiors in the department didn’t agree.

“Oh, that’s not what we do,” he says he was told. “We ask ourselves whether there’s an argument.” And even if the argument has less than a five-per-cent chance of success in the courts, it can still be “credible” – in other words, consistent.

“That is a kind of doublespeak,” the now-retired Mr. Schmidt says. (The justice department suspended him when he sued and, after six months without pay, he retired.) “Most of us, when we hear the word ‘credible,’ think ‘worthy of being believed.’ But that’s not what the department meant.”

If he wins, “it means government will likely pay a lot more attention to the Charter consistency of their legislation,” he said in an interview.

The Schmidt case lacks the sex appeal of the Mike Duffy trial, about alleged fraud and bribery in the Senate, or the criminal trial of Bruce Carson, a former staffer in the Prime Minister’s Office, charged with influence peddling. Nor is it limited to the current government; the Justice Department’s interpretation of the 1985 law goes back many years.

But the trial raises sharp questions on governing in the Charter era for the Conservative government. No other government has clashed so often with the courts on Charter rights.

From refugee health-care cuts, to mandatory minimum sentences for illegal gun possession, to an end to supervised use of illegal drugs at a Vancouver medical clinic, to retroactive loss of early parole for non-violent offenders, many Conservative laws have been struck down by the courts. (Three Supreme Court judges supported the mandatory minimums; but in several other cases, the court was unanimous in rejecting Conservative laws.)

To the federal government, the case is about carving out a space for elected politicians, not judges, to decide which laws to write. “Democracy is about who makes the difficult decisions about what a ‘right answer’ might be,” the Justice Department argues in an affidavit filed with the Federal Court of Canada. “It is for the Minister alone to decide whether he concludes that he has ascertained that a provision in a bill is inconsistent with guaranteed rights.”

It says that Mr. Schmidt’s approach to examining legislation would harm the principle that the civil service is neutral and supports the government of the day. “Political neutrality calls for an examination standard that supports the Minister in performing his duties, not one which purports to dictate how he should exercise them.”

But to the 62-year-old Mr. Schmidt, the government’s neutrality argument is faulty. “It starts from the wrong premise. It assumes that your loyalty is owed to the government. It’s not. The public service owes its loyalty to the Canadian democratic constitutional state.” He likens Justice Department lawyers to auditors for Enron, a U.S. energy company that engaged in fraud, who deemed their job to serve the executives, rather than the company itself.

Source: Lawyer’s lawsuit highlights Ottawa’s court clashes over Charter rights – The Globe and Mail

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Canada-Québec: le grand rendez-vous manqué | Bouchard

2015/09/22 Leave a comment

I have the greatest respect for Prof Bouchard, and the work we [the Multiculturalism Division within CIC] did with him in 2010-11 to capture the nuances between multiculturalism and interculturalism was among the most interesting work we did (for the summary charts see: Table 9: Diversity Paradigms, Table 10: Multiculturalism/ Interculturalisme Comparison).

Where I would disagree with him is that Canada has not accommodated Quebec (it has, but not to the extent that he and others may like, two examples being the Quebec Pension Plan and the Cullen-Couture Immigration agreement). He also implies more opposition between interculturalism and multiculturalism than is warranted, although he recognized that the explicit emphasis on integration by Minister Kenney made differences smaller.

Others in Quebec have been much less nuanced, portraying multiculturalism in Canada as ‘anything goes relativism’ while ignoring that it is within the Canadian constitutional and legal framework (including the primacy of official language rights), and was always within a context of  fostering integration, participation and equality:

Ce qui différencie l’interculturalisme québécois du multiculturalisme canadien, c’est entre autres le fait que, ici, la majorité francophone se perçoit comme une minorité menacée à l’échelle de l’Amérique du Nord — ce qui n’est évidemment pas le cas pour la majorité anglophone du Canada. « Mais s’il y a une majorité au Québec, il y a aussi des minorités, ajoute Gérard Bouchard. En conséquence, le rapport majorité/minorités est fondamental dans la vie interculturelle québécoise. »

« Un Québécois francophone d’aujourd’hui, c’est d’abord quelqu’un qui s’identifie à son groupe francophone parce qu’il a des aspirations communes, qu’il a aussi des craintes et des inquiétudes et qu’il a une volonté d’agir pour surmonter ces problèmes, résume-t-il. Et tout cela se manifeste à tout moment. »

Selon Gérard Bouchard, c’est d’ailleurs ce qu’on a vu se manifester au moment de la crise des accommodements et de la commission qu’il a coprésidée. « Une très vive inquiétude est apparue au sein de la majorité francophone à cause de la perception négative qu’elle a développée des immigrants et des minorités », observe-t-il. Même chose lors du débat sur la Charte de la laïcité : « Il y a deux ans, on a vu encore la majorité se manifester, dit-il, et les minorités descendre alors dans la rue pour protester contre la majorité ! On se trouve donc toujours au coeur de ce rapport majorité/minorités ! »

Si, dans les années 1960, le Canada avait accepté la notion des deux nations fondatrices, voilà qui aurait changé l’histoire, estime Gérard Bouchard, « puisque nous nous serions alors sentis en sécurité sur notre territoire. Ça, ça a été un grand rendez-vous manqué de la part du Canada anglais ». En fait, nuance-t-il, c’est avant tout un rendez-vous manqué de notre point de vue, car, du côté du Canada anglais, ce ne l’est pas. « Ce ne l’est pas, déclare M. Bouchard, puisque pour eux tout est très bien ainsi. En effet, jusqu’à maintenant, le Canada a su survivre et a évité la rupture en prenant certaines mesures pour dénouer les petites crises et en gérant intelligemment et prudemment les choses… Et les Canadiens anglais savent y faire, lance-t-il, puisque ça fait longtemps qu’ils composent avec le problème francophone. »

Et M. Bouchard est formel : « Jamais le Canada anglais n’acceptera d’accommoder le Québec et jamais il ne répondra aux demandes du Québec ! Les Canadiens anglais prennent simplement des mesures d’atermoiement pour que les choses n’éclatent pas… et on ne peut pas dire qu’ils ne réussissent pas bien puisque… regardez où nous en sommes aujourd’hui ! »

Source: Canada-Québec: le grand rendez-vous manqué | Le Devoir

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Stephen Harper explains ‘old-stock Canadians’ comment: Defining the Term and What the Numbers Say

2015/09/21 1 Comment

Old and New Stock Ethnic Origins.001Hard to avoid drawing conclusion that this was not a slip of the tongue and was somewhat calculated given Teneycke’s comment that this was part of the ‘war room’ discussions. Even harder to believe that his definition, as stated Friday, second-generation or more, is how his base (and most Canadians) would hear it.

That being said, hard to find a neutral term for ‘old stock Canadians’ – I tend to use ‘long-established’ Canadians (in my mind  third-generation or more) rather than the ‘mainstream’ (excluding others).

The above chart shows the generations of different ethnic groups. Using the third generation definition, ‘old stock’ refers to European, mainly Western and Northern European ethnic groups (other African reflects the long presence of Blacks, Oceania is largely Australian). The difference between ‘old stock’ and ‘new stock’ visible minorities is clear.

In Quebec, “de souche” has a longer-term context, dating back to the original immigration from France before la Conquête, as is periodically played out in Quebec identity politics (e.g., Bouchard-Taylor Commission, Quebec Values Charter:

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper has elaborated on what he meant when he alluded to “old-stock Canadians” during last night’s leaders’ debate, saying it refers to “Canadians who have been the descendants of immigrants for one or more generations.”

Harper used the term Thursday while responding to criticism from Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau about the government’s move to scrap health-care services for some refugees.

The Tory leader asserted that the measures imposed by his government in 2012 to deny special health care to people whose claim for refugee status had been denied were supported by new immigrants and “old-stock” Canadians alike.

His retort immediately drew ire on social media, as many people seemed confused about what the phrase actually meant.

In his response to CBC News reporter Hannah Thibedeau’s question on Friday, Harper did not repeat the term — nor fully answer why he used it.

The Conservative leader repeated his position that the government should not give special health-care benefits “better than received by ordinary Canadians to people who are clearly not refugees and have been judged as such.”

“I know that that is a position supported widely through the Canadian population, it’s supported by Canadians who are themselves immigrants and also supported by the rest of us, by Canadians who have been the descendants of immigrants for one or more generations.”

….Conservative spokesman Kory Teneycke said after the debate, however, that he doesn’t “think there’s any insult or malice in that phrase.”
The Tory election war room had obviously anticipated the phrase could become a point of contention. Before Friday’s event, campaign representatives circulated an email to media that included quotes by Liberal politicians, including Trudeau, that contained the term.

The email cited a 2007 Toronto Star article that reported Trudeau had wondered in an earlier interview with a Montreal newspaper whether the Québécois nation included everyone in Quebec or just the “old stock” pioneers of the province.

The Conservatives also highlighted a 2014 quote from former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, translated from French, and a 2008 quote from current Liberal candidate Pablo Rogriguez that included the term, albeit in varying contexts.

Source: Stephen Harper explains ‘old-stock Canadians’ comment – Politics – CBC News

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How Ottawa’s war on data threatens all that we know about Canada

2015/09/21 Leave a comment

Good in-depth long read by Anne Kingston in Macleans on the Government’s reductions in data collection and dissemination (beyond the cancellation of long-form Census data).

Likely that the transition books being prepared by StatsCan include an option for reintroducing the long-form Census in the event of a change of government):

Disappearing data is only one part of a larger narrative of a degradation of knowledge—one that extends from federal scientists being prevented from talking about their research on topics as mundane as snow to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission being forced to take the federal government to court to obtain documents that should have been available under Access to Information. The situation has descended into farce: Library and Archives Canada (LAC), entrusted with preserving historic papers, books, photographs, paintings, film and artifacts, was so eroded by cuts that, a few years ago, author Jane Urquhart was unable to access her own papers, donated to LAC in the 1990s.

The result is a crisis in what Canadians know—and are allowed to know—about themselves. The threat this poses to a functioning democracy has been raised over the past several years, most recently, in the massive, damning June 2015 report “Dismantling democracy: Stifling debate and dissent in Canada”produced by Voices-Voix, a non-partisan coalition of more than 200 organizations and 5,000 individuals.

Less discussed, however, is how data erasure also threatens the economy, industry, the arts, and the country’s ability to compete internationally. The 2013 report “Information management in the Canadian federal government” is a title not likely to attract the non-librarian reader. But the conclusions drawn by its authors, a librarian at Carleton University and an information-management consultant, are chilling. Isla Jordan and Ulla de Stricker describe a country “without access to large parts of its institutional memory, and leaders without access to the information needed for strategic decision-making.” Toni Samek, a professor at the school of library and information studies at the University of Alberta, puts it more succinctly. Canada is facing a “national amnesia,” she says, a condition that will block its ability to keep government accountable, remember its past and plan its future.

Canada’s closed-data stance is taking root at the very moment “open data” and “knowledge economy” are global mantras. The OECD and World Bank have led the charge for open-platform disclosures. In 2013, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration launched openFDA to provide easy public access. Last year, the U.S. Federal Reserve posted full and revealing transcripts of meetings held by then chairman Ben Bernanke in the weeks and months leading to the 2008 recession—there for anyone with an Internet connection to read. U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2016 budget calls for an emphasis on making data “legally and practically” more accessible.

Canada certainly talks the talk. Last year, Tony Clement, Conservative MP and Treasury Board president, announced the Action Plan on Open Government 2014-16 to “foster greater openness and accountability . . . and, at the same time, create a more cost-effective, efficient and responsive government.” Rona Ambrose, the minister of health, announced a Transparency and Openness Framework that included a commitment to begin “transparently publishing drug safety reviews.”

Those dependent on these data balk at such claims. “Health Canada has improved its transparency in a few small areas, but overall, does an abysmal job,” says Joel Lexchin, a drug-industry watchdog and professor in the school of health policy and management at Toronto’s York University. “[It] doesn’t even make public a list of drugs withdrawn for safety reasons,” he says.

Access to federal scientific data is equally dire. Canada is in the Dark Ages, compared with the U.S., says biologist Jeremy Kerr, a professor at the University of Ottawa. Kerr works in climate change, ecology and conservation—“data-hungry fields,” he says. “I do big-picture ecology, where we think across countries and continents. But rapid scientific process stops at the Canadian border.” Detailed information about Canada isn’t available, says Kerr, noting that his American colleagues “make this data freely available.” Part of the problem is long-standing, he says, arising from “the difficult nature of federal-provincial relationships.” But “accessibility of data in Canada is becoming less, not more,” he says. “We are not collecting a lot of data that used to be routine.”

Canada not only lags other governments, but also international business, says Jan Kestle, founder and president of Toronto-based Environics Analytics: “Everyone is moving toward setting up data-governance processes inside companies to collect information and safeguard it,” she says.

But where digitization has helped other governments and companies make more information available, it is having the opposite effect here. The edict to eliminate information deemed “redundant, outdated and trivial” (known as “ROT”) gives federal managers licence to decide what data should be cut and what kept, says Li, the U of T librarian. “There is no transparency, oversight, or published criteria for the decision-making process,” she says. While the U.S. Federal Depository Library Program tracks U.S. government-publication digitization efforts, Canada has no such mechanism. It’s LAC’s mandate to preserve federal government information, but there has not been a comprehensive web crawl since November 2008….

Economic considerations are cited routinely to justify cutbacks in collecting, analyzing and digitizing information. A closer look at recent data erasure, however, suggests it runs counter to sound economic strategy. The glaring example is the elimination of the mandatory long-form census, a detailed survey of Canadians taken every five years. Its replacement, the voluntary National Household Survey, added $22 million to the cost of the 2011 census; the response rate dropped from 94 per cent in 2006 to 69 per cent, which makes the data totally unreliable. “A response rate of 75 per cent is the minimum required for sample accuracy,” says StatsCan’s former chief statistician, Munir Sheikh, who famously resigned in 2010 after Tony Clement, then industry minister, stated publicly that the decision to cut the long-form census came from within StatsCan. “The federal government misrepresented my advice,” Sheikh told Maclean’s, adding that ongoing cuts to the agency have undermined its credibility. StatsCan stands by the data: “The results for the 2011 census are of very high quality, as in previous censuses,” says Peter Frayne of StatsCan.

Five years later, we are seeing the effects. Without the baseline provided by the long-form census, says statistician Doug Elliott, who runs Regina consultancy QED Information Systems, “when an employment rate or CPI [consumer price index] doesn’t make any sense, your immediate suspicion now is that the number is wrong, rather than trying to figure out why.” Voluntary surveys also create biased data, says Sheikh: Response rates from the very rich, the very poor, rural areas, immigrants and Aboriginal communities tend to be far lower—so these groups are not well-represented. “People who do not respond well to a voluntary survey are the very people social policy tries to help,” he says. “So if you were to base policy on data received, you’d say, ‘Gee, we don’t have a poverty problem in this country.’ ”

“You see this continual silencing of people who are not ‘winners,’ for lack of a better word,” says Armine Yalnizyan, a senior economist with the Ottawa-based Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. “The result is that the government can pretend they’re not there. It’s like, ‘If you’ve got any needs, we can’t hear you, we can’t see you, la la la.’”

Sheikh believes we’d be better off with no census data than what we have now: “Then you do the best you can using reasoning, logic, and whatever other stats may be available [on which] to base your decision. But when you have wrong information, chances are, it will put you on the wrong path to policy development.”

Source: How Ottawa’s war on data threatens all that we know about Canada

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Immigration and refugee policies centre stage in federal election campaign: Party summaries

2015/09/21 Leave a comment

Star article summarizing party positions (pending formal release of their platforms):

Conservatives: The Conservatives are all about staying the course — with perhaps some small refinements along the way. Recent promises including trying to get the provincial governments to speed up processing of foreign credentials and increasing the number of loans to immigrants to upgrade their skills. Harper has pledged that his government would welcome 10,000 additional Syrian and Iraqi refugees — with an emphasis on religious minorities and those who are vulnerable over the next four years and create an emergency relief fund that would match Canadian donations up to $100 million for Syria.

NDP: The NDP want to repeal and rewrite parts of Bill C-24 — Strengthening the Citizenship Act — in particular the revocation and intent-to-reside clauses that are the subject a constitutional challenge. The party also wants to reduce the wait times in processing family reunification applications as well as increasing the number of Syrian refugees to Canada. NDP leader Thomas Mulcair has promised 10,000 Syrian refugees will be welcomed to Canada by the end of the year, with another 9,000 annually until 2019. And the party plans to make sure to reinstate health care for refugees.

Liberals: John McCallum, the Liberals’ former immigration critic, said reducing processing times for family reunification applications is high on the party’s list. That would mean more money and more resources to the department to cut wait times. As well the most egregious clauses of Bill C-24 would be rewritten. The Liberals would also increase the number of government supported refugees from Syria. Leader Justin Trudeau has said that he would welcome 25,000 refugees — many of whom would be government sponsored.

Source: Immigration and refugee policies centre stage in federal election campaign | Toronto Star

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Subtle racism is the real threat: Cole

2015/09/19 Leave a comment

Desmond Cole on subtle racism, following UofT’s ‘White Student Union’ controversy:

The SFWC [Students For Western Civilization] website also features an interview with University of New Brunswick professor Ricardo Duchesne, who claims that “there is a real bias in university against white students, against white history.” Duchesne is the founder of the Council of European Canadians, whose mission statement proclaims that “Canada should remain majority, not exclusively, European in its ethnic composition and cultural character.”

For the moment, these messages of blatant white supremacy, and resentment for racialized people and movements, are thankfully unwelcome in mainstream Canadian conversation. That could change, of course, which is why it is important to challenge and oppose Duchesne, SFWC and their sympathizers. But we must also recognize them as merely the leading edge of a racist undercurrent in Canada, a mainstream fear that insists white people are under attack, but skilfully avoids examining what whiteness is or where it originated.

Race is a social construct, a false classification of humanity with no basis in science. However, thanks to our human history of European colonialism, slavery, and appropriation, whiteness has been established in Canada as an unscrutinized norm, a blank standard against which all other races are measured.

In Canada, white people are rarely named as a definitive group of people with a common identity or culture, a collective existence or set of values. Instead, whiteness stands invisible behind the camera and the microphone, examining the actions of others and demanding an explanation without acknowledging its role in framing nearly all mainstream conversions.

This is why, for example, a Canadian national newspaper can publish the headline, “We can’t keep tiptoeing around black-on-black violence,” as if the public is consumed with some other form of intra-racial violence, or would even validate that, say, white-on-white violence, exists or is a problem. It is why I, as a well-known black Canadian, am routinely asked my opinion about the actions of alleged black criminals, when it is the opinions of our white-dominated media that truly guide that narrative.

Most political observers and even casual news watchers remember city councillor and former mayor Rob Ford’s statement that “Oriental people work like dogs.” That kind of shameless racism gnaws at our Canadian sensibilities. But few people remember that Ford, whose heritage is hardly indigenous to North America, also said that East Asian people are “slowly taking over.”

Ford didn’t have to say what “Orientals” were taking over or, more importantly, from whom they were taking over. Similarly, when Conservative politician Larry Miller recently said that Muslim women in Canada who cover their faces should “stay the hell where you came from,” he did so without irony despite the fact that his own ancestry is not indigenous to Canada.

We can all recognize overt racism, and we should all condemn it, but our bigger problem is the subtle, unexamined sort. While we may reject uncomfortable notions of white student groups and organizations that promote European “cultural character,” most of us are more accepting of the equally racist notion of a dominant “Western civilization” they employ as a substitute for talking openly about whiteness.

Our unacknowledged assumptions, and our language about human diversity are better indicators of racism and discrimination than the impolite outbursts we seem so prone to recognizing. The clumsy expressions of hatred on local university campuses this week are like weeds — we can tear out the unsightly offshoots that pop up, but ultimately we have to address the problem at its root.

 Source: Subtle racism is the real threat: Cole | Toronto Star

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , ,

Kent Roach & Craig Forcese: Press the reset button on security

2015/09/19 2 Comments

Always worth reading, and likely one of the first in a series of ‘transition advice’ should there be a change of government:

The problem is, however, that our anti-terrorism dilemmas are more acute than “C-51 good; C-51 bad.” To be sure, we believe strongly that it is bad. It infringes the Charter rights of Canadians without appreciable security gains.

That said, Canadians are right to be concerned about terrorism. A close examination of the data suggests it is not an existential threat, but it is a real one. Terrorist attacks are overt acts of political violence, the scope and lethality of which are limited only by the capacity and imagination of their perpetrators. They are unpredictable and designed to make us do things, or at the very least fear things. Terrorism is a conscious assault on freedom, in a way that is dramatically different from the accidental perils of living. Such conduct demands a response from the state.

But Canadians are also right to be concerned about the freedoms sacrificed by C-51. They should be even more alarmed that those rights are sacrificed unnecessarily, for no appreciable security gain. And they should be especially concerned that no party has so far shown itself prepared to grapple with the real problems that ail anti-terrorism efforts in Canada.

In our new book, False Security: The Radicalization of Canadian Anti-terrorism, we urge that C-51’s misguided “quick fixes” are no substitute for efficient terrorism investigations and prosecutions leading to convictions and meaningful prison terms for terrorism offences. They are also no substitute at the front end for multi-disciplinary and community-based programs attempting to curb radicalization to violent extremism, including in prison.

Bill C-51, read in association with the earlier Bill C-44, runs the serious risk of undermining anti-terrorism efforts, while at the same time sacrificing elemental constitutional rights. But even if C-51 were swept from the earth, we would still have a woefully deficient anti-terrorism strategy. There are many reasons for this, but two stand out.

First, as compared to other democracies, Canadian terrorism prosecutions are unnecessarily unwieldy, complex and remarkably infrequent. The inquiry into the Air India bombings pointed urgently to the need to resolve this issue in its 2010 report, and also underscored long-standing (and still persisting) difficulties in the process by which CSIS intelligence can be used as evidence in criminal trials.

The government ignored the Air India report even in the face of decisions, like one from the famous Toronto 18 case, where a trial judge reported that, “CSIS was aware of the location of the terrorist training camp.… This information was not provided to the RCMP, who had to uncover that information by their own means.”

Any suggestion that C-51 fixes the structural reasons for this dangerous conduct is nonsense. It allows information to be shared about just about everything, but does not compel CSIS to share information about terrorism.

Second, Canada lags behind other democracies in developing multidisciplinary programs to counter violent extremism. Counter violence extremism initiatives require close attention, and then careful consideration of empirical evidence on how best to dissuade persons from moving toward political violence (or for those at risk of further radicalization in prison, disengage from it).

Bill C-51’s new speech crime, the government’s political messaging and its near exclusive focus on hard-nosed tactics without a meaningful overall anti-terrorism strategy are serious barriers to success.

Exactly what the parties would do in these and related areas if elected is unclear. Certainly, we welcome proposals for enhanced accountability review of the security services — long overdue and identified in detail by the Arar inquiry almost a decade ago. We support the idea of a more informed parliamentary process, including parliamentarians competent to review secret information. Our book outlines suggestions in both these areas.

But accountability reform alone is insufficient.

After Oct. 19, a government of some sort will take office. Canadians deserve a government willing to embrace complexity, and the maturity to step back from anti-terrorism as a subset of gotcha politics. There are members in each political party who share this ambition — we have spoken to them. We hope those voices are raised in the weeks to come.

Source: Kent Roach & Craig Forcese: Press the reset button on security

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Memorial Univ prof refuses to wear device for hearing disabled student, cites religious reasons

2015/09/19 Leave a comment

Hard to believe. And should her religion (unspecified) or religious beliefs not allow her to wear a transmitter, this has to be balanced against the right of the student to hear her lectures, which in my mind should prevail:

In 1996, CBC News reported that MUN sided with a student who filed a similar complaint against Panjabi for refusing to wear one based on religious reasons.

Panjabi was also reprimanded in 1985 for a similar complaint.

While in each of those cases Memorial University sided with the students, so far the Sears family has been given no clear solution.

Sears’s father, Bill Sears, told CBC Radio he is not satisfied with what he has heard from both MUN and the university’s centre for disabilities.

“All we know is that it’s going through the channels in there, but we have had no feedback,” he said.

“The Blundon Centre said they would work with the professor if William really wanted to stay in class, to come up with compromise — but to me, the compromise is that she wears the FM system. I don’t get the idea of her refusing.”

Bill Sears said he has been in touch with the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association and the Newfoundland and Labrador Human Rights Commission, which are both looking into the matter.

He said knowing what his son has had to go through in his life with regards to his hearing problems, only to face this now in what is supposed to be a place of higher learning, is deeply disturbing.

“To see him denied education is an absolute travesty. At university, to run into this situation — it blows my mind,” he said.

“I’d love to see where it is written that you can’t wear a microphone because of religion.”

Given that Panjabi appears to be a repeat offender, perhaps stronger disciplinary action is needed.
Source: MUN prof refuses to wear device for hearing disabled student, cites religious reasons – Newfoundland & Labrador – CBC News

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The Conservatives’ veiled pitch for the anti-Muslim vote: Delacourt

2015/09/18 Leave a comment

Delacourt has it right, both in terms of substance and politics:

What we have here is a textbook case of saying one thing and doing another in politics. The ‘saying’ part is for all the wrong reasons — the ‘doing’ part is for the right ones.

I suspect the Conservative government realized several years ago that it was legally impossible to ban veiled voting. Two attempts were made between 2007 and 2011. Both quietly died on the order paper.

Here’s why: It would amount to singling out certain members of the population for restricted rights. We do allow people to vote in Canada without showing their face at the ballot box — through proxies, or mail-in special ballots. How do you write a law that says some people don’t need to show their faces, but others do?

Moreover, a special law to prohibit the niqab would stomp all over Canadians’ rights to religious expression. That’s probably why the Justice Department lawyer felt he had to point out the non-mandatory aspect of the legislation in Federal Court.

Rather than explain this to Canadians, though, the Conservatives took the path of blustering about niqabs and sending dog-whistle signals to people uncomfortable or fearful about Muslims. Bad statesmanship. Easy politics, though.

We saw that earlier this year, as well, when the Conservatives sent out a fundraising email asking supporters to sign up if they agreed that it was “offensive” to wear a niqab or a hijab at citizenship ceremonies. The email left little doubt that the Conservatives were whipping up these sentiments for reasons of purest electoral politics.

The note was signed by Immigration Minister Chris Alexander and stirred up some controversy with his interchangeable use of ‘niqab’ and ‘hijab’; one is generally associated with full-face coverings, while the other, the hijab, is commonly used to describe a head covering.

To make things even more confusing, not all Conservatives have been using the word “offensive” when it comes to garments of religious expression. Kenney, for instance, said on Twitter in 2013: “A child is no less Canadian because she or he wears a kippa, turban, cross, or hijab to school.” Kenney sent out that missive in the midst of the Quebec debate over the wearing of religious symbols in public.

There’s still a month left in this election and it’s entirely possible that one of the eleventh-hour Conservative campaign promises will revolve around banning veiled voting — again. It would fit well with this week’s bluster on citizenship ceremonies.

This time we might ask them: Why did the last two attempts quietly die? Are they serious this time, or is this just another attempt to whip up some good old-fashioned intolerance?

What’s really being veiled here by all this talk about the niqab?

Source: The Conservatives’ veiled pitch for the anti-Muslim vote

Filed under Citizenship, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

ICYMI: Whose Neighborhood Is It? – The New York Times

2015/09/18 Leave a comment

Tom Edsall on some of the integration challenges in the US and the progress that has been made:

These suburban Detroit communities provide a case study in what has come to be called the “tipping point,” the point at which whites begin to leave a residential locale en masse as African-Americans or other minorities move in.

This phenomenon puzzled Thomas Schelling, a professor emeritus of economics at Harvard and a Nobel Laureate, who was struck by the lack of stable integrated communities. In 1971, he began work on a mathematical theory to explain the prevalence of racial segregation in a paper titled “Dynamic Models of Segregation,” published in the Journal of Mathematical Sociology.

Schelling’s famous thesis has been carefully summarized by Junfu Zhang, an economist at Clark University. Zhang writes:

Schelling’s most striking finding is that moderate preferences for same-color neighbors at the individual level can be amplified into complete residential segregation at the macro level. For example, if every agent requires at least half of her neighbors to be of the same color―a preference far from extreme―the final outcome, after a series of moves, is almost always complete segregation.
In other words, residential segregation can emerge even if initial preferences are very slight.

According to Schelling, Zhang writes,

“in an all-white neighborhood, some residents may be willing to tolerate a maximum of 5 percent black neighbors; others may tolerate 10 percent, 20 percent, and so on.

The ones with the lowest tolerance level will move out if the proportion of black residents exceeds 5 percent. If only blacks move in to fill the vacancies after the whites move out, then the proportion of blacks in the neighborhood may reach a level high enough to trigger the move-out of the next group of whites who are only slightly more tolerant than the early movers. This process may continue and eventually result in an all-black neighborhood.

Similarly, an all-black neighborhood may be tipped into an all-white neighborhood, and a mixed-race neighborhood can be tipped into a highly segregated one, depending on the tolerance.”

In the years since 1971, scholars have followed up on the Schelling argument with empirical studies.

Residential and public school integration remain an immense challenge. Affordable housing, one piece of the integrative process, got a boost from a favorable Supreme Court decision in June, Texas Department of Housing, that further empowers plaintiffs in housing discrimination cases. A second boost came from new HUD regulations issued in July requiring local governments “to take significant actions to overcome historic patterns of segregation, achieve truly balanced and integrated living patterns, promote fair housing choice, and foster inclusive communities.”

Government action has often been resisted but, over time, it has pulled millions of blacks into the mainstream of American life. From 1940 to 2014, the percentage of African-Americans ages 25 to 29 with high school degrees rose from 6.9 percent to 91.9 percent. Over the same period, the percentage of blacks with college degrees grew from 1.4 percent to 22.4 percent. From 1963 (a year before enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) to 2015, the percentage of blacks employed in management, professional and related occupations more than tripled, from 8.7 percent to 29.5 percent.

Although progress toward racial and ethnic integration has been sporadic – frequently one step forward, two steps back – credible progress has been made over the last 75 years. We have not come to the end of the story, but there are grounds for optimism.

Source: Whose Neighborhood Is It? – The New York Times

Filed under Integration, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

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