Supreme Court of Canada appeal on expatriate voting rights – February 16 schedule

2017/01/11 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see if the SCC accepts federal government arguments that the case is now moot given the provisions in Bill C-33. Unlikely that their will be any change due to the Cabinet Cabinet shuffle and the replacement of Maryam Monsef by Karina Gould, the new Minister for Democratic Institutions:

A federal law barred Canadians from voting in federal elections if they have lived abroad for more than five years. In Gillian Frank, et al. v. Attorney-General of Canada, two Canadian academics at Ivy League universities say that law violated the constitutional right of all citizens to vote. One judge of the Ontario Court of Appeal agreed, saying the law turned them into second-class citizens, and that even federal prisoners have a constitutional right to vote; but two judges said the government had put a reasonable limit on that right, because expatriates don’t live with the daily consequences of their voting decision. The Liberal government has since introduced a law to repeal the legislation barring voting from abroad, but it has not passed yet. The government argues the case is now moot; the court has not decided yet whether it is.

Source: A preview of the Supreme Court of Canada’s winter session – The Globe and Mail

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Diversité et emploi: la piètre performance de la Ville de Montréal | Bouazza Mache

2017/01/11 Leave a comment

Bouazza Mache on the ongoing lack of representation in Montreal with respect to the municipal government (Montreal is 32 percent visible minority, Montreal CMA is 20 percent):

Encore une énième recherche qui démontre par l’absurde que les immigrants, souvent plus diplômés, sont les plus touchés par le chômage, en particulier dans la ville la plus colorée du Québec. Ainsi, nous apprenons dans cette étude, menée par l’Institut du Québec (IdQ), en collaboration avec la Chambre de commerce du Montréal métropolitain (CCMM) et Montréal International (MI), que « les immigrants sont plus instruits, mais chômeurs ».

Plusieurs recherches et enquêtes ont montré auparavant, par les chiffres et à coup d’investigations, que c’est devenu une réalité criante. Il y a eu même des études sectorielles sur le thème, comme la présence de la diversité dans les médias, dans le système de l’éducation ou encore, la situation des femmes racisées. Et à chaque fois, les résultats vont dans le même sens, négatif.

Il y a 18 mois, je soulevais le caractère folklorique de gérer la diversité à Montréal, en particulier en ce qui a trait à l’emploi. Et six mois plus tard, en janvier 2016, j’ai demandé au maire Coderre de prêcher la diversité par l’exemple, en mettant à niveau la représentativité des minorités visibles dans les effectifs municipaux, et de publier les résultats du plan d’action en accès à l’égalité en emploi de 2013-2015.

Or, je viens de découvrir qu’un « plan d’action pour la diversité en emploi 2016-2019» a été publié en mai 2016 par la Ville de Montréal, sans faire trop de bruit. Ce document expose sommairement les réalisations des plans précédents et élabore les objectifs pour 2019.

Les réalisations de l’administration Coderre ne sont nullement reluisantes: le pourcentage des minorités visibles dans l’effectif municipal peine à dépasser le cap des 12% (en 2015). Dans certaines catégories d’employés, il demeure très difficile de recruter auprès des groupes visés par le plan en accès à l’égalité en emploi. C’est le cas des cadres/contremaitres et du personnel pompier.

Mais le problème ne se limite pas uniquement aux demandeurs d’emploi. Il frappe aussi de plein fouet celles et ceux qui ont décidé de se lancer en affaires. Les réseaux fermés et l’accointance avec les décideurs (acheteurs) constituent un obstacle majeur face à la pénétration des marchés publics.

La faute à qui?

En premier lieu aux gouvernements qui se sont succédé et qui ont préféré gaver les statistiques pour faire contrepoids à un reste-du-Canada « menaçant », sans tenir compte des réalités sociale et économique. On dirait que la politique d’immigration a été en décalage total avec la société et le milieu des affaires.

La stigmatisation récurrente de certains politiciens et acteurs médiatiques envers certains groupes minoritaires envoie également un mauvais message aux employeurs qui hésitent à embarquer dans différents plans de recrutement.

Résultat : une ou deux générations d’immigrants, arabes et musulmans en particulier, laissées pour compte.

Source: Diversité et emploi: la piètre performance de la Ville de Montréal | Bouazza Mache

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Diversity is key to success in corporate Canada

2017/01/10 Leave a comment

Jennifer Reynolds, of Toronto-based Women in Capital Markets, on the business case for diversity:

In my role, I have the pleasure of spending time at universities across the country, meeting with students to talk about their careers and the important role they can play as future business leaders in Canada’s economy.

I am not sure who coined the term, but I often hear Canada’s leadership teams referred to as “male, pale and stale”. While I consider “stale” a bit harsh, the “male and pale” is hard to deny. A mere 12 per cent of TSX publically listed company directors are women, and visible minorities make up 4.5 per cent of FP500 company directors in Canada. One could argue that universities in Canada were not all that ethnically diverse 30 years ago when the current crop of senior leaders were graduating, however, you can’t argue that there were no women there. Women have represented 50 per cent (or more) of university graduates for 30 years. Women have also been abundantly present in middle management roles for years. The pool of female talent for leadership roles in our economy has existed for decades, yet less than 20 per cent of senior officer roles are held by women and 40 per cent of leadership teams in Canada have no women at all.

So as this current generation graduates from universities, can we tell them with confidence that 20 years from now Canada’s leadership teams will look like their classrooms? History would argue that “same likes same” in the corporate world. Unless leaders start challenging that overwhelming desire to hire and promote in one’s own likeness, we will find the disconnect between the demographic in our universities and that in the corporate boardroom continues to persist. The reality is, it will take intentional and tenacious focus to hire, develop and promote diverse talent.

To date, corporate Canada hasn’t been all that strong at developing diverse talent. If we want Canada to lead when it comes to innovation, productivity and economic competitiveness, we must take advantage of the immense pool of diverse talent in this country. Our diversity can be a significant competitive advantage. Volumes of research by credible organizations like Credit Suisse, McKinsey and Catalyst have demonstrated higher levels of gender diversity in leadership result in stronger financial performance, same hold true for ethnic diversity.

If you are a leader that buys into the thesis that you need to access the best of 100 per cent of the talent pool to win in the 21st century, you need to start the hard work now. You need to equip your management team with the motivation and tools to change the way they recruit and develop talent. Most importantly, you need to be the biggest, most vocal and tenacious champion of the need for diversity in your business’s talent pool. Even those with the best of intentions fall back on comfortable practices in challenging times. It will take a long-term view to change habits and culture in any organization and the CEO must champion that change.

When young people start their careers in an organization, they are looking for role models. People they relate to and aspire to emulate. If they don’t see anyone that looks like them, if they don’t fit in with the dominant group, that can appear to be a barrier to their prospects. It needs to be clear that “fit” is not “sameness”, that difference of opinion and perspective is valued, and that the leadership team of tomorrow, will look different than the leadership team today.

The best management teams, the ones the next generation will want to work for, will need to evolve from amalgamating power in one dominant person or group, to recognizing that the highest value they can bring to their organizations is to empower other people. To give power to diversity of thought, ideas and solutions. That is innovation in the 21st century.

Source: Diversity is key to success in corporate Canada – The Globe and Mail

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It’s time to walk away from Shared Services Canada: Smith

2017/01/10 Leave a comment

Wayne Smith’s strongest critique yet, and yet one likely to be listened to, given the investment of funds and political/bureaucratic capital in Shared Services:

One might argue that it is rational to starve the legacy infrastructure in order to invest in what is seen as the target infrastructure. This might be true if there was actually a comprehensive and fully costed plan with a known (and near) end date. In fact, no one knows how long the transformation will take or what it will cost but we’re looking at decades and billions of dollars, not a year or two and millions of dollars. The legacy infrastructure cannot survive for that long a time without renewal. As the government’s experience with its new web site demonstrates, SSC’s direct cost for the hardware infrastructure will be dwarfed by the costs incurred in the 43 client departments as they modify their systems to make them transportable to the new infrastructure. This need to transform systems will make this a long-haul project indeed.

From the client departments’ perspective this deepening morass is further complicated by the lack of any acceptable governance arrangements around their relationship to SSC. Shared Services Canada is not accountable to its clients. Nowhere is it set down what obligations SSC has to its clients in respect of the base budget already transferred. Cash-starved SSC takes advantage of this situation by constantly redefining, to its own advantage, those things that it is expected to pay for. One of the more egregious examples was the reversal of an earlier Shared Services Canada commitment that it would accept responsibility to expand capacity in line with natural growth in requirements of client departments. So client departments, at the same time they are looking for massive amounts of money to transform systems to work in SSC planned new data centres, find their IT budgets being eaten away by unjustified and unaffordable SSC charges for hardware services. Departments with large budgets and a tendency to surplus funds annually might be indifferent (it’s not their money) but smaller, tightly run departments may find themselves in serious financial difficulty.

Can SSC turn this situation around? One needs only look at the steady stream of failures and ballooning costs of more modest government IT initiatives (Phoenix, Canada.ca web site, SSC’s own stalled email system) as well as the planning to date of SSC itself to conclude this is unlikely. And there are more centralization projects in the pipeline. One is reminded of Albert Einstein’s famous quip about insanity being defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Sometimes what looks like a better outcome on paper is unattainable. Sometimes a collection of human-scale solutions well-integrated into their environments is ultimately more robust and more efficient overall than the grand, massive scheme. There are better things to spend money on than breaking things that work. The government would be better-advised to back away from this initiative, re-think it (look at New Zealand for a more robust approach) and not move forward again until it has a complete, well-programmed and fully costed plan.

So, Canadians should watch the 2017 budget for any new infusion of funds into Shared Services Canada. The government invested hundreds of millions in the 2016 budget to bail out the SSC initiative, but this sum was nowhere near enough. Government IT operations remain at risk and transformation is largely stalled. This is not short term pain for long-term gain, this is an ever-deepening money pit.

Source: It’s time to walk away from Shared Services Canada – The Hill Times – The Hill Times

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Black people 3 times more likely to be street checked in Halifax, police say

2017/01/10 Leave a comment

Not surprisingly but still alarming and similar data to that of other cities such as Toronto:

Ashley Taylor tenses up every time he sees a police cruiser because he knows what could be coming next.

“Being pulled over by the police for me,” the Nova Scotia resident said, taking a pause, “it’s normal.”

Taylor, 42, estimates he has been stopped by police an average of three times a year. The student support worker at Dartmouth High School in said it usually happens on his drive to work.

“Is it racial profiling? Possibly.”

He’s not surprised to hear a CBC News Investigation finding that Halifax police are more likely to stop and check people who are black.

In fact, according to information released by Halifax Regional Police, black people are three times more likely to be the subject of a so-called street check than white individuals.

Graphic

Halifax Regional Police began recording data of street checks in 2005. (CBC)

Street checks are used to “look at individuals who are doing suspicious activity,” said police Chief Jean-Michel Blais.

Source: Black people 3 times more likely to be street checked in Halifax, police say – Nova Scotia – CBC News

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Lisée veut «aller plus loin» pour séduire les communautés culturelles

2017/01/10 Leave a comment

Given that Lisée has been all over the map on identity issues and ethnic groups, hard to see this ‘seduction’ succeeding:

Le chef du Parti québécois (PQ), Jean-François Lisée, souhaite «aller plus loin qu’avant» pour séduire les communautés culturelles et il croit que sa proposition de ne pas faire de référendum dans un premier mandat risque de l’avantager en ce sens.

Le fait qu’on n’ait pas décidé de tenir de référendum dans le premier mandat est une façon de détendre l’atmosphère», a expliqué M. Lisée, en point de presse, dimanche après-midi, à Montréal.

Le chef du PQ a rencontré les médias pour discuter de son plan d’action qui vise à attirer dans le giron péquiste les Québécois issus de l’immigration, un électorat qui a tendance à voter davantage pour le Parti libéral du Québec (PLQ).

Pour ce faire, il a confié le mandat à sa conseillère spéciale en matière de diversité, Évelyne Abitbol, de tenter de tisser des liens avec ces électeurs. Carole Poirier, la whip en chef du PQ et porte-parole sur l’immigration et les communautés culturelles, s’occupera pour sa part à mobiliser les membres et ses collègues députés sur cette question.

«Pendant la campagne au leadership, Jean-François a réuni une vaste coalition de la diversité. Cette vaste coalition, il faut maintenir ces liens et la rendre active», a soutenu Mme Poirier.

Selon le chef du Parti québécois, le fait de mettre le référendum de côté pendant quatre ans permettra au parti d’accueillir plus de communautés culturelles, qui seront plus réceptives à ses messages.

«Il y a des gens qui sont d’accord avec nous, mais qui ne nous connaissent pas assez (…) Nous, on a décidé de ne pas en tenir (de référendum), alors est-ce qu’on peut ouvrir les portes, les oreilles, les conversations? On pense qu’il va y avoir plus de fluidité», a-t-il expliqué.

M. Lisée estime que certains de ces électeurs ne connaissent pas assez bien de son parti parce qu’ils se font toujours dire par le PLQ qu’un vote pour le PQ équivaut à un vote contre le Canada.

Le chef du PQ ne s’est pas avancé sur ce qui a pu nuire à son parti par le passé auprès des communautés culturelles, mais il dit vouloir profiter du vent de changement amené par la récente course à la direction.

«Cette curiosité et cette présence de beaucoup de membres de la diversité dans ma campagne, dans celle d’Alexandre (Cloutier), de Martine (Ouellet) et de Véronique (Hivon), pour moi, c’est un fait nouveau intéressant. Il faut miser là-dessus», a-t-il souligné.

Interrogé sur la possibilité que le PQ ravive la Charte des valeurs de l’ancien gouvernement Marois sur laquelle il avait été très critiqué, M. Lisée a fait valoir que ses propositions sur laïcité étaient beaucoup plus «pragmatiques» et «ouvertes» que l’ancienne politique prônée par son parti.

«C’est clair que notre message est plus attrayant pour les membres de la diversité qui ont une vision plus laïque sur l’avenir du Québec et ils sont très nombreux», a-t-il soutenu en anglais.

Le Parti québécois affirme qu’il mettra en place une «série d’actions» dans les prochaines semaines, ce qui inclut la création d’un comité pour la diversité dans les instances du parti.

Source: Lisée veut «aller plus loin» pour séduire les communautés culturelles | Vicky Fragasso-Marquis | Politique québécoise

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St Lucia opposition describes new citizenship rules as ‘desecration’ | Caribbean News Now

2017/01/10 Leave a comment

Inevitable, that a program designed to encourage investment through citizenship, should lead to minimal conditions or requirements?

The Saint Lucia parliament later approved the legislation establishing the CIP with every member expressing support for the programme, including all opposition members.

In establishing the CIP, the SLP was very clear on its objectives, Pierre said:

1. It was a tool aimed primarily at attracting foreign direct investment in high end hotel and real estate products and employment generating business enterprises

2. Accountability and transparency was not an option. An annual report would have to be submitted to Parliament indicating the individuals who were granted Saint Lucian citizenship, how much income was collected and how was that revenue utilised

3. That Saint Lucia’s programme would not be positioned just as selling passports. “We were introducing global citizenship as a lifestyle and creating incentives to make the island a choice destination for investment. In this regard, we placed Saint Lucia on the higher end of the scale of options. We did not see Saint Lucia as being offered as the cheapest option,” Pierre noted.

4. That the due diligence process would be very robust and was expanded the due diligence process to include legally enforceable assessments.

5. That Saint Lucia would be offered as an option for selected high worth individuals with a propensity to invest, therefore the number of applications was limited to 500 annually, and required a minimum net worth of US$3 million.

However, apparently abandoning its initial up-market approach to its citizenship programme, namely, Prime Minister Allen Chastanet, last month issued an amendment to the citizenship by investment regulations, removing the cap on annual applications, reducing the amount of qualifying contributions and dispensing with the requirement of financial resources of a minimum of US$3 million.

“The announcement that the UWP administration has changed the regulations effective January 1, 2017, has effectively damaged the reputation and image of the CIP. The intention of the UWP government is to turn the CIP into a cash cow with little regard for the consequences to Saint Lucia or the programme. The unrealistic election promises must now be funded by whatever means necessary,” Pierre said.

The SLP said it is opposed to the changes being made and will seek a debate in the Parliament to ensure that the changes and their possible consequences are fully explained to the people of Saint Lucia.

Source: St Lucia opposition describes new citizenship rules as ‘desecration’ | Caribbean News Now

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Conservative Party’s fortunes hinge on immigration policy: Ibbitson

2017/01/09 Leave a comment

Good overview by Ibbitson of the varied immigration positions of the Conservative leadership contenders (the Harper support mentioned below reflected in part the weakness of the other parties as well as the strong outreach by former Minister Jason Kenney):

Under Stephen Harper, the Conservatives enjoyed broad support from immigrant Canadians, many of whom are economically and socially more conservative than many native-born Canadians.

But when the party promised during the 2015 election campaign to root out “barbaric cultural practices,” it made Conservatives look anti-immigrant.

New Canadians will support the Conservatives, but only if they believe that Conservatives support them.

Source: Conservative Party’s fortunes hinge on immigration policy – The Globe and Mail

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ADL and Wiesenthal Center don’t seem to agree on anti-Semitism in America | Bloggish | Jewish Journal

2017/01/09 Leave a comment

Interesting contrast (ADL’s approach the more reasonable one):

Shortly before the New Year, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, both human rights organizations dedicated to fighting hate speech, each put out the top 10 list of anti-Semitic incidents in 2016 (the Wiesenthal Center’s list also included anti-Israel incidents – more on this below).

The two lists are starkly different, and that difference is worth paying attention to.

Numbers one through four on the ADL list are all related to the election, apparently arising from the Donald Trump moment and the new life it gave to the seedier elements of American xenophobia.

On the Wiesenthal Center list, this type of anti-Semitism is featured just once, coming in at number five with Richard Spencer’s memorable tryst at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. Number one on this list is the failure of the Obama administration to veto a recent United Nations resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The difference is notable because in theory, it shouldn’t exist. These two organizations are not identical, to be sure. The Wiesenthal Center is Los Angeles-based, for one, and incorporates Holocaust memory to a greater extent in its mission.

But both have at their core the same goal of fighting anti-Semitism. The overlap is great enough to cause some amount of institutional rivalry.

“ADL is always a little bit worried that the center in L.A., the Wiesenthal Center, will steal its thunder,” Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University told me in November. “So they always have kind of one eye on the Wiesenthal Center.”

Why, then, do two organizations with the same ideals come to vastly different conclusions about where to look for the most troubling incidents of anti-Semitism?

I brought this question up during a recent interview with Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Wiesenthal Center. He pointed out to me that the lists were in fact not the same and that his organization, unlike the ADL, had included “anti-Israel incidents” as a criterion. That’s why the U.N. resolution ended up at the top of the Wiesenthal Center list without appearing at all on the ADL list.

Fine. But that doesn’t explain the massive discrepancy between, on the one hand, nearly half of a top 10 list being dedicated to right-wing anti-Semitism, and, on the other, a single item buried halfway down.

It’s easy to chalk this up to politics. Critics of Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL CEO, like to point out that he came to the job from a post in the Obama administration. In their mind, he’s a left-wing actor that has turned the ADL into a basically partisan operation.

But I take Greenblatt at his word when he told me that during the campaign trail “I said what I said and we did what we did because it was consistent with ADL’s historic role.”

Greenblatt, it seems to me, is too smart to nakedly put his politics on display. If he really were a leftist shill, he’d probably be smarter about hiding it, anyway. I’m guessing – and we can only guess as to people’s intentions – that both lists reflects a real concern about where anti-Semitism exists in America today.

The net result is that we have two lists that tell us more about the organizations that generated them than they do about anti-Semitism.

Source: ADL and Wiesenthal Center don’t seem to agree on anti-Semitism in America | Bloggish | Jewish Journal

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Austria to consider total headscarf ban for public servants – The Globe and Mail

2017/01/09 Leave a comment

Hard to see how this will assist community relations and integration:

Austria’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Integration Sebastian Kurz said on Friday he wants to ban public servants, including school teachers, from wearing the Islamic headscarf.

Mr. Kurz, of the Christian Conservative People’s Party (OVP), is working on a draft law with Muna Duzdar, a junior minister from the OVP’s senior Social Democrat coalition partner who has an Arab family background and is Muslim.

If passed by Austria’s parliament, the nationwide ban would be stricter than laws in France, where only the full body veil is illegal, or Germany, where the highest court in 2015 restricted lawmakers’ scope to ban teachers from wearing the headscarf.

“Because there (schools), it’s about the effect of role models and the influence on young people. Austria is religion-friendly but also a secular state,” Mr. Kurz said, according to a spokesman.

Christian crosses, widespread in staunchly Catholic Austria, should be allowed in classrooms, Mr. Kurz said, referring to the country’s “historically grown culture.”

An adviser to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said in March companies should be allowed to prohibit staff from wearing the Islamic headscarf but only as part of a general ban on religious and political symbols.

Mr. Kurz is revamping Austria’s integration laws and would also like to include a ban on full body veils and restrictions on the distribution of the Koran by Salafist Muslims, Kurz’s spokesman said.

A spokeswoman for Austria’s most prominent Muslim group, IGGIO, noted that discrimination in the workplace on religious grounds was illegal in Austria and said: “After such a statement, trust is badly shaken.”

She said such a ban would send the wrong signal, not least because working women wearing the headscarf could help overcome deep “patriarchal prejudices.”

Ms. Duzdar, the junior minister, told Reuters a person cannot be discriminated against in the workplace on the grounds of their religion and said she wanted to wait for a final ECJ ruling on the issue before sending the law to parliament.

“I’m open to discussions about this but in reality one cannot pick individual religions. If you discuss religious dress and symbols, you have to speak about all religions. We work on a dialogue with all religious communities,” she said.

Source: Austria to consider total headscarf ban for public servants – The Globe and Mail

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