Distinct societies: Why Canada, U.S., diverge on Syrian refugees: Adams

2015/12/10 Leave a comment

Michael Adams on the contrast between Canada and the USA:

Americans certainly enjoy unique latitude in the individual pursuit of happiness, but the pursuit of happiness doesn’t always look like much fun. In an environment where there is a lot to fear (financial ruin in an unforgiving system, illness leading to bankruptcy, gun violence inflicted by a stranger, a family member, or an unsupervised toddler), it is perhaps not surprising that some are eager to control the one variable that seems like a no-brainer: don’t give jihadists a green card. But one of the San Bernardino jihadis seems to have been born in Chicago. The “big and beautiful wall” Donald Trump proposed to build to keep dangerous people out of America would require complex architecture indeed. No society is or can be perfectly safe. But societies that have traditionally put a little more stock in collective well-being seem to have better odds. To be fair, those safer, quieter places have also not been the birthplaces of Apple, Google, Tesla, Amazon, Wikipedia and the first man on the moon.

As I have written elsewhere, despite the current apparent spasm of xenophobic sentiment and the din of gun violence, our values research suggests that in fact Americans’ values are tilting in a slightly more Canadian direction – toward greater openness to social difference, a more nuanced sense of personal autonomy, and even a less suspicious attitude toward government. The shift is by no means a sea change, but the election of Mr. Obama (twice) was indeed the product of deep and meaningful changes in the electorate, no matter how lonely he may sometimes appear in White House press briefings these days. As younger voters, women (especially single women), and America’s diverse, city-dwelling voters become more influential politically, America is changing. But those who are on average less keen on this direction of social change (older, more conservative, whiter, more religious and patriarchal voters) have some innings left, as the tremendous polarization of U.S. political discourse attests.

What will become of America in the next election cycle and beyond? And how will the noisy debates and decisions of our neighbour to the south influence our own public conversations and political aspirations? As we wait to welcome 25,000 Syrian refugees, Canada feels like a fairly peaceable corner of a turbulent world. Recent reports suggest, however, that of the more than 25,000 refugees interviewed by the UN, fewer than 2,000 were interested in coming to Canada. Many are likely hoping for reunification with family members in Europe. It would be interesting to know how many are holding out for their shot at the American Dream.

Source: Distinct societies: Why Canada, U.S., diverge on Syrian refugees – The Globe and Mail

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Trump’s Anti-Muslim Plan Is Awful. And Constitutional. – Peter Spiro, The New York Times

2015/12/10 Leave a comment

Good piece by Peter Spiro on the constitutionality of race or religion-based immigration restrictions:

In the ordinary, non-immigration world of constitutional law, the Trump scheme would be blatantly unconstitutional, a clear violation of both equal protection and religious freedom (he had originally called for barring American Muslims living abroad from re-entering the country as well; he has since dropped that clearly unconstitutional notion). But under a line of rulings from the Supreme Court dating back more than a century, that’s irrelevant. As the court observed in its 1977 decision in Fiallo v. Bell, “In the exercise of its broad power over immigration and naturalization, Congress regularly makes rules that would be unacceptable if applied to citizens.”

The court has given the political branches the judicial equivalent of a blank check to regulate immigration as they see fit. This posture of extreme deference is known as the “plenary power” doctrine. It dates back to the 1889 decision in the Chinese Exclusion case, in which the court upheld the exclusion of Chinese laborers based on their nationality.

Unlike other bygone constitutional curiosities that offend our contemporary sensibilities, the Chinese Exclusion case has never been overturned. More recent decisions have upheld discrimination against immigrants based on gender and illegitimacy that would never have survived equal protection scrutiny in the domestic context. Likewise, courts have rejected the assertion of First Amendment free speech protections by noncitizens.

Nor has the Supreme Court ever struck down an immigration classification, even ones based on race. As late as 1965, a federal appeals court upheld a measure that counted a Brazilian citizen of Japanese descent as Asian for the purposes of immigration quotas.

In the context of noncitizens seeking initial entry into the United States, due process protections don’t apply, either. This past June, the court upheld the denial of a visa for the spouse of an American citizen based on the government’s say-so, with no supporting evidence.

The courts have justified this constitutional exceptionalism on the grounds that immigration law implicates foreign relations and national security — even in the absence of a specific, plausible foreign policy rationale. The 1977 Fiallo case, for instance, involved a father seeking the admission of his out-of-wedlock son from the French West Indies — hardly the stuff of national interest.

Indeed, contrary to the conventional understanding, President Trump could implement the scheme on his own, without Congress’s approval. The Immigration and Nationality Act gives the president the authority to suspend the entry of “any class of aliens” on his finding that their entry would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” President Obama has used this to the better end of excluding serious human rights violators.

But here’s the interesting thing: Just because Mr. Trump’s proposal has a judicial pedigree, that doesn’t make it “constitutional” in a broader sense. The Constitution and the courts are not synonymous, nor do the courts have a monopoly on constitutional interpretation. Politicians, the legal community, scholars and the public at large are all a part of our continuing constitutional conversation. Clear popular consensus can establish constitutional norms, with or without the courts.

The leading example comes out of the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. The Supreme Court upheld the internment in its 1944 Korematsu decision, and that ruling has never been judicially reversed. Technically, it remains good law. But it has been effectively overridden by other actors, and in the court of public opinion. A formal apology and payment of reparations, enacted by Congress and signed into law by Ronald Reagan in 1988, supplies the formal evidence. Korematsu continues to provoke popular shame.

We may be seeing that same shame at work today. Mr. Trump’s plan has triggered an uproar across the partisan divide. Perhaps a religion-based immigration bar may be consistent with court-made doctrine. But it doesn’t reflect our deeper, broadly assimilated understandings of the Constitution.

Source: Trump’s Anti-Muslim Plan Is Awful. And Constitutional. – The New York Times

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Donald Trump’s no-Muslims immigration idea right in line with U.S., Canadian history

2015/12/10 Leave a comment

Canada, of course has its equivalents (Chinese head tax and related restrictions, World War 1 internment, Continuous Journey clause, Japanese World War 2 internment, restrictions on Jewish immigrants etc):

1.Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

exclusion_act

The first page of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)

The first major law restricting immigration to the U.S. was the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred all Chinese people from entering the United States.

Signed into law on May 6, 1882, the act came amid outcry from American-born citizens that Chinese workers were to blame for the high unemployment and declining wages plaguing the West Coast.

Not only did the law bar Chinese immigration, but it also prevented Chinese people already living in the country from gaining citizenship.

The law, originally written to last 10 years, was repeatedly amended and extended until its repeal in 1943, when China became an ally against Japan during the Second World War.

2. Immigration Act of 1917

This U.S. federal law was the first to restrict immigration to those who could pass a literacy test.

It also banned all immigration from the so-called “Asiatic Barred Zone,” which encompassed  India, Afghanistan, Persia (now Iran), Arabia, parts of the Ottoman Empire and Russia, Southeast Asia and the Asian-Pacific islands.

Furthermore, it expanded an already-existing category of barred “undesirables” to include sex workers, criminals, alcoholics, political radicals, contract labourers, “idiots, imbeciles, and [the] feeble-minded,” people with epilepsy, tuberculosis or contagious disease, as well as anyone else deemed “mentally or physically defective.”

3. Chinese Immigration Act of 1923

The United States wasn’t alone in discriminating against Chinese immigrants.

In Canada, the federal government imposed a $50 head tax on Chinese immigrants in 1885 after Chinese workers were no longer needed to work on the Canadian Pacific Railway. The amount was raised to $500 in 1903, the equivalent of about two years’ wages at the time.

On July 1, 1923, the head tax was replaced by the Chinese Immigration Act, which barred any Chinese immigrants — or ethnic Chinese people of other nationalities — from entering the country. There were some exceptions for merchants, diplomats and foreign students with proper documentation.

Canada also cast suspicion on those already living here, forcing all people of Chinese origin or descent to register with authorities and to obtain an identity certificate.

The act remained in effect until 1947.

4.Immigration Act of 1924

Travel-NYC-Holocaust Exhibit

In this 1938 photo, prospective immigrants line up outside the U.S. consulate in Vienna after the German annexation of Austria. American Jews struggled to get refugees out of Nazi-era Europe due to strict immigration quotas in the U.S. (Museum of Jewish Heritage/ Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library/Associated Press)

In an attempt to stem the tide of eastern European immigration to America, the U.S. enacted a quota system, stipulating that visas be provided only to two per cent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census.

Because so many eastern Europeans moved to the U.S. in the decades leading up to the First World War, lawmakers opted not to use the more recent census of 1910 to calculate the quotas.

The act also barred entry to “any alien who by virtue of race or nationality was ineligible for citizenship” — a provision aimed at the Japanese.

The effects of the quota system were particularly devastating for European Jews, who struggled to obtain visas leading up to the Second World War and the Holocaust.

5. ‘Excessive demand’

The Canadian Immigration and Citizenship Act states “a foreign national is inadmissible on health grounds if their health condition might reasonably be expected to cause excessive demand on health or social services.”

This wording has been used to bar entry of people with illnesses or disabilities.

In 2011, a South Korean family living in New Brunswick faced deportation because their teenage son is autistic. The deportation order was later reversed amid public outcry.

Again in 2012, the National Post reported that a University of Victoria professor from the U.S. and his family were denied permanent residency in Canada because their four-year-old son’s autism.

Source: Donald Trump’s no-Muslims immigration idea right in line with U.S., Canadian history – World – CBC News

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Quebec: Difficile régionalisation de l’immigration

2015/12/10 Leave a comment

The ongoing problem of attracting and retaining immigrants outside of Montreal (Quebec retains relatively fewer immigrants compared to other provinces save Atlantic Canada):

Même si la très grande majorité des réfugiés syriens attendus au Québec en 2015 et 2016 s’établiront dans la grande région de Montréal, plus d’un millier d’entre eux atterriront en région. Y resteront-ils? Rien n’est moins sûr, car la rétention des populations immigrantes hors des grands centres demeure un défi considérable.

C’est une réalité qui n’est que trop familière à Henry Mbatika. Arrivé de la République démocratique du Congo avec sa famille en 2000, ce père de cinq enfants – dont deux sont nés à Sherbrooke – est maintenant seul de son clan au Québec.

Victime d’une fermeture d’entreprise, sa femme n’arrivait plus à trouver du travail et est partie pour l’Alberta en 2012, où elle travaille dans une usine de PepsiCo, à Lethbridge. Les enfants l’ont suivie et le couple est maintenant écartelé entre les deux provinces.

«On est bien à Sherbrooke: il n’y a pas de racisme, les maisons sont plus abordables qu’à Montréal et il y a beaucoup d’espace», dit M. Mbatika, chargé de projet à la Fédération des communautés culturelles de l’Estrie et candidat défait à un poste de conseiller lors des élections municipales de 2013. «Le seul problème, c’est l’insertion socioprofessionnelle. C’est le travail.»

Les efforts de régionalisation de l’immigration ont cours au Québec depuis le début des années 90. Et ils ont eu jusqu’ici des résultats mitigés, dit Michèle Vatz-Laaroussi, professeure au département de travail social de l’Université de Sherbrooke et auteure de plusieurs études sur le sujet.

«L’attraction vers les régions, on l’a pas mal travaillée, et ce n’est pas si mal, dit-elle. Mais la rétention [des immigrants et réfugiés] reste difficile. Les Québécois eux-mêmes quittent les régions, alors pourquoi les immigrants y resteraient-ils?» La régionalisation, dit-elle, a souvent des airs de «banlieuisation», la couronne de Montréal attirant un nombre considérable de migrants.

L’Estrie passe pour une des régions qui réussit le mieux à intégrer les populations venues d’ailleurs. Et pourtant, elle est parvenue à retenir à peine 21% de ses nouveaux arrivants entre 2006 et 2011, selon une étude faite au printemps par l’organisme sherbrookois Actions interculturelles de développement et d’éducation (AIDE).

«C’est tout à fait décevant pour la région, dit le directeur général de l’organisme, Mohamed Soulami. Mais le Québec en entier a de la difficulté avec la rétention des personnes immigrantes. Il y a un manque de soutien aux employeurs pour qu’il y ait une ouverture vers l’engagement d’immigrants.»

Subventions salariales

Et pourtant, comme l’a reconnu hier à Montréal le ministre du Travail, de l’Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale, Sam Hamad, «l’emploi, c’est le meilleur endroit pour s’intégrer».

Le ministre a lancé avec sa collègue titulaire du portefeuille de l’Immigration, Kathleen Weil, un appel aux employeurs pour qu’ils embauchent des réfugiés qui s’établiront au Québec dans les prochains mois.

«Les villes sont bien conscientes du défi de rétention. Il faut avoir des milieux accueillants. Ça commence par des entreprises qui disent: “On a besoin de vous”», a dit la ministre Weil.

Source: Difficile régionalisation de l’immigration | JEAN-FRANÇOIS BÉGIN | Politique québécoise

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Pranksters read verses from a Bible disguised as the Qur’an to prove a point

2015/12/09 Leave a comment

A good experiment, one that reminds us that all religious texts have passages that we find abhorrent:

A YouTube “prank” video is being used once again this week to teach the world an important lesson about never judging a book by its cover.

Quite literally, in fact.

The Holy Quran Experiment was released by Dutch comedians Alexander Spoor and Sacha Harland over the weekend to express the duo’s concerns about reports of Islamophobia motivated by last month’s Paris attacks.

“Since the recent events in Paris, and the association between ISIS and Islam, the Islamic belief has been under constant scrutiny,” reads English subtitles on the Dutch-language video‘s introduction.

“Muslims have been accused of following a religion that has no place in our Western culture,” the piece continues. “This made us wonder: What about Christianity? A religion that has influenced our culture greatly?”

To further explore the question, Spoor and Harland picked up a copy of the Bible and started reading.

Bible Quar'an experiment Dit Is Normaal

Then, after selecting what they called “some of it’s most gruesome verses,” they removed the Bible’s cover, replaced it with the cover of a Qur’an – the central religious text of Islam – and took to the streets.

“Let’s see what happens when we read these passages from the Bible to some people out there, all while leading them to believe these are passages from the Qur’an,” says one member of the team, which goes by Dit Is Normaal on YouTube, before sharing the following quote with several passers-by:

“If you do not obey Me, but act with hostility against Me… you will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters.” (Leviticus)

As it turns out, people in The Netherlands aren’t very keen on the idea of eating their own children. Or putting gay men to death. Or cutting off the hands of women who dare to teach.

“How could anyone believe in this?” one woman says. “That’s unbelievable to me.”

“Cutting off peoples’ hands … I mean, apparently that’s just the way they are,” says another. “If you’ve been raised with this book and these kinds of thoughts it’s going to influence the way you think.”

When asked to compare what they’ve just heard from the (fake) Qur’an to what’s in the Bible, different people the comedians encounter describe the Islamic holy book as “more aggressive” and less “positive” than the Christian holy book.

Then comes the big reveal, which leaves every participant visibly shocked (and most, rather amused).

Bible Quar'an experiment Dit Is Normaal

Harland and Spoor let the faces speak for themselves, choosing to reserve comment and show a reel of the reactions instead.

Source: Pranksters read verses from a Bible disguised as the Qur’an to prove a point – Trending – CBC News

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Liberals Urge 33 Of Harper’s Political Appointees To Resign Voluntarily

2015/12/09 Leave a comment

Interesting that of the 39 letters, 1 is to a citizenship judge (Roy Wong) and four to appointees to the IRB:

Liberal MPs urged dozens of Conservative political appointees Monday to follow the federal government’s request and voluntarily resign from positions to which they were appointed in the dying days of Stephen Harper‘s government.

Last summer, Harper’s cabinet approved the appointment or term extensions for 49 people, whose positions took effect only after the Oct. 19 election.

The Prime Minister’s Office is particularly incensed over the unusual, and extraordinarily high, $1-million-plus severance packages that some appointees negotiated with the Conservative government. In total, taxpayers could be on the hook for $18.5 million to break the contracts.

Thirty-eight people were appointed to terms that took effect between Oct. 20, 2015, and Dec. 30, 2015. Ten people were appointed to terms starting in 2016 and one extreme case was to start in 2019. But John Badowski, the chairperson of the Transportation Appeal Tribunal of Canada, resigned his future appointment last week before being formally asked. 

Given that the Government has expressed its lack of confidence in these appointees, it would be wise for them to voluntarily resign.

Source: Liberals Urge 33 Of Harper’s Political Appointees To Resign Voluntarily

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Charts: No, the Y-Axis Doesn’t Always Need to Start at Zero | Re/code

2015/12/09 Leave a comment

Having spent more than a year on finding the right charts for my book, Multiculturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote, I liked this little video on when to use the 0 and when not (also applies to the x-axis, where for median income data, starting at 0 made no sense):

If you write things on the Internet, angry email is inevitable. If you make charts on the Internet, angry email about those charts is inevitable. Especially if your charts sometimes use a y-axis that starts at a number other than zero. You see, an old book called “How to Lie With Statistics” has convinced people that truncated axes are a devilish tool of deception.

The truth is that you certainly can use truncated axes to deceive. But you can also use them to illuminate. In fact, you often have to mess with the y-axis in order to craft a useful image — especially because data sometimes reaches into negative territory and sometimes goes nowhere near zero. The right principle is that charts ought to show appropriate context. Sometimes that context includes zero, but sometimes it doesn’t. It’s long past time to say no to y-axis fundamentalism.

Source: Charts: No, the Y-Axis Doesn’t Always Need to Start at Zero | Re/code

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Why aren’t we looking into the Saudi role in San Bernardino attack?

2015/12/09 Leave a comment

Neil MacDonald, on Saudi Arabia and the uncomfortable parallel with ISIS:

Usually, executions — more than 150 so far this year — are performed with a “godly” sword. In public, of course, for the entertainment of a self-righteous crowd. But there are also crucifixions and mutilations.

SAUDI-ELECTION/

Saudi woman Fawzia al-Harbi, a candidate for local municipal council elections, sits next to one of her chaperones at a shopping mall in Riyadh last month. Saudi Arabian women are running for election and voting for the first time on Dec. 12, but their enfranchisement marks only a pigeon step towards democracy and gender equality in the Islamic kingdom. (Reuters)

Saudi women are treated better than immigrants, but are still severely oppressed, and treated like chattels of the male population.

If that all sounds like the modus operandi of ISIS, which the Saudis have been accused of having funded and armed before becoming a stout ally in the U.S. bombing campaign, well, the shoe does fit.

The Saudis have actually threatened to sue anyone who makes the ISIS comparison, but objectively, it’s not unreasonable.

The main difference is that the Saudis are extremists who managed to create a nation and have it recognized. And of course their king doesn’t claim to lead a new caliphate.

It’s almost a cliché to say this is all about oil, and the Saudi willingness to sell it, and sell it cheaply in unlimited quantities, to the West.

Because it is about oil. It’s also about the Saudis’ willingness to spend billions of that petro-revenue back in the West, signing contracts for military materiel that our governments are ecstatic to arrange.

If you’re inclined to think otherwise, try this mental exercise: imagine if Cuba, or Russia, or Venezuela (or even Canada) had produced 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers, and had remained a consistent leader in exporting murderous ideology, and radicals like Tashfeen Malik.

Source: Why aren’t we looking into the Saudi role in San Bernardino attack? – World – CBC News

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San Bernardino shooting highlights tensions within Islam

2015/12/09 Leave a comment

More on the Saudi influence on radicalization by Nadeem F. Paracha:

Faisal Shahzad, the American-Pakistani who tried to blow up New York’s Times Square in 2010, had also spent some time in Saudi Arabia. Like Tashfeen, he, too, belonged to a middle-class family.

The authorities in Pakistan still have no clue how to address the phenomenon of educated and relatively well-to-do young people becoming overtly radicalized to the point of committing grave violence.

The country’s military establishment, along with the government headed by the moderate center-right party, the PML-N, has unleashed a widespread operation against hardened and organized militants.

Part of the operation also includes an elaborate plan to neutralize the harder and more puritan stands of the faith that have seeped into various sections of Pakistani society ever since the 1980s.

This aspect of the operation has been tougher to implement because one major section of PMLN’s vote-bank in the Punjab is made up of men and women whose economic status has been enhanced by the money they made in the Gulf states.

But, again, till now, though such Pakistanis have often been known to denounce the faith followed by most of their compatriots and to fund a number of apolitical Islamic evangelical outfits that preach their kind of Islam, they are never expected to cross the line that separates them from militancy.

Ready-made narratives

However, as one Pakistani psychologist suggested two years ago at a seminar, young people in Pakistan with serious emotional problems and unresolved psychological issues are now being handed ready-made religious and political narratives by populist electronic and social media outlets. These narratives, he said, encourage them to give violent expression to their angst, confusion and failures while believing that they are doing so for a grander, more divine cause.

This seems to have been the case with Tashfeen. Hailing from a small town family steeped in indigenous forms of the faith; allegedly flown away to Saudi Arabia by a stubborn father who believed his country’s people were “flawed Muslims” and that “true Islam” was practiced only in Saudi Arabia; returning to Pakistan as a young woman and perhaps coming to the conclusion that her father was correct; linking up with an equally disgruntled soul from the US; marrying him; and then finally discovering her true calling: mass murder.

Hers was a psychotic break emerging from unresolved emotional issues, but combined with a warped politico-religious narrative that simply promised her a catharsis. But it was a catharsis that left 14 innocent people dead; a six-month-old child scarred for life; and a Muslim community in the US scratching their heads and wondering where they went wrong in simply trying to lead “pious lives.”

Source: San Bernardino shooting highlights tensions within Islam | World | DW.COM | 07.12.2015

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Jim Maclean: In Ontario, a new race-based government | The Limits of Anecdote and Assertion

2015/12/08 Leave a comment

This commentary by Jim Maclean illustrates the risk of anecdote and assertion-based commentary Highlights of his piece:

Wynne told the Post that it’s time to use “the race lens” when formulating government policy, adding, “we need to start,” although she said she has yet to discuss the idea formally with cabinet. But if she is musing about it in public, you can bet a formal proposal is in the works.

To ensure the government’s “race lens” focuses properly, Wynne says a “structure” will need to be created “that is going to allow us to filter the policies we put in place, to create new policies to put protections in place.” How these race-based “protections” will differ from or supersede the broader (but apparently inadequate “human rights” protections that already exist in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and many other pieces of provincial legislation is unclear. Also yet to be determined: the shape and size of the “structure” that Ontario will need to establish to filter government policies through Wynne’s “race lens.” Will it be akin to the bureaucracy that administers Quebec’s French language laws?

If anything, it will likely be bigger, because in order to ensure that Ontario’s current and future policies are properly “racially focused,” a large and racially-diverse number of civil servants will need to be hired so that the filtering is fully representative of all of the racial groups that make up Ontario’s diverse population. How else to ensure that the racial lens focuses correctly?

But let’s not stop with race. What of ethnicity? To be truly sensitive and inclusive, perhaps “ethnic” lenses may have to be used in addition to “racial” lenses, to focus more accurately, because, of course not all members of a particular race share the same views.

A little thinking is clearly a dangerous thing, and perhaps the Premier should do a lot more thinking about this initiative.

Once Ontario’s new Ministry of Racial Profiling has been set up, it will likely take years for all existing provincial government policies, and all future policies, to be correctly filtered. A tremendous, bureaucratic make-work project.

To be fair, each and every policy would have to be considered, would it not? And why stop with government policies? Why not have the Ministry examine all existing Ontario legislation? That would be the only fair and, um, consultative, thing to do.

….One can only hope that intelligent, thoughtful opponents to this ill-considered proposal will find their voices, and that they do so soon, before serious damage is done to the multi-racial and multicultural fabric of Ontario.

So, as hopefully an intelligent and thoughtful proponent of a diversity lens, let me note a few fallacies in his arguments:

  • Ontario is the second most diverse province, with 26 percent visible minorities, and with greater diversity within visible minorities than British Columbia;
  • When devising policies and programs, it is important to understand the needs of the population served. In Canada’s four largest provinces, that means understanding the range of groups being served;
  • Government has long-applied a gender lens to various policies and the federal government did apply a rural lens at one time;
  • This is no different from the private sector, where sectors as diverse as banks, grocery chains, fast food outlets and telecoms all conduct such research to better understand, and respond to, client needs;
  • Understanding citizen needs does not automatically mean a targeted policy or program response but it ensures policy makers have the necessary information to make recommendations; and,
  • any response can range from substantive policy or program adjustments to improve outcomes, or improved ways to let citizens know about government programs that may be relevant to them.

From the theoretical to some practical examples:

  • Would police-carding practices not have been questioned if a race-lens highlighted the disproportionate carding of Blacks?
  • Would the Toronto District School Board have been able to develop programming to improve high school graduation rates among Somali-Canadian youth without a diversity lens?
  • Would the roll-out of Ontario’s new sex education program not have been smoother had resistance from some segments of some communities been identified earlier through such a lens.

Lastly, to Maclean’s fear that the Ontario government will have to hire a “large and racially-diverse number of civil servants,” he can rest easy: 20.4 percent of Ontario’s public service are already visible minority.

In any case, the purpose of a “lens” is for all public servants, whatever their origin, to become more attuned to the population they serve.

Source: Jim Maclean: In Ontario, a new race-based government | National Post

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