Interesting how concepts originating from the left can be turned against them. And yes, the risk is real:
The Canadian Left introduced the notion of “social licence” into our policy and political lexicon during the Harper era to describe the expectation that oil and gas companies act, consult, and operate in ways that secured public buy-in for individual projects and the sector as a whole.
Conservatives were mostly critical of the concept at the time. It seemed elusive, woolly, and conceived of to block projects rather than ultimately enable them. I’ve wondered in recent weeks, however, if in hindsight it has utility for thinking and talking about the place of institutions in a democratic society.
In particular, Canadian universities should ask themselves hard questions about their own social licence. The growing gap between the culture and ideas on campus and the rest of the population ought to be a major cause for concern. Universities’ alienation from the society in which they inhabit represents a threat to their social licence.
The shocking reaction of many university faculty members and students to Hamas’s terrorist attacks against Israel has exposed this gap for the rest of us to see. One gets the sense (as others such as Tyler Harper have noted) that the consequences will be lasting. The incentives for politicians to seriously take on universities have changed.
Academic freedom isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card from democratic accountability—particularly in Canada where we still heavily rely on public dollars (even if the relative share has fallen) to finance universities. Scholars don’t have a positive right to publicly-subsidized employment or research funding. Universities don’t have a positive right to their current funding levels.
There’s nothing stopping provincial governments, for instance, from cutting core institutional funding (especially in a zero-sum world in which health care is consuming roughly half of program spending) or even reducing public subsidies for particular fields or disciplines (which might come in the form of policy reforms that require universities to charge the full cost of certain programs).
The upshot: if you’re a university president, you need to stop spending so much time and attention on managing your internal politics and start dedicating more to your external politics. Placating the most radical voices on your campus isn’t worth it if the cost is the public’s support for your institution’s basic mission. In fact, the opposite is true: a firm stand against radicalism is arguably the best means to protect your institution’s long-run interests.
In 2019, the Pew Research Center polled Americans on their knowledge of the Holocaust and their attitudes toward Jews. The results were intuitive: The more people knew about Hitler’s rise to power, and about how many millions of Jews were murdered, the “warmer” their feelings were.
“Warmer feelings” seems to be the basic goal British Columbia and Ontario have in mind in beefing up Holocaust education in elementary and secondary schools, after Hamas’s Oct. 7 pogrom in southern Israel led to celebrations on the streets of Canadian cities, and later the targeting of Jewish-owned businesses for protests and various other antisemitic acts.
“If we really want to fight hate in this province, if we really want to stand up to antisemitism, it is critical that we learn from the past,” B.C. Premier David Eby said this week. “We know how threats and hate can accelerate into violent acts and into horrific outcomes. We must ensure that the same horrors are not repeated.”
“By including new mandatory learning in Holocaust education in elementary and secondary schools, we are ensuring students are never bystanders in the face of hate and division,” Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce averred.
It would be very difficult to argue against Holocaust education, unless you think students needn’t know about seminal events in human history. (Astonishingly, only Ontario and B.C. mandate any at all. Expect that to change.) But as a means to a greater social end, Holocaust education isn’t necessarily as effective as people might hope.
A cautionary note from the Pew survey: The “warm feelings” gap between the informed and uninformed really wasn’t very big. The people who were most informed about the Holocaust measured 67 out of 100 on Pew’s “feeling thermometer.” The least informed were at 58.
And another cautionary note from the British Centre for Holocaust Information: Just because you teach kids something doesn’t mean they’ll believe it or remember it. In a 2016 survey of nearly 10,000 English secondary-school students, the centre found that “despite the Holocaust being a staple in the curriculum for almost 25 years, student knowledge and conceptual understanding is often limited and based on inaccuracies and misconceptions.”
Just over 10 per cent of students believed “no more than 100,000 lives were lost (in the Holocaust),” the study reported. “Most (students) had little understanding of why (the Jews) were persecuted and murdered,” with most assuming it was simply a matter of Nazis abhorring “difference” of all kinds. The understanding of antisemitism specifically — past and present — was so weak that “68 per cent of students (were) unaware of what ‘antisemitism’ meant.”
Teaching about the Holocaust in isolation from antisemitism, from Jewish history, and from Jews in the modern world, is one of the key pedagogical pitfalls American essayist Dara Horn identified in a fascinating recent piece at The Atlantic. Horn quoted Charlotte Decoster of the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum: “Students are going to see Nazis as aliens who bring with them anti-Semitism when they come to power in ’33, and they take it back away at the end of the Holocaust in 1945.”
“When anti-Semitism is reduced to the Holocaust, anything short of murdering six million Jews — like … taunting kids at school, or shooting up a Jewish nonprofit, or hounding Jews out of entire countries — seems minor by comparison,” Horn argues.
“Holocaust education remains essential for teaching historical facts in the face of denial and distortions,” she concludes. “Yet over the past year, as I’ve visited Holocaust museums and spoken with educators around the country, I have come to the disturbing conclusion that Holocaust education is incapable of addressing contemporary anti-Semitism.”
Indeed, it strikes me that the worst things I’ve heard Canadians says since Oct. 7 have come from conspicuously educated people who surely know what the Holocaust was. “How beautiful is the spirit to get free that Palestinians literally learned how to fly on hang gliders,” Harsha Walia jaw-droppingly effused on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery. She has a law degree from UBC. She was director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, for heaven’s sake, until she cheered the burning of churches on First Nations.
It seems safe to say, knock wood, that Canada isn’t quite as deep into this problem as some of our peer nations. By the Anti-Defamation League’s definition, eight per cent of Canadian adults harbour antisemitic views. In France it’s 15 per cent, in Belgium 22 per cent, in Spain 26 per cent. We don’t have France’s soul-crushing banlieues — ghettoes fine-tuned to turn bitter, unemployed young Muslim men into extremists. We have freedom of speech: We let pro-Palestinian activists say their piece, disturbing as it might be, rather than turning the water cannons on them.
Pew found that simply knowing something of another faith (or none) significantly warmed feelings toward that faith: Atheists scored just 38 degrees on the “feeling thermometer” among Americans who don’t know any, and 51 degrees among Americans who do. Catholics enjoyed the same 13-per-cent jump. Those with personal connections were 10 degrees warmer to Hindus, Jews and Mainline Protestants. Canada is a country where people of many faiths and of no faith work and socialize together — even those who might have been raised with prejudicial attitudes toward others. That ought to help.
But of course, it only takes one pathetic, bigoted freak to lose the plot before something horrific happens. Sticking to our values is all we can do, in my view, and that should absolutely include well-designed Holocaust and antisemitism curricula. But no one should assume it’ll be enough. This problem didn’t emerge on Oct. 7, after all. Oct. 7 simply shined a blinding light on it
One of the better assessments, particularly on the lack of action on temporary residents, whose numbers have ballooned over the last 10 years:
Don’t look too closely at the immigration targets the federal government set Wednesday. They’re not the numbers that matter right now.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller kept the already-planned target of 500,000 in 2025, but said there’d be no increase in 2026. But that isn’t Canada’simmigration number.
The figure that matters more is the 2.2 million in temporary residents who are in Canada. That number has surged for reasons that have nothing to do with immigration planning. And the Liberal government should be screwing up their courage to do something about that, right away….
The diversity, equity and inclusion industry has been dented by several recent antisemitism disputes. George Washington University postponed a diversity summit last week over concerns about the “current climate”, after a student group projected messages onto a campus building reading “glory to our martyrs”, “free Palestine from the river to the sea” and “GWU is complicit in genocide in Gaza”. The university wrote that the postponement was related to campus safety as well as the “pain” felt by students.
Institutions across the country — and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) departments in particular — appear to be reckoning with the same problem. The advocacy group StopAntisemitism found in its 2022 report that the majority of universities it evaluated did not include Jews in their DEI programs.
Speaking to UnHerd, Cornell law professor William A. Jacobson claimed that at his university “opponents of Israel seek to racialise what is a religious and national conflict to put together coalitions of students ‘of colour’ versus ‘white’ Israel and Jews”. He suggested that this process has accelerated since the university announced an anti-racism initiative in early June 2020, following the killing of George Floyd.
Cornell came under scrutiny after history professor Russell Rickford said he was “exhilarated” by the 7 October Hamas attacks, and the FBI is currently investigating recent antisemitic threats made against its Jewish student centre.
“I’ve not seen any response from feminist and women’s rights groups, which overlap significantly with the pro-Palestinian groups, to the use of rape and sexual abuse by Hamas, including rape of dead Israeli women,” Jacobson said. “It may be old fashioned Jew-hatred, but I think more likely it is because campus ‘social justice’ movements, including at Cornell, have been conditioned by the DEI obsession with race to view Israeli Jews as so uniquely evil that resistance ‘by any means necessary’ is promoted, embraced, and excused.”
In March, Tabia Lee found out the extent of the DEI industry’s targeting of certain viewpoints. A former faculty director for the Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Multicultural Education at De Anza Community College in Cupertino, California, she was fired from her position after hosting Jewish speakers on campus to discuss antisemitism and the Holocaust, and attempting to host a multifaith heritage event.
“I saw antisemitism on a weekly basis in my two years as a faculty ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ director,” she wrote in the New York Post this month. “Toxic DEI ideology deliberately stokes hatred toward Israel and the Jewish people.” Lee characterised the industry as “built on the unshakeable belief that the world is divided into two groups of people: the oppressors and the oppressed.” Within this, “Jews are categorically placed in the oppressor category, while Israel is branded a ‘genocidal, settler, colonialist state’”, and “criticizing Israel and the Jewish people is not only acceptable but praiseworthy.”
Last week, Sophia Hasenfus — a diversity, equity and belonging officer at MIT — came under fire for liking a tweet which claimed that Israel is guilty of genocide and does not have a right to exist.Meanwhile, City University of New York (CUNY), which has been subject to several Title VI complaints for alleged antisemitic discrimination, hired Saly Abd Alla, a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) supporter and former civil rights director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), as its chief diversity officer in 2021.
The problem isn’t limited to academia: former head of diversity at Google Kamau Bobb was moved to a different department at the company in 2021 after a blog post in which he wrote that Jews have an “insatiable appetite for war” and an “insensitivity to the suffering [of] others” resurfaced.
In the same year, a report from the conservative Heritage Foundation found widespread and inordinate hostility towards Israel in the Twitter activities of university DEI staffers. Tweets they wrote, shared or liked about Israel included numerous mentions of apartheid, colonialism, genocide and the targeting of children, the report found. While Israel was referenced three times as often as China, 96% of the tweets about Israel were deemed negative. The corresponding figure for tweets about China was 38%.
Australia’s highest court on Wednesday overturned a government decision to strip citizenship from a man convicted of terrorism.
The ruling is a second blow in the High Court to the law introduced almost a decade ago that allows a government minister to strip dual nationals of their Australian citizenship on extremism-related grounds.
The ruling also prevents the government from deporting Algerian-born cleric Abdul Benbrika when he is released from prison, which is expected within weeks.
The ruling is a second blow in the High Court to the law introduced almost a decade ago that allows a government minister to strip dual nationals of their Australian citizenship on extremism-related grounds.
The ruling also prevents the government from deporting Algerian-born cleric Abdul Benbrika when he is released from prison, which is expected within weeks.
The High Court judges ruled 6-1 that the law that gave the home affairs minister power to strip citizenship in such instances was unconstitutional. The majority found that the minister was effectively exercising a judicial function of punishing criminal guilt.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his government would examine the ruling in regards to the law passed by the previous government.
Constitutional lawyer George Williams said he was not surprised by the result.
“It’s a fundamental breach of the separation of powers in Australia which says that judging guilty and determining punishment should be by courts and not by people in Parliament,” Williams said.
Williams said he understood that Benbrika was the only person to lose citizenship under a particular clause of the law relating to convictions of terrorism-related offenses that are punished by more than three years in prison. Therefore the precedent did not effect any other person who had lost citizenship rights.
The High Court last year struck down a separate clause of the law that allowed a dual national imprisoned in Syria to lose his citizenship on suspicion that he had been an Islamic State group fighter.
In 2020, Benbrika became the first extremist, proven or alleged, to lose citizenship rights while still in Australia. The government has not disclosed how many there have been.
Benbrika was convicted in 2008 of three terrorism charges related to a plot to cause mass casualties at a public event in Melbourne. No attack took place.
He was sentenced to 15 years in prison and would have been released in 2020. But his sentence was extended by three years under a recent law that allowed the continued detention of prisoners convicted or terrorism offenses who a judge ruled posed an unacceptable risk to the community if released.
In 2021, he lost a High Court challenge to his continued detention in a 5-2 split decision.
He will be subjected to a court-imposed supervision order that can allow close scrutiny of his communications, associates and movements when he is released before the end of the year.
The conflict in Israel and Palestine has thrown American campuses and society into turmoil.
We are both deans of public policy schools. One of us comes from a Palestinian family displaced by war. The other served in Israeli military intelligence before a long career in academia. Our life stories converged when we were colleagues and friends for 10 years on the faculty of Princeton University. Notwithstanding our different backgrounds, we are both alarmed by the climate on campuses and the polarizing and dehumanizing language visible throughout society.
Universities should state hard truths and clarify critical issues. As leaders of public policy schools, we train the leaders of tomorrow to think creatively and boldly. It starts with countering speech that is harmful, modeling civic dialogue, mutual respect and empathy, and showing an ability to listen to one another.
Universities should not retreat into their ivory towers because the discourse has gotten toxic; on the contrary, the discourse will get more toxic if universities pull back.
Faculty and students on some campuses across the country have reported feeling unsafe in light of verbal and physical attacks. Activist groups and even student groups are screaming past one another instead of listening and engaging with the other side. The polarizing talk in media, political and campus circles create an environment lacking in sophistication and nuance.
For example, chants like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” are commonly perceived as calls for the annihilation of the state of Israel. What’s more, the position these chants represents completely ignores the fact that the majority of Palestinians have rejected this stance since the 1993 Oslo Accords, and leaders of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank have consistently called for a two-state solution. Furthermore, the claim that all Palestinians in Gaza are responsible for Hamas lacks empirical support.
Condemnation of the Oct. 7 massacre of Israeli civilians by Hamas — and calling it out as an act of terrorism — shouldn’t be avoided out of risk of offending Palestinians and their supporters. Not condemning the terrorist attacks is a failure of a moral core, and by no means should condemnation of terrorism be viewed as incompatible with believing in Palestinian rights and statehood, alongside Israel. Terrorism is, by common understanding, an attack on all humanity.
We teach our students to deal with policy predicaments that start with tough questions that require understanding opposing ideas. The uncertainty about what the future of Gaza will look like, whether the peace process can be revived and how the security and safety of Israelis and Palestinians will be achieved — these are, to be sure, hard questions with solutions that do not fit on placards.
While campus groups and all Americans enjoy freedom of speech, educators at universities must respond to speech that is harmful, hateful, untrue or lacking nuance and historical context. Free speech only works when there is vigorous counter speech.
As deans, we also know that in this volatile political environment, we must ensure that our campuses have places where each side can air their opinions and even come together and hold difficult conversations without fear of retaliation. Examples of this include webinars that our respective schools held in the wake of the attacks featuring a diversity of voices, including academics and policymakers, Israelis and Palestinians, Democrats and Republicans. That must start with the core element of civic engagement and civil disagreement.
Campuses must protect free speech, but equally advocate for mutually respectful dialogue. That obligation is both especially important and especially demanding in our current political and societal landscape.
A discussion of the actions that states should take in self-defense is worth convening, as well as one on the conduct of warfare in a dense urban environment. Israel’s response should be directed at eliminating the threat posed by Hamas, not at innocent civilians in Gaza. What that means in practice is a matter for debate. Calling out Israel for its bombing of civilian areas in Gaza shouldn’t be avoided out of risk of offending Israelis and their supporters.
There is no better place for these discussions than a university campus. But sponsoring this kind of debate takes courage.
As educators, we at times have to make our students uncomfortable by challenging their preconceptions and encouraging them to think through their positions using data, evidence and logic. It is unrealistic to believe that individuals can put their emotions away. But if a university doesn’t encourage students to reflect on how their own emotions shape, and occasionally distort, their analysis of the world around them, where else could they possibly learn this?
Even prior to the current violence, the Arab-Israeli conflict was an intensely uncomfortable topic to discuss, and, unfortunately, some schools may try to solve that problem by omitting it from their curriculums. Journal editors may be wary of wading into such hotly charged topics. This gap has left an intellectual vacuum filled by hate speech, antisemitism, Islamophobia and other stereotypical tropes on campuses and crowded out rigorous empirical analysis and reasoned discussions. Add to that a polarized media establishment, political landscape and social media, and no wonder we’ve seen the conversation on campus devolve into a verbal war of platitudes and talking points.
We remain hopeful, however. Over the past few weeks, we’ve also witnessed a vibrant student body eager for more information around these issues.
Universities play a vital role in shaping the conversation. Polls show that universities still enjoy a higher level of trust by the public than many other institutions, although it is dwindling. We have unique access to the world’s best intellectual minds and financial resources to support them.
We will squander this trust and legacy if we stay on the sidelines.
Amaney Jamal and Keren Yarhi-Milo: Dr. Jamal is the dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Dr. Yarhi-Milo is the dean of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
Indeed. 13 ridings are more than 5 percent Jewish compared to 114 who are more than 5 percent Muslim, hence the tension within the Liberal party:
Justin Trudeau has been stalwart in supporting Israel during the current crisis, despite divisions within the Prime Minister’s Liberal caucus. Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are unequivocally pro-Israel. The NDP, though more ambiguous in its position, also condemned the horrific attacks by Hamas of Oct. 7.In
But Canada is changing, politically and demographically. Some who defend the rights of Palestinians use language that is plainly antisemitic. People are saying hateful things during pro-Palestinian demonstrations. For supporters of Israel and of Jews everywhere, the future darkens.
…
words we use should reflect on their own words as well.
Depuis l’attaque des militants du Hamas contre Israël du 7 octobre dernier, le premier ministre Justin Trudeau se garde soigneusement de dévier de la position américaine sur le conflit, qui menace de se propager à d’autres pays du Proche-Orient.
Son refus d’appeler à un cessez-le-feu crée des remous au sein du caucus libéral. Pas moins de 23 députés libéraux ont signé une lettre lui demandant que le Canada « se joigne au nombre croissant de pays qui demandent un cessez-le-feu immédiat ». M. Trudeau leur a répondu cette semaine en se disant favorable « à l’idée de pauses humanitaires », qui permettraient l’acheminement d’aide aux civils piégés à Gaza tout en n’empêchant pas Israël de reprendre son assaut sur le territoire palestinien dans le but d’éliminer le Hamas.
Sa déclaration, mardi, est arrivée presque simultanément à celle du secrétaire d’État américain, Antony Blinken. Devant l’Organisation des Nations unies, à New York, il a, lui aussi, appelé à des pauses humanitaires.
Depuis son arrivée au pouvoir, en 2015, le gouvernement de M. Trudeau semble élaborer sa politique étrangère en fonction des désirs des clientèles ethniques de certaines circonscriptions clés, notamment de la banlieue de Toronto et de Vancouver. Dans beaucoup de cas, ses positions n’attirent pas l’attention du public en dehors de ces enclaves ethniques, où l’appui — ou pas — de la population sikhe, tamoule, chinoise ou autre peut tout changer entre une victoire ou une défaite des libéraux lors d’élections fédérales.
Puisque leurs mots et leurs actions ne pèsent pas beaucoup sur la scène internationale, les gouvernements canadiens, sauf de rares exceptions, ont tous traditionnellement eu le luxe de concevoir leur politique étrangère comme un bidule à faire gagner des votes. Toutefois, cette approche s’est retournée deux fois contre le gouvernement Trudeau dans la dernière année.
Il a longtemps cherché à minimiser les allégations d’ingérence chinoise dans les élections fédérales de 2019 afin de ne pas se mettre à dos les électeurs chinois des circonscriptions baromètres de Toronto et de Vancouver. Mais ce scandale a fini par lui éclater au visage, avec les révélations dans les médias des avertissements répétés sur l’ingérence chinoise que lui aurait lancés le Service canadien du renseignement de sécurité.
On est en droit de se demander si M. Trudeau aurait fait une sortie aussi dramatique pour annoncer que l’Inde serait impliquée dans l’assassinat d’un militant séparatiste sikh commis en banlieue de Vancouver en juin dernier s’il ne se préoccupait pas autant du sort des libéraux dans les circonscriptions où la population sikhe est majoritaire ou presque. La réaction du gouvernement indien à ses propos menace maintenant les relations du Canada avec le pays que tous nos alliés cherchent à courtiser pour contrer l’influence chinoise dans le monde.
Dans le dossier du conflit entre Israël et le Hamas, M. Trudeau, contrairement à certains de ses députés, ne peut pas contredire nos alliés sans qu’ils s’en aperçoivent. Tout comme pour la guerre en Ukraine, les enjeux de ce conflit sont trop importants pour que le premier ministre ose aller à contre-courant.
Certes, des divisions existent aussi au sein même de l’alliance occidentale, comme en témoigne la difficulté qu’ont les pays de l’Union européenne à s’entendre sur une position commune. Seul le premier ministre espagnol, le socialiste Pedro Sánchez, qui lutte pour sa survie politique après avoir perdu les élections en juillet, a jusqu’ici exigé publiquement un cessez-le-feu. Mais, dans son cas, toute autre position ferait éclater la coalition de partis de gauche qu’il essaie de préserver afin de garder le pouvoir et d’éviter la tenue d’élections, qui pourraient mener à sa défaite définitive.
Le président américain, Joe Biden, n’est pas prêt à appeler à un cessez-le-feu, même s’il dit déplorer les conséquences des actions militaires d’Israël contre le Hamas pour la population de Gaza et qu’il milite pour une accélération dans la livraison d’aide humanitaire. D’abord, parce qu’il sait que le Hamas, un groupe terroriste qui se consacre à la destruction d’Israël, ne respecterait jamais ses conditions. Ensuite, parce que toute clémence envers cette organisation serait perçue comme une invitation, pour les ennemis des États-Unis, à commencer par l’Iran, à semer la terreur à travers la région et le monde.
Tout au plus M. Biden demande-t-il à Israël d’exercer une certaine prudence en menant sa campagne contre le Hamas. Il sait pertinemment que cette situation est un bourbier géopolitique qui risque de plomber sa présidence et de mener à de multiples conflagrations militaires ailleurs au Proche-Orient et dans le monde. La dernière chose dont il a besoin, c’est de voir un gouvernement canadien soucieux de plaire à l’opinion publique lui compliquer davantage la tâche, déjà si délicate. M. Trudeau semble l’avoir compris.
Yet another poll showing a decline in support for current high levels of immigration over the past year given the impact on housing, in particular.
Public support for immigration has fallen sharply over the past year as Canadians increasingly tie affordability and housing concerns to a historic influx of newcomers, according to survey results published on Monday.
Forty-four per cent of Canadians think immigration levels are too high, up from 27 per cent last year, according to a survey conducted by the Environics Institute for Survey Research, in partnership with the Century Initiative, an organization that advocates for Canada’s population to hit 100 million by 2100. This was the largest change in sentiment between surveys that Environics has observed in four-plus decades of polling on the topic.
Just a year ago, public support for immigration was stronger than ever, Environics found. But since then, Canadians have been consumed by a number of economic worries, including high inflation, rising interest payments and a worsening housing crisis, which is pushing up resale prices and rents across the country.
At the same time, Canada is growing rapidly. Over the 12 months through June, the population expanded by around 1.2 million people, bringing the total number of residents to 40.1 million. At 3 per cent, this was the largest 12-month increase since 1957; international migration accounted for almost the entirety of the expansion.
This surge has led to a spirited debate about immigration and Canada’s ability to absorb so many people so quickly. The results from Environics are similar to other recent surveys, including a Nanos poll for The Globe and Mail that found more than half of Canadians want the country to accept fewer immigrants than Ottawa’s plan.
“We see these results as a clarion call for action,” said Lisa Lalande, the chief executive officer of the Century Initiative. “You cannot address demographic decline through immigration without having these corresponding investments” in housing and other areas.
The survey was published just before the federal government unveils its next three-year plan for immigration this week, covering 2024 to 2026. Last year, Ottawa said it was aiming to admit 500,000 permanent residents annually by 2025, part of a steady increase since the Liberal Party came to power in 2015.
As the Liberals struggle with weaker support in the polls, the Century Initiative is hoping the government doesn’t water down its immigration plans. “Now is not the time to pull back on immigration,” Ms. Lalande said.
Of late, the population increase is mostly driven by the arrival of temporary residents, such as international students and workers, many of whom wish to settle permanently in Canada. There are no limits on the issuance of temporary visas, although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last week that his government was considering a cap.
Under Mr. Trudeau, the Liberals have made high immigration a cornerstone of their economic agenda. They argue that not only will immigration lead to stronger growth, but it will also help fill jobs as Canada gets progressively older.
David Williams, vice-president of policy at the Business Council of British Columbia, said this is a naive view of how economies work. He pointed to a stagnation in gross domestic product per capita as a sign that average living standards were not improving, despite the high intake of newcomers. Furthermore, there is ample research that indicates immigration has little effect – positive or negative – on per-capita output or average wages.
“Canada’s immigration policy has really become disconnected from the academic evidence,” Mr. Williams said. “There seems to be a view in Ottawa that ever-increasing immigration levels is a panacea for all of the structural problems in Canada’s economy.”
Rupa Banerjee, a Canada Research Chair in immigration and economics at Toronto Metropolitan University, said the country has struggled for a long time to build homes in sufficient quantities. “People are getting this wrong impression that the immigration situation is causing the housing crisis,” she said.
The Environics survey found the largest declines in support for immigration in British Columbia and Ontario. There was a sharp divide by political party: Nearly two-thirds of Conservative Party supporters agreed with the statement that “there is too much immigration to Canada,” compared with 29 per cent of Liberals and 21 per cent of New Democratic Party backers.
Still, the results suggest that Canadians see the upsides of immigration. Around three-quarters of people agreed that immigration has a positive impact on the economy, down from 85 per cent last year.
The survey was based on telephone interviews conducted with 2,002 Canadians between Sept. 4 and 17. The results are accurate to within plus or minus 2.2 percentage points in 19 out of 20 samples.
The Century Initiative was co-founded by Mark Wiseman, chair of Alberta Investment Management Corp., and Dominic Barton, the former global managing partner of consulting giant McKinsey & Co. Mr. Barton also served as chair of the Advisory Council on Economic Growth, which recommended to the Trudeau government in 2016 that it raise its annual intake of permanent residents by 50 per cent over five years.
“We do not believe in growth at all costs,” Ms. Lalande said. “That growth must absolutely be accompanied by investments in infrastructure, both physical and social.”
Dr. Banerjee said the federal government could do a better job of communicating its plans for how these newcomers will integrate into Canada. Otherwise, she said, people are left with the impression that there is no plan.
“For several years now, I’ve been slightly concerned that we shouldn’t take this high support for immigration for granted,” she said. “It’s very precarious, to be honest.”
Interesting to contrast Canadian and foreign-born along with party. Striking that more immigrants feel levels too high compared to Canadian born. Party differences less surprising:
Overall, there is too much immigration to Canada: Canadian-born 43 percent, Foreign-born 47 percent, Liberals 29 percent, CPC 64 percent, NDP 21 percent
Many people claiming to be refugees are not real refugees: Canadian-born 33 percent, Foreign-born 45 percent, Liberals 29 percent, CPC 49 percent, NDP 21 percent
There are too many immigrants coming into this country who are not adopting Canadian values: Canadian-born 48 percent, Foreign-born 46 percent, Liberals 38 percent, CPC 65 percent, NDP 27 percent
Overall, immigration has a positive impact on the economy of Canada: Canadian-born 72 percent, Foreign-born 81 percent, Liberals 85 percent, CPC 64 percent, NDP 89 percent
The other question that is interesting to look at the breakdown between Canadian and foreign-born pertains to those immigrants considered to be high priority. Not surprisingly, immigrants place higher priority on family immigration and international students but a lower priority on refugees. Both give priority to higher skilled compared to lower skilled:
People with good education and skills who move to Canada permanently: High priority: Canadian-born: 66 percent, Foreign-born: 67 percent
Family members of current residents of Canada, including immigrants: Canadian-born: 38 percent, Foreign-born: 43 percent
Refugees who are fleeing conflict or persecution in their own countries: Canadian-born: 58 percent, Foreign-born: 47 percent
Workers with specialized skills that are in high demand in Canada: Canadian-born: 76 percent, Foreign-born: 80 percent
Students who come to study in Canadian colleges and universities: Canadian-born: 29 percent, Foreign-born: 45 percent
Lower skilled workers who are hired to come to Canada for a short time to take on hard-to-fill jobs: Canadian-born: 34 percent, Foreign-born: 33 percent
And it appears from a variety of public opinion research that this ill-advised policy change is likely one of the changes contributing to declining public support for immigration:
There is a thicket of bureaucratic language in the eight-page briefing document from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada on the upside and downside of waiving temporary visitor visa requirements to get rid of a massive backlog of applications.
Multicultural Meanderings 