Where should we put Canada’s counter-radicalisation programme? Gurski

2016/03/28 Leave a comment

Phil Gurski is right on this one. Better to have this outside of Public Safety. Canadian Heritage, now that the Multiculturalism Program is back, is likely the better home (Economic and Social Development, while another alternative, is simply too large a department to provide effective oversight).

However, that being said, given that it is in Minister Goodale’s mandate letter rather than Mme. Joly’s, I don’t see this happening.

And Public Safety has funded a number of good research projects under the Kanishka Project (named after the Air India coming of 1985):

This move represents a significant shift in Canada’s CVE (Countering Violent Extremism) approach from the purely hardline emphasis of the Harper government to a more inclusive and more comprehensive one under the new regime (note that the previous government did have a soft CVE aspect, and one in which I worked, but did not fund it adequately and actually undermined it with stupid comments by public officials).  As I have said before, we will always need the hardline tool, but we need to do more in early intervention and counter radicalisation.

One question remains: where should this new office reside?  When I still worked for the federal government it was housed within Public Safety Canada, split between the National Security Policy branch and Citizen Engagement.  In some ways, it should stay there if for no other reason that that department has experienced and capable staff who were part of the amazing success of the shortened efforts under Harper.

But in other, more important ways, it should be moved to another department.  Let me try to explain why.

Aside from getting a brand new start and being able to put the unfortunate mistakes of the previous government behind us, the biggest drawback to leaving Canada’s CVE strategy with Public Safety lies with the very nature of that ministry.  Public Safety Canada is the umbrella department for CSIS, the RCMP, Correctional Services Canada and the Canadian Border Services Agency.  All of these are staffed by dedicated and professional people but they have one underlying commonality: they are all enforcement/punitive agencies.  CVE needs to be seen as an opportunity to occur before people engage in activities that are the remit of CSIS and the RCMP in order to work.

We have seen in other places like the UK with its PREVENT programme that communities associate CVE with intelligence gathering and enforcement, whether or not that is what is happening.  Having a ministry responsible for the national spy and law enforcement agencies run CVE creates a stigma that can hamper even the best efforts.  If communities do not feel comfortable and have issues of trust with certain partners, they will not want to participate.

What if the government put the new office under the Heritage portfolio?  CVE is all about providing communities with the tools to foster Canadian citizenship and reject the empty and violent promises of groups like Islamic State. It is about being or becoming Canadian.  Another aspect is the debate over narratives.   I have long argued that we need to move away from “counter narratives” to “alternative narratives”.  Alternative narratives are an important part of CVE – what better place to locate them than within Heritage, the department that helps foster the Canadian narrative?  Our narrative is so superior to that of IS that if this were a boxing match the referee would have called the fight years ago.

Of course, those with lots of experience in CVE, especially the RCMP which has a longstanding and robust outreach programme, would be asked to lend its assistance and best practices.  Other partners could also contribute.  Canada is – or rather was – a world leader in CVE and many countries look to us for models on what to do.  We don’t need to reinvent it, we just need to tweak it to make it better.

At the end of the day it really doesn’t matter where the government decides to put CVE.  The important thing is that it cultivate good relations with the communities it hopes to work with, for the best answers to violent radicalisation and extremism are to be found there, not in a government policy brief.

Source: Borealis Threat & Risk Consulting

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with , , , , ,

ICYMI: Stateless Prince George man one step closer to citizenship

2016/03/28 Leave a comment

No longer falling through the cracks:

Qia Gunster is one step closer to being Canadian.

The 20-year-old Prince George man has lived in B.C. since he was a baby, but has never been recognized by his country.

As a “stateless person,” Gunster has been unable to get government identification, which means he couldn’t legally work, drive a car or travel.

But this week, Citizenship and Immigration Canada granted Gunster permanent resident status and he will finally be able to get a driver’s licence. He will also be able to get a social insurance number, so he can work and pay taxes.

He won’t be able to apply for Canadian citizenship for another four years.

“It’s pretty awesome — my whole outlook on the future has changed,” Gunster said Thursday.

“It makes everything easier.”

Gunster was born in Arizona, but his mother didn’t register his birth and when he was 18 months old, she crossed the border into B.C. with him. She left her baby in McBride, east of Prince George, where he was raised by a friend of a friend.

Being without ID wasn’t a significant problem until he finished high school. With help from a large circle of supporters, Gunster was able to earn a living. He is partway through his apprenticeship as an electrician and has found employers willing to pay in cash.

But Gunster still faced many limitations. He needed a birth certificate even to begin the process of applying to the federal government for citizenship.

The school principal got involved, and his adoptive families tried to help. Even the local MP contacted Arizona government officials in an attempt to get Gunster a birth certificate.

Despite stacks of paperwork, and a DNA test proving he is the son of an Arizona resident, the state has refused to issue the document.

Late last year, Michelle Quigg, a lawyer with North Vancouver-based Access Pro Bono, got involved with Qia’s case. She succeeded in getting Gunster permanent residency status, but she intends to press the government to grant him citizenship sooner under a section of the Immigration Act that allows it for “exceptional circumstances.”

Gunster, meanwhile, is making plans. He is going to get his driver’s licence and apply for jobs as an electrical apprentice at any company who’s hiring. He can go to a bar and no longer worry about being asked to prove his age. He can apply for a credit card.

“When you’re stateless, the options are so limited — you can’t work unless you know the right people,” he said.

“Basically I was stuck in a black hole that I couldn’t get out of, and now I have a world of opportunities.”

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ICYMI: Canadian and U.S. right not that different | Supriya Dwivedi 

2016/03/28 Leave a comment

Interesting to see this kind of commentary in The Sun:

The Canadian right also seems to be just as allergic to the term political correctness as their American counterparts. When former Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the election was underway, he made an overt reference to political correctness, stating, “now is not the time for political correctness”.

Several commentators noted it was an odd remark to make at the onset of the election, but as the campaign started to unfold it became clear why Harper made the reference. As much as conservative pundits might opine that those on the left are merely afraid of being anything other than politically correct, I’m not sure that the repudiation of things like the Barbaric Cultural Practices Tip Line, reference to “old-stock” Canadians and obsession with what Muslim women are allowed to wear during a citizenship ceremony was the embracing of political correctness as much as it was the rejection of veiled xenophobia.

More recently, in an interview with Embassy News Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu (Sarnia-Lambton) stated that Trump’s rhetoric has been positive for free speech advocates: “The only bright light is that he has sort of restored freedom of speech to America”. Gladu went on to assert that many people in Canada are fearful of saying what they think out of fear of being accused of “breeding hatred and fear”.

It’s worth asking where Gladu thinks she lives, considering Canada is still indeed a free state, and people are free to think, believe and say what they choose. Similarly, people with opposing viewpoints are free to say they disagree. That is what freedom of speech is. Evidently, confusing freedom of speech and freedom from consequences of that speech is something that Conservatives and Republicans have in common.

The Conservatives were not completely off-base in trying to appeal to nativist politics. The support is there. It just won’t win you a majority anymore. Canadians may not be as comfortable in the overt displays of racism as our American brethren, but we are inclined to dabble in our homegrown brand of racism that tends to be framed in a more palatable manner. It’s coded, it’s often implicit, but it’s there.

Perhaps we’re not the enlightened, toque-wearing citizenry that we like to make ourselves out to be, eh?

Source: Canadian and U.S. right not that different | DWIVEDI | Columnists | Opinion | To

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ICYMI: Deportations to Jamaica, Honduras could hurt Canada

2016/03/28 Leave a comment

The possible longer-term impact of the populist policy to deport criminals:

Experts in Canada and Jamaica told the researchers that the ability of deportees to obtain jobs, housing, education and health care heavily influenced their ability to reintegrate and whether criminals would continue to take part in illicit activity upon their return.

“The great difficulty with properly reintegrating criminal deportees has ultimately contributed to deportee-related problems with unemployment, homelessness, inadequate housing, property crime, mental health and addiction,” one study says.

Jamaica has returned to prominence as a major shipment point for cocaine originating in South America, posing concerns for Canadian police, the researchers add. The organized-crime landscape has also expanded beyond drugs to lucrative lottery scams that directly target Canadians.

It’s one thing to deport someone with no real connection to Canada, but quite another to return a person who has grown up in Canada, said Toronto immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman.

“It’s completely unacceptable that we’re dumping our social problems back in Jamaica,” Waldman said.

“I think the time has come for our government to really reassess this policy.”

Deportees to Honduras return to a country that is facing urgent humanitarian problems, a proliferation of street gangs and organized groups involved in the hemispheric drug trade, the other study says. The extremely challenging economic conditions, social stigma and threat of violence make it difficult to build a new life.

A number of Honduran organizations offer social services to deportees, but they lack resources and cannot keep up with the massive flow of returnees, particularly from the United States, the study says. “Canada can play an important role in international efforts to support deportees and the Honduran authorities, while pushing for broader security and justice reform in Honduras.”

The studies also point out that privacy law limits the information about returnees the Canada Border Services Agency can share with officials in other countries, potentially hampering reintegration. However, they add the RCMP may be better placed to pass along information through its international channels.

Source: Deportations to Jamaica, Honduras could hurt Canada – The Globe and Mail

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Why Canada should keep its religious freedom office: US advocates

2016/03/26 Leave a comment

More advocacy regarding keeping the Office of Religious Freedom, this time from US counterparts, Robert P. George and Katrina Lantos Swett:

This flurry of engagement is happening for good reason: Religious freedom conditions are deteriorating dramatically. According to a number of studies, at least three-quarters of the world’s people live in countries that perpetrate or tolerate serious religious freedom abuses, ranging from the denial of permits to build houses of worship to the imprisonment, torture and murder of the persecuted.

Persecutors include secular tyrannies such as that of China, which persecutes religious adherents from Christians and Uighur Muslims to Tibetan Buddhists and Falun Gong; and North Korea, perhaps the most world’s most repressive country. They also include theocratic states, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, and violent groups, such as Boko Haram in Nigeria, Buddhist extremists in Myanmar, and the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq (among other places).

Thanks in part to the existence of USCIRF (United States Commission on International Religious Freedom), the U.S. House of Representatives recently gave unanimous approval to a resolution decrying the Islamic State’s horrifying violence against Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities as religiously motivated genocide. Others have also deemed it genocide, from Pope Francis to the European Parliament.

For humanitarian reasons alone, silence is no option in the face of those who violate religious freedoms. QBut there is a further reason for concern. Speaking in 2014 about the Middle East, Jean Benjamin Sleiman, the Archbishop of Baghdad, said: “I do not think Europe will be calm. This … does not stop at territorial boundaries.” His words were prophetic: Five months later, in January, 2015, the same religious extremism that was plaguing his own country struck the office of the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket in Paris.

The lesson is clear. Standing up for religious freedom is not just a moral imperative but also a practical necessity for any country seeking to protect its security and that of its citizens. At such a time as this, Canada should not retreat from its leadership role in advancing this fundamental human right.

Religious freedom merits a permanent seat at the table of a great country’s foreign policy. Canada has given freedom of conscience such a seat through its Office of Religious Freedoms. May it retain this critical seat so long as religious freedom is threatened anywhere in the world.

Source: Why Canada should keep its religious freedom office – The Globe and Mail

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Why Foreign Fighters Come from Francophone Countries | Foreign Affairs

2016/03/26 Leave a comment

Interesting take by William McCants and Christopher Meserole (thanks to those who brought it to my attention), and another indicator of the failure of the French (and Belgian) models of integration (and in the case of France, laïcité):

As with the Francophone finding overall, we’re left with guesswork as to why exactly the relationships between French politics, urbanization, youth unemployment, and Sunni militancy exist. We suspect that when there are large numbers of unemployed youth, some of them are bound to get up to mischief. When they live in large cities, they have more opportunities to connect with people espousing radical causes. And when those cities are in Francophone countries that adopt the strident French approach to secularism, Sunni radicalism is more appealing.

For now, the relationship needs to be studied and tested by comparing several cases in countries and between countries. We also found other interesting relationships—such as between Sunni violence and prior civil conflict—but they are neither as strong nor as compelling.

Regardless, the latest attacks in Belgium are reason enough to share the initial findings. They may be way off, but at least they are based on the best available data. If the data is wrong or our interpretations skewed, we hope the effort will lead to more rigorous explanations of what is driving jihadist terrorism in Europe. Our initial findings should in no way imply that Francophone countries are responsible for the recent horrible attacks—no country deserves to have its civilians killed, regardless of the perpetrator’s motives. But the magnitude of the violence and the fear it engenders demand that we investigate those motives beyond just the standard boilerplate explanations.

Source: Why Foreign Fighters Come from Francophone Countries | Foreign Affairs

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with , , ,

Denmark may strip radical imams of citizenship

2016/03/26 Leave a comment

Charging them with hate speech would be appropriate:
Denmark might soon be able to strip radicalized imams of citizenship. The proposal is expected to be supported by a majority in parliament.

The initiative comes from the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party, and has received backing from the ruling Liberal Party, the opposition Social Democrats and the Conservative party.

“The Constitution says that one must practice his faith as long as it is not contrary to morals or disturbing to the public order,” Martin Henriksen, Danish People’s Party’s spokesman told the Berlingske newspaper on Monday.

“When imams endorse or recommend stoning or when an imam tells a woman subjected to violence by her husband, that that’s okay, then it [may be considered] subversive speech that disturbs the public order. Some of these imams are Danish citizens, and we think we should deprive them of their citizenship,” he said.

The proposal was made in particular to withdraw citizenship from Abu Bilal, a leading imam at the Grimhoj mosque in the city of Aarhus. A recent documentary, ‘Mosques behind the Veil,’ revealed that the imam advocated the stoning of adulterous women and the killing of apostates.

Danish Prime Minister Lokke Rasmussen urged MPs to come up with measures to counter the growth of radical Islam after the documentary exposed the activities of such radical mosques.

The Danish People’s Party is set to make two new proposals in the upcoming set of negotiations with the Danish PM. The party is to present a draft resolution on stripping Abu Bilal of his Danish citizenship and then to review the Constitution’s clause on religious freedom.

Rasmussen said that he will be willing to “push the limits” of the interpretation of the Danish Constitution when reviewing the proposals, the Local reported.

“We are open to all solutions that can stop the radicalized imams,” said Trine Bramsen, the Social Democrats’ spokesman, according to the Berlingske newspaper.

 Source: Denmark may strip radical imams of citizenship — RT News

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Exploring the lack of diversity in Quebec police forces

2016/03/26 Leave a comment

This has been an issue for a considerable time.

Police_ForcesThe table above compares police force diversity in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver; what surprised me when collecting this information directly from the respective police forces was the degree to which the information is not public on their website and does not appear to be systematically collected (Surête de Québec does keep good stats):

Quebec’s police academy doesn’t have “a lot of influence” over whether visible minorities apply to become officers, says a spokesman for the academy.

Pierre Saint-Antoine, director of communications of École nationale de police du Québec in Nicolet, said racial minorities made up five per cent of its student population in 2015, despite attempts to “recruit people from all diversities and communities in Quebec.”

“We don’t have a lot of influence on the people that apply here,” Saint-Antoine said, adding that Nicolet has a program in place, in conjunction with the Quebec government, to encourage more diversity among applicants.

Saint-Antoine’s comments come after numbers compiled by CBC News show that Quebec police forces are lagging in their hiring of visible minorities.

For instance, the Sûreté du Québec serves more than 2.5 million people, however, fewer than one per cent of its officers are not Caucasian.

Community activists have said a lack of diversity among police leads to strained relationships with racial minorities.

But getting more people to apply is no easy task, says Paul Chablo, the head of John Abbott’s police technology program.

Before going to Nicolet, prospective police officers must first complete a three-year CEGEP program, and Chablo said many people from minority backgrounds don’t apply.

Out of roughly 250 students at John Abbott, 49 define themselves as having an “ethnic background” and only seven are visible minorities.

‘They have to adjust their techniques’

Chablo, who is also the former director of communications for the Montreal police, points to a multitude of factors — including lacklustre recruiting efforts and poor relationships with some ethnic communities — to explain the lack of diversity among applicants.

He said Quebec police need to a better job of reaching out to prospective employees to encourage them to apply to CEGEP programs in the first place.

“I think they have to adjust their techniques,” he said in an interview.

Source: Exploring the lack of diversity in Quebec police forces – Montreal – CBC News

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Plenty of blame to go round in real estate crisis: Mason

2016/03/26 Leave a comment

The (valid) criticism of governments continues.

But at least, the planned StatsCan study will illustrate the extent to which (mainly Chinese) immigration has contributed to increased housing prices:

The B.C. government recently vowed to crack down on real estate agents involved in nefarious practices such as shadow flipping that help to drive up prices. But this is a small measure that will do absolutely nothing to improve affordability. Its primary purpose is to improve optics: Look, everyone, Premier Christy Clark is finally doing something about this mess. The Premier also asked B.C. Housing to look at the impact of foreign investment in the market.

In this week’s federal budget, meanwhile, $500,000 was set aside to help Statistics Canada determine the best way to collect data on international buyers.

It would be comical if it weren’t so sad.

Others, meanwhile, aren’t waiting. This week, two economists from the National Bank produced a study showing as many as one-third of house purchasers in Metro Vancouver last year were from China. But perhaps the most interesting numbers to be revealed lately concern the impact that the immigrant-investor program – both the one run for years by Ottawa (and terminated in 2014) and another that still exists in Quebec – has had on the real estate madness we are witnessing.

Under the program, immigrants can come to Canada in exchange for $800,000, up front, that serves as a five-year loan to the government. The report, brought to light by Ian Young of the South China Morning Post, reveals how completely porous and unaccountable the immigrant-investor system has been. Truly awful might be another way to describe it.

For example, after 10 years the average annual income tax paid by these millionaire migrant investors is $1,400. That compares with $7,500 for the average Canadian. The report notes that after five years, many of these investors have secured Canadian citizenship and returned to their home country.

Quebec accepts about 1,750 such applications annually. After handing over their $800,000, most move to Vancouver and buy real estate. The vast majority of all who have taken advantage of these programs over the years have ended up in British Columbia (by one estimate, nearly 200,000).

Those who have come to Canada acknowledged to federal researchers that their primary motivation for obtaining citizenship was as a hedge against political or economic upheaval occurring in their home country.

The federal government has known about the impact the investor pipeline was having on things such as real estate and didn’t care. It was more than pleased to sell Canadian citizenship to the wealthy. The B.C. government, meanwhile, is only too happy to take rich immigrants through the investor back door that continues to be provided by Quebec. It doesn’t care that it isn’t seeing any of the loan money that immigrant investors have to pay; it is making tens of millions from the insane escalation in real estate prices these immigrants have set off.

Canadians should be furious that their governments allowed this to happen. Now all that these same governments can do is introduce lame measures that will have no meaningful impact on housing prices, but rather are designed to show that government is on the problem!

Except they’re not. And never have been. And hopefully history will judge them harshly for that.

Source: Plenty of blame to go round in real estate crisis – The Globe and Mail

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Malcolm Turnbull: multiculturalism and tolerance will combat terrorism| The Guardian

2016/03/25 Leave a comment

Welcome change in language from his predecessor and strong message regarding the contribution that multiculturalism and inclusion can make to reducing the risks and extent of radicalization:

Malcolm Turnbull has nominated Australia’s cultural tolerance and multicultural society as reasons the country is well-placed to deal with terrorist threats.

In sharp contrast to the rhetorical tone of his predecessor, Tony Abbott, who repeatedly warned Australians that the “Daesh death cult” was “coming after us”, Turnbull said while no government could “guarantee the absolute absence of terrorism” Australia was “better placed than many of our European counterparts” in dealing with the threat “because of the strength of our intelligence and security agencies, our secure borders and our successful multicultural society; one that manages to be both secure and free”.

“Terrorism is designed to make us turn on each other,” Turnbull said in a lecture to the Lowy Institute on Wednesday evening. “That is why my government works hard to promote inclusion and mutual respect, ensuring that all communities and all faiths feel part of ours, the most successful multicultural society in the world.”

“Strong borders, vigilant security agencies governed by the rule of law, and a steadfast commitment to the shared values of freedom and mutual respect – these are the ingredients of multicultural success,” he said.

He said “early signs” indicated the Brussels attacks had been inspired or planned by Islamic State in Syria and this underscored the importance of Australia’s military contribution in Syria and Iraq.

Source: Malcolm Turnbull: multiculturalism and tolerance will combat terrorism | Australia news | The Guardian

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with , ,

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