Citizenship put on hold for ‘no-handshake’ Muslim boys – SWI swissinfo.ch

2016/04/20 Leave a comment

Another example of an accommodation issue (in this case, I would side with the authorities):

The family of the two teenagers, who refused to shake their female teachers’ hands for religious reasons, have had their application for citizenship suspended. Shaking hands with the teacher before and after class is often standard practice in Switzerland.

A spokesperson for the local security authorities said that the office for migration in canton Basel Country would be speaking to family members individually, and that it was not unusual for an application to be suspended while additional information was gathered.

The spokesperson said that the interview would be open-ended, and that the family’s immigration status would only be decided based upon their answers to the questions posed during the interview process. After this it would be decided how the application process should proceed. Precise appointment dates are not known.

The 14- and 16-year old brothers are Muslim, and do not want to touch women in general, for religious reasons. The younger of the two said in a newspaper interview that he had discovered this rule in an internet sermon.

The head teacher of the school attended by the two boys arranged that they would not shake hands with any of the teachers. However, this led to a public outcry as news spread in the Swiss press, and justice minister Simonetta Sommaruga publicly criticised the decision, arguing that the handshakes are part of Swiss culture.

Clarification

The decision to suspend the application process for citizenship and summon all family members for individual interviews was said to have been taken last week. It is not known how many of the children are applying to become Swiss, along with their parents.

The cantonal education authorities have meanwhile ordered a legal opinion on how and if etiquette can be enforced. Several motions have been filed in the local parliament that focus on banning special arrangements made for religious reasons.

Source: Citizenship put on hold for ‘no-handshake’ Muslim boys – SWI swissinfo.ch

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Australia: Stripping of citizenship a loss in more ways than one

2016/04/19 1 Comment

Australian law professor George Williams on the lack of due process in citizenship revocation in cases of terror or treason:

The job of resolving whether a person has engaged in conduct like this would ordinarily fall to a judge. We ask judges to take on this role because a person should only lose their liberty or rights in a democracy as a result of a fair process and a decision by an independent person. In the case of serious crimes involving the possibility of imprisonment, members of the community are also involved through service on a jury.

The Allegiance to Australia Act confounds these understandings. It confers no powers upon judges or juries, instead leaving a vacuum when it comes to determining whether someone has fallen foul of the law. The government has inserted the Citizenship Loss Board into this gap.

This results in a breach of traditional legal principles such as the rule of law and the separation of powers. Unnamed government officials are left to determine whether a person should be banished from the country. To use the words of Chief Justice Warren of the US Supreme Court, public servants are able to impose a punishment involving “the total destruction of the individual’s status in organised society”.

The creation of the Citizenship Loss Board is an Orwellian development, and yet another indication of Australia’s willingness to compromise good governance and basic rights in the name of the war on terror. Measures such as this show how we are losing our sense of perspective. Our goal in countering terrorism is not to maximise security by creating a police state, but to preserve a liberal democracy that safeguards liberties such as freedom of speech and the right to a fair trial. We must not compromise these important democratic values in the name of preserving them.

Our leaders would do well to recall the words of Prime Minister Robert Menzies on September 7 1939, four days after he announced that Australia was at war with Nazi Germany. In introducing an extraordinary new law to safeguard the nation’s security, he warned that in the battles to come “there must be as little interference with individual rights as is consistent with concerted national effort”. He concluded that “the greatest tragedy that could overcome a country would be for it to fight a successful war in defence of liberty and to lose its own liberty in the process”.

Source: Stripping of citizenship a loss in more ways than one

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The changing face of multiculturalism in Europe: David Miller

2016/04/19 Leave a comment

David Miller of Oxford University on multiculturalism:

The death of multiculturalism [in Europe] might then seem to resemble Murder on the Orient Express, in which the victim was stabbed by 12 assailants. But in European societies there is an additional factor that distinguishes our situation from the Canadian one. These are societies with national identities that stretch back for hundreds, if not for thousands, of years, in the course of which they have needed to be defended by armed struggle against rivals and neighbours. That some of these identities include a generous dollop of historical myth does nothing to reduce their emotive force. And now these identities face new threats: global culture, the spread of English as a lingua franca, the flattening effect of the European Union. Under these circumstances Europeans are not likely to be found echoing the Canadian claim that cultural pluralism is the essence of their national identity. Instead, they see it as part of the state’s job to protect the national culture; this means giving it some precedence, and encouraging immigrants to adopt it, even they have to jettison parts of the culture they bring with them. In this respect, Europe looks much more like Quebec than it does the rest of Canada.

European leaders, then, think in terms of citizenship and integration rather than of multiculturalism. More commonly now, access to citizenship depends upon passing a test that requires knowledge of the history and political culture of the country, for example. The effect of recent mass immigration to countries such as Germany and Sweden can only be to reinforce this trend. But does this really mean that multiculturalism has disappeared altogether? Many policies associated with that word are still in place, such as affirmative employment policies for ethnic minorities, or accommodations for religiously mandated dress, and these are not going to change. What has gone is a certain idea of how a modern liberal society should look: a variegated landscape in which many cultures live happily alongside each other, with a neutral state presiding benignly over them all.

Valid points regarding the very different European experience and history, but fails to acknowledge the differences in immigration policies (‘guest’ or temporary workers versus immigrants as future citizens) that also made a difference.

Moreover, multiculturalism in Canada was always based on easing the integration and citizenship pathway, rather than encouraging or facilitating separate identities and institutions as happened in many countries in Europe.

Source: The changing face of multiculturalism in Europe – The Globe and Mail

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High-school students need to learn more about Holocaust to dissuade teens from joining ISIL, group says

2016/04/19 Leave a comment

One effort to improve awareness:

“It’s very topical: we’re talking about 17-year-olds and 16-year-olds being lured into ISIS,” said Berger. “The question is, if these students were educated about genocide, that would certainly help to a large degree.”

Kyle Matthews of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies is supporting Berger’s initiative.

“It struck me that we’re not teaching our youth enough about genocide when we have Canadian and Quebec youth leaving to commit genocide overseas,” said Matthews.

“Something is missing in our core education when not just a couple of a bad apples but a significant number are embracing an ideology that encourages slaughter (and) extinction.”

Matthews says it is important to preserve the memory of such massacres: there are no survivors left of the Armenian genocide and Holocaust survivors are elderly and dying.

Genocide education is sporadically available around the country. The Toronto District School Board has offered a course since 2007 that investigates examples of genocide in the 20th and 21st centuries, including Armenia, the Holocaust and Rwanda.

Berger, a filmmaker and university lecturer, carries on her mother’s message in her own school presentations on the Holocaust — one in which Kazimirski still figures prominently through a posthumous video testimonial about the harrowing experiences she endured.

In her school visits, Berger learned that teachers are afraid to teach it and don’t have the tools.

“An ethics teacher came up and told me that kids are graduating from Grade 11 without knowing what the word genocide means,” Berger recounted.

About 18 months ago, she founded The Foundation for the Compulsory Study of Genocide in Schools. In Quebec, Berger is lobbying for changes to a textbook for a course called “Contemporary World” to include a full chapter on genocide instead of the current few paragraphs. She also wants help for teachers.

Berger says a meeting with Education Minister Sebastien Proulx is scheduled for early May and that a previous petition as well as meetings with provincial legislators and teachers’ unions have been positive.

David Birnbaum, the legislative assistant to Proulx, has helped Berger navigate Quebec bureaucracy and bring the matter to the attention of the national assembly.

Birnbaum said academic studies suggest a relatively high level of ignorance about the Holocaust and genocide in general, but adds the matter is tackled in the current Quebec curriculum.

“There are a range of places … where the Holocaust and the concept of genocide are mentioned and it’s always a challenge to make changes to the program,” Birnbaum said.

“But my own priority is to make sure that Heidi Berger gets to make her case as clearly and directly as she can.”

Quebec title: Une Québécoise réclame une formation sur le génocide dans les écoles

Source: High-school students need to learn more about Holocaust to dissuade teens from joining ISIL, group says | National Post

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust, Radicalization Tagged with ,

Legal misstep lets Catholic Church off hook for residential schools compensation – The Globe and Mail

2016/04/19 Leave a comment

Legally off the hook but ethically? Morally?

A miscommunication by a federal lawyer allowed the Catholic Church to renege on its obligation to try to raise $25-million to pay for healing programs for the survivors of Indian residential schools.

Of that amount, the Church raised only $3.7-million, and a financial statement suggests less than $2.2-million of that was actually donated to help former students cope with the trauma inflicted by the residential schools.

The legal misstep occurred when Ottawa was pressing the Church to pay the entirety of a related cash settlement stemming from the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, the largest class-action deal in Canadian history.

The failing fundraising effort by the Church, which represented almost a third of its obligation under the settlement, was playing out as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was travelling the country hearing gut-wrenching stories about what occurred behind the walls of the institutions that operated in Canada for more than 100 years.

The landmark settlement agreement required 50 Catholic groups that ran the schools, known in court documents as the Catholic entities, to pay a combined $79-million for their role in the abuse.

Of that, $29-million was to be paid in cash, most of which was to flow to a now-closed Aboriginal Healing Foundation. Another $25-million was to be donated in unspecified “in kind” services. And an additional $25-million was to be raised for healing programs through the “best efforts” that the entities could make at fundraising.

In an attempt to make the Catholic Church pay the full amount of the $29-million cash settlement, the government inadvertently released it from any obligation it might have had to continue with a dismal fundraising campaign.

“When you have a deal, it needs to be implemented,” said Bill Erasmus, the National Chief of the Dene Nation who handles the residential schools file for the Assembly of First Nations. “So the Church should be paying up. The church agreed there were harms. That’s why people were to be compensated.”

But, as of last summer, the Catholic entities were legally off the hook.

In a March 19 letter to Ron Kidd, a concerned citizen from British Columbia who has been following this case, Andrew Saranchuk, an assistant deputy minister within the Indigenous Affairs department, explained that a court settlement reached on July 16, 2015 “released the Catholic entities from all three of their financial obligations under the settlement agreement, including the ‘best efforts’ fundraising campaign, in exchange for a repayment of $1.2-million in administrative fees.”

This result, Mr. Saranchuk went on to explain, “was due to miscommunications between counsel regarding the nature and extent of the settlement being discussed.”

Source: Legal misstep lets Catholic Church off hook for residential schools compensation – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Aboriginal, Government Tagged with ,

How Christianity and Islam took over the world, in 90 seconds – The Washington Post

2016/04/18 Leave a comment

The video is better than the historical accuracy but nevertheless worth watching:

The video above depicts the growth and spread of the world’s two largest religions over a span of 2,000 years. Represented in white and green, respectively, Christianity and Islam spring up from obscurity in the Middle East to morph into globe-spanning juggernauts.

It was produced last year by the Western Conservatory of the Arts and Sciences, a rather grandiosely named Christian ministry based in Tennessee, as an accompaniment to a supposedly historically accurate map that depicts the “Spread of the Gospel.” A note on the ministry’s website cites biblical scripture, pitching the map as a “beautiful visual reminder that ‘the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world … is bearing fruit and increasing.’ ”

Real historians will doubtless find plenty to quibble about with the broad sweep of the canvas that this video represents. And, to be sure, this ministry doesn’t exactly have an objective approach to the history of Islam — in another post on its website, it looks forward to Syrian refugees being disabused of their “Muhammedan way of life.”

The video begins with the Roman empire and shows Christianity sprouting up on its margins, then spreading elsewhere. Islam follows suit a bit later, moving rapidly through the crumbling Byzantine and Sassanian empires, through North Africa and into parts of Europe. They both inexorably expand thereafter.

Over the course of time, this green-white tableau gets interrupted by ruptures in the form of other hues — the purple rampages of the Mongols and the red splotch of Communism — but the video for the most part keeps it very simple.

But elsewhere, particularly when gazing at centuries of supposed Christian expansion in Asia, it seems a gross exaggeration. Christianity was never the major religion farther east, but rather present through small communities of traders and missionaries. The same is also somewhat true for Islam’s role across vast swaths of Africa and Southeast Asia in the centuries after its birth.

India, which represents almost a sixth of humanity, is hardly a Christian nation (as it appears in the last frame of the map). Rather it is majority-Hindu and has a far greater number of Muslims than Christians within its borders.

Source: How Christianity and Islam took over the world, in 90 seconds – The Washington Post

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Canadians living abroad should be allowed to vote: Editorial | Toronto Star

2016/04/18 Leave a comment

I disagree.

Long-term (over 5 years) expats may or may not remained connected to Canada (the various imperfect data sources I am looking at present a varied picture) but most  do not pay Canadian taxes and are disconnected from the day-to-day issues (e.g., healthcare, transit) that often drive elections and voters:

The rule used to deny the vote to Canadians who have lived abroad for longer than five years actually dates back to 1993. But it was only enforced by the government of former prime minister Stephen Harper after 2007. The decision was based on a claim that it was unfair to give equal voice to Canadians living abroad and those who live in the country because expatriates won’t live with the consequences of their choice.

It’s a flawed argument and one rejected by most other democracies, which place fewer restrictions on expatriates. Canadians abroad who are passionate about this country’s affairs — to the extent that they’re determined enough to vote — should have a say in the affairs of their homeland.

Given the vast information resources available online and the ease of international travel, Canadian expats can easily keep up to date with what’s going on at home. And their opinions have real value. Indeed, it can be argued that it’s in the national interest to allow these well-travelled and typically well-educated citizens a hand in the political process.

As reported by The Canadian Press, the constitutionality of existing law is being challenged by plaintiffs Jamie Duong and Gillain Frank, both Canadians working in the United States. Frank, from Toronto, teaches at Princeton University, and Duong, of Montreal, works at Cornell.

They won before the Ontario Superior Court in 2014; lost when the government appealed last July; and then took the matter to the Supreme Court of Canada, which has agreed to hear their case.

The court would do well to overturn an unfair law and bring Canada’s rules more in line with international practice.

Britons living abroad are allowed to cast a ballot if they’re citizens and had registered to vote within the last 15 years. Americans can vote all their lives, regardless of where they happen to live. And Italy goes so far as to set aside seats in parliament specifically to be filled by citizens living abroad.

It’s estimated that more than a million Canadians living outside the country are blocked from voting by the current rule. That constitutes a large-scale disenfranchisement and it’s manifestly unfair. If these people want a say in the affairs of their homeland they should be allowed to have it, regardless of how long they’ve been away.

Source: Canadians living abroad should be allowed to vote: Editorial | Toronto Star

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RCMP refugee screening a $16M flop, says internal report

2016/04/18 Leave a comment

Must be some lessons learned from a big data perspective, both for the RCMP as well as the government as a whole:

$16-million RCMP project to help keep dangerous refugees out of Canada has turned out to be an expensive security flop.

An internal evaluation says the screening project delivered information too late, strayed beyond its mandate, and in the end did almost nothing to catch refugees who might be linked to criminal or terrorist groups.

Meanwhile, 30 Mounties were tied up for four years on duties that did little to enhance Canada’s security.

FedElxn Conservatives 20150909

Then prime minister Stephen Harper said in Welland, Ont., on Sept. 9, 2015, that Canada needed to proceed cautiously in taking in refugees from war zones because they had to be properly screened for criminal and terrorism links. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

“The current approach does not appear to provide much by way of relevant information to support the admissibility screening of refugee claimants,” concludes the Sept. 29, 2015, report, obtained by CBC News under the Access to Information Act.

The report on the anemic results was completed at about the same time as then prime minister Stephen Harper said Canada had to proceed cautiously in accepting Syrian refugees so that Canada’s screening process could weed out terrorists.

“When we are dealing with people that are from, in many cases, a terrorist war zone, we are going to make sure that we screen people appropriately and the security of this country is fully protected,” Harper told a 2015 election rally in Welland, Ont.

“We cannot open the floodgates and airlift tens of thousands of refugees out of a terrorist war zone without proper process. That is too great a risk for Canada.”

Domestic databases checked

The RCMP screening pilot was launched in 2011-12 as part of a package of Conservative reforms tightening up the processing of refugees, including a controversial move to withdraw some medical treatments for rejected asylum seekers. The Liberals have since reversed that measure.

Under the pilot project, the RCMP vetted potential refugees already in Canada — the names were provided by the Canada Border Services Agency — by checking domestic police databases for links to criminal or terrorist organizations, among other things.

Source: RCMP refugee screening a $16M flop, says internal report – Politics – CBC News

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Trudeau’s citizenship policies are about scoring votes | Malcolm

2016/04/18 Leave a comment

Standard simplistic analysis by Malcolm.

While her general points are valid re importance of language, the language requirements are only being relaxed for 55-64 year olds, about 6-8 percent of those tested, and the government is not changing the requirement for the knowledge test or interview to be conducted in an official language. One can disagree with this change but the sky is not falling.

And, as both media articles and C-6 hearing testimony to date attest, there was and is pressure to relax these ongoing requirements, so any ‘pandering’ (or responding to constituents)  was limited:

Beyond economics, newcomers who learn our language will integrate better in Canadian society. Language skills help newcomers make new friends and adjust to life in Canada. In a Statistics Canada research study, 96% of immigrants said learning English was important or very important to life in Canada.

Perhaps most compelling of all, a new government report found that speaking English or French in Canada has significant health implications.

A recent Statistics Canada report found that newcomers with poor English or French skills were three times more likely to report ill health than newcomers with strong language skills. This decline in health is particularly widespread amongst older immigrants.

The report found that “limited official language proficiency was strongly associated with a transition to poor health among male and female immigrants who had earlier reported good health.”

People who were healthy when they arrived in Canada became sick, just because they didn’t learn our language.

Yet, the Trudeau government is eliminating the requirement for newcomers to learn English, particularly for older immigrants who are more likely to get sick without language skills.

When newcomers arrive in Canada, they need encouragement to begin the integration process. The language requirement for citizenship is a great incentive. It urges newcomers to take a language training course – funded by the taxpayers and free of charge to newcomers – and start communicating in English in their every day lives.

When the government drops that incentive, it allows newcomers to retreat into their own ethnic communities. It becomes a barrier and stops them from branching out.

This is bad for Canada, but it’s also bad for the individual newcomers. It makes them more isolated, more sick, and less wealthy.

So why is the Trudeau government ignoring the facts, overlooking the data, and snubbing the experts on this topic?

The answer is simple. Politics.

Trudeau is catering to the demands of special interest groups who want quick and easy access to Canadian citizenship. They are rushing to turn newly arriving immigrants into voting citizens, and “reducing the barriers” to citizenship simply to earn votes and lifelong political allegiances.

Source: Trudeau’s citizenship policies are about scoring votes | Malcolm | Columnists |

Filed under C-24, C-6, Citizenship Tagged with

Canadian citizenship should have 2 tiers, Reis Pagtakhan says

2016/04/18 Leave a comment

Pagtakhan will be making these points at the C-6 hearings on April 19 (he also testified in 2014):

When Fahmy was first convicted on these charges, the Canadian government criticized the Egyptian court process as unfair and quickly assured Canadians and Fahmy that his citizenship would not be taken away. However, by quickly assuring Fahmy that he would not lose his citizenship, the government exposed one fatal flaw in its legislation — exactly what sort of foreign conviction would result in Canadian citizenship being revoked and how would the Canadian government decide who gets to retain citizenship?

Because it is impossible to ensure that Canadians tried abroad are provided with all the protections of Canadian law, including our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, citizenship revocation for terrorism should occur only if a citizen is convicted in Canada.

The other problem with the current law is that the minimum sentence that could lead to citizenship revocation is too short. Currently, a person sentenced to five years in jail for terrorism can have citizenship revoked. While five years in jail is not inconsequential, if a judge gives a convicted terrorist five years in jail as opposed to life in prison, this is because there is an assessment that the offence is less serious.

While the government should retain the ability to revoke citizenship in very select cases, revocation of citizenship should not occur automatically. Canadians should be given the ability to prove that they have changed their ways in order to retain their citizenship. One of the best examples of a person who became a statesman after being initially branded as a terrorist was former Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela. Now, while most terrorists will not follow in the footsteps of Mandela, the opportunity to do so should be provided. Should terrorists not choose this path, revocation of citizenship should quickly follow.

Some of McCallum’s other proposed changes to citizenship laws are welcome — such as the proposal to eliminate the requirement that new citizens sign an intention to reside in Canada. While there is nothing wrong with wanting Canadians to live in Canada, many Canadians contribute to Canada on the world stage. As well, asking Canadians to reside in Canada when the government continues to work on free trade agreements that give preferential treatment to Canadian citizens who work abroad is hypocritical. We cannot negotiate free trade agreements that allow Canadian citizens to work abroad while telling these same citizens they must live here.

Finally, the proposal to allow temporary residents to count days they live in Canada before becoming permanent residents toward citizenship is good. Foreign nationals who study here and work here should get some credit for their contributions to society as foreign workers and foreign students. However, this time credit should not extend to tourists. While it is important to promote tourism, foreigners here merely for a vacation should not get credit toward Canadian citizenship.

Source: Canadian citizenship should have 2 tiers, Reis Pagtakhan says – Manitoba – CBC News

Filed under C-24, C-6, Citizenship Tagged with

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