Black and Arab people overrepresented in Quebec City police stops, data show 

2024/11/12 Leave a comment

Of note:

New data from Quebec City police show that Black, Arab and, to a lesser extent, Latino people are overrepresented in police stops, a recurring pattern across North America. Researchers and advocates say this is evidence of racial profiling, which the force denies.

The data, obtained by The Globe and Mail through an access to information request, break down by race the 4,567 stops done by Quebec City police between Jan. 1, 2023, and July 13, 2024.

They include street checks and arbitrary traffic stops conducted under a Highway Safety Code provision invalidated by the Quebec Superior Court in a landmark 2022 racial profiling case. Police continued to use the provision pending appeal by the Quebec government, but the Court of Appeal confirmed the lower court ruling in October. Street checks occur when police ask individuals to provide ID or other information without detaining or arresting them.

White people were under-represented in police stops, making up 83.1 per cent of stops, compared with 90.6 per cent of the Quebec City population, according to the 2021 census.

Source: Black and Arab people overrepresented in Quebec City police stops, data show

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

Chris Selley: Imagine the chaos if Israeli soccer comes to Canada

2024/11/12 Leave a comment

Not an appealing thought experiment:

…It was a terribly grim landmark day for European Jews, and indeed for Europe in general. The World Jewish Congress estimates there are only about 30,000 Jews in the Netherlands: roughly one-eighth as many as in 1939, on the eve of the Holocaust. There might be even fewer than that in very short order, if Thursday’s madness becomes routine. Canadians, Jews especially, are right to wonder whether it could happen here.

The answer is, basically, sure it could. But it could also be prevented. And this should have been. It looks like a colossal failure of policing. It’s easy to say from a desk on the other side of the Atlantic, but this was entirely predictable.

Reports out of Amsterdam Wednesday night were alarmingly and obviously portentous of what occurred the next day. Some purported Maccabi-supporting hooligans had assaulted a taxi driver and ripped down Palestinian flags, while chanting anti-Palestinian slogans.

Even if it weren’t true, the fact those stories were out there in the wild should have been reason enough to expect retaliation — and then some.

Clearly what happened Thursday night isn’t primarily about soccer. It’s about primordial hatred. But alas, soccer incubates primordial hatred. That’s true within the Netherlands: Ajax supporters, few of whom are Jewish, have traditionally embraced the team’s Jewish roots (they often refer to themselves as “the Jews”) and their rivals — especially supporters of Rotterdam club Feyenoord — have often taunted Ajax with antisemitic chants like “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas, followed by a hissing noise. From a North American perspective, it’s almost beyond belief.

…It’s not inconceivable that Israel might qualify for the 2026 World Cup, and that it might play one or more games in Toronto or Vancouver. I shudder to imagine what that would look like. Police don’t just need to be prepared for serious Amsterdam-style violence; they, and their political overseers, need somehow to convince Canadian Jews and their friends that they’re actually safe. It’s a tough job, nowadays.

Source: Chris Selley: Imagine the chaos if Israeli soccer comes to Canada

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Statelessness in Canada Webinar: My Analysis of Self-Reported and Operational Data

2024/11/12 Leave a comment

The Lanark & Renfrew LIP organized a webinar, Statelessness: A Global, a Canadian, and a Human Perspective, featuring Deny Dobobrov: Director of International Relations, World Roma Federation, Jamie Chai Yun Lew: Author, Professor, and Lawyer, University of Ottawa and myself.

My presentation is below:

Statelessless StatisticsDownload

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Coyne: The U.S. election shows that sometimes the people get it wrong

2024/11/11 Leave a comment

One of his better columns. Many other examples, Brexit being perhaps one of the best among Western countries:

…But that is an entirely separate question from whether it is rational, in response, to vote for a candidate such as Mr. Trump. The Biden administration made its share of mistakes; Ms. Harris has her flaws; the American economy could be performing better (though quite honestly it’s hard to see how); identity politics has a lot to answer for. But the notion that any of these, or all of them, represent such a dire threat, such an emergency, as to justify a “remedy” such as Mr. Trump – there is no other word for this but irrational.

It is not polite to say this. The notion that “the people are always right” is a staple of democratic discourse. And there is much truth in this. Indeed, I have often been forced to acknowledge it myself – the issue in which I had been so heavily invested, the factors that I had felt sure really ought to decide this or that election, proved, in the fullness of time, not to be of such overwhelming importance as all that, at least when set beside all the many other issues and considerations that combine, by some extraordinary alchemy, to produce a vote.

The average voter, busy as they are with the regular distractions of life, may take a broader and I dare say better view of things than the full-time pundit, too caught up in the day-to-day minutiae of politics. But it is not necessarily true, always and everywhere. Indeed, it can’t be true for all voters – in any election, the abiding wisdom of the majority must be set against what is presumably the abject folly of the minority.

Who’s to say we must necessarily pay homage to the former, just because they slightly outnumber the latter? Sometimes the people – some of the people at any rate – get it wrong. Especially the people who say the reason they voted for Donald Trump is that he is a “man of God,” or will “get tough with Russia,” or “cares about people like me.”

It is expected of politicians, especially losing politicians, that they must nevertheless grit their teeth and mouth the words, “The people are always right.” But such pieties are not required of columnists.

Source: The U.S. election shows that sometimes the people get it wrong

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Khrushcheva: Enablers, profit-mongers and blind believers sent Trump back to the White House

2024/11/11 Leave a comment

One of the more mordant commentaries:

…Mr. Trump had plenty of help in converting voters to his debauched religion. Fox News, Rupert Murdoch’s highly profitable propaganda machine, distorted discourse and stoked outrage. Tech billionaires supported Mr. Trump’s rise more directly – Elon Musk was Mr. Trump’s second-largestfinancial backer – in the hopes of benefiting from a deregulation spree. (Tesla shares have already surged.) Such tech titans – together with the silent powerbrokers of Wall Street, like Jamie Dimon – are the modern American equivalents of the German business leaders who thought they could control Adolf Hitler. Mr. Trump’s fellow Republicans are under no such illusions, which helps to explain why even those who once attempted to challenge him have rolled over.

Cowardly Republican politicians have helped Mr. Trump to shake the political radioactivity that should have engulfed him after he incited his supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The next day, figures like Senators Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham finally seemed prepared to wash their hands of Mr. Trump. But days later, they refused to vote for his impeachment. And when Mr. Trump launched his campaign for the party’s nomination again, they quickly fell into line. Nobody wants to be on a dictator’s bad side. And, given the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling granting the president virtual immunity from criminal prosecution, Mr. Trump will be nothing if not a dictator.

How did it come to this? A majority of white Americans have lost faith in their country. Members of the profit-hungry business elite have gained an unfettered ability to use their pocketbooks to shape politics. And Republican politicians have sacrificed their own integrity – and American democracy – at the altar of power.

Source: Enablers, profit-mongers and blind believers sent Trump back to the White House

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Layoffs on the table for permanent government employees as part of spending review

2024/11/11 Leave a comment

These will be mild compared to what is likely coming under a likely Conservative government:

The federal government has been looking for ways to tighten its budget and curb the size of the public service, which has swelled in recent years. While the Liberal government has said it would do so through attrition and hiring freezes, cutting the jobs of permanent government employees wasn’t on the table.

But Canada’s biggest public sector union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), says that no longer seems to be the case.

During a meeting on Thursday between Treasury Board officials and PSAC, the union said it was told the government will be  “widening the net” to reduce its spending, looking to cut term and casual employees and “opening the door for departments to slash permanent employees” through layoffs.

The union said the Liberal government has assigned budget reduction targets “in salary line items” to federal departments. But it has not released those targets, claiming they were protected under Cabinet privilege and would only be made public in June 2025.

“It’s just really disappointing that, once again, there’s this doublespeak from the federal government,” said PSAC’s national executive vice-president Alex Silas, who noted that the government said the meeting was not a consultation.

Silas said the idea of cutting casual and term positions “is bad enough,” but the idea of cutting permanent positions is “shameful.” He said there was a lack of detail in the government’s presentation about the potential cuts, but that departments and agencies were coming up with their own plans and were “encouraged” to consult with unions.

In April, the federal government announced it would seek to cut the size of the public service by 5,000 full-time positions primarily through natural attrition over the course of four years, as part of an effort to save $15.8 billion over five years and reallocate it elsewhere.

According to the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, the size of the public service in 2024 is 367,772—up from 300,450 in 2020….

Source: Layoffs on the table for permanent government employees as part of spending review

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Keller: What will be the economic consequences of Donald Trump?

2024/11/11 Leave a comment

Good series of questions:

..The challenge for Canada is that if the Trump administration decides on an aggressive policy of alien removal, or if non-citizens in the U.S. fear that such a policy is coming, many of them may choose to simply walk across the border into Canada. It could be a repeat of Roxham Road, on a potentially far larger scale.

Since 2023, Canada has an expanded Safe Third Country Agreement with the U.S., under which a foreigner in the U.S. who comes to Canada to make an asylum claim is supposed to be quickly returned to the U.S. But if hundreds of thousands of people that the Trump administration wants to deport decide to self-deport themselves to Canada, will the Trump administration follow the letter of the agreement and take them back?

The MAGA movement gets a lot of mileage out of “owning the Libs,” and Mr. Trump could make great sport out this situation. He could say that, while the Biden administration was marked by scenes of migrants flooding across the southern border on the nightly news, the Trump administration is delivering the opposite, namely scenes of illegal immigrants flooding out of the U.S. and across the northern border. Could a border crisis for Canada be played as a deportation triumph for Mr. Trump?

It might be a variation on Republican border-state governors busing migrants to Democratic strongholds such as New York – a move that not only owned the libs but upended U.S. politics, spurring some blue state voters to become more conservative and helping elect Mr. Trump.

Canada’s refugee-claims system is already massively overloaded and backlogged, as is the system for removing failed claimants. Anyone making a refugee claim can expect to live in Canada for many years pending a decision, and possibly many more years, even indefinitely, after that.

To avoid an influx of people from the U.S., Canada is counting on a couple of conditions that may not hold for much longer. First, that if someone comes from the U.S. to make a refugee claim, we can send them back. And second, that there aren’t very many people in the U.S. who would want to bypass the refugee process, sneak into Canada and become an illegal immigrant – even though it’s relatively easy to walk into Canada at thousands of quiet spots from coast to coast.

What does Mr. Trump have in store for us? We are about to find out.

Source: What will be the economic consequences of Donald Trump?

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Internal report describes a ‘cesspool of racism’ in the federal public service

2024/11/11 Leave a comment

Similar to an earlier report by Zellars on all PCO employees (Privy Council Office workers face culture of ‘racial stereotyping’: internal report). Given the same methodology and consultant, my earlier comments still broadly apply..

Took a look at the Public Service Employee Survey results for PCO. In most cases, broadly comparable to the public service as a whole, with some exceptions. But interestingly, some slippage between the 2020 and 2022 surveys results in harassment and discrimination, perhaps reflecting a mix of greater awareness following the Clerk’s Call to Action and the broader social context.

19.2 percent of PCO are visible minorities, 3.0 percent Indigenous peoples, broadly comparable to other departments [for executives, the numbers are 15.2 percent, 5.2 percent respectively]. Unfortunately, don’t have desegregated data by visible minority and indigenous group.

As to the Zellars report, based on interviews, we see a similar pattern in that the surveys indicate that there are issues, a consultant with experience in diversity issues is engaged, has discussions with a number of employees, many who feel aggrieved by remarks and/or treatment. But the nature of such consultants, given their career, is to have an implicit bias of highlighting discrimination and prejudice rather than a more neutral approach. Doesn’t mean of course findings are not valid but need to be assessed accordingly.

And of course the usual groups of organizations and activists use the survey to further their political aims:

An internal report on workplace racism and harassment at the highest levels of the federal public service shows that not even the federal government’s top executives are immune to the problem.

The government-funded report on the experiences of Black public servants in the senior ranks of government — obtained by CBC News — includes first-hand accounts of racist remarks, harassment, intimidation and threats that have harmed the mental health of public servants, especially Black women.

“Crucially, Black women detailed workplace conflicts so severe that they led to chronic depression, the use of antidepressant medications, and suicide attempts,” the report says.

The report also documents instances of Black public servants being called the N-word at work, sexual harassment and even threats of physical violence. It also raises concerns about internal complaint processes being weaponized against Black executives.

The report was initiated by the Black Executives Network, a support group for Black executives in the federal public service. The network is funded by multiple government departments.

CBC obtained a copy of the report and an email from the country’s top public servant — Clerk of the Privy Council John Hannaford — addressing the report’s findings and providing a preliminary response plan.

“What is relayed in the report is deeply concerning and we are distressed to think that some members of the Black executive community have reported that they have lived or are living through these kinds of experiences,” Hannaford said in the email.

Hannaford and several other senior public servants sent the email to all deputy ministers and the Black Executives Network….

Source: Internal report describes a ‘cesspool of racism’ in the federal public service

Filed under Government, Racism Tagged with ,

Ministers urged to explain how they will prevent a surge in asylum seekers from U.S. after Trump election

2024/11/09 Leave a comment

Suggests major increase in funding for the IRB along with some process re-engineering will be needed. Nothing reduces public support more than the perception that immigration is not being well managed as we have seen over the past two years:

Federal ministers came under pressure from MPs Thursday to explain how they plan to prevent an influx of asylum seekers from the United States after the election of Donald Trump, as a senior official at the Immigration and Refugee Board disclosed it now takes almost four years for asylum claims to be processed.

Roula Eatrides, deputy chairperson of IRB’s refugee protection division, told the Commons immigration committee Thursday that it now takes 44 months for a refugee claim to be dealt with after being referred to the board. She said the IRB has a record backlog of about 250,000 cases.

On Wednesday, immigration lawyer Richard Kurland told The Globe and Mail that because asylum claims take so long to process, undocumented migrants facing deportation from the U.S. may try to find a safe haven and “buy time” in Canada, though he said few are likely to have their claims approved.

During his campaign, Mr. Trump promised to conduct the largest deportation in American history of people living there illegally. On Thursday, Mr. Trump said he will move forward with that pledge. “Really, we have no choice,” he told NBC News. There are an estimated 11 million undocumented migrants in the U.S.

The RCMP’s national headquarters confirmed Thursday it has a plan to deal with a predicted influx of migrants, informed by its experience of a surge during the first Trump presidency…

Source: Ministers urged to explain how they will prevent a surge in asylum seekers from U.S. after Trump election

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Clark: Sprinkle a little notwithstanding on every governing headache [medical schools and mobility rights]

2024/11/09 Leave a comment

Clever critique:

…That implies its use should be judicious, and not an easy shortcut to a policy goal. Yet there has been a growing willingness to use it to brush aside Charter inconveniences – sometimes to replace the need to file a court appeal or draft new legislation that meets a policy objective without unreasonably infringing on Charter rights.

It’s true that Quebec’s political culture is different. For a period after the 1982 repatriation of the Constitution, the Parti Québécois government invoked the clause on every bill as a protest. There was never as much of a taboo on the use of the notwithstanding clause.

But Mr. Legault has in the past used it to override the enshrined rights in Quebec’s own Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, too. It has become an easy reflex.

Source: Sprinkle a little notwithstanding on every governing headache

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