Millionaire immigrant investor program lures only 7 instead of 60

2016/01/23 Leave a comment

No surprise. Immigrant investor programs always have a ‘cash for citizenship’ aspect to them, with investors making rate-of-return calculations. And while the previous government may have talked up the ‘value’ of citizenship, clearly investors found the cost far greater than the benefits.

Lesson from the pilot – cancel the program:

The Immigrant Investor Venture Capital program, a revamped version of a program critics once denounced as “cash for citizenship,” was launched under the former Conservative government.

It was meant to attract rich immigrants willing to make a non-guaranteed investment of $2 million up front, which would be held for 15 years in a fund managed principally by BDC Capital, the investment arm of the Business Development Bank of Canada, in return for permanent residency. They also had to prove they had even more money in the bank.

But a year after it was launched, the pilot program has yielded just seven applications from potential international investors and no permanent resident visas.

“The demand for this pilot program has been low,” said Nancy Caron a spokeswoman with the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in an email to CBC News this week.

High-hopes dashed

The previous Conservative government thought it would result in hundreds of applications from rich immigrant investors.

“The program will be open for applications from Jan. 28 to Feb. 11, 2015, or until a maximum of 500 applications are received,” the previous government announced around this time last year.

A year later, Canada is still waiting to welcome it’s first new millionaire immigrant investor.

“A total of seven applications are in process,” said the departmental spokeswoman this week, adding that as of Dec. 30, 2015, four applications had passed a first-stage review and three had passed a second-stage review and were “in process.”

Only when an application reaches the second-stage is it then given a “pass or fail,” Caron explained.

With all seven applications still in process, “No permanent resident visas have yet been issued under this program,” she said.

‘A blank cheque’

The previous Conservative government tightened up the rules under the new pilot after acknowledging that immigrant investors under the old program were not likely to stay in Canada over the long term and contributed “relatively little” to the Canadian economy.

While the Conservatives were hoping to have better luck with this program than they did under the former Immigrant Investor Program, Richard Kurland, an immigration lawyer and policy analyst based in Vancouver, said the pilot was “broken” from the get-go.

“Canada was asking prospective immigrants to write a blank cheque and hope that 15 years down the road they would see any return on that investment,” Kurland said in a phone interview with CBC News.

“It’s no surprise to see that the wealthy immigrant investor crowd would look at other immigration possibilities to come to this country in order to grow our economy, create jobs and find a secure place for their own families.”

Source: Millionaire immigrant investor program lures only 7 instead of 60 – Politics – CBC News

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The angry, radical right: Martin Patriquin

2016/01/22 Leave a comment

Just as many pundits noted “Harper derangement syndrome” on the left, we now have “Trudeau (the younger) derangement syndrome” on the right following the election.

Ironic, given that the Conservative Party, now in opposition, has been running away from some of the policies and practices it implemented (e.g., cancellation of the Census, refusal to have an enquiry on murdered aboriginal women, the sale of LAVs to Saudi Arabia).

There will always be fringes on both sides of the political spectrum and the question is whether this will remain on the fringes or be picked up in some form by mainstream political parties (as arguably happened with the Conservatives’ use of identity politics with respect to Canadian Muslims during the election):

The RCMP, meanwhile, has seen an uptick in threats against Trudeau, according to police sources. “It’s somewhat expected, because Trudeau is anathema to right-wing extremists, and right-wing extremists tend to be the most explicit and reckless of those who make these kinds of threats,” says a former member of the RCMP’s threat-assessment group, a national security unit that safeguards domestic and visiting political leaders, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he remains a member of the RCMP.

Much of the rhetoric comes from a range of online groups whose ideologies vary as much as their popularity. Pegida Canada and Canadian Defence League, for example, are offshoots of European anti-Islamic groups. Others, including Separation of Alberta from the Liberal East, have specific Canadian political goals. Others still are Zionist in nature, including the Jewish Defence League and Christians United For Israel. With its 25,000 followers, Never Again Canada looms large.

The Never Again Canada Facebook page first appeared in mid-2014. The group, such as it is, bills itself as an “organization dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism, propaganda, terror and Jew hatred in Canada . . . Hatred is like cancer, the more you don’t treat it and ignore it, the worse it gets.” Its page, often updated several times an hour, is almost uniquely dedicated to criticism of Justin Trudeau—sometimes referred to as “Justine”—and Islam. (“Never Again” is an apparent reference to the slogan of the Jewish Defence League, the U.S.-based militant Zionist organization, which has a chapter in Canada.)

The commentators on Never Again are a hodgepodge of Zionists, former and current military, Christian militants, the occasional white nationalist—an irony, given that the white nationalist movement isn’t typically very charitable toward Jews—and many anti-Muslim types like Witko and Larry Langenauer. A 67-year-old small business owner, Langenauer says he began posting on Never Again’s Facebook page four months ago.

On Dec. 10 Langenauer wrote that “the most convincing non-confidence statement” against Trudeau would be to shoot him. He has made similar threats about the Saudi-born Liberal MP Omar Alghabra, who was recently appointed parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs. (In Canada, uttering threats is an offence punishable by up to five years in jail. Committing hate speech is punishable by up to two years in jail.)

“I guess anyone that feels that way is probably thinking that [Trudeau] is the man who almost single-handedly, with the people in office with him, has enabled violent immigrants,” Langenauer said in a recent telephone interview from his Montreal home. “It’s their responsibility. Why would Canada be exempt from this type of behaviour by the radical Islamic immigrants? They say they’re refugees, they’re not really refugees. People are going to resent it, and eventually they will act upon it toward the people whom they feel are responsible.”

Source: The angry, radical right – Macleans.ca

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German Jews ‘no longer safe’ due to anti-Semitism and ‘deteriorating security’ – The Independent

2016/01/22 Leave a comment

Worrisome:

Jewish people no longer feel safe living in Germany, it has been claimed.

The leader of Hamberg’s Jewish community, Daniel Killy, told the Jerusalem Post: “We no longer feel safe here.”

He went on to explain how a combination of extreme right-wing forces, deteriorating security, and Germany welcoming of refugees brought up in cultures “steeped in hatred” for Jews were resulting in anti-Semitism.

Hamburg has a 2,500-strong Jewish population, and there are around 118,000 in Germany overall. One million Muslim refugees arrived in Germany over the last year.

Mr Killy referenced a report published on tagesschau.de, authored by expert in extremist ideology Patrick Gensing.

In the report he said: “Anti-Semitic sentiments have diverse manifestations in Germany. [There are studies that point to] “historical defensive guilt [about the Holocaust], obsessive criticism of Israel, National Socialist racism, Muslim anti-Semitism [and] Christian anti-Semitism.”

An article published on dw.com included an interview with 22-year-old Jewish man, Elliot Reich, who took part in a pro-Israel demonstration in 2014.

Reich said he was surprised at the animosity against the marchers, claiming counter-protesters shouted things like: “’Hamas, Hamas! Jews into gas!’ Words like this have nothing to do with Israel – they are purely anti-Semitic.”

Source: German Jews ‘no longer safe’ due to anti-Semitism and ‘deteriorating security’ | Europe | News | The Independent

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Political-activity audits of charities being wound down by Liberal government

2016/01/22 Leave a comment

Expected and welcome:

The Liberal government is winding down the political-activity audits of charities that were begun by the Harper government — but there’s no amnesty being offered to the two dozen charities already caught in the program.

Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier announced the reversal today, saying results so far indicate that charities have largely been following the rules restricting political activities.

“The results of the political-activities audit program have shown that the charities audited have been substantially compliant with the rules regarding their involvement in political activities,” she said in a release.

“In light of these outcomes, the program will be concluded.”

The controversial program was launched with fanfare in the 2012 Conservative budget, with funding that grew to $13.4 million and was supposed to ensnare 60 charities over five years. The program was launched as two Conservative cabinet ministers, Joe Oliver and Peter Kent, vilified environmental charities for interfering in the government’s pipeline and energy policies.

The first wave of audits hit environmental groups but later waves expanded to include poverty, human-rights and international-development charities. Critics said the audits not only were costly for poorly funded groups to defend themselves, but created an “advocacy chill” as some charities self-censored to appease auditors.

Violations not generally political

Lebouthillier said only five of the charities caught by the program were notified they would lose their charitable status — but said their violations of charity rules generally didn’t result from their political activities but from other violations the auditors discovered.

The Canada Revenue Agency never released the names of all the targeted charities, though many came forward to identify their troubles in the news media.

The announcement Wednesday is good news for six unidentified charities who had been targeted for audits that had not yet begun. But the 24 charities still in the throes of unfinished political-activity audits will continue to be scrutinized until the auditors’ work is finished.

The minister said in making that decision she was respecting the arm’s-length relationship between her office and the Charity Directorate.

“The independence of the Charity Directorate’s oversight role for charities is a fundamental principle that must be protected,” she said in a release.

“The minister of national revenue does not and will not play a role in the selection of charity audits or in the decisions relating to the outcomes of those audits.”

Source: Political-activity audits of charities being wound down by Liberal government – Politics – CBC News

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How to Fix the Racist Oscars—and Hollywood – The Daily Beast

2016/01/22 Leave a comment

More on the #OscarsSoWhite controversy and detailing the extent of Hollywood’s problems:

It’s not just the Academy that’s lacking diversity, either. Researchers at the University of Southern California analyzed the 700 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2014 and came to some staggering conclusions. They determined that, of the top 100 highest-grossing films of 2014, only 17 of the top movies featured non-white leads or co-leads, and the overall breakdown of actors was: 73.1 percent White, 12.5 percent Black, 5.3 percent Asian, 4.9 percent Hispanic, and 4.2 percent Other.

“I know many members who wouldn’t even see [Straight Outta Compton] because it represented a culture that they detest or, more accurately, they assume they detest,” an Academy member said.

These frustrating numbers inspired “Every Single Word,” an eye-opening Tumblr by Dylan Marron that highlights every single word spoken by a person of color in a mainstream film. Marron’s shocking findings show, among many examples, that in the entire Harry Potter film series, only five minutes and 40 seconds are spoken by characters of color (they total over 20 hours). In The Lord of the Ringstrilogy, it’s 46 seconds (if you count the Orcs). E.T.: nine seconds. Into the Woods: seven seconds. Moonrise Kingdom: 10 seconds. Last year’s Best Picture winner, Birdman: 53 seconds.

Hollywood is also a business, so some of the explanation for the lack of diversity is financial. A decade ago, the U.S. box office comprised 51.3 percent of worldwide gross. Today, it’s less than 40 percent, so over 60 percent of a movie’s overall take is international. But a big problem that the industry doesn’t know how to address is the tastes of international audiences, which are, quite frankly, far more narrow-minded than that of Americans. With the exception of the Fast and the Furiousfranchise, many films with mainly black casts don’t travel too well abroad. Look at Straight Outta Compton, which made just $39 million internationally out of $200 million total, or Creed, which took home $30 million of its $137 million total outside the U.S (the previous entry with a white lead, Rocky Balboa, made $70 million domestic and $85 million abroad). In the Sony hack, a controversial email surfaced from a producer to Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman Michael Lynton decrying the tastes of international movie audiences.

“I believe that the international motion picture audience is racist—in general pictures with an African American lead don’t play well overseas,” the producer wrote in an email pegged to the Denzel Washington-starrer The Equalizer. “But Sony sometimes seems to disregard that a picture must work well internationally to both maximize returns and reduce risk, especially pics with decent size budgets.”

Source: How to Fix the Racist Oscars—and Hollywood – The Daily Beast

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

Harvard academic Todd Rose on the fallacy of averages – Macleans.ca

2016/01/22 Leave a comment

Although I like manipulating and understanding large groups of people, using averages, medians and the like, useful note of caution on some of the limits.

However, analysis of overall trends and groups provides an overall understanding of how different groups are doing, and a frame to understand and address individual variances:

Q: It’s apparent in The End of Average that, while you applaud personalized medicine, what really interests you is education.

A: Education and the workforce: I think these two things go together in terms of human potential. Historically, education has been about batch processing: standardize everything against the average, rank kids, sort them to see who gets more and who really doesn’t deserve to be there. The problem, even if you’re just being selfish from an economic standpoint, is we’re not producing the talent we need: companies tell me that even in their best attempts to hire people, it’s a 50/50 proposition whether that person pans out a year later. We need to develop people rather than process them. But if you accept that, there are huge implications, including a whole different organizing set of principles. Right now, for instance, we resist giving people extra time on exams or for assignments, as though it’s unfair to the faster students. Well, is the purpose of the assessment to understand what they know or to rank them against the average? The whole idea of timing tests is a century old, from a scientist who thought speed and ability were tightly correlated, which they are not. We don’t have that obsession with, say, a driver’s licence: take the test as often as you need; when you pass we’ll allow you to operate a multi-tonne machine.

Q: Are you still working on ways to personalize education?

A: Our role so far has been to clarify for the public a way of seeing this. We use the Air Force analogy: there were expensive things they had to do to get a cockpit suitable for a lot of pilots, like wraparound windshields, but their initial solutions, when they realized average didn’t work, were adjustable seats. How in the world did they not already have adjustable seats in their planes? We’re looking for adjustable seats for education, for basic things that we can do. Solutions are out there in piecemeal that need to be brought to the centre of the system. Abandon fixed-time, grade-based classes; if something is valuable, have mastery focus, where we give a flexibility in time and it’s all about getting you to competency.

Q: If your children were in high school and grading, for lack of a better term, the way you did in high school, do you have solid options that were not available to your parents?

A: Yes, but right now they’re decidedly skewed to people with money. That rubs me wrong. I care deeply about opportunity and fairness, because I grew up really poor. What motivates me is that, for the first time, we can have the knowledge to scale these kind of solutions and make them available to all. But that requires making good choices right now about the way we’ll use our technology, and the purpose we have for education. That’s not going to happen magically. We can make really bad choices and double-down on the system we have, so we have to work at it.

Source: Harvard academic Todd Rose on the fallacy of averages – Macleans.ca

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Diversity of Deputy Ministers – Current Baseline

2016/01/21 Leave a comment

With the announcement that Janice Charente is being replaced by Michael Wernick as Clerk of the Privy Council, I thought it might be interesting to see what the baseline is before further appointments and changes take place this year.

Including the 22 deputies for departments (per GEDS), eight deputies at PCO, and the heads of CBSA, CRS, CSE, CSIS, PSC, RCMP, SSC, StatsCan and TBS (39 deputies or equivalents), generates the following results (14 women, 25 men, 1 visible minority):

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Will update this at the end of the year to see if any significant changes given the government’s focus on diversity and inclusion (and of course if I have missed anyone or mischaracterized anyone, happy to revise).

Kathryn May’s analysis of the appointment worth reading:

The announcement left many public servants scratching their heads as to why Trudeau replaced Charette with Wernick and asked him to help find his replacement.

It’s unclear how long Wernick will be in the job, but one of his key tasks will be studying how to select the next clerk. “The Prime Minister has asked Mr. Wernick for advice on a process to fill the position on a permanent basis,” said the press statement.

Ralph Heintzman, the University of Ottawa research professor who has long argued for an independent appointment process to pick the clerk and all deputy ministers, said the move is in line with the new approach Trudeau is taking to all appointments.

He said finding a new arm’s length process for appointing the clerk is the first step to a “renaissance” of Canada’s non-partisan public service, which many argued had become politicized as more power shifted to the Prime Minister’s Office.

Michael Wernick new Clerk of the Privy Council

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The unbending arc: America’s race gap is stuck | Brookings Institution

2016/01/21 Leave a comment

Richard Reeves on the ongoing economic gap between white and black Americans:

America is in danger of becoming stuck, with insufficient social, geographical, or economic mobility. That’s the claim I made in a recent essay for Esquire magazine, a collaboration between the magazine and Brookings. (You can read the whole package here.)

Poverty persists across generations, too. Half of the black children born on the bottom rung of the income ladder (the bottom quintile) will stay there as adults. A boy who grows up in Baltimore will earn 28 percent less simply because he grew up in Baltimore. Sixty-six percent of black children live in America’s poorest neighborhoods, compared with six percent of white children.

Recent events have shone a light on the black experience in dozens of U.S. cities. Behind the riots and the rage, the statistics tell a simple, damning story. Progress toward equality for black Americans has essentially halted. The average black family has an income that is 59 percent of the average white family, down from 65 percent in 2000. In the job market, race gaps are immobile, too. In the 1950s, black Americans were twice as likely to be unemployed as whites. And today? Still twice as likely.

In part this reflects geographical separation, too. While the degree of segregation by race has reduced slightly in recent years, as shown by my colleague William Frey, black Americans are still likely to live in areas of concentrated income poverty, and to be Stuck in Place, as the title of Patrick Sharkey’s influential book puts it.

Race gaps in wealth are perhaps the most striking. The average white household is now thirteen times wealthier than the average black one. This is the widest gap in a quarter of a century. The recession hit families of all races, but it resulted in a wealth wipeout for black families. In 2007, the average black family had a net worth of $19,200, almost entirely in housing stock, typically at the cheap, fragile end of the market. By 2010, this had fallen to $16,600. By 2013—by which point white wealth levels had started to recover—it was down to $11,000. In national economic terms, black wealth is now essentially nonexistent.

Half a century after the passing of the Civil Rights Act, the arc of history is no longer bending toward justice. A few years ago, it was not unreasonable to hope that changing attitudes, increasing education, and a growing economy would surely, if slowly, bring black and white America closer together. It is now clear that time and economic growth alone will not heal the racial divide.

Source: The unbending arc: America’s race gap is stuck | Brookings Institution

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Montréal toujours loin de la parité hommes-femmes

2016/01/21 Leave a comment

Unfortunately, we do not have consistent cross-municipality data (the NHS/Census allows us to compare gender and median income but the shift to the NHS in 2011 makes comparisons problematic). For all municipal employees across Canada, 59 percent are male:

La proportion de femmes parmi les employés de la Ville de Montréal a diminué depuis huit ans, alors que la métropole s’était pourtant engagée à tendre vers la parité avec les hommes. Le nombre de femmes ayant obtenu un poste de cadre a augmenté, mais celles-ci continuent à gagner moins que leurs collègues masculins. Ce sont là quelques-uns des constats qui se dégagent du plus récent avis du Conseil des Montréalaises, qui sera présenté aux élus de la métropole lors de la prochaine réunion du conseil municipal.

La proportion de femmes parmi les employés de la Ville de Montréal a diminué depuis huit ans, alors que la métropole s’était pourtant engagée à tendre vers la parité avec les hommes. Le nombre de femmes ayant obtenu un poste de cadre a augmenté, mais celles-ci continuent à gagner moins que leurs collègues masculins. Ce sont là quelques-uns des constats qui se dégagent du plus récent avis du Conseil des Montréalaises, qui sera présenté aux élus de la métropole lors de la prochaine réunion du conseil municipal.

Le nombre de femmes cadres progresse

Malgré le recul de la proportion de femmes au sein du personnel de la métropole, le Conseil des Montréalaises se réjouit de constater que leur nombre a tout de même progressé chez les cadres. En 2006, 40 % des cadres étaient des femmes, proportion qui a grimpé à 44 % en 2014 parmi les 1836 cadres de la métropole. Les femmes continuent toutefois à être sous-représentées dans les plus hauts échelons de l’appareil administratif, note le rapport. Celles-ci n’occupaient que 32 % des postes de cadre de direction, soit ceux répondant directement au directeur général. Cette proportion représente tout de même une progression par rapport à 2006, où elles étaient 24 %.

Source: Montréal toujours loin de la parité hommes-femmes | Pierre-André Normandin | Montréal

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Where is the PM when Quebec needs him? Lysiane Gagnon

2016/01/21 Leave a comment

Worth reading, but not as sanguine about her conclusion regarding overall Canadian fears or not regarding Canadian Muslims.

Virtually all polling I have seen, as well as the identity politics practiced by the Conservative government, suggest that a significant number of Canadians do share this fear.

Fine balance between over and under-playing, but overall better to downplay and avoid over-heating fears:

Former prime minister Stephen Harper was too warlike. Now, we have the other extreme: a prime minister who hates conflicts and sees the world through a New Age prism in which everything can be solved with love and understanding. Unfortunately, the country he leads doesn’t live in a dream world.

Maybe Mr. Trudeau’s timidity is also due to the fear of raising anti-Muslim sentiments. But this is a misplaced fear: Canadians are not stupid and they know that the huge majority of Muslims have nothing to do with radical Islam. And Muslims are often the first victims of the murderous groups who reign by terror over large parts of the Middle East and Africa.

Source: Where is the PM when Quebec needs him? – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Radicalization Tagged with , , ,

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