Bouchard: Laïcité, méfions-nous du va-t-en-guerre

2024/12/16 Leave a comment

Always interesting to read Bouchard, with his sensible analysis and recommendations:

Je suis fermement opposé aux pratiques qui viennent d’être exposées dans nos écoles. Elles sont nettement contraires aux valeurs de notre société et il faut y mettre fin. Mais de quelle façon ?

Parti en guerre contre l’islamisme (« On va se battre ») comme si une vague déferlait sur le Québec, M. Legault veut immédiatement sortir l’artillerie lourde : durcir la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État, l’enchâsser dans une constitution, utiliser la disposition de dérogation, « sortir » la religion des écoles et des lieux publics. Il y a certes un problème, mais une intervention précipitée, mal calibrée, pourrait l’aggraver plutôt que de le régler. Nous connaissons mal la situation, des enquêtes viennent tout juste de commencer. Voici quelques questions à considérer.

1) Quelle est l’ampleur du problème ? Gardons-nous de généraliser hâtivement. Nous savons actuellement que moins de vingt écoles sont concernées. Est-ce la pointe de l’iceberg ? Ou l’iceberg lui-même ? Qu’en est-il des 2757 établissements primaires et secondaires recensés au Québec ? Et qu’en est-il des universités et des cégeps ? Nous l’ignorons.

En passant, ce que nous savons des dérapages provient du travail des médias. Sinon, quand le public en aurait-il été informé ?

2) Quelle est la source du problème ? Les situations dénoncées peuvent être imputables à diverses causes : a) les responsables, à tous les niveaux décisionnels, en étaient informés, mais ont choisi de les cacher ; b) les responsables immédiats le savaient et ont fait leur devoir, mais leurs messages se sont « perdus » plus haut ; c) des responsables, à un niveau quelconque, ont jugé que les pratiques concernées ne méritaient pas qu’on s’y attarde ; d) des acteurs, victimes d’intimidation, se sont tus. Encore là, nous ne savons pas.

Il s’agissait peut-être de peu de choses au départ. Le problème a pu s’accentuer à la faveur de l’inaction prolongée des gestionnaires. Dans le cas de l’école Bedford, on sait que les transgressions avaient cours depuis sept ans. Il est troublant que le ministère de l’Éducation n’ait pas été saisi de ces écarts ou que, l’ayant été, il n’ait rien fait.

3) Un problème d’intégration culturelle ? Il paraît clair que des éléments très localisés (jusqu’à preuve du contraire) d’un fondamentalisme islamique s’activent dans les écoles. Fondamentalisme ? J’entends par là le fait de a) reconnaître une priorité absolue à des valeurs religieuses ; b) se fermer à tout assouplissement ; c) s’adonner à l’endoctrinement.

Ce semble être un phénomène neuf ici. Aucune mention n’en a été faite au cours des nombreuses consultations conduites auprès de la communauté scientifique et auprès du grand public par la commission que j’ai coprésidée avec Charles Taylor.

Nous faisons face à un choc culturel. Qu’il soit ou non le fait d’une nouvelle génération, il témoigne d’un rejet de valeurs primordiales promues par notre société. Nous devons mieux connaître les conditions dans lesquelles des catégories de croyants en viennent à se comporter d’une manière inacceptable dans des institutions aussi névralgiques que le système scolaire.

4) Interdire les prières en public ? Qu’entend-on exactement par là ? On parle des attroupements de fidèles accomplissant un rituel religieux sur un trottoir ou une place. Qu’est-ce qu’un attroupement : deux personnes ? Cinq ? Dix ? Visera-t-on aussi le dévot qui, devant l’oratoire Saint-Joseph, s’arrête pour faire une génuflexion et le signe de la croix ? Qu’entend-on par « lieux publics » ? Par « prières » ? Comment démêler le religieux et le spirituel ? Et qu’advient-il des droits fondamentaux ? Enfin, toutes les religions seront-elles visées ? On aura noté que le premier ministre ne parle que des « islamistes ».

Bonne chance aux spécialistes qui rédigeront les nouvelles directives. Et bonne chance à ceux et celles qui devront les appliquer.

5) « Sortir » le religieux des écoles ? Comment procédera-t-on ? Il faudra distinguer l’endoctrinement et l’enseignement des religions, statuer sur les anciens séminaires laïcisés subventionnés par l’État et qui abritent une chapelle encore active. Et si notre premier ministre est cohérent, il devra fermer les écoles religieuses. Osera-t-il le faire ? Sinon, qui le prendra au sérieux ?

Selon un texte de Radio-Canada (avril 2022), notre gouvernement subventionnerait cinquante établissements privés ayant « une vocation religieuse explicite ».

6) Quoi faire ? Comment ? Comment contrer les expressions répréhensibles de convictions profondément enracinées dans le religieux ? Cette tâche appelle de la prudence et du doigté dictés par une approche réfléchie, expérimentée. Possédons-nous les outils psychologiques et sociologiques requis ?

Nous avons un centre de prévention de la radicalisation créé par la Ville de Montréal depuis une dizaine d’années. Il a fait ses preuves, surtout à l’échelle des individus, sauf erreur. Disposons-nous d’une expertise spécifique sur le plan collectif ? Saurons-nous traiter correctement des réalités aussi complexes, potentiellement explosives ?

7) Une déchirure sociétale à la française ? Des interventions à l’emporte-pièce pourraient donner à court terme l’illusion d’un succès, mais elles pourraient aussi activer le feu qu’on voulait éteindre. Évitons, si possible, de reproduire ici la situation de la France : un clivage profond, terreau de violences, devenu ingérable.

Au premier ministre de jouer…

Quel parti va prendre M. Legault ? Cédant à l’émoi du moment et en quête d’un gain électoral facile, va-t-il choisir d’en découdre et risquer de provoquer un durcissement, d’ériger un mur ? Ou optera-t-il pour la prudence afin d’y voir plus clair avant d’agir ?

Ce texte n’est pas une invitation à la complaisance ou à la mollesse. C’est une invitation à donner une chance à la prévention (sensibilisation, mises en garde, négociations, mises au pas, sanctions au besoin) avant de recourir à l’artillerie lourde. C’est une invitation à bien baliser le parcours avant de s’y engager. Et n’excluons pas que le cadre juridique actuel, appliqué rigoureusement, puisse offrir les moyens de ramener les choses à l’ordre. C’est ce que croient plusieurs juristes.

Source: Laïcité, méfions-nous du va-t-en-guerre

I strongly oppose the practices that have just been exposed in our schools. They are clearly contrary to the values of our society and must be put to an end. But in what way?

Gone to war against Islamism (“On va se battre”) as if a wave was sweeping over Quebec, Mr. Legault immediately wants to take out the heavy artillery: toughen the Law on the Secularism of the State, enshrine it in a constitution, use the exemption provision, “take” religion out of schools and public places. There is certainly a problem, but a hasty, poorly calibrated intervention could aggravate it rather than solve it. We do not know much about the situation, investigations have just begun. Here are some questions to consider.

1) What is the extent of the problem? Let us be careful not to generalize hastily. We currently know that less than twenty schools are affected. Is this the tip of the iceberg? Or the iceberg itself? What about the 2757 primary and secondary schools identified in Quebec? And what about universities and CEGEPs? We do not know it.

By the way, what we know about skids comes from the work of the media. Otherwise, when would the public have been informed?

2) What is the source of the problem? The situations denounced can be attributed to various causes: a) those responsible, at all decision-making levels, were informed, but chose to hide them; b) the immediate officials knew it and did their duty, but their messages were “lost” above; c) those responsible, at some level, judged that the practices concerned did not deserve to be dwelling on; d) actors, victims of intimidation, fell silent. Again, we don’t know.

It may have been a few things at the beginning. The problem may have been exacerbated by the prolonged inaction of managers. In the case of the Bedford School, we know that the transgressions had been taking place for seven years. It is disturbing that the Ministry of Education has not been seized of these discrepancies or that, having been, it has done nothing.

3) A problem of cultural integration? It seems clear that very localized elements (until proven otherwise) of Islamic fundamentalism are being activated in schools. Fundamentalism? I mean a) recognizing absolute priority to religious values; b) closing to any relaxation; c) indocting indoctrination.

It seems to be a new phenomenon here. No mention of this was made during the many consultations conducted with the scientific community and with the general public by the commission that I co-chaired with Charles Taylor.

We are facing a cultural shock. Whether or not it is the fact of a new generation, it testifies to a rejection of primordial values promoted by our society. We need to better understand the conditions under which categories of believers come to behave in an unacceptable way in institutions as neuralgic as the school system.

4) Prohibit prayers in public? What exactly do we mean by that? There is talk of crowds of worshippers performing a religious ritual on a sidewalk or square. What is a crowd: two people? Five? Ten? Will we also aim at the devotee who, in front of the Saint-Joseph oratory, stops to make a genuflection and the sign of the cross? What is meant by “public places”? By “prayers”? How to disentangle the religious and the spiritual? And what happens to fundamental rights? Finally, will all religions be targeted? It will have been noted that the Prime Minister only speaks of “Islamists”.

Good luck to the specialists who will write the new guidelines. And good luck to those who will have to apply them.

5) “Take out” the religious from schools? How will we proceed? It will be necessary to distinguish the indoctrination and the teaching of religions, to rule on the old secularized seminars subsidized by the State and which house a chapel that is still active. And if our prime minister is consistent, he will have to close religious schools. Will he dare to do it? Otherwise, who will take it seriously?

According to a text from Radio-Canada (April 2022), our government would subsidize fifty private institutions with “an explicit religious vocation”.

6) What to do? How? How to counter the reprehensible expressions of convictions deeply rooted in the religious? This task calls for prudence and tact dictated by a thoughtful, experienced approach. Do we have the necessary psychological and sociological tools?

We have a radicalization prevention center created by the City of Montreal for about ten years. It has proven itself, especially at the level of individuals, unless I am mistaken. Do we have specific expertise at the collective level? Will we be able to properly deal with such complex, potentially explosive realities?

7) A French societal tear? Cookie-cutter interventions could give the illusion of success in the short term, but they could also activate the fire we wanted to put out. Let’s avoid, if possible, reproducing here the situation of France: a deep cleavage, a breeding ground for violence, which has become unmanageable.

It’s up to the Prime Minister to play…

Which side will Mr. Legault? Giving in to the emotion of the moment and in search of an easy electoral gain, will he choose to fight and risk causing a hardening, erecting a wall? Or will he opt for caution in order to see more clearly before acting?

This text is not an invitation to complacency or softness. It is an invitation to give prevention a chance (awareness, warnings, negotiations, steps, sanctions if necessary) before resorting to heavy artillery. It is an invitation to mark the course before committing to it. And let’s not rule out that the current legal framework, rigorously applied, can offer the means to bring things back to order. This is what many lawyers believe.



Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , ,

Globe editorial: The twin crises of housing and immigration 

2024/12/16 Leave a comment

Indeed:

…In its most recent plan, the government uses five criteria – with the final one being Canada’s capacity to settle, integrate and retain newcomers. That is too faint a nod toward a critical shortage of housing in major urban centres.

The new federal targets aim to reduce immigration levels (from record highs) over the next three years. But those reductions won’t fix chronic, countrywide challenges around housing and health care. Canada needs to ensure that its immigration targets match our ability to provide the fundamentals in communities that are stretched by high numbers of new arrivals.

The federal Conservatives want Canada to set immigration targets based on this country’s capacity to absorb newcomers, based on the availability of housing, jobs and health care. The Tories are on the right track. Capacity – most easily measured by the state of the housing market – should be the yardstick for the federal government’s targets for economic migrants, in addition to its humanitarian commitments.

The reduced targets are overdue. Unchecked growth has soured Canadians’ support for immigration, as gaps in housing supply, access to health care and other social services have grown….

The lesson for the federal Liberals, who will face voters next year, is that immigration and housing are intertwined crises – and should be dealt with as such.

Source: On the Brink: The twin crises of housing and immigration

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C-71 Senate SOCI Report

2024/12/16 Leave a comment

Of note, as often happens, the narrower interests related to adoption prevail over broader policy considerations (time limit for residency test):

This bill is a response to the December 2023 decision from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Bjorkquist et al. v. Attorney General of Canada). This decision declared that the existing provisions in the Citizenship Act that limit citizenship by descent to the first generation born abroad, contravene the mobility and equality rights provisions in sections 6 and 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (the Charter). These provisions in the Act are thus unconstitutional and, as such, have no force or effect. The Court suspended its declaration of invalidity until December 19, 2024, to give the Government of Canada time to amend the Citizenship Act.

With consideration to the impending court deadline, on November 28, 2024, the subject matter of Bill C-71 was referred to your committee for a pre-study, with instructions to report its findings to the Senate within two weeks. Your committee therefore received limited witness testimony and did not have enough time to seek additional clarity from stakeholders and government officials on this important piece of legislation. Your committee examined the subject matter of this bill over two meetings, hearing testimony from the Honourable Marc Miller, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship and departmental officials, in addition to six stakeholders.

Your committee heard broad support for the substantial connection test proposed by Bill C-71.

Concerns around equity and consideration of rights guaranteed by the Charter dominated much of the other limited testimony that was received. The Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship stated that, if Bill C-71 is adopted, the Citizenship Act will be in full compliance with the Charter for the first time in its history. While some stakeholders agreed that the bill addresses the exclusions of the current Act, others cautioned that inequities in recognizing citizenship may persist, including violations of Charter rights.

In particular, concerns were raised by some stakeholders about the requirements for recognizing the citizenship of the children of internationally born adoptees. Your committee heard diverging perspectives on this point and, therefore, encourages the Government of Canada to engage with relevant stakeholders to further investigate this issue and consider amendments to the bill, if required.

Your committee also acknowledges the overall complexity of the Citizenship Act and suggests that careful consideration be taken at each step of the legislative and implementation processes relevant to this bill to prevent future lost Canadians and further violation of Charter rights.

During his testimony, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship informed the committee that the Government of Canada is seeking an additional extension to the court deadline.

Source: C-71 Senate SOCI Report

Media coverage focused on extension of court deadline:

An unknown number of people will automatically become Canadian citizens next week if the Ontario Superior Court doesn’t grant the federal government a third extension to fix the issue of “lost Canadians,” Canada argued in court Thursday.

“Lost Canadians” is a term applied to people who were born outside of the country to Canadian parents who were also born in another country. In 2009, the former Conservative government changed the law so people who were born abroad could not pass down their citizenship unless their child was born in Canada.

In late 2023, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled that law is unconstitutional.The government has until Dec. 19 to amend the Citizenship Act to respond to that decision. It is now seeking its third extension, after being granted delays in June and August.

In court Thursday the government asked for the Dec. 19 deadline to be delayed three months, until March 19, 2025, to give them more time to pass legislation.

The Liberals introduced the amendments to the Citizenship Act in May but the bill only began real debate in September. It has been sidelined since then, as an ongoing battle between the Conservatives and Liberals delays most work in the House of Commons.

The new legislation stipulates that anyone who meets the criteria would be eligible for citizenship if their parents spent a cumulative three years in Canada before they were born.

Source: Missed ’Lost Canadians’ deadline would make ’unknowable’ number of new citizens: feds

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From ‘eh’ to ‘meh’? Pride and attachment to country in Canada both endure significant declines 

2024/12/14 Leave a comment

Alarming decline, reflecting likely mix of housing, healthcare, post-COVID hangover, inflation, youth challenges etc, along with perhaps undue focus on criticism of Canada and its history. No easy corrective action no matter which government:



Link to the poll here: www.angusreid.org/

The years since the onset of COVID-19 have been a well-documented period of division and discord in this country, with Canadians expressing concerns about the lack of a “middle” option politically, an unwillingness from governments to work together for the people, weakening compassion and growing space between Canadians.
 
New data from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute find two broad trends underscoring these changes and signalling a challenge for national unity. In 2016, 62 per cent of Canadians said they had a deep emotional attachment to Canada. In 1991 that mark was three points higher (65%). Now in 2024 it is 13 points lower at 49 per cent.

Even more dramatic is a drop in a sense of pride among Canadians. In 1985, 78 per cent said they were “very proud” to be Canadian. This dropped to 52 per cent in 2016 and now by another 18 points to 34 per cent. The proportion who say they are either proud or very proud of their nationality has dropped precipitously from 79 per cent to 58 per cent over the past eight years.

Source: From ‘eh’ to ‘meh’? Pride and attachment to country in Canada both endure significant declines 

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Brian Dijkema: American solutions won’t solve the problems fuelling Canadian populism  

2024/12/14 Leave a comment

Good discussion of some of the differences:

…Canadian populism ≠ American populism

Conservatives who are sympathetic to an economic vision that is focused on the working class might be forgiven for wanting to copy and paste the American vision into the Canadian context. But this would be a mistake because while many of the concerns of the Canadian working class are shared with their American counterparts (particularly their distrust of elite institutions, including universities, media, law, and cultural establishment), the economic realities that have affected the working class in Canada are markedly different in nature than they are in America.

Many of the items that Cass, Salam, and Douthat sought as policy remedies for the working class in America—family allowances or parental leave, for instance—are well established in Canada. And, frankly, if you look at significant portions of our economy, we are kind of living the dream of a realignment conservative in the U.S. You would expect populism to be a non-factor here.

But that assumes that all countries are like the United States, and they’re not. We’re not.i

Populism is a factor here for many of the same reasons in the U.S. on the cultural side.2 But on the economic side, while we have experienced job polarization, we also have many of the family and other supports that realignment conservatives in the U.S. offer as a means to provide a base for family vitality.

While Cass might be right about the imbalance in favour of the consumer in the U.S. (I’ll let him debate that within his own country), it is absolutely true that in Canada the imbalance goes the other way.

Whether it’s Volkswagen’s battery plants, or spaghetti factories in Brampton, Ont., there is nothing Canadian governments love doing more than taking care of producers in the name of creating jobs (or, more accurately, hypothetical jobs). I think it’s entirely plausible to suggest that, across a whole range of industries, the structure of our economy works against working families getting ahead. So many bills, for cell phones, the milk, butter, and cheese that we use to feed our children, chicken, flights home for Christmas, Christmas turkeys, banking costs, electricity, or housing are far higher than they need to be because the Canadian governments (both provincial and federal) have chosen the producer over the consumer.

Many Canadians, myself included, just look at their monthly bills, look at the ways in which associations and lobbyists for these groups secure protections from competition that would lower prices, and start reaching for their pitchforks. And that doesn’t include the array of other industries that aren’t directly connected with consumer goods—shipbuilding, aerospace, or infrastructure, for instance—that take our tax dollars to create jobs, but barely do that, and also fail to build us the ships and planes that we need to defend our own country. It’s tough to swallow getting dinged with tariffs because our money has gone to stuff the pockets of the Bombardiers, Irvings, and SNCs of the world while they in turn have failed to deliver the things we need to defend democratic institutions against global threats.

A realignment economic agenda in Canada will need to include measures that address these challenges, and insofar as it does so, it will not only look far different from its populist neighbours to the south, but far more like traditional free market economics than the heterodox strands that have been woven into the American populist agenda.

Politicians in Canada who hope to craft a multi-ethnic, working-class coalition will, of course, also need to address the deeply rooted sources of populism in culture, but when it comes to economics, at least in Canada, what’s old should become new again.

Source: Brian Dijkema: American solutions won’t solve the problems fuelling Canadian populism

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Pro-life groups need to defend birthright citizenship

2024/12/14 Leave a comment

Interesting take (but then again, Catholic organizations tend to support more generous immigration and related policies, unlike Evangelicals):

President-elect Donald Trump stated he plans to end birthright citizenship, which is currently guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. The pro-life movement, which is as significant a part of the GOP base as the anti-immigrant caucus, needs to step up and oppose any attempt to end the conferral of citizenship on those born in the United States.

The foundational argument of the pro-life movement is that all life is sacred, and that once you start parsing who is, and who is not, entitled to certain rights, you are halfway down a slippery moral slope. All human beings, as human beings, should enjoy the same rights as every other human being.

The relationship of abortion policy to immigration policy might seem counterintuitive. The 14th Amendment doesn’t help the pro-life cause. It refers to “All persons born or naturalized in the United States …” Pro-choice groups argue that a human being only has a right to life once it is born, but once born, the rights that are conferred on the person are sacrosanct.

Those who drafted and enacted the 14th Amendment were not addressing the moral and legal issues surrounding abortion, and they didn’t have sonograms in 1866 when members of Congress began drafting the amendment after President Andrew Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act that year.

The drafters of the 14th Amendment aimed to extend the equal protection of the laws to those formerly enslaved. They knew that the framers of the original Constitution had it wrong when they decreed that slaves only counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of representation in the Congress. They knew that the founders had been wrong about slavery entirely. They knew that this diminishment of the humanity of those who had been enslaved was an affront to our nation’s foundational claims about human freedom and legal equality.

The pro-life movement has always been constructed on this deeper moral concern, that no person should have their humanity diminished, even if the movement has failed to live up to this high ideal. The source of human rights is our civilizational belief in transcendent human dignity. Virtually every religion expresses this belief in some way. Ours expresses it in terms of the imago Dei, the belief that every person is made in the image of likeness of God. Every time the pro-life movement ignores other threats to this God-given human dignity, it weakens its credibility.

“Catholic social thought starts with the dignity of each person and the whole person,” Dylan Corbett, executive director of the Hope Border Institute which advocates for immigrants, told me. “This is the bedrock of the church’s commitment to the poor, the unborn and the vulnerable, without distinction. In the coming months, the Trump administration’s targeting of our parishioners, neighbors and the essential workers in our communities simply because of immigration status will test the credibility of our moral witness.”

Kristen Day, director of Democrats for Life of America agrees. “Pro-life principles don’t end where Donald Trump’s pet projects begin,” she told me via email. “Remaining silent on the issue of birthright citizenship would betray our movement’s highest values because there is nothing pro-life about ending it. Life begins at conception, but it doesn’t end at birth.”

To be clear, even a democracy seriously engaged in working for equality will need to draw distinctions, to discriminate, between people. We all know a precocious 16- or 17-year-old who is more mature than some 20-somethings we know, but unless you are 18, you don’t get to vote. We wouldn’t want the government devising some kind of test that decides who is worthy to vote, and who isn’t, and so we set an arbitrary cutoff. That arbitrary cutoff is applied universally.

In terms of abortion policy, conception, viability and birth are the usual cutoffs, and there is an argument to be made for any of the three. Only the first coheres with Catholic teaching, and in most pluralistic democracies, the cutoff is at some point between conception and viability.

As a culture, a society and a polity, we need to learn how to think more deeply, and less arbitrarily, about where we draw such lines.

The idea that a person is a citizen of the place where he or she is born is a bulwark against any attempt to discriminate unjustly. A good way to sniff if a particular discrimination is just or unjust is to ask whether it is universal. Birthright citizenship is universal: It applies to everyone born here.

This political linkage of immigration and abortion cuts both ways. Pro-immigrant arguments would have greater moral cogency to many Americans if they were put forward by people who are committed to protecting the lives of unborn children, or at least not indifferent to the dignity of those unborn children. Given the polarization of the country, that moral linkage is not apparent to most and will be dismissed by many. Still, moral coherence eventually wins out most of the time.

At this moment in our nation’s political history, the pro-life movement should rally around the cause of defending birthright citizenship.

Source: Pro-life groups need to defend birthright citizenship

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Globe editorial: Wanted – More enforcement in immigration 

2024/12/14 Leave a comment

Latest in the series:

…Right now, Canada relies on a system of incentives for people to follow the law. People ordered to leave must confirm their departure with the CBSA at a port of exit or risk being put under an exclusion order that would prevent any future return to Canada.

But leaving it to people to decide what is in their best interests leads to a situation where the CBSA cannot speak with absolute certainty as to the whereabouts of 19,729 people whose claims for refugee status were denied by Canada in 2011 or earlier. They might have left and simply not informed the CBSA. Or they may still be here.

There are a range of potential solutions. First, the problem needs to stop where it starts: limiting the number of refugee cases by reducing the incentive for fatuous claims, as this space argued on Thursday. Ottawa could also explore issuing automatic exclusion orders once permits expire.

At the same time, the government needs to provide the CBSA with the tools and staffing to ensure that the people deported actually leave the country. In this new, harder world, stricter monitoring of whether people leave the country when they’re supposed to is inevitable.

Canada can no longer give people the option to fade into the woodwork.

Source: On the Brink: Wanted – More enforcement in immigration

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Canadian Immigration Tracker – October 2024 Update

2024/12/14 Leave a comment

Year to date highlights:

  • Permanent residents admissions: Increase January-October from 404,000 in 2023 to 413,000 in 2024 or 2.3 percent.   
  • TR2PR (Those already in Canada): Increase January-October from 212,000 in 2023 to 219,000 in 2024 or 3.3 percent. 
  • TRs-IMP: Decrease January-October from 757,000 in 2023 to 648,000 in 2024 or -14.5 percent.
  • TRs-TFWP: Decrease January-October from 172,000 in 2023 to 165,000 in 2024 or -4.0 percent.
  • Students: Decrease January-October from 570,000 in 2023 to 461,000 in 2024 or -19.2 percent. Post-secondary only: Decline from 431,000 to 328,000 or 23.9 percent.
  • Asylum Claimants: Increase January-October from 117,000 in 2023 to 149,000 in 2024 or 27.3 percent.
  • Citizenship: Increase January-October from 317,000 in 2023 to 329,000 in 2024 or 3.7 percent.
  • Visitor Visas: Decrease January-October from 1,567,000 in 2023 to 1,290,000 in 2024 or -17.7 percent.

https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/canadian-immigration-tracker-october-2024-pdf/274022459

Filed under Citizenship, Immigration Tagged with , ,

Ling | Court fights aren’t fixing our culture wars. They might be making them worse

2024/12/13 Leave a comment

Good commentary:

…The fact is, Canada is in a state of particular social and political polarization. That isn’t inherently a bad thing. There was a time when having gay teachers in the classroom was a deeply polarizing concept. The courts, yes, declared that legally permissible. But having Queer people in the classroom did not become normal or accepted because the courts deemed it so. That was made possible because many good people did the difficult work of convincing skeptics that it was an actively positive thing. A recent backlash to LGBTQ issues in education should be a sign that while the law can be settled, our politics rarely are.

Community is not created by a tribunal ruling or a waving flag, but by people who actively work to build it. Litigation can absolutely dismantle systemic injustice and force conversations, but there are limits to what the adversarial battles in the courtroom can achieve. 

In recent years, many progressives have come to believe they are indisputably right and therefore have no need to debase themselves by talking to those who are wrong. In the worst cases, they have come to believe that wrong-thinkers can be cowed into silence or deplatformed entirely. These lines in the sand aren’t just polarizing, they rob us of the ability to resolve actual differences. And when polarization can’t resolve itself, it can spiral into societal breakdown.

One of the ways we can disentangle these disputes is through politics. (McQuaker didn’t have to defend his record in a campaign, he was recently re-elected by acclamation.)

But more broadly, we should take some lessons from Gilbert Baker and Queer activists of recent decades. As the Queer community’s Betsy Ross told theTimes: “We have put our whole lives into changing society, but we are just starting. This is an intergenerational process.”

This process is slow and difficult, but it is important. If we rely too much on institutions, symbols, and learning modules titled “Human Rights 101” to change society, we can forget that society is other people. And other people must be convinced, not cajoled.

Source: Opinion | Court fights aren’t fixing our culture wars. They might be making them worse

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Alicia Planincic: The provinces are losing ground to federal priorities in immigration 

2024/12/13 Leave a comment

Useful observation and analysis. It would benefit, however, from further analysis comparing PNP and federal economic outcomes:

A couple of months ago, the federal government made a big announcement that they were decreasing targets for immigration pretty substantially. Though there was a lot of talk about the topline numbers and what it means for the economy, what was overlooked at that time was that cuts to immigration came primarily at the expense of a single program: the Provincial Nominee Program (the “PNP”)—what represents the provinces’ role in selecting economic immigrants.

What’s important about the PNP is that it’s designed to distribute immigrants more widely across Canada (especially beyond the country’s biggest cities) and give the provinces the ability to meet local labour market needs. And, though it’s not perfect, it’s pretty effective at both.

Just how big of a hit did the program take? Pretty big.

Graphic credit: Janice Nelson. 

While total immigration was reduced by around 100,000 new permanent residents (annually), the PNP was reduced by 65,000. To put this into perspective, the PNP is just a single program within the broader “class” of economic immigration but cuts to the PNP dwarfed cuts made to the other two main classes of immigration combined (i.e., family-related immigration and refugees).

At the same time, federally-focused economic programs did not see any major cuts. In fact, their numbers grew slightly. The result of all this is that the province’s role in economic immigration, which had been steadily growing for years, is set to collapse from over 40 percent of total economic immigration down to just 24 percent.

It’s worth noting that the PNP is also losing ground to another federal priority: French-speaking immigration outside of Quebec. In fact, French language proficiency has become a key factor in selecting economic immigrants federally. Though the target for French-speaking immigration was cut marginally this year, numbers have nearly doubled over the last couple of years, with the latest target at 30,000 (compared to 55,000 for the PNP).

In other words, the current plan to decrease immigration is not just an across-the-board cut that will hit all parts of Canada equally. It comes with regional consequences, as provincial priorities lose out to federal ones.

Source: Alicia Planincic: The provinces are losing ground to federal priorities in immigration 


Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

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