The winners and losers of globalization, Branko Milanovic’s new book on inequality answers two important questions: Corak

2016/05/24 Leave a comment

Miles Corak’s review of Branko Milanovic’s Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization makes interesting reading, particularly  the section on immigration:

If we really can get into this global mindset that he is asking us to adopt, then we might think more creatively, and perhaps less dogmatically, about a series of challenges that we face as citizens of individual nations. There are a number of examples in the last chapter, but perhaps the most striking deals with citizenship and migration, examples that cut at the very core of the approach.

There remains a huge boost to incomes depending upon where an individual lives, and this creates big incentives for migration from poorer to richer countries. American politics has long been struggling with meaningful immigration reform, driven by the large inequalities between countries but also formed, informed, and misinformed by the large inequalities within the country.

The refugee crisis now afflicting Europe is partly geopolitical but also deeply economic. Better lives are to be had if one can make it to Germany or Sweden. “Physical walls between jurisdictions,” Milanovic tells us, “are being built, in part, because there is a huge financial wall between being and not being a citizen of a rich country.” In his view, this is because our national politics ties us to a binary notion of citizenship. He speculates that Americans and other citizens of the rich countries might be more amenable to immigration if there were what he calls an intermediate level of citizenship, a level that would have less economic value than full citizenship because it would entail higher taxation, less access to social services, or perhaps an obligation to return to the country of origin.

In other words, put aside the idea of a “path to citizenship” as a right. Americans have tolerated a de facto inferior form of residency, but in a way that keeps many immigrants and their children in the shadows. Milanovic is advocating bringing them out of the shadows through, for example, a legally administered program for temporary foreign workers, giving migrants the right to work in the country but also the obligation to return home.

This is something actually done in Canada, but the policy went afoul politically because it made the competition for jobs between natives and migrants more transparent. It may be a policy particularly appropriate to the European Union, where the walls are something more than metaphorical. This is context that Milanovic probably has in mind. But it is hard to imagine how much traction a temporary foreign-worker program, or the other variants he suggests, would have in the U.S., because the perception that immigrants compete for jobs and lower wages of the native-born will still bite.

Indeed, at the same time, Milanovic makes clear that he feels the “great middle-class squeeze” is not over, and will likely lead to more polarization in rich societies and their politics. This will not only ensure immigration policy will continue to be challenging, it may also be all the more troubling for policy directed to equality of opportunity.

In the coming years, the observed differences in the skills and abilities between the top echelons and everyone else will not be that great, with chance, family background, and inheritances playing a bigger role in allocating incomes. “The new capitalism will resemble a big casino, with one important exception: those who have won a few rounds (often through being born into the right family) will be given much better odds to keep on winning.” If this is so, then it will be harder and harder to sustain the story that inequality is somehow the precursor of opportunity, offering rewards and incentives for the more productive among us to contribute to higher growth and incomes for all. And the status quo will become politically less and less sustainable.

Source: The winners and losers of globalization, Branko Milanovic’s new book on inequality answers two important questions | Economics for public policy

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Douglas Todd: Mixed motives fuel rise of foreign students

2016/05/24 Leave a comment

Not surprising that universities and other educational institutions view foreign students from an economic perspective and that foreign families consider not only the education but financial (shift money to Canada, invest in real estate) and political benefits (citizenship).

But, as in the case over the debate over housing prices, it raises policy issues:

Immigration Canada data shows about 72,000 foreign students from Mainland Chinese were accepted in 2014, 36,000 from India, 17,000 from South Korea and 13,000 from France. In total, one out of four foreign students in Canada is from China.
Canadian politicians talk in predictable ways about the increasing number of foreign students.

Wilkinson maintains Chinese and other foreign students bring “social, cultural and economic benefits.” And they pay full fees for their own educations, unlike subsidized homegrown students.

The federal Immigration Minister John McCallum often calls foreign students “the cream of the crop.”

But noted specialists in higher education, including Boston College’s Philip Altbach and Ontario’s Jane Knight, say the quality of foreign students is going down as their numbers inflate.

Most foreign students are now second tier, say Altbach and Knight. They’re generally not doing well in the schools in their countries of origin. But many have rich parents.

Given the trend, Knight argues that most Western foreign-student programs have lost their humanitarian origins and become elaborate cash grabs. They make it possible for governments like British Columbia’s to mask that they are tightening education funding.

What are some foreign students in Canada doing when they’re not studying?

Canada’s federal housing agency, looking for new methods to track foreign ownership in the country’s soaring real estate markets, has considering classifying foreign university students as foreign buyers as it steps up its investigation into global money-laundering.

Bloomberg News discovered that Canada Mortgage & Housing Corp., the Crown corporation that tracks housing data, is especially interested in how the red-hot housing markets in Toronto and Vancouver are partly fuelled by foreign students, some of whom live in multi-million-dollar homes near the UBC campus.

In a related study, urban planner Andy Yan, head of Simon Fraser University’s City Program, discovered that in a six-month period in 2015, about 70 per cent of 172 detached homes sold on Vancouver’s west side were purchased by Mainland Chinese buyers.

Yan’s research showed that, of all self-declared occupations among owners of the high-priced homes in the study, 36 per cent were housewives or students with little income.

Five of eight homes owned by “students” were bought outright with cash at an average value of $3.2 million.

Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, a frequent adviser to the federal parliament, said it’s clear that most children from around the world who are able to afford to live and pay full education fees in expensive cities like Toronto and Vancouver are from “elite families.”

One bonus of getting children into Canada as foreign students, Kurland says, is that those who are able can become players in real-estate investment. Students are being declared as property owners of Vancouver residential property because they aid in international money transfers, Kurland said.

Foreign students have the advantage of being able to appear as residents of Canada for income tax purposes, even as their declared earned income would be extremely low.

As principal resident of a dwelling, Kurland said, a foreign student does not have to pay capital gains when his or her home is sold at a profit. “Then, out of the goodness of their heart, they can send the profit back to their uncle in China,” Kurland said with irony.

In addition to aiding the movement of trans-national wealth, however, possibly the more common reason a well-off foreign family puts a great deal of effort into establishing their son or daughter in Canada is that it goes a long way to obtaining a second passport.
Canadian politicians often rank international students as prime candidates for immigration. Roughly three out of 10 foreign students have gone on to become Canadian citizens. And that proportion is expected to rise.

Kurland believes more foreign students from China are being flown to Canada at “younger and younger ages … in part because they’re a no-fit in the Chinese educational system.” They need to establish themselves early in Canada’s educational system if they’re going to make it.

The immigration lawyer, who publishes a newsletter called Lexbase, discovered that Mainland Chinese families have doubled the rate at which they’re sending their children to Canadian elementary and high schools. Four out of 10 foreign students in Canada, including those from Mainland China, now apply for “secondary school or less.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Mixed motives fuel rise of foreign students | Vancouver Sun

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In Austria’s Jewish Community, Some Who Fear Muslims Are Drawn To The Far-Right : NPR

2016/05/24 Leave a comment

Interesting report regarding the political divisions within Austria’s small Jewish community:

KAKISSIS: Van der Bellen is the independent liberal-leaning candidate running against Norbert Hofer. Winkler, an Orthodox Jewish teacher, worries that Austria’s next president could be Hofer, someone from a party with Nazi roots.

WINKLER: Yes, they want to claim that they are OK. Yes, yes, of course. They want to disguise a little bit.KAKISSIS: She says the Freedom Party, which Austrians call the FPO, likes to blame outsiders for the country’s problems. And Muslims are just the current targets.

WINKLER: If there wouldn’t be a Youssef, it would be about Yosef. And if there wouldn’t be a Mohammed, it would about the Moshe. So if the – if wouldn’t have the Muslims to target, it would be us.

KAKISSIS: Vienna was once a mecca for Jewish intellectuals like psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. But the rise of Nazism forced many to leave. Tens of thousands of Austrian Jews who did not leave died in the Holocaust. About 15,000 Jews live in Austria today.But for some Austrian Jews, the government’s decision last year to accept 90,000 refugees, mainly from the Middle East and Afghanistan, is more of a worry than far right politicians. Michael Kaner is a Jewish web designer. And he believes Muslim immigrants are teaching their children anti-Semitic values.

MICHAEL KANER: The greedy Jew, the Jew with the big nose who’s always after the money, who’s controlling the economy and who wants to rule the world – these are anti-Semitic things we got rid of in Europe.

KAKISSIS: That’s why Kaner is supporting Hofer. The Freedom Party even has one Jewish number of Parliament, David Lasar, who has taken party members to Israel. Writer Peter Sichrovsky, a former member of the European Parliament was actually the first Jewish number of the Freedom Party. He joined in 1996, he says, because he was tired of Austria’s two mainstream parties dominating politics.

PETER SICHROVSKY: You couldn’t get a job without the support of one of the parties. You would join a sport club that was connected to one of the two parties. If you wanted a cheap apartment in Vienna, you had to become a member.

KAKISSIS: Sichrovsky left the Freedom Party in 2002 after populists took over.

SICHROVSKY: They don’t offer solutions in economics. They don’t offer solutions in education. All they do is using the anger and the frustration and pour oil into the fire, as you say.

KAKISSIS: His son Ilja Sichrovsky now organizes an annual conference that brings together Muslims and Jews from around the world. For NPR News, I’m Joanna Kakissis in Vienna.

Source: In Austria’s Jewish Community, Some Who Fear Muslims Are Drawn To The Far-Right : NPR

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PMO ‘central control deepening far more than people know or seem to care about’

2016/05/24 Leave a comment

Good interview with Alex Marland, author of Brand Command: Canadian Politics and Democracy in the Age of Message Control;

Your book also examines political communications under the Harper Conservatives. Has political communications changed under the Trudeau Liberals? 

“The Trudeau brand is refreshing and engaging. Even those who cringe at the selfies and the blatant photo-ops should acknowledge that the change in tone is a welcome relief after the intense negativity that permeated Canadian politics dating to the early 2000s. Hopefully the showmanship will fall away, because a shameless desire for publicity and public adulation can turn many citizens off politics too. For someone like me, the issue is that the more that the media’s glare is on the prime minister, the more power that individual has. I believe that central control is deepening far more than people know or seem to care about. The creation of delivery units in the centre of the Liberal government are an excellent example of PMO control. It is not lost on me that if the Harper administration had created those we’d be hearing howls that Canada is becoming an authoritarian state. It is the role of academics to see beyond the public personas of political leaders, especially when everyone else is distracted by them.”

Why do you say the pursuit of political power is strategic as never before? What do you mean?

“The competition for power involves a level of strategic manoeuvering and tactical execution in ways that are exceedingly complex. Sure, there’s a lot of gut instinct involved—there just isn’t enough money in Canadian politics to enable the kind of data analytics found in the U.S.A. In any event, you cannot form government on the basis of marketing alone. It was sometimes said that Harper was playing chess while everyone else was playing checkers. I would suggest that everyone is forced to play chess now. Even the smallest political parties have supporter databases, are using social media, are familiar with market segmentation to bundle coalitions, and so on. Everything is quick, quick, quick—not only do you need to be sharp-minded, but you need to operate in a media cycle that churns multiple times per day. This is where branding comes in: if you have a core set of messages and values the brand mantra acts as a guide for spinning a message no matter what the circumstance.”

How has branding influenced democracy?

“Branding’s supporters, including in the government, will tell you that it saves money and makes things more efficient. Navigating webpages with a common look and feel is an example; cutting down on the number of sub-brands and logos throughout government is another. Templates for campaign signs, brochures and websites have done wonders for local campaigns, while simultaneously imprinting a central command ethos. Branding also simplifies things for electors—the same messages are repeated, we see the same visuals over and over. Only the most rabid politicos read campaign platforms, or care about policy discussions at party conventions. Most Canadians are busy with their daily lives and pay surface attention to politics. Branding connects with them. It also limits the potential for a brand ambassador to commit a gaffe or so-called “bozo interruption” that undermines the leadership team. So as a strategy it helps to move an agenda forward. The downside, of course, is that candidates and MPs, and even some ministers, become regional sales reps of a message set by people at the top. It becomes a serious problem when all messages align, bordering on state propaganda.”

Where is Canadian politics headed? 

“I am a cautious optimist. The proliferation of digital media means that traditional elite power structures are under stress to change and evolve. This is generally good. What is not good is that the online sphere has become a powerful interest group for the hyper-sensitive forces of political correctness. A healthy democracy is strongest when open-minded citizens carefully deliberate a variety of opinions. As a society, we need leaders who encourage thoughtful constructive debate, who are willing to challenge the wisdom of crowds, who question attachments to party labels, and who aren’t afraid to sometimes take a public punch from their own brand ambassadors.”

Source: PMO ‘central control deepening far more than people know or seem to care about’ |

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How the Big Red Machine became the big data machine: Delacourt

2016/05/24 Leave a comment

As someone who likes playing with and analyzing data, found Delacourt’s recounting of how the Liberals became the most data savvy political party interesting:

The Console, with its maps and myriad graphs and numbers, was the most vivid evidence of how far the Liberal party had come in its bid to play catch-up in the data war with its Conservative and NDP rivals. Call it Trudeau 2.0. Just as the old Rainmaker Keith Davey brought science to the party of Trudeau’s father in the 1960s and 1970s, the next generation of Trudeau Liberalism would get seized with data, science and evidence in a big way, too.

And in the grand tradition of Davey, Allan Gregg and all the other political pollsters and marketers who went before them, this new squad of strategists set about dividing Canada’s electoral map into target ridings, ranked according to their chances of winning in them. In a 21st-century-style campaign, though, the distinctions would be far more sophisticated than simply “winnable” and “unwinnable” ridings. Trudeau’s Liberals divided the nation’s 338 electoral districts into six types, named for metals and compounds: platinum, gold, silver, bronze, steel and wood.

Platinum ridings were sure bets: mostly the few dozen that the Liberals had managed to keep in the electoral catastrophe of 2011. Gold ridings were not quite that solid, but they were the ones in which the party strategists felt pretty certain about their prospects. Silver ridings were the ones the Liberals would need to gain to win the election, while bronze ridings, the longer shots, would push them into majority government territory. Steel ridings were ones they might win in a subsequent election, and wood ridings were the ones where the Liberals probably could never win a seat, in rural Alberta for instance.

The Console kept close track of voter outreach efforts on the ground, right down to the number of doorsteps visited by volunteers and what kind of information they had gathered from those visits — family size, composition, political interests, even the estimated age of the residents. By consulting the Console, campaigners could even figure out which time of day was best for canvassing in specific neighbourhoods or which voters required another visit to seal the deal.

When the Liberal team unveiled the Console to Trudeau, he was blown away. He told his team that it was his new favourite thing. He wanted regular briefings on the contents of the program: where it showed the Liberal party ahead, and where fortunes were flagging and volunteers needed to do more door-knocking. Actually, he wondered, why couldn’t he be given access to the Console himself, so that he could consult it on his home computer or on his phone while on the road?

And that, Trudeau would say later, was the last he ever saw of the Console. “My job was to bring it back, not on the analysis side, but on the connection side — on getting volunteers to go out, drawing people in, getting people to sign up,” Trudeau said. Clearly he was doing something right on that score — Liberal membership numbers had climbed from about 60,000 to 300,000 within Trudeau’s first 18 months as leader.

Volunteers for the party would learn — often to their peril — that the leader was fiercely serious about turning his crowd appeal into useful data. Trudeau wasn’t known for displays of temper, but the easiest way to provoke him was to fall down on the job of collecting data from the crowds at campaign stops. Few things made Trudeau angrier, for instance, than to see Liberal volunteers surrounding him at events instead of gathering up contact information. “That was what I demanded. If they wanted a visit from the leader they had to arrange that or else I’d be really upset,” Trudeau said.

Source: How the Big Red Machine became the big data machine | Toronto Star

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Azrieli and Herscovitch: Take the lead in Holocaust education, Canada

2016/05/20 Leave a comment

Commentary by Alice Herscovitch and Naomi Azrielli on the need for Canada to take a more active role on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and the need to restore funding for the NGO experts. Agree – the value of IHRA discussions was more at the expert level and discussions than the governmental level during my time as head of delegation:

IHRA’s track record is excellent and includes the implementation of Holocaust education guidelines and a strategic, co-ordinated approach to teaching the Holocaust worldwide. IHRA also provides a critical opportunity for its members to reflect on universal issues – such as teaching without survivors.
The height of Canada’s involvement came during the 2013-2014 session, when we chaired IHRA. Following this, however, Canada’s commitment waned. Canada has not set a national agenda in two years, the delegation has not been given direction and it has lacked consistency and continuity in terms of participation and representation. The key developers of Holocaust education and remembrance initiatives in Canada are no longer the cornerstones of the delegation. This is a reflection of a government decision in 2014 to cease supporting delegate travel. The experts from voluntary organizations who contributed so much time and expertise sharing Canada’s innovative contributions internationally simply don’t have the financial means to assume additional responsibility for the country’s representation.  

This month, a new head of delegation to IHRA was appointed, Ambassador Artur Wilczynski. We welcome Wilczynski and, noting his personal family connection to the Holocaust and impressive track record of leadership, are hopeful that our international engagement will be renewed.

Wilczynski can do a number of things, such as regularly convening meetings between delegates, reinstating funding for delegate travel and, most importantly, defining, with the delegation, an agenda for Holocaust and human rights education in Canada and a set of national and international priorities.

The Holocaust survivors who settled in Canada have profoundly shaped our country. Survivors have been instrumental in creating Holocaust education centres and commemoration programs, and continue to contribute by writing memoirs, through video testimony and by speaking to thousands of Canadians each year. Their legacy directly connects to current discussions about the refugee crisis, respect for diversity and genocide prevention. 

It’s time for Canada to reaffirm its commitment to the Stockholm Declaration and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. With the community of Canadian survivors fast disappearing, we have a responsibility to honour their steadfast work and take it up as our own. 

http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/azrieli-and-herscovitch-take-the-lead-in-holocaust-education-canada

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1 Syrian refugee a week reports being a victim of domestic abuse, agency says

2016/05/20 Leave a comment

Another reminder of the challenges of integration:

That “trauma of migration” can be a trigger for violence, but there are other factors.

Among them, women asserting themselves more forcefully upon arriving in a country where they feel freer to do so, said Zena Al Hamdan, a program manager at the Arab Community Centre.

“It creates a backlash on the male partners. They become more aggressive and more defensive and they want to assert dominance more because of the perception that the West, that society will support the female,” she said.

When she arrived in Canada in 2011 from Syria, Hayat Zaid she wasn’t sure how she’d be received.

Then 14, she was scared of being bullied in school but also unsure how much freedom she’d actually have to pursue her own interests.

“When I came, I was really shy because I was a hijabi and I couldn’t do certain things like swimming or other things in my religion I’m not allowed to,” she told the Commons committee Wednesday.

“But my family was really supportive, and the Boys and Girls Club was really supportive too, and I overcame my shyness and I did what I loved.”

Now 18, Zaid has received a scholarship to study early childhood education at Algonquin College in Ottawa and has spent more than 800 hours volunteering with the Boys and Girls club in the hope others can benefit.

“It’s a really free place when you can overcome your shyness.”

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/05/19/1-syrian-refugee-a-week-reports-being-a-victim-of-domestic-abuse-agency-says.html

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Jean-François Lisée propose de réduire les cibles d’immigration

2016/05/20 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see where the other PQ candidates line up:

L’immigration massive est un échec, juge Jean-François Lisée. Le candidat à la direction du Parti québécois propose d’abaisser substantiellement le nombre d’immigrants admis au Québec et de demander au Vérificateur général (VG) du Québec de déterminer les seuils d’immigration optimaux.
« Cinquante mille immigrants par année [le seuil actuel], c’est la recette de l’échec, a affirmé Jean-François dans une entrevue accordée au Devoir. On ne rend service à personne. On ne rend pas service surtout à ces néo-Québécois à qui on doit donner les outils de la réussite. » Il a rappelé qu’en 2002, sous un gouvernement péquiste, le nombre d’immigrants admis ne dépassait guère les 37 000.

 C’est le gouvernement Charest qui a haussé les seuils d’immigration, d’abord à 45 000, puis à 50 000, puis à un maximum de 55 000, pour un retour sous le gouvernement Couillard à 50 000. Ce « chiffre magique » de 50 000 immigrants par année n’a jamais reposé sur une évaluation objective de la réussite des nouveaux arrivants, a déploré le député de Rosemont. « Ç’a été idéologique. Ç’a été peut-être poussé aussi par des organisations d’entreprises qui aiment avoir un bassin de main-d’oeuvre bon marché. »

Dépolitiser

Le troisième candidat en lice pour succéder à Pauline Marois propose de dépolitiser la fixation des seuils d’immigration. Il suggère qu’on demande au VG de les évaluer objectivement. « Si les libéraux veulent 50 000, et même Philippe Couillard disait que c’était intolérant de ne pas vouloir 60 000, ils sont soupçonnés de vouloir importer des électeurs. Et si le Parti québécois en veut moins, on est soupçonné de ne pas vouloir importer des électeurs libéraux », a-t-il fait valoir.

Jean-François Lisée estime que plusieurs données indiquent que le Québec accueille trop d’immigrants par rapport à sa capacité de les intégrer décemment. « Les signaux récents sont assourdissants », a-t-il dit.

http://www.ledevoir.com/non-classe/471433/lisee-propose-de-reduire-les-cibles-d-immigration 

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It’s time for Canada to right historic wrongs against LGBTQ community: John Ibbitson

2016/05/19 Leave a comment

While the focus of Ibbitson’s article is with respect to LGBTQ issues, the broader discussion of apologies was the aspect I found most interesting.

When we were implementing the Conservative government’s historical recognition program for wartime internment and immigration restrictions, the legal aspects of apologies was raised regularly, and appropriately, by Justice Canada officials given fears over liability. At one point in time, we considered doing a policy paper on the question of apologies, their typology, and delivery. In the end, other priorities emerged, but good to see the work that has been done elsewhere:

The Government of Canada should also apologize to the thousands in the public service and military who were dismissed or otherwise discriminated against because they were homosexual, a practice that continued right up until the late 1980s.

The Liberals have been studying both questions for months. Justice Department lawyers often warn that political apologies can expose governments to expensive lawsuits from victims, with the apology serving as proof of guilt.

But as a leading authority in the field points out, not only are such fears overblown, “a meaningful, effective apology can have the opposite effect. Rather than encourage litigation, it can cause people to accept the past more easily.”

Leslie Macleod, a former assistant deputy attorney-general of Ontario, teaches dispute resolution at York University’s Osgoode Hall law school and is a leading authority in mediating and resolving disputes.

“The kind of apology that could be made here would address not only the emotional and psychological interests of those who suffered very dire consequences, it would also address the concerns that we as a society have about how people were treated in the past,” she says.

In that sense, people who see no reason for governments to apologize for acts that no one alive today committed miss the point: We apologize to remind each other of when we fell short in the past, so that we do not fall short in some other way going forward.

A meaningful, effective apology conforms to what could be called the Seven Rs. As described by Ms. Macleod, it involves the specific recognition of the harm caused; expresses remorse for that harm; takes responsibility and repents for the transgression; gives reasons for how the situation came about; offers reparation by way of making amends; and promises reform so nothing similar happens again.

The legislation to prevent discrimination against transgender people could be seen as in the spirit of fulfilling the seventh, and most important, of the seven Rs.

As for reparations, public servants I have talked to who lost their jobs because of their sexuality have, for the most part, gone on with their lives. They do not want money; they just want to be told that, on the terrible day when they were brought into a room, accused of being a homosexual and fired, the person on the other side of the table was in the wrong, not them.

Lawyer Dale Barrett has written about the apology laws on the books in most provinces, which make it easier for governments to apologize by reducing their liability. “It’s very important for government and society to reflect upon the changes in law and changes in sentiment and changes in attitude,” he says, “to acknowledge that society has changed, and to consider what changes we should be making in the future.”

With this new law protecting the rights of transgender people, Mr. Trudeau has advanced the cause of equality for Canada’s LGBTQ community. He should also acknowledge, on behalf of all Canadians, our collective responsibility for those in this community who suffered in the past at the hand of their own government.

Source: It’s time for Canada to right historic wrongs against LGBTQ community – The Globe and Mail

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Trudeau’s plan to apologize for the Komagata Maru is no solution to racism, say critics

2016/05/19 Leave a comment

Ujjal Dosanjh and others on the Komagata Maru apology:

Justin Trudeau, for instance, promised before the 2015 campaign to apologize in Parliament because some Punjabi-Canadians were upset that his predecessor, Stephen Harper, had tendered an apology on behalf of Canada at an event in Surrey.

“As Pierre Trudeau predicted, it’s becoming a slippery slope. There’s no end to it. And there are other apology-seekers at the gates now.”

He said his only exception is in accepting Harper’s apology to Aboriginal Canadians for residential schools in 2008 and Mulroney’s to Japanese-Canadians two decades earlier as both involved Canadian citizens.

But he said even in these cases, he is only accepting the reality of these apologies after the fact. In retrospect, Dosanjh said, he wishes Pierre Trudeau’s successors had followed his lead.

“Just because there’s an apology there won’t be an end to racism,” he said. “It’s not like we’re going to wake up tomorrow and there’s going to be no poverty or inequality or discrimination. That’s where the efforts need to be.”

Dosanjh also criticized Trudeau for announcing his pending apology last month at a Sikh religious event in Ottawa, saying it’s “dangerous” to mix religion and politics.

B.C. Liberal MP Randeep Sarai, whose wife’s great-grandfather was on the Komagata Maru and who was wounded and imprisoned after the riot, said he strongly disagrees with Dosanjh.

“This symbolizes who we are as Canadians, it’s hugely symbolic,” said the MP for Surrey Centre. “It helps heal wounds, and you feel more Canadian once a wrong has been righted.”

B.C. historian Hugh Johnston said Tuesday that both Justin Trudeau and Harper, rather than apologize for a single incident, should have focused instead on the policy that severely restricted immigration from “non-traditional” countries like India before the 1960s.

“The really big thing is the policy over half a century, not just one incident,” said Johnston, author of The Voyage of the Komagata Maru, the first authoritative book on the incident.

Canada went from a country of roughly 30,000 Sikhs in 1971 to about a half-million today, he noted.

“That strikes me as more significant than turning back a ship with less than 400 people aboard in 1914,” said Johnston, whose book was first published in 1979 and revised and expanded in 2014.

But Johnston, like Dosanjh, questions the notion that politicians should apologize over events in the past.

“I’m an historian. I share Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s view. You can’t rewrite history.

Source: Trudeau’s plan to apologize for the Komagata Maru is no solution to racism, say critics

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