When solidarity fails | Institute of Race Relations

2015/09/03 Leave a comment

Reprinted in its entirety, Liz Fekete, Director of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), captures all too vividly the failure of Europe in addressing the refugee crisis along with integration:

I want to talk about the immediate institutional crisis in the EU, as hostility grows towards a modest plan by the European Commission to relocate a little over 32,000 asylum seekers from Greece and Italy. The failure of the member states to rise to the humanitarian challenge posed by the boat people arriving via the Mediterranean Sea, the mean-spirited and positively hostile response of some governments, both national and regional, and the breakdown of solidarity between the receiving countries and their richer neighbours, has had consequences. These consequences need to be discussed in terms of cause and effect, in order to fully grasp the intersection between the breakdown of a humanitarian approach to asylum and the growth of racism.

But I would first like to frame my points by making two short observations. First, failures in the institutional response should not blind us to the absolute heroism of ordinary people and over-stretched civil society actors such as Refugees Welcome (Germany), Caritas (Austria) and Migszol (Hungary) who are feeding, clothing and welcoming the new arrivals. Second, we must recognise that the current lack of political leadership, and the failure to find adequate and secure accommodation, is not something new. What I will describe serves merely as the top layer of an existing situation. Europe has fallen far short of providing a safe haven for displaced people, and deaths of migrants do not just occur in tragic circumstances at Europe’s borders. The fact that deaths inside accommodation or removal centres, or as the result of enforced destitution, are met with official indifference, suggests continuity with the moral inertia towards border deaths [2]. The Institute of Race Relations recently published an audit of 160 asylum-and immigration-related deaths within EU States between 2010 and 2015, 46 per cent of which were by suicide, as desperation reached epidemic proportions.

Scaremongering in the media

The roots of the current spate of attacks on migrant accommodation centres start with a scaremongering media discourse and equally irresponsible words from some politicians. Migrants are represented in the media as toxic waste, a dangerous mob, human flotsam, an unstoppable flood and a terrorist threat. In the UK, they have been compared with insects, through the use of inflammatory terms such as ‘swarms of people’ (British prime minister David Cameron) and ‘like cockroaches’ (Sun columnist, Katie Hopkins). The British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond singled out African ‘economic migrants’ in Calais, describing them as ‘marauding migrants’ ‘threatening our standard of living’ and opining that ‘Europe can’t protect itself, preserve its standard of living and social infrastructure if it has to absorb millions of migrants from Africa.’ (It’s also worth noting here that, in relation to Calais, there has been barely a flicker of concern about the fact that at least thirteen migrants, including two teenagers have died attempting to reach the UK since June.)

Spreading hostility not curbing it

The consequence of such scaremongering – which portrays migrants as a security threat – is that it has become much more difficult for electorates to understand why migrants take such a perilous journey, particularly if they hail from African countries, the problems of which are barely covered in the European press. In this climate, too many politicians are pandering to prejudice, acting for short-term self-interest, whipping up distrust, spreading hostility, not curbing it. Unless politicians at a national, local and regional level are encouraged to act responsibly, xenophobia will continue to be manipulated into something more sinister, and potentially deadly. France has sealed its Italian border at Ventimiglia, Hungary is constructing a wall at the border with Serbia (reportedly with the use of prison labour). The Czech interior ministry demands cultural compatibility of those relocated,[3] and the governor of Lombardy threatens to financially penalise northern Italian prefects who go along with the national relocation plan. Luigi Ammatuna, the mayor of the Sicilian port town of Pozzallo, in the Ragusa region, summed up the Italian North-South divide well when he said that the North’s anti-immigration stance was ‘spreading bad feeling’ about migrants across the entire country, adding that its leaders are ‘heartless’ and ‘selfish’ for not working with the government to solve the crisis. Meanwhile, the leader of the powerful Northern League, has declared that the ‘League is prepared to occupy every hotel, hostel, school or barracks intended for the alleged refugees’.

Anti-black racism, anti-multiculturalism

The first step is to end rhetoric which, in some countries, has now gone beyond anti-immigration into a wider anti-multiculturalism and a discourse with heavy overtones of anti-black racism. Here we can specifically identify the interventions of electoral extreme and far-right politicians. For example, the Finns Party – the second largest party in the Finnish parliament – has representatives such as Olli Immonen MP, who wrote on social media that he was ‘dreaming of a strong, brave nation that will defeat this nightmare called multiculturalism’.[4] And Marian Kotleba, the state governor of the Banská Bystrica region, told a rally of 8,000 people in Bratislava protesting against relocation of refugees, ‘I wish you a nice, white day … we are here to save Slovakia’.

Demonstrations and vigilante-style attacks

Such rhetoric encourages hostility at a local level, where examples abound of migrants, seeking safety, being greeted by hate-filled mobs. In Prague, anti-immigration demonstrators waved gallows and nooses, calling for the death of ‘traitors’, i.e. all those who support migrants. In Treviso, Italy, 100 migrants had to be evacuated from one town after two days of protests spearheaded by fascists from Casa Pound – and after the Northern League mayor for the Veneto region had called for the refugees to be cleared out of accommodation near tourist resorts, warning that the region was in danger of ‘Africanisation’. And in Germany, where attacks on refugee accommodation centres for 2015 – specifically arsons – now exceed that of the whole of 2014 (in turn, attacks in 2014 were up threefold from 2013), journalists and local politicians are now facing death threats and the car of one east German politician was blown up.

When politicians lead the way

While Germany has its protest movement, PEGIDA, hostile responses in other countries are led by politicians – in Hungary, by the prime minister,[5] and in others, such as Austria, where the Social Democrats in Burgenland have formed a coalition government with the extreme-right Freedom Party, by state governors and local mayors from both centre Left and centre Right. In Bavaria, the state premier Horst Seehofer has been accused by the Central Council of Jews of provoking hostility towards asylum seekers, and across the North of Italy, hostility has been fuelled by senior politicians in Liguria, Lombardy and Veneto. Other countries like the UK and Denmark have started to cut welfare payments to migrants, in a further lurch towards the nativist agenda of the anti-migration movements. The UK government, for example, has slashed asylum support payments and is proposing to withdraw automatic support for families whose claims are refused but who for legitimate reasons cannot return home – amounting to enforced destitution. And both Italy and the UK are attempting to drive those without papers out of private housing, by outsourcing immigration controls to landlords.

The danger is that xenophobia ‘from below’ will combine with structural neglect of human rights ‘from above’. This will result in a further deterioration of conditions (overcrowding, lack of health care) in reception and detention centres. ‘Fast-track procedures’ to speed up asylum claims will not only lead to grave injustices but more forcible deportations, which also claim lives, as we saw most recently in March 2015 in Sweden when an Iraqi asylum seeker suffocated during a deportation attempt, the seventeenth such deportation death in Europe since 1991.

Though there has been a huge drive by ordinary European citizens to welcome refugees, to take a stand for human dignity, another trend is undermining it. The truth is that we face the possibility of a perfect storm unless those in power take cognisance of their positive duty to combat racism, rather than fuel it.

Source: When solidarity fails | Institute of Race Relations

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Iran’s Surprising New Foreign Legion

2015/09/03 Leave a comment

Ironic. Follows US approach of granting preference to those who serve in the military, which Canada also adopted in the 2014 Citizenship Act changes:

Proposed amendments to Iran’s Civil Code under the name “Facilitating Naturalization of non-Iranian Veterans, Warriors and Elites” will offer citizenship to foreigners who join Iranian military units—be it border patrol, militias confronting the so-called “Islamic State” in Iraq and Syria, groups involved with public order operations, or any of Iran’s less “official” military initiatives, including support for Hezbollah in Lebanon. Under the amendments, “revolutionary heroes” can become citizens without undergoing existing naturalization requirements.

Parliamentarians who signed the bill say those who “serve the revolution,” including people who have contributed to Iran’s scientific progress, will be entitled to easier access to the citizenship they deserve. Yet human-rights activists and lawyers say the amendments are part of a political and militaristic strategy to entice immigrants, who have resided illegally in the country since 1979, into fighting Iran’s proxy wars.

If passed, the amendment to Article 980 will allow a new working group—the Committee for Granting Naturalization to non-Iranian Veterans, Warriors and Elites—to decide if a non-Iranian “revolutionary” will be granted Iranian citizenship. The MPs who tabled the bill on January 12 include several conservative parliamentarians who are currently waiting for their amendment to be reviewed.

Who does this new law affect and what is it really trying to achieve?

“After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan [in 1979], the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran opened its doors to Afghans, arguing that Islam does not recognize any borders,” explains Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human-rights lawyer and 2003 Nobel Peace laureate. “At that time, around 4 million Afghans came to Iran, but only around 10 percent of them managed to obtain residency permits.” The rest, she explains, remained illegally, and were thus denied basic rights which citizens enjoy. “At that time,” Ebadi continues, “Iran had begun an eight-year war with Iraq and was naturally in need of inexpensive labor. Iran took advantage of illegal Afghan workers to satisfy this need.” But when the war ended, the policy remained.

Source: Iran’s Surprising New Foreign Legion – The Daily Beast

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Are migrants settling in? | OECD Insights Blog

2015/09/02 Leave a comment

The latest OECD report comparing integration across member countries (I relied heavily on the previous report for cross-country comparisons in Multiculturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote):

Nevertheless, despite all these variations, not to mention the differences between immigrants themselves in terms language ability; education; reasons for migrating – be it for employment, family, or humanitarian; and so on; certain broad themes emerge in the report:

  • There is no “integration champion”: Whereas countries such as Australia and Canada – which have taken in large numbers of skilled labour migrants on top of family and humanitarian migrants – have better outcomes than most European destinations, they too face some challenges, for example with respect to making the most out of migrants’ skills.
  • More immigrants doesn’t mean less integration: There’s no obvious link between the proportion of immigrants in a population and how well they do across a range of areas, such as in employment, income levels and education. In terms of employment, countries that are home to larger proportions of immigrants even tend to have better outcomes.
  • Things get better over time: In many areas immigrants tend to do a less well than native-born. In particular, recent arrivals face difficulties virtually everywhere. However, the longer immigrants stay, the narrower the gap with native-born becomes. That underlines the reality that integration is a process, not an overnight transformation, and reflects the success – or otherwise – of immigrants in making friends, learning local ways and acquiring a new language.
  • Immigrants’ kids still face problems: The acid test of integration is the fate of the so-called “second generation” – that is, the native-born children of immigrants. If integration efforts are working, the children of migrants born in adopted countries should be doing about as well in education and, later, the workforce as the children of natives. But the signs of success for them are mixed. While they’re narrowing the gap in educational performance and with respect to labour market outcomes – particularly for women – they still lag behind in other areas, particularly in Europe when it comes to employment. In Europe also, the proportion of locally born children of immigrants who say they feel discriminated against is worrying high – a feeling that could have grave implications for social cohesion.

Will review the report over coming weeks to see if any notable changes from the previous one.

Source: Are migrants settling in? | OECD Insights Blog

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Canadian living takes toll on immigrant hearts: Study

2015/09/02 Leave a comment

Not surprising. As new Canadians integrate and adopt our sedentary lifestyle and poor nutrition habits, their health worsens. One of the downsides of integration:

Is living in Canada bad for your heart?

A groundbreaking new study has found that recent immigrants have a 30 per cent lower rate of major heart problems, such as heart attacks and strokes, than long-term residents, but that gap shrinks the longer they spend in Canada.

While newcomers are known to have better health than the general population because they must pass rigid health screening, Dr. Jack Tu, lead author of the study, says “part of it can be explained by most immigrant groups having lower rates of smoking and obesity than Canadian-born individuals.”

But after 10 years in Canada, and some of the negative impacts of Western culture, like fast-food and cigarettes, that “healthy immigrant effect” diminishes, the study shows.

While recent East Asian immigrants, predominantly Chinese, had the lowest incidence of major heart problems overall (2.4 in men and 1.1 in women per 1,000 person-years), South Asian immigrants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Guyana had the highest rates, at 8.9 in men and 3.6 in women.

However, after 10 years in Canada, the rates among East Asians increased by 40 per cent for men and 60 per cent for women, said the study released by the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in the American Heart Association journal Circulation on Monday.

“East Asians — Chinese from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan — are the most sensitive to the acculturation of Western culture. The overall incidence rate of the other (ethnic) groups is only up by 10 per cent after 10 years,” said Tu, a cardiologist at the Sunnybrook Schulich Heart Centre.

…Other key findings of the study:

  • The rate of heart attacks and strokes varies drastically among the eight ethnic communities studied, but the differences diminish the more time they spend in Canada.
  • While 5.6 per 1,000 immigrant adult males and 2.4 of females had major heart problems, long-term Ontarians had a rate of 8.1 for men and 3.4 for women.
  • Among immigrant men, East Asians had the lowest rate of heart disease, followed by black, white-Western European, Southeast Asian, Latin American, West Asian/Arab, white-Eastern European and South Asian.
  • Among immigrant women, the order was somewhat different, though East Asian females still shared the best cardiovascular health. They were followed by white-Western European, Southeast Asian, white-Eastern European, black, Latin American, West Asian/Arab and South Asian.

Source: Canadian living takes toll on immigrant hearts: Study | Toronto Star

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John Tory, Mark Saunders get cover from Queen’s Park on carding issue: James

2015/09/02 Leave a comment

Royson James on the Ontario government’s public consultations on carding:

There is little reason to believe that the provincial Liberal government consultations on carding will yield anything more satisfactory than the chaotic farce the Toronto Police Services Board has delivered, led by Mayor John Tory.

To expect meaningful reform from the current initiative, with a stop in Toronto at the reference library Tuesday night, is to be overcome with naiveté borne of willful blindness.

In fact, the evidence points to a provincial government in cahoots with Tory and the Toronto police brass; one whose intervention is designed to offer pap and a public relations show, while preserving the essence of police street checks.

Notwithstanding the lofty statements about the government’s intolerance of discrimination, the impact of any new rules passed will likely be: police will have the ability to stop anyone, anytime, for any reason, stated or unstated, to psychologically, if not expressly detain said person, record personal information from said subject, and record the same in a police database.

And we know who will be targeted most.

And we know — or have been told ad nauseum this past year — the real, psychological, and social costs borne by the black community, particularly young black men.

But carding is a useful tool — according to opening statements on the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services website, announcing the review.

Done properly, the new police chief has said, carding is legal.

Done properly, we wouldn’t be here debating the matter, attempting to tame it, wrestling with the chief to find reasonable constraints on the practice, and advocating for reform.

Done properly, street checks in Toronto would follow the protocol drawn up in April 2014 by a Toronto police board that studied the matter and came up with as good a compromise as possible.

That was before John Tory and (now board chair) Andy Pringle and former chief Bill Blair turned the file into a horrible mess, a political hot potato and a public relations disaster.

Pringle, a member of the board in 2014 and Tory acolyte and Blair’s fishing buddy, convinced Tory that he should back Blair in his refusal to implement the board’s decision. Tory, while condemning carding, destroyed the 2014 policy designed to fix it, brought in new guidelines that created a firestorm of controversy, and was forced to go back to the very 2014 board policy he meddled with.

And this is where the province mysteriously entered the fray.

Why? Few can explain the motivation. How? In a manner that only fosters cynicism. Who would enter this messy situation, with the epicenter in Toronto, and decide to hold consultations in Ottawa and Thunder Bay but not Toronto? Who would set up private sessions with groups familiar with the issue and not include the Black Action Defence Committee (BADC)?

Source: John Tory, Mark Saunders get cover from Queen’s Park on carding issue: James | Toronto Star

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Montreal man under fire from Yazidi activists over rescue efforts

2015/09/02 Leave a comment

Further to the earlier article (Un Montréalais à la rescousse des esclaves sexuelles de l’EI), appears not quite true:

Montreal businessman Steve Maman has been dubbed the “Jewish Schindler” for his efforts to rescue women and girls from sexual slavery in Iraq.

But now Maman is defending himself against questions about his motives, methods and results being raised by politicians, activists and religious leaders from the very minority group he says he has been pouring his time and energy into saving.

In an open letter last week, the signatories questioned a claim they called “dubious” that Maman’s group, The Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq, had rescued 102 women and girls (a number that has since risen to 128) with just $80,000. They also questioned whether the money paid for the hostage release was going back into Islamic State coffers. They are calling for Maman to offer proof of his tactics and the identities of those who have been saved before they will approve his work.

“We ask the friends of the Yazidi people all over the world who passionately support our vulnerable community to stop donating to Mr. Maman until his work is verified,” reads the letter, dated Aug. 26. “If his project is legitimate, safe, and ethical, we will also support him.”

Maman claims he has the backing of the Iraqi and Kurdish governments and credits his success to powerful and influential contacts in Iraq who have assisted his team of front-line workers.

He refutes critics’ allegations and says he is preparing to publicly defend his claims: “I know what I have in my hands. I can take the hit for another month, two months or three months in the media and let people say I’m a fraud and all that. But three months from now we’re going to go out in public and show everything we’ve done.”

Maman’s defence against the criticisms have become more strident in the last few days. He says he initially chalked it up to a misunderstanding that occurs as information is translated from French to English to Arabic to Kurmanji, a collection of Kurdish dialects.

A few days later, he sent a cease-and-desist letter to one of the signatories, University of Chicago Yazidi specialist Matthew Barber, who is a member of Yazda, a group that raises awareness about the Yazidi plight. The letter warned the signatories to end their criticisms or face a $5-million defamation suit.

Source: Montreal man under fire from Yazidi activists over rescue efforts | Toronto Star

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Twitter Sets Measurable Hiring Goals for Women and Minorities | Re/code

2015/09/02 Leave a comment

Setting public goals and reporting on them provides incentives for managers:

A month ago, Twitter’s interim CEO Jack Dorsey told employees that diversity would soon be a company goal. Twitter was fresh off an embarrassing fraternity-themed party that only underscored Silicon Valley’s reputation as a place where women and minorities are often overlooked.

Today, Dorsey and Twitter followed through on that promise, and they’ve got the numbers to back it up.

Twitter reported its diversity metrics Friday, falling in line with the rest of Silicon Valley by reporting a predominantly white and male workforce. Two-thirds of Twitter’s global employee base is male, and men also claim 87 percent of the company’s tech jobs; ninety percent of its U.S. employees are either white or Asian.

Unlike most other tech companies, however, which often provide lip service on how they plan to improve those ratios, Twitter is setting measurable goals for each of these categories as a way to hold itself accountable. For example, it wants to grow its percentage of women in tech roles from 13 percent to 16 percent in the next year. It also wants to grow women in leadership roles from 22 percent to 25 percent.

They’re small increments, sure, but putting tangible numbers out there also puts pressure on the company to deliver. (You can guarantee that if it misses these marks, the media will point it out.) Janet Van Huysse, Twitter’s VP of diversity and inclusion, wrote in a post Friday that the company will start recruiting more heavily at historically black colleges and universities and Latino-serving institutions this fall. It is also working to ensure its job descriptions are written to “appeal to a broad range of applicants.”

Kudos to Twitter for putting a stake in the sand. Perhaps other companies will soon do the same. Now the pressure’s on to actually change things at Twitter.

Perhaps DND and the RCMP could take a similarly public position, starting by posting their employment equity reports on their website, and commit to a more active approach to addressing their poor results for women and visible minorities.

Source: Twitter Sets Measurable Hiring Goals for Women and Minorities | Re/code

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Justin Trudeau vows to repeal ‘2-tiered’ citizenship law

2015/09/01 Leave a comment

Unclear whether he would repeal the complete Citizenship Act (the reporting suggested that) or just the revocation and a few other provisions:

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau says if elected his government will repeal the Conservative government’s “two-tiered” citizenship law and that he would do more to help free imprisoned Egyptian-Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy.

“Liberals believe in a Canada that is united — strong not in spite of its differences, but precisely because of them,” Trudeau told an audience at the Jalsa Salana Islamic conference in Mississauga, Ont., on Saturday afternoon.

He added that under Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, Canadians are being encouraged to be fearful of one another and there has been a decline in refugees coming to Canada, and in citizenship applicants.

In an accompanying news release, Trudeau said his government would repeal the Conservative government’s controversial Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, saying it “devalues Canadian citizenship by creating two classes of citizenship.”

“Liberals will guarantee that all Canadians’ fundamental rights are respected as guided by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” the statement said.

The act became law in June 2014. While several elements of the law remain controversial, a provision that came into effect in May of this year expands the grounds on which the federal government can strip dual nationals of their Canadian citizenship, even if they were born in Canada.

The provision gives the power to revoke citizenship, in some cases, to elected officials and not a federal court.

“There is a suggestion that some of us might be less Canadian than others, a suggestion of who ought to decide who stays or goes from Canada be an elected politician instead of our justice system. I think that’s wrong,” Trudeau said during his speech.

The changes are currently being challenged in court by a coalition of civil liberties groups.

In a statement, the Conservative candidate for Ajax [and current Minister of Citizenship and Immigration] described Trudeau’s remarks as “more evidence that he’s just not ready,” to be prime minister.

“Canadians know that only Conservatives can be trusted to take action against those who would do Canada harm and stand up for Canadian values,” Chris Alexander said.

Liberal position is consistent with their opposition to the revocation provisions during the C-24 Citizenship Act hearings (NDP also opposed).

In a sign that either the Conservatives continue to think they have a winner on this issue (earlier polling would suggest that) or whether they are worried that they don’t, the heavy hitters, Jason Kenney and Jenni Byrne were denouncing Trudeau’s position vigorously on Twitter.

Source: Justin Trudeau vows to repeal ‘2-tiered’ citizenship law – Politics – CBC News

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Foreign caregivers ask Filipino Canadians to ‘vote wisely’

2015/09/01 Leave a comment

It will be interesting to see how these changes play out with Filipino Canadians and the weight of this in relation to broader political issues (there are only 4 ridings with more that 10 percent Filipino Canadians: Vancouver South, Vancouver Kingsway, Scarborough Centre, with only Winnipeg North where they are the largest groups at 28.6 percent):

Kristina Torres hopes her 620,000-strong Filipino Canadian community won’t forget their roots — and the compatriots they left behind — when they cast their votes in the October federal election.

The Toronto woman from the Philippines is joining a chorus of past and present foreign caregivers, who are overwhelmingly Filipino, to warn the community about Ottawa’s waning caregivers program, which has been the key immigration avenue to Canada for Filipinos over the past 15 years.

“The government has promised to reduce the backlog, but the changes they made are making things worse,” said Torres, 27, who was let go by her employer in October and has since been struggling. “They made the promise to improve the program and must keep their word.”

Until November, foreign caregivers were bound by the requirements of the old Live-in Caregivers Program, which allowed them to apply for permanent residency after two years of service.

In December, the Conservative government replaced the old program by removing the live-in condition, capping the yearly number of applicants and raising applicants’ English and education requirements.

However, months into the new program, caregivers said the processing time required for their permanent residency has lengthened, and many are now having trouble getting a positive Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) — a certificate that justifies their attaining a job because of a labour shortage.

“There has been no improvement. Our members can’t get the LMIA. If they leave an abusive employer, they will be punished because they need the LMIA to work,” said Johnna Uchi, of Toronto’s Caregivers Action Centre, pleading for all political parties to commit themselves to changing the situation.

“Voters in the Filipino community, and all voters, must vote wisely. Don’t just think of what is happening now to the program, but think of what’s going to happen to the community in the long run.”

Source: Foreign caregivers ask Filipino Canadians to ‘vote wisely’ | Toronto Star

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Critics see problems with Ontario carding review

2015/09/01 Leave a comment

In advance of Toronto’s consultation on Tuesday, a look at three concerns raised by critics about the province’s street checks review and responses from the ministry and police associations:

The definition of “street checks” is too broad

In an online form the ministry calls its “discussion document,” street checks are defined as a tool police use “to engage and record interactions with individuals whose activities and/or presence within their broader context (e.g., location, time, behaviour, etc.) seem out of the ordinary.”

But Knia Singh — who has launched a Charter challenge against police carding and says he has been stopped by police 30 times — says the ministry’s definition is does not capture the reality of street checks, which involve arbitrary detentions.

The majority of community members who are concerned about carding are not opposed to police having the ability to stop and question people for a legitimate investigative purpose.

“What we’ve always been fighting is the non-criminal investigation of people,” Singh said. “What they’re missing is the whole point of people just walking on the street, standing on the corner or minding their own business are getting stopped.”

“If they are going to use the word ‘street check,’ they have to define it correctly,” Singh said. “Then we can have a discussion.”

Jonathan Rose, spokesperson for Naqvi’s ministry, said it’s in the process of updating the content of its street-check document online “to reflect the feedback that we have heard from our public consultation and online channels,” though he did not specify what changes were being made.

“We intend to make these changes to the web page content in the coming days,” Rose said in an email.

It misses the root problem of racial discrimination

In a lengthy submission to the ministry, the Ontario Human Rights Commission states its central concern with the street checks review is that it does not go far enough to address the “systemic issue” underlying the over-representation of racialized people in street-check interactions.

Ruth Goba, the OHRC’s interim chief commissioner, says the ministry does not go far enough to define when it is appropriate to perform street checks.

The OHRC challenges the suggestion that police may perform street checks when individuals’ activities “seem out of the ordinary.” That is just simply too broad, Goba says — and unguided officer discretion to initiate street checks is “fertile ground for racial profiling,” the OHRC writes.

Also, the larger issue “of racial profiling is not explicitly mentioned,” Goba says, “and that is a significant gap given how the issue has manifested itself.”

Rose said Naqvi has made it clear the government “takes the protection of human rights very seriously and that we have zero tolerance for racism or marginalization.”

It is taken for granted that street checks solve crime

In its description of street checks, the province describes the practice as “a necessary and valuable tool for police” that helps solve and prevent crime.

Chris Williams, an outspoken carding opponent and member of the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition, says stating carding’s usefulness as fact is problematic. Numerous groups, including TPAC, the Law Union of Ontario and the OHRC have argued there is a dearth of objective evidence supporting the claim that street checks solve crime.

Police forces and associations across Ontario often cite the importance street checks can play in solving crime…

Source: Critics see problems with carding review | Toronto Star

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