Widening Racial Disparities Underlie Rise in Child Deaths in the U.S.

2024/05/06 Leave a comment

Of note:

Thanks to advancements in medicine and insurance, mortality rates for children in the United States had been shrinking for decades. But last year, researchers uncovered a worrisome reversal: The child death rate was rising.

Now, they have taken their analysis a step further. A new study, published Saturday in The Journal of the American Medical Association, revealed growing disparities in child death rates across racial and ethnic groups. Black and Native American youths ages 1 to 19 died at significantly higher rates than white youths — predominantly from injuries such as car accidents, homicides and suicides.

Dr. Coleen Cunningham, chair of pediatrics at the University of California, Irvine, and the pediatrician in chief at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, who was not involved in the study, said the detailed analysis of the disparities documented “a sad and growing American tragedy.”

“Almost all are preventable,” she said, “if we make it a priority.”

Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University and Children’s Hospital of Richmond had previously revealed that mortality rates among children and adolescents had risen by 18 percent between 2019 and 2021. Deaths related to injuries had grown so dramatically that they eclipsed all public health gains.

The group, seeking to drill deeper into the worrying trend, obtained death certificate data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s public WONDER database and stratified it by race, ethnicity and cause for children ages 1 to 19. They found that Black and American Indian/Alaska Native children were not only dying at significantly higher rates than white children but that the disparities — which had been improving until 2013 — were widening.

The data also revealed that while the mortality rates for children overall took a turn for the worse around 2020, the rates for Black, Native American and Hispanic children had begun increasing much earlier, around 2014.

Between 2014 and 2020, the death rates for Black children and teenagers rose by about 37 percent, and for Native American youths by about by about 22 percent — compared with less than 5 percent for white youths.

“We knew we would find disparities, but certainly not this large,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, a professor of family medicine at the V.C.U. School of Medicine, who worked on the research. “We were shocked.”

The racial and ethnic disparities were most drastic when injuries were isolated from other causes of death. For example, Black children died by homicide at 10 times the rate of white children between 2016 and 2020. When the study’s lead author, Dr. Elizabeth Wolf, an associate professor of pediatrics at the V.C.U. School of Medicine, compared accidents with intentional injuries, the sobering realities of the mental health crisis came into focus.

Native American children died by suicide at more than twice the rate of white children, whose rate was already high.

“As a pediatrician, that really took my breath away,” she said.

Gun-related deaths, including accidents, homicides and suicides, were two to four times as high among Black and Native American youths than among white youths, and the risk of dying from a gun-related injury more than doubled among Black and Native American youths between 2013 and 2020.

The researchers also drew attention to disparities in other causes of death: Native American children died from pneumonia and the flu at three times the rate of white children, for example, and Black children died from asthma at almost eight times the rate of white children.

This particular study did not examine all of the variables that contribute to the causes of childhood illness, injury and death. Dr. Wolf said she hoped the paper would serve as a “wake-up call” and galvanize researchers to scrutinize the underlying factors.

Understanding the reasons for the increase in car accident deaths, for example, could determine whether redesigned intersections or targeted seatbelt campaigns would be the most effective intervention for a specific group.

For other childhood deaths, access to care is a likely factor, given that Black children with circulatory diseases are less likely to be referred for transplants and less likely to have a successful procedure compared to white children. Asthma-related disease and death are likely to be affected by access to interventions such as inhalers, as well as socioeconomic and environmental factors like air pollution.

At the same time, Dr. Woolf said, policymakers should not “wait for more research to identify the obvious next steps,” including mental health support for children and stricter gun laws. The public perception of gun violence among children is often focused on school shootings, he said, but statistically speaking, “the vast majority occur in communities across our country — day by day, one by one.”

Source: Widening Racial Disparities Underlie Rise in Child Deaths in the U.S.

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Social justice or medical expertise: What do patients want more from their doctors?

2024/05/06 Leave a comment

Rhetorical question for patients. One thing to have awareness and understanding of the social determinants of health and to improve data and understanding of health factors that affect different groups, but how will anti-oppression language improve health outcomes:

For over a year Canadian physicians have been debating the CanMEDS roles, which is a framework describing the competencies required of specialist doctors certified by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. These roles are taught in medical school and form part of the basis for the students’ evaluations.

The roles include physician as communicator, collaborator, leader, health advocate scholar and professional. The central role is physician as medical expert, which integrates the other roles.

In the March 2023 special issue of the Canadian Medical Education Journal, the CanMEDS 2025 interim report was distributed for open public feedback and included a suggestion to centre social justice anti-racism and anti-oppression, rather than medical expertise.

A massive push back from physicians against the decentering of medical expertise arose and has been continuing since publication of the report.

Now, in a March 2024 issue of the CJME, one of the authors of the March 2023 report and others are responding to the negative responses. They claim that opposition to the decentering of medical expertise simply represents “medicine perpetuat(ing) its own power” and maintaining “medicine as an institution steeped in power and privilege.”

This is a deadly serious issue for medical education and for the care of patients. It matters not whether a surgeon is engaged in social justice for the patient who makes it to the operating room. At that point only medical expertise counts.

I learned this during my training at St. Michael’s Hospital in the late 1970s. A man living in a shelter was admitted to hospital for an urgent heart valve replacement. The surgeons saved his life but were not focused on social justice. Their expertise and attention were directed to the patient and nothing else.

Of course, post surgically he had no place to live and hospital personnel had a duty to find him an adequate place to which he could be discharged. But that would be all for naught had it not been for the expertise of the surgeons. That determined everything else. Medical expertise trumped all.

Confronting inequities and racism in health care is inseparable from confronting system-wide and societal inequities. Doctors alone cannot solve that, but they can at least be competent physicians technically and remain current on the science and standards of care for ailing people.

Beyond that they may choose to engage as any other caring citizen and fight fiercely for justice, freedom and truth in the health care system and in general.

They cannot be taught, mandated, and scripted to do so in the detached world of academic medicine. That is elitism at its worst, as if doctors should lead the charge for social justice.

There is a certain personal irony for me. Nearly 20 years ago I gave the first advocacy lecture in the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine undergraduate curriculum. I stated up front to the students that I was not sure why I was even giving the lecture. I have given the same talk dozens of times since.

Here is how I introduced my talk and then with breathtaking hypocrisy continued on with the presentation:

“In my judgment, all advocacy means is being a socially responsible and good citizen, values both personal and ideological that are part of being a human and could not possibly — and maybe, should not — be taught by the universities. After all, what business is it of medical faculties to be teaching and evaluating political philosophies within the context of a curriculum?

“But how can the matter of advocacy be incorporated into medical practice and medical school curricula? It should be expected that physicians advocate on behalf of individual patients, who might benefit from an experimental therapy for a life-threatening disease. Physicians should actively intervene on behalf of a group of patients who are being denied access to a standard treatment. And physicians must intervene when a neighbourhood is at a health risk because, for example, of an environmental hazard.”

I still do not think that it is the business of medical faculties to be teaching and evaluating political philosophies within the context of a curriculum.

The public, if they were ever asked I am certain, would choose a competent surgeon, if that is all the surgeon could offer. They can secure their social justice elsewhere, with or without doctors.

Philip Berger is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a longstanding downtown Toronto physician.

Source: Social justice or medical expertise: What do patients want more from their doctors?

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Israel plans changes to Palestinian education to remake how children are taught

2024/05/04 Leave a comment

Hard to see how this will work. And of course, similar care needs to be taken with the Israeli curriculum. Good concluding quote:

…Yuli Tamir, a scholar and former cabinet minister who is president of Beit Berl College, said changes to schools can only succeed if they comes with much broader social and political change.

Ms. Tamir, who was Israel’s education minister from 2006 to 2009, provoked an outcry when as part of an effort to teach Israeli students about Palestinian history she reintroduced to textbooks a mention of the nakba – when Israeli forces drove hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes 1948 – and a map containing the green line, the pre-1967 borders of Israel.

It was a “mild change,” Ms. Tamir said, designed to foster understanding. It didn’t last long. “They took it out immediately when I left.”

By the same token, she said, teachers in Gaza should not be held uniquely responsible for fighting antisemitism when “the whole system hates Jews – the parents, the authorities, the health care,” she said.

It takes a change in governing priorities, she said, for education to successfully shift course.

“Curriculum is a representation of the state,” she said. “More than a flag. Or an anthem. This is what you tell your children you are all about.”

Source: Israel plans changes to Palestinian education to remake how children are taught

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La bouée de sauvetage des travailleurs temporaires coule

2024/05/04 Leave a comment

Of note, regarding open work permits for Temporary Foreign Workers:

De Vancouver à Gaspé, des personnes immigrantes attendent durant des mois la réponse à leur demande de permis ouvert pour travailleurs vulnérables afin de fuir les abus qu’elles subissent. Un programme d’urgence censé offrir cette protection rapidement est bloqué, selon cinq organisations qui accompagnent les travailleurs dans de telles démarches.

Une forme de soupape pour remédier aux risques du permis lié à un seul employeur, appelé « permis fermé », le programme a été lancé en 2019 avec la promesse de traiter les demandes en cinq jours. Ce délai est d’autant plus problématique que les responsables politiques l’utilisent pour se défendre des critiques, notamment formulées par le rapporteur spécial des Nations unies sur les formes contemporaines d’esclavage.

Mais cette manière « rapide » de « régler la situation des employés vulnérables », comme l’a décrite le ministre de l’Immigration, Marc Miller, en commission parlementaire, est en panne. Sur la soixantaine de demandes que ces organisations ont soumises depuis janvier dernier, seulement cinq ont été traitées, ont-elles confirmé au Devoir. 

Sur les 1349 demandes reçues pour les trois premiers mois de l’année 2024, Réfugiés et Citoyenneté Canada (IRCC) n’a délivré que 201 permis jusqu’à maintenant, soit nettement sous la moyenne de l’an dernier. Une trentaine de permis seulement ont été octroyés en mars. La page Web du programme a été modifiée en catimini depuis novembre 2023.

Ces réponses qui arrivent au compte-gouttes créent une « situation intenable » et « énormément de pression » sur les immigrants, dit Noémie Beauvais, organisatrice communautaire au Centre des travailleuses et travailleurs immigrants (CTI).

« Quelqu’un m’appelle en détresse quasiment chaque jour », illustre Florian Freuchet, organisateur communautaire au CTI du Bas-Saint-Laurent…

Source: La bouée de sauvetage des travailleurs temporaires coule

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Why Are the Anti-Israel Chants So Tedious? » Mosaic

2024/05/03 Leave a comment

Of interest:

The anti-Israel demonstrations on American campuses have been compared to the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of the 1960s and early 1970s. In their intensity, they may be similar. In their stupidity, they are not. Nowhere is the difference between the two protest movements more immediately apparent than in the quality and nature of the slogans used by their participants.When one considers the slogans of the anti-Vietnam War movement, one is struck by the wit and humor of many of them. Many still have the power to make one smile or laugh, such as the “Make Love, Not War” motto that probably outdid any other in its popularity. What made it so potent, yet so funny? Partly, its clever yoking together of two opposed English idioms that shared only the verb “make”; partly, its puckish suggestion that everyone, from the foot soldier in Vietnam to the president of the United States, would be better off in bed with someone else than on a battlefield or in a war-cabinet session; partly its invoking of the sexual revolution of the sixties as both the antithesis of, and the alternative to, a supposed culture of aggressive militarism; and most sweepingly, its implication that life-giving Eros and death-dealing Thanatos are different expressions of the same human libido, and that the first is preferable to the second. That’s a lot to pack into four words, but “Make Love, Not War” managed to do it.

Other anti-Vietnam War slogans were almost as memorable. Some, like “Hell, no, we won’t go [to fight in Vietnam]” were chanted at demonstrations. Two favorites that I remember were displayed on signs. One bore the iconic flower of hippiedom and the words, in a take-off of the warning recently introduced in those days on packs of cigarettes, “War Is not healthy for children and other living things.” The other, a parody of the famous World War I recruiting billboard, had a drawing of a grim-faced Uncle Sam exhorting, “Join the U.S. Army! Travel to exotic lands, meet exciting people, and kill them.” There was the stern “If you support this war, send your own children,” and the poignant “Not our sons, not your sons, not their sons.” A sign carried only by black demonstrators said, “No Vietnamese ever called me n—r.”

There were, of course, angrier and more violent anti-Vietnam War slogans, too, such as the chant “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” But these, though they spread as the war dragged on and public frustration with it mounted, were never the rule. The dominant tone was irony and sarcasm, the underlying message: “You who are prosecuting this war may be more powerful than we are, but we are smarter than you, more creative than you, and more caring for human life and human beings, and because of this, we will prevail.”

Compare this with:

  • “Red, black, green, and white, we support Hamas’s fight!.”
  • “Hitler, Hitler, go back home! Palestine is ours alone!”
  • “Globalize the intifada!”
  • “One, two, three, four, Israel will be no more! Five, six, seven, eight, Israel we’ll eliminate!”
  • “There is only one solution! Intifada revolution!”
  • “Say it loud, say it clear: we do not want Zionists here!”
  • “Oh, al-Qassam, you make us proud!  Kill another soldier now!”
  • “Resistance by any means necessary!”
  • “Palestine is our demand! No peace on stolen land!”
  • “We say justice. You say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!”
  • “We don’t want no two states. We want all of ’48!”

The sheer idiocy of such slogans is as staggering as is their hatefulness. Those who compose them seem to be under the impression that whatever rhymes is intelligent, and their ability to put two rhyming words together in what resembles a cheer for a high-school basketball team appears to be as far as their intelligence extends.

One mustn’t, of course, overgeneralize. Although many college students have joined the demonstrations, many times their number haven’t. Still, changed attitudes toward Israel aside, something has clearly happened to the minds of young American protesters between the 1960s and today. What?

Well, childhoods and adolescences dumbed down by smartphones, WhatApp, and Facebook, for one thing. And college educations given by teachers, products of the postmodernism and deconstructionism that gained ascendancy on university campuses in the last decades of the 20th century, who have taught that there is no such thing as verifiable truth or falsehood but only the competing narratives of oppressed and oppressor, and that it is incumbent to identify with the latter. And a national politics that has become one of non-debatable identities rather than of debatable issues. And the fear of saying or thinking anything that smacks of racism, sexism, genderism, religionism, elitism, nationalism, patriotism, colonialism, ethnocentrism, Orientalism, or whatever else might offend progressive values and the feelings of others, with the notable exception of those whose feelings it is permissible to offend.

None of this has been conducive to independence or subtlety of thought, let alone to irony or humor; combine it with a growing antagonism toward Israel and its Jewish supporters, now squarely placed by many young Americans in the camp of the oppressor, and you get the imbecility of “Go, Hamas, we love you! We support your rockets, too!” But whence all that rage, whence all that hate?

This is a question worth pondering. After all, the student demonstrators of the 1960s had much better reason to be consumed by such emotions (and some were) than those today. The government they were protesting against was sending them to fight, and possibly to die, in a war they considered immoral and unjust. What comparable threat does Israel, however immoral or unjust it may strike them as being, pose to students on American campuses now? What is all the screaming at it about?

The stock answer given by Israel’s supporters is: anti-Semitism. It’s hard to argue with that. When a Jewish state is vilified by mobs of students for supposed atrocities the likes of which leave them indifferent when committed by other nations, an antipathy toward Jews clearly has something to do with it.

But rampant anti-Semitism, as we know, does not spring from nowhere. It’s always an expression of some deep fear or resentment that the anti-Semite projects onto the Jew. What are today’s student demonstrators projecting that students in the 1960s were not?

Possibly, the loss of hope.

The demonstrators of the 60s were, like all rebellious young people since at least the time of the American and French Revolutions, a hopeful lot. They believed, however naively, in their power to make a better world than the one they were born into. They may have been the last generation in human history to do so. They were certainly the last in a chain going back two centuries or more, since what young person today honestly thinks life might get better in his lifetime? At most, it might be kept from not getting too much worse: too much hotter, too much more spun out of control by blind, unstoppable forces, too much more stripped of its human face by technology and artificial intelligence. The young generation’s task as the world passes into its hands will be to fight a holding action to stave off disaster, not to try creating something freer, more loving, and more joyous. If it doesn’t already know this, it surely feels it in its bones.

I would be full of anger, too, if such a world were passed on to me. Projecting such anger on a traditionally American-backed Israel that has almost nothing to do with the overall state of things is a tempting way to vent it. The more intelligent of today’s demonstrators will one day look back with embarrassment at the slogans they shouted. They will understand that they were shouting about something else.

Source: Why Are the Anti-Israel Chants So Tedious? » Mosaic

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I always thought immigrant Germans would vote against the far right. I was wrong

2024/05/03 Leave a comment

A bit naive as all immigrant groups have a range of views. That being said, AfD, like other overtly anti-immigrant and/or xenophobic politicians, are a concern:

….It pains me, but I understand where this drawbridge mentality comes from. Immigrants who have “made it” often seek to melt into the middle class by moving away from ethnic neighbourhoods, putting a distance between themselves and those who aren’t affluent or don’t speak the language. In the hierarchy of society they look up, not down. Rivalries might also play a role: I have met Russians who distrust Turks, Vietnamese who don’t like Chinese, Iranians who feel superior to Egyptians.

On X, I come across a post by one of Lambrou’s colleagues, Anna Nguyen, a second-generation Vietnamese like me, and a new member of the AfD’s parliamentary group in Hesse. Another Vietnamese-German wrote to her: “As a Vietnamese with the same last name, I feel ashamed for you. You’re blind! You’re hoping for a steep career in an inhuman party. But according to them, you and I will never be German. Wake up!” To which Nguyen replied: “I’m terribly sorry, but I didn’t realise that I wasn’t allowed to have a different political opinion.”

According to the migration researcher Naika Foroutan, social media has become a powerful tool for the AfD to target immigrant voters. She noticed that on TikTok, AfD members have begun posting videos aimed at the conservative German-Turkish community – and some influencers have picked up their message, ranting about there being “too many refugees”.

Just as not all women are feminists, not all people with immigrant heritage are fans of an open-door policy. Think of Suella Braverman, former British home secretary, Vivek Ramaswamy, a former candidate for the Republican nomination in the US and Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally in France. Do they, subconsciously, think that by slamming others into the category of “bad immigrants” they will be seen as “the good ones”? Are they trying to be overzealous nationalists because they want to demonstrate how British, American or French they really are?

….Rightwing parties have always exploited the narrative of “good” versus “bad” immigrants. Now the AfD seems to have discovered a new group of voters among immigrant Germans, some of whom seem all too willing to embrace its message and support the party. This doesn’t mean the AfD is any more tolerant, but it has become smarter, and therefore even more threatening.

  • Khuê Phạm is a German journalist and writer. Her debut novel, Brothers and Ghosts, which is inspired by her Vietnamese family, has just been released

Source: I always thought immigrant Germans would vote against the far right. I was wrong

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Nicolas | Paix sociale à la montréalaise

2024/05/03 Leave a comment

Interesting differences based on geography but the camp-in at McGill may change that:

Alors que tous les yeux sont rivés sur le campement propalestinien à McGill, j’ai envie de vous parler non pas de ce qui se passe, mais de ce qui ne se passe pas à Montréal.

Certes, l’attaque du 7 octobre contre Israël et les bombes qui n’en finissent plus de tomber sur Gaza ont élevé le niveau de tensions intercommunautaires un peu partout dans la ville. Il suffit toutefois de se comparer pour prendre la mesure de la résilience particulière du tissu social montréalais — jusqu’à présent. Il y a plusieurs pistes d’explication à ce phénomène.

D’abord, ça peut sembler étrange à dire, mais la géographie de la ville nous aide. À Toronto, plusieurs des institutions phares de la communauté juive sont en plein centre-ville, sur les grandes artères qui balisent le parcours normal des manifestations. La situation donne lieu à des moments surréels que l’on s’est épargnés ici.

Par exemple, lors d’une grande manifestation, le 12 février dernier, le Spider-Man de Toronto — un peu l’équivalent de l’Anarchopanda du printemps étudiant de Montréal — était parmi la foule à escalader les édifices le long du parcours. Une fois rendu sur la University Avenue, le personnage anonyme a grimpé sur la façade de l’hôpital Mount Sinai avant de continuer son chemin.

Des Canadiens d’origine palestinienne qui ont de la famille à Gaza ont pris la parole lors de cette manifestation, alors que l’armée israélienne annonçait vouloir se lancer dans une offensive sur Rafah. Leur message n’a pas passé. Le lendemain, toute la classe politique canadienne était en train de dénoncer… la présence de Spider-Man et de son drapeau palestinien sur un hôpital fondé par la communauté juive. Même le premier ministre Justin Trudeau a déploré sur X « cette démonstration d’antisémitisme ».

Ce n’était pas la première affaire du genre. Parce que les manifestations se retrouvent parfois en face de leurs institutions, plusieurs membres de la communauté juive de Toronto sentent qu’on manifeste contre eux, personnellement, et non contre le gouvernement d’Israël. Les organisateurs se défendent, bien sûr, d’avoir de telles intentions. Après près de sept mois de telles tensions, le dialogue social, là-bas, est devenu presque impossible.

Par « chance », à Montréal, l’Hôpital général juif n’est pas sur la rue Sherbrooke, et la plupart des écoles, des synagogues et des centres communautaires juifs de Montréal sont situés plus loin du coeur de l’action. On ne se pile pas sur les pieds de la même manière.

On a fait aussi des choix tactiques différents de ceux d’ici. Là-bas, on a manifesté à quelques reprises contre des commerces qui ont des activités dans les territoires palestiniens occupés ou qui soutiennent financièrement l’armée israélienne — et qui sont par ailleurs dirigés par des personnes juives. Alors que, d’un côté, on voit dans ces gestes une dénonciation politique de ce qui est perpétré par Israël, de l’autre, on ne voit là qu’une forme de pogrom. Là aussi, tout le monde est à cran. Plus qu’ici.

À Montréal, le plus important édifice à avoir été ciblé de la sorte est celui de Radio-Canada, qui a fait l’objet de graffitis dénonçant une « complicité avec le génocide » en novembre dernier. Le débat sur l’antisémitisme ne fait pas écran au message des manifestants de la même manière.

Je ne veux pas non plus peindre un portrait trop rose de notre situation. On se souviendra, par exemple, du discours tout à fait inacceptable prononcé par Adil Charkaoui durant la manifestation du 28 octobre dernier. Seulement, à ce point-ci, toute personne qui comprend un peu les mouvements sociaux montréalais sait que l’homme est une espèce de patate chaude opportuniste qui émerge chaque fois qu’il y a de l’action pour faire déraper le dialogue public. Personne de sérieux ne le considère comme une voix rassembleuse.

Par ailleurs, les coups de feu contre deux écoles juives de Côte-des-Neiges ont choqué la ville en novembre dernier. L’affaire a éveillé les craintes des parents, et à juste titre. Notons que des mois plus tard, aucune information ne permet d’établir l’identité ou les motifs des responsables de ces crimes haineux.

Depuis l’automne dernier, on n’a pratiquement pas entendu parler, dans les médias, de la mairesse de Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Gracia Kasoki Katahwa. Si la réponse de son équipe aux attaques commises dans son arrondissement avait été complètement dépourvue de sensibilité, son nom serait partout. Le travail consistant à rassurer les communautés et à faire baisser la tension dans nos quartiers se fait loin des projecteurs. C’est par ce qui ne fait pas la nouvelle, parfois, qu’on peut comprendre que, même si la situation est loin d’être facile, les choses pourraient aller beaucoup, beaucoup plus mal.

Finalement, durant ces presque sept mois d’une guerre qui met bien des gens d’ici sur les nerfs, le Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) n’a presque pas fait les manchettes. Non pas parce que la police est inactive. Mais parce que des choix ont été faits, jusqu’à présent, sur la manière d’intervenir dans les manifestations et de répondre aux plaintes pour discours haineux antisémite, antipalestinien ou islamophobe. Quand on ne parle pratiquement pas du SPVM, bien qu’on marche à Montréal semaine après semaine, c’est que, là aussi, ça pourrait aller beaucoup plus mal que ça ne va jusqu’à présent.

Cette relative paix sociale montréalaise qui subsiste malgré tout dans le contexte — j’insiste sur le mot « relative » —, elle est précieuse. Et très fragile. Les décisions du SPVM, de nos tribunaux et de l’administration de l’Université McGill cette semaine pourraient nous rapprocher du niveau de tension qui mine la plupart des grandes villes nord-américaines.

Aujourd’hui, Montréal peut décider d’asseoir fièrement sa différence, ou de l’effacer. La métropole peut se rapprocher de Toronto ou de New York, ou faire les choses à sa manière. Dans les jours, voire les heures qui suivent, son leadership choisira.

Source: Chronique | Paix sociale à la montréalaise

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Jonathan Kay: Just ignore Sarah Jama’s keffiyeh. Next she’ll be wearing a turban, Kaveh Shahrooz: The Queen’s Park keffiyeh kerfuffle proves the wisdom of keeping political symbols out of the legislature

2024/05/03 Leave a comment

Two contrasting views on the right, starting with Kay:

…If legislators at work are to be governed by a rule that forbids political symbols, then that category should be defined narrowly — which means permitting any symbol, such as a keffiyeh, whose use doesn’t necessarily convey a political meaning. In a liberal society, it is much more important to guard against false positives than false negatives when defining classes of banned expression. And Jama’s antics shouldn’t be seized upon as an excuse to err in an illiberal direction.

One reason I’m wary of any kind of keffiyeh ban is that we’re just coming out of a period of progressive social panic in Canada, during which even the mildest articulation of conservative viewpoints, or display of traditional Canadian symbols, was denounced as a “dog whistle” for white supremacy or some such. (To take one particularly ludicrous example: Recall that in 2022, an “anti-racist” group got a six-figure grant from Justin Trudeau’s government so it could author a report denouncing the Red Ensign flag — Canada’s national symbol until about 60 years ago — as a coded endorsement of white supremacism.) We’re all sick of this type of phobic mindset being displayed on the left, and I’m wary of conservatives copying the worst habits of their enemies now that the cultural tide is starting to turn.

One of those bad habits is catastrophizing. When I first mentioned on social media that I thought Jama should get her way on the keffiyeh issue, I got a chorus of pushback to the effect that she was channelling antisemitism — because what else except Jew-hatred would motivate anyone to take up the keffiyeh in the shadow of 10/7? To allow her to continue dressing in this way, the claim goes, is to make Jews across Ontario feel unsafe.

But I doubt that Jama is any kind of true bigot (even if the stridency of her anti-Israeli statements raises the possibility). What seems more likely is that she’s one of those serial activists whose focus will flit from cause to cause over the years, based on what’s in the news and what brings out the cameras. Once Gaza cools down and other conflicts take centre stage, who knows? We may see Sarah Jama in a turban, or a Ukrainian vyshyvanka, or perhaps even some kind of fez.

Whatever adornments Jama chooses, the best course is to simply ignore them, and leave it to Hamilton Centre voters to assess her wardrobe choices in the next election.

Source: Jonathan Kay: Just ignore Sarah Jama’s keffiyeh. Next she’ll be wearing a turban

Contrary view by Kaveh Shahrooz:

…The legislature holds a unique place in our polity and should aspire to more. While it should serve as the forum for political disagreement and debate, it should not itself be seen as partisan. And it should elevate our public discourse, instead of becoming yet another force that reduces nuanced topics to signs, pins, stickers, and placards. 

Opposing the keffiyeh for its alleged bad meaning naturally draws out the battle over that meaning, and invites another battle over the freedom of expression. It also invites future fights about the meaning of every other symbol that MPPs will hereinafter try to bring into the legislature. Is the Ukraine pin a good or bad symbol? The Black Lives Matter badge? What about the MAGA hat? Open this door just a little and we will be mired in a thousand battles about a thousand causes, logos, and signs.

The solution, then, is not to engage in a futile line-drawing exercise which will leave many stakeholders unhappy much of the time. Instead, it is to maintain the existing nearly blanket ban on political symbols. (I say “nearly blanket” because symbols like the Remembrance Day poppy are now permitted at Queen’s Park. But even that required a special exemption.) The ban avoids the problem altogether, allowing our core deliberative body to remain a place for reason above passion. 

We will likely never agree on the precise meaning of the keffiyeh (though we should at least strive to be honest in its interpretation; something the “it’s just a cultural symbol” crowd is not doing.) 

But we should agree that some corners of our society should be reserved for deliberation and debate instead of cheap appeals to emotion and tribalism. What better place for that than Queen’s Park?

Source: Kaveh Shahrooz: The Queen’s Park keffiyeh kerfuffle proves the wisdom of keeping political symbols out of the legislature

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , , ,

Jen Gerson: The Conservative case for the CBC

2024/05/02 Leave a comment

Comments on immigrant communities and their media consumption from country of origin sources as a reason to revitalize the CBC. Her reform suggestions have merit:

It was at the recent Canada Strong and Free Network conference — formerly known by the much less awkward title the “Manning Centre” conference — in which I overheard one of those conversations that is so often considered taboo in tête-à-têtes that are more Liberal or NDP-adjacent. It was a discussion on immigration, and specifically, on the obstacles to cultural integration that rapid immigration can sometimes entail. 

The speaker noted with some dismay the number of satellite TV dishes affixed to the balconies of apartments in urban areas that tend to become the first homes of new arrivals to the country. With the advent of affordable global satellite television, those who had relocated to Canada could keep abreast of news at home, in the languages they were most comfortable with. This influx included not only the plethora of private television networks, but also their public counterparts: RT, IRA, CCTV — virtually every country in the world invests in some content offering, and makes that offering widely available both domestically and abroad. 

In liberal democracies, public broadcasting tends to value at least a degree of journalistic independence. In authoritarian nations, well, not so much. But they broadcast just the same. 

Of course there’s nothing inherently wrong with seeking news and entertainment from one’s homeland. Nothing could be more natural than the desire to seek out the familiar, especially while adapting to a new culture and a new home. My fellow conversationalist was not unsympathetic to that desire, yet those satellite dishes concerned him, nonetheless. Canada is welcoming a nearly unprecedented number of new immigrants at the same moment in which its sense of itself as a nation has, arguably, never been weaker. Or, as Justin Trudeau himself once put it “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada.” 

If that’s so, how do we expect this influx of new Canadians to cohere to the vacant identity of their adopted homeland? Is the move to Canada a thing that exists in the body only; the spirit to remain entrenched in the values, language, news and entertainment of the citizen’s soul? His homeland? How does a nation as widely dispersed and malleable as ours, one that welcomes people from around the world, create some kind of pan-Canadian values and identity? How the hell do we actually work together?  

I don’t have an easy answer to that question, but I did note at the time that this individual had unwittingly articulated the best Conservative case for the CBC. 

And he had done it in a place where promises to “defund the CBC” generated unabashed whoops of glee. 

“Perhaps don’t defund the CBC” is a contrarian position in my circles, of late. Conservatives hate this institution — and I don’t use the word “hate” lightly. It may be too late to make an appeal for reform, caution or reason. Blood is high. 

They are angry that the CBC sued the Conservative party — and only the Conservative party — for a fair use of news material in political advertising. They are angry at an organization that seems to be ideologically driven to, and hell bent on, closing the Overton window on a range of policy positions and values that many of them care about. They resent being forced to pay for a public broadcaster that they feel has alienated them. 

While I think some of these positions are clouded by the poor judgment that inevitably accompanies anger, many of these grievances are valid. And, privately, I know at least some employees in the CBC will admit to it. The CBC is not what it ought to have been in recent years, and calls for it to be defunded are a predictable and inevitable consequence of adopting a set of cultural values that are openly at odds with a plurality of the taxpayers that fund it. 

The organization still does necessary work, and employs many hundreds of diligent and grounded journalists. However, at least some sections of the organization do come off as high handed and patronizing, as if the outlet sees its role as imposing a set of Canadian Values onto a benighted populace eager for the Call On High of the Annex, rather than as an institution whose fundamental role is to serve those very masses. 

Take the carbon tax, MAID, government spending, contentious protests, gender identity, sex work, safe supply, diversity and inclusion, homelessness, and crime — these are some of the most pressing and contentious issues facing Canadians today. These are complicated issues, often morally fraught, and offer rich opportunities for real debate, reporting, and investigation. I don’t think that’s what we’re getting from the CBC right now. That is a problem, and an abrogation of the CBC’s duty to inform and serve a geographically and ideologically diverse public. Hence the anger. 

However, I cannot pin this failure solely on the CBC. 

If our public broadcaster is not producing the kind of journalism that we want, need and expect, then the negligence lies also within ourselves. We taxpayers, political leaders, and citizens have failed to communicate to the CBC what we expect. And weak management, poorly guided by a vague mandate, has been unable to establish a clear vision of what the outlet needs to prioritize — and, more crucially, what it must deprioritize. 

What I see when I look at the CBC is a Byzantine hall, ruled by competing fiefdoms, and dug five stories deep into the forbidding earth. What I see is mandate creep.

Is there anyone in senior management who can seriously blank-face defend CBC Gem? Or CBC Comedy? Why is the CBC replicating widely available language learning apps with their own version, Mauril? Or how about its vertical devoted to first-person opinion pieces? In an era of Substack and Medium and X, is there market failure that a public broadcaster really needs to address, here? A real lack of opportunity to write articles like: After coming out as trans, my return to sex work has been unexpectedly rewarding.

I could go on, but you get the point. Is there anyone, anywhere, within the CBC hierarchy who can say: “No”? 

All of these efforts reek of a senior management that so lacks a sense of self direction that it instead tries to be everything to everybody, and then blames its lack of adequate funding when it fails to do anything particularly well. And that’s before we get into the management bonuses, and last minute budget top ups. This isn’t sustainable. And it’s why I don’t find arguments for increasing funding right now compelling — absent a clear mandate and strong internal management, the government could double or even triple the CBC’s funding and not create anything better; all we’d get is an even more sprawling bureaucracy trying to churn out more #content in categories that are already amply if not ably served by the private sector. 

So, yeah, I understand the emotion, here. I understand how gratifying it is for Conservatives who squeal with delight when Pierre Poilievre screams “defund the CBC.” Whatever that means. 

All I’d ask is for such people to consider that this is, indeed, an emotional response generated by feelings of grievance and alienation. It’s not a rational policy position. Shut down the CBC tomorrow, and Canada is not suddenly going to host 1,000 ideologically grounded private media organizations. That’s a fantasy, totally detached from a solid understanding of the modern media market. The only problem defunding the CBC solves is the continued public funding of the CBC. 

Local news — real reporting that involves sending actual people to write about quotidian court cases and city hall meetings week after week — is a very hard business case in an environment that generates revenue by virality and clicks. There are going to be some successes in this sphere, but not enough to replicate a tenth of even the current skeletal coverage. 

Privatizing the CBC will do nothing other than to create another failing private media outlet. And defunding or shuttering it outright is only going to eliminate what’s left of an already battered local news system at the very moment that the private media sector is heading into its senescence. This is going to contribute to already expansive news deserts, with citizens turning to things like Facebook groups and closed group chats in order to share local knowledge. 

Some of these quasi-outlets will be fine, and even useful. Ordinary journalism doesn’t require special training or a credential. 

But it does mean that more Canadians over time are going to grow increasingly reliant on sources of information that may or may not have any attachment to how the world around them actually functions. Not only is this going to have an impact on our concepts of a shared national identity, but in some cases, even consensus reality. 

We don’t have to peer too deep into the darkness of our hearts to get a sense of where this is going. Travel just a little ways outside a major city and you’ll quickly run into news deserts where a significant subsection of the population already believes that the Canadian government is controlled by Klaus Schwab for the benefit of Satanic, adrenochrome-swilling pedophiles. 

To put it more bluntly: Conservatives, it’s one thing to burn CBC’s downtown Toronto HQ. By all means, paint your bodies in the ashes and scream at the moon until she hears your victory. Revel in it. But then you’re actually going to have to govern people. How long do you think the current crop of “hang the elites” stand by you when you’re the elite

The CBC in its current state is not sustainable. It needs a radical overhaul that includes an extensive mandate review that sets clear expectations for content, tone, and objective outcomes. Personally, I’d cleave everything related to entertainment and leave that to die. The CBC ought to be an exclusively journalistic organization, with a particular focus on local news, beat reporting, and investigations. I’d take the CBC’s mandate out of the Broadcasting Act and create a standalone statute that enshrines objective journalistic standards and practices in law so internal committees can’t dick around with journalistic fads. (I have no objection to “activist” journalism, or concepts like “moral clarity” in private business, or even grant-supported niche outlets; but a national public broadcaster ought to adopt broadly unobjectionable and historically grounded journalistic standards when serving an audience that cannot escape footing the bill.)

I’d demand the CBC create a functional, independent newsroom in every city over 100,000 people in this country. I’d assign specific beats like health, upper courts, legislatures and the like, and I’d write those expectations straight into the mandate. 

Most importantly, I’d have both the CBC and its critics understand that it is one of the most important repositories of institutional knowledge in this country — it is not only a reservoir of Canada’s culture and history, but also an irreplaceable living resource for the craft and practice of journalism itself. I wish the CBC considered itself not as a competitor to private journalistic enterprise, but more like a public service, akin to a library. An institution whose role is to help foster regional journalistic talent — perhaps through workshops, internships, or even equipment or facility rentals. 

If a local journalism student wants to start a podcast in, say, Medicine Hat, the local CBC outlet ought to be a resource to help her make that project a success. The local CBC outlet ought to be her champion. 

In this lurid dream vision, I would make all the CBC’s written and audio-visual materials freely available to any Canadian media outlet. Further, the CBC should be allergic to private advertising. 

I would also put some serious thought into the CBC’s role as a guardian of this country’s digital and physical news archives. If much private media is about to collapse, we risk losing an extraordinary amount of our shared cultural heritage, unless some entity is willing to take on the care, organization, and access of historic documents and material. 

All the above is a napkin sketch for a sustainable CBC mandate. One that fosters an innovative private media sector while ensuring that Canadians will be reasonably well served by a grounded and objective information environment. If Canadians want to wander into QAnon conspiracy land, that’s not for me, or for any government, to restrict. However, in the face of market failure — and objective news reporting is one such imminent failure — there is room for the public sector to act. We should ensure that Canadians have real choices. 

Funnily, when I spelled out that vision of a CBC, most of the Conservatives I spoke to at the conference in Ottawa could get behind it, or some version of it. And that didn’t surprise me. Most Conservatives in this country are not libertarians or even, frankly, true populists. Most, I think, grant that there is some role for a federal government to play in the promotion of a Canadian culture and identity, particularly where the preservation of history and institutions are concerned. I am aligned to the role of a free market in media, as in anything else (like and subscribe!), but I would remind everybody that the media industry doesn’t exist in a pure free market in the Platonic world of ideal forms, and never has. There are bad ways to intervene in it (ahem, the Online News Act) and there are good ways — ways grounded in historic success, both here and in other countries. Public broadcasting is tried and true, which is why almost every country has some version of it in accordance with its national values, needs, and insecurities. 

Ironically, the cultural conditions that prompted the creation of the CBC in 1936 are more prevalent now than at any time previous in living memory. There is more need now for a shared sense of Canadian identity. We need a revitalized social understanding about how to mediate access to information and power in a democracy. I would remind Conservatives of this, and I would ask: if you destroy the CBC, would you have to replace it with something else? I would ask you to put a pin in the anger, and consider how Canada and her people will be best served after the impending collapse of traditional media infrastructure. Lastly, I would remind you of all those satellites on all those apartment blocks and ask: if the CBC, or something like it, isn’t going to fill the gap, who will? 

Source: Jen Gerson: The Conservative case for the CBC

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Canada needs to do more to prepare for an aging, and more diverse population

2024/05/01 Leave a comment

Good analysis and prescription:

….Since 2018, Andrew Pinto and his team at Upstream Lab at the University of Toronto have been working on a tool called SPARK, a list of standardized questions designed for primary caregivers to collect information from patients, including race and ethnicity. Dr. Pinto hopes the questionnaire becomes standard in healthcare settings across the country.

It also includes socioeconomic questions – about income, education, disability status, housing, food security – recognizing that race and ethnicity are just part of the many factors that influence a person’s health outcomes.

“We all come from different cultures, with different ways of relating to health providers, and have different needs,” Dr. Pinto said.

“By asking these questions, we can get a better understanding of what people need.”

Source: Canada needs to do more to prepare for an aging, and more diverse population

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

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