Op-Ed: Ottawa’s strange indifference to ‘street checks’

2015/08/07 Leave a comment

Valid points:

When Inspector Mark Patterson of the Ottawa Police Service presented a report showing that visible minorities are overrepresented among individuals subjected to “street checks”, the reaction was noticeably different. No questions were asked about the evidence of systemic racism revealed by the data, or any other aspect of the report for that matter. In an interview following the meeting, board chair Eli El-Chantiry came out strongly in favour of the lawfulness and utility of street checks. He categorically rejected the possibility that they were conducted in a racially discriminatory manner.

The numbers speak for themselves. In a city in which 5.7 per cent of the population is black, 20 per cent of those subjected to street checks are black. Although less than 5 per cent of the Ottawa population is of Middle Eastern origin, 14 per cent of street checks involved individuals identified as being Middle Eastern.

So why the lack of outrage? Is it because Cole’s narrative was personal, while the individuals in the Ottawa Police Service’s report are nameless, faceless statistics? Is it because the Ottawa police refer to the practice as a “street check” rather than “carding”? Is it something else?

After all, Ottawa has seen its share of high profile cases involving racial discrimination by police. Ottawa newspapers have covered the issue of street checks extensively. When the board met to discuss the police service’s report, one of the authors of this op-ed, Leo Russomanno, gave submissions urging them to seek an explanation for why visible minorities are overrepresented in the data. He also questioned the propriety of carding more broadly. Juxtaposed with the reaction in Toronto, the indifference of the board and other city officials – including the mayor – is jarring.

Op-Ed: Ottawa’s strange indifference to ‘street checks’ | Ottawa Citizen.

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Reevely: Sticking up for the public service a tricky line for Ottawa politicians

2015/08/07 Leave a comment

On the public service and political level relationship, picking up some of the themes of my book, Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias: Resetting Citizenship and Multiculturalism:

They [the Conservatives] fired the head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for being too meticulous about nuclear safety, forced the head of Statistics Canada to resign on principle, went to war with Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page and Elections Canada boss Marc Mayrand. Ombudsmen for veterans and victims of crime lost faith in the Tories and said so publicly, then got frozen out.

That the Conservatives would be suspicious of the public service is understandable: A small-government party isn’t naturally friends with people who work in the government, who’ll tend toward statist solutions to public problems. And there’s a real divide between public-sector workers with stable employment and private-sector ones in Canada’s growing precariat (some of whom actually work for the government as temps, creating a shadow public service that began under the Liberals).

The Tories’ approach to the genuine challenges they have with the public service has, in the main, been to dump on public servants generally and get rid of specific senior ones who get too uppity. That might be satisfying for certain elements of the Conservative base but does not actually get Canada a better government. After nine years in power, they’ve likely effected about as much genuine reform as we can hope for.

But it says a great deal about how low the relationship between the politicians and the public service has gotten that “we would listen to the advice of professionals even if we don’t always take it” counts as a meaningful change from the way the Canadian government works now.

Reevely: Sticking up for the public service a tricky line for Ottawa politicians | Ottawa Citizen.

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New US Poll Shows Half of Blacks Have Been Unfairly Treated by Police

2015/08/07 Leave a comment

Not surprising, likely reinforced by ongoing instances of police wrong-doing:

The AP-NORC poll shows that just a third of black Americans say they can always or often trust police to do what is right for their communities, while a large majority of whites say that. Nearly half of blacks trust the police just sometimes, and 2 in 10 trust them rarely or never.

Eight in 10 black Americans say police are too quick to use deadly force, and 7 in 10 say police officers who cause injury or death are usually treated too leniently by the criminal justice system. Just a third of whites say either of those things.

More than 8 in 10 blacks say police sometimes treat minority groups more roughly. A similar proportion says that police are more likely to use deadly force against a black person than against a white person. Most whites think race does not affect police use of deadly force.

Fifty percent of blacks, compared with just 3 percent of whites, say that they personally have felt treated unfairly by a police officer because of race. Another 15 percent of blacks and 5 percent of whites say unfair treatment by police has happened to a family member.

New Poll Shows Half of Blacks Have Been Unfairly Treated by Police | TIME.

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Québec désapprouve l’abolition de la banque de données des statistiques officielles

2015/08/07 Leave a comment

Quebec’s cancellation of the census moment?

La décision a été vivement dénoncée mercredi, notamment par des chercheurs qui y avaient recours. « La banque de données fait partie de ces coupes dont on s’évertue à faire croire qu’elles n’auront pas d’impacts sur les usagers. Mais elles en auront », s’est indigné André Lemelin. Ce professeur d’économie à l’Institut national de recherche scientifique (INRS) s’intéresse de près aux statistiques régionales et utilise régulièrement les données de l’ISQ, dont celles de la BDSO.

« Les chercheurs devront dorénavant courir à droite et à gauche, trouver quel ministère et qui est responsable de quoi pour pouvoir obtenir des données. C’est décidément une perte déplorable », décrit-il. L’ISQ effectuait en effet un travail de sélection, de préparation et de mise en forme des données pour les rendre « intelligibles, conviviales et accessibles », mentionne Patricia Caris, directrice générale adjointe aux statistiques et à l’analyse sociales. Des compilations statistiques sur mesure, un service déjà offert moyennant plusieurs centaines de dollars, pourront être obtenues. M. Lemelin doute toutefois que les chercheurs soient prêts à assumer ce fardeau supplémentaire pour leurs fonds de recherche qui fondent aussi.

Le président du Syndicat de professionnelles et professionnels du gouvernement du Québec, Robert Perron, s’inquiète aussi vivement : « C’est une “ harpérisation ” de l’État qui rendra plus difficile la dénonciation de ce qui se passe », croit-il.

« La transparence est l’un des outils de la démocratie, l’information nous permet de comprendre la société dans laquelle on vit », renchérit Lise Millette, présidente de la Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec. Elle déplore le fait que les journalistes devront « reprendre le bâton du pèlerin et cogner à la porte de chacun des ministères quand notre coffre à outils n’est déjà pas très garni ».

Québec désapprouve l’abolition de la banque de données des statistiques officielles | Le Devoir.

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So You Flunked A Racism Test. Now What?

2015/08/06 Leave a comment

More on the inbuilt biases and prejudices that we all have:

You’re probably at least a little bit racist and sexist and homophobic. Most of us are.

Before you get all indignant, try taking one of the popular implicit-association tests. Created by sociologists at Harvard, the University of Washington, and the University of Virginia, they measure people’s unconscious prejudice by testing how easy — or difficult — it is for the test-takers to associate words like “good” and “bad” with images of black people versus white people, or “scientist” and “lab” with men versus women.

These tests find that — regardless of how many Pride parades they attend or how many “This is what a feminist looks like” T-shirts they own — most people trust men over women, white people over minorities, and straight people over queer people. These trends can hold true regardless of the gender, race or sexuality of the test-taker. I’m from India, and the test found that I’m biased against Asian-Americans.

There is research indicating that these types of implicit prejudices may help explain why cops are more likely to shoot unarmed black men than to shoot unarmed white men, and why employers are more likely to hire white candidates than equally qualified black candidates.

….Perhaps more important than the lasting effects of this particular approach, Paller’s findings are proof that our implicit attitudes are malleable — and maybe, just maybe, it is possible for people to let go of prejudice for good, if they want to. But it won’t be easy.

“Adults have had years and years of exposure to stereotypes,” Paller says. And biases take hold early — studies have found that kids as young as 4 and 5 show racial and gender bias. “It can take a lot of effort to reverse that.”

Paller stresses that this is very preliminary research. To confirm the results, a lot more people have to be tested. “Plus, we still don’t know if changing people’s results on the implicit-bias test translates to them acting differently toward minorities in the real world,” he notes.

The bottom line: There’s no silver bullet, says Anthony Greenwald, a social psychologist at the University of Washington who helped develop the implicit-association test. At least not yet. “But I’m open-minded,” says Greenwald, who wasn’t involved in Paller’s study. “It will be interesting to see if these results can be reproduced.”

Greenwald, who perhaps understands more about bias than just about anyone, has taken the implicit-association test himself. His results haven’t budged over the years. He’s still biased along racial and gender lines, he says, “even though I really don’t like having these biases.”

And while it may be hard to correct such inbuilt bias, it starts with being more mindful of such associations and automatic thinking.

So You Flunked A Racism Test. Now What? : Code Switch : NPR.

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Premier Wynne, give us the data on police carding | Desmond Cole

2015/08/06 Leave a comment

Agree. The data should and needs to be shared:

Last week, the province launched a public consultation on police carding, the controversial practice of stopping and documenting civilians who are not suspected of any crime (some police forces use the terms “street checks” or “proactive policing” to describe the practice). The news is welcome and overdue — for years, police forces across Ontario have been disproportionately carding people with dark skin in the name of public safety.

The consultation includes an online survey, whose opening paragraph claims that “information collected during street checks may help solve and prevent crime.” Our police have never produced any data to back up this critical argument, and the province fails to do so in its consultation. If Queen’s Park wants meaningful public input on carding, it must publish independent, province-wide data showing how often carding happens, whom it tends to affect, and how much relevant information, if any, it produces.

Carding remains controversial in part because police tend to suppress data about it. The few existing stats tell us nothing about the relationship between carding and public safety. But data from police in Ottawa, Hamilton and Toronto is clear about carding’s racial bias; in each of these cities, black residents are overwhelmingly the most likely people to be carded.

Only 5 per cent of Ottawa residents are black, but 20 per cent of people carded in the nation’s capital in recent years have been black. Since 2010, Hamilton police have carded blacks at a rate of three to four times their share of the local population. The total number of people carded in Toronto dropped sharply in 2013, but during the same period the share of blacks being carded actually went up. This is the reality in three of Ontario’s five most populated cities.

The police forces responsible for this skewed policing deny there is any problem, and simultaneously hide relevant info on their activities. In June, Ottawa police chief Charles Bordeleau claimed his force did not collect information on the racial breakdown of carding incidents. A month later under growing public scrutiny, Ottawa police produced the race-based data the chief claimed they didn’t have.

…Officers with the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS) have done the majority of Toronto police’s carding in recent years. TAVIS has refused the Star’s requests for data on the number of its contacts that result in arrests or the recovery of guns. However TAVIS data from 2008, the most recent year available, shows that officers failed to lay charges during 98 per cent of carding interactions; that same year, TAVIS officers recovered a firearm once in every 650 times they carded a resident.

Premier Wynne, give us the data on police carding | Toronto Star.

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Ian Mulgrew: Outraged Chapman a tireless crusader for disenfranchised Canadians

2015/08/06 Leave a comment

Profile on citizenship activist Don Chapman and his focus on “Lost Canadians”:

Don Chapman pulled from his backpack books, photocopies of historic documents and legal briefs.

Depending on the moment, he picked them up and brandished them like a club he would use on Ottawa, or as an indictment: “Look at this!”

The airline pilot turned longtime citizenship crusader can’t believe the new Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act is so bad.

While the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and refugee lawyers are preparing a constitutional challenge, Chapman is involved in other court cases and pounding the table to rouse Canadians.

“Nobody paid attention in spite of me screaming and yelling — I was considered a nutcase,” he said about his opposition to the law, substantial portions of which recently came into effect.

It fixed some of the past citizenship anomalies, but it created others and has sparked a lot of concern.

Ian Mulgrew: Outraged Chapman a tireless crusader for disenfranchised Canadians.

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Hungary’s future: anti-immigration, anti-multiculturalism and anti-Roma?

2015/08/06 Leave a comment

Commentary on Hungary’s increasing anti-immigrant and anti-multicultural policies and practices:

Hungary has recently passed new legislation tightening asylum rules and is now building a border fence along the Serbian border to keep migrants and refugees out. Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, believes Hungary cannot cope with any immigration, as it has no experience of ‘multiculturalism’. But Hungary has always been multicultural, with Roma and other minorities making up 10-12% of the country’s citizens.

Viktor Orbán’s campaign against migrants to Hungary was already in full force before he started to build a 4 metre-high fence along the 110-mile border with Serbia. In May this year his government, Fidesz, sent a questionnaire to every household as part of a ‘National Consultation on Immigration’. This included skewed questions clearly linking immigrants to terrorism, such as: “There are some who think that mismanagement of the immigration question by Brussels may have something to do with increased terrorism. Do you agree with this view?” Reportedly costing 1 billion forints (EUR 3.2m), the consultation bizarrely cost far more than any money put aside for managing immigration.

New waves of migration are a contemporary issue for Hungary – Hungary has become a major transit country for migrants. In the last six months alone a reportedly 71,200 migrants entered the country. This article doesn’t question the scale or potential problem this poses for Hungary, what it does question is the speed and force with which Orbán’s governing party Fidesz has taken up an anti-immigration stance, and how this stance is being linked to anti-Roma (or anti-Gypsy) discourse.

This article argues that Orbán’s focus on immigration has emerged and become a diversion from the deep inequalities, extensive oligarchic type of state corruption and daily police and institutional harassment that many Hungarian citizens (whether Roma or not) are currently facing.[1] Racism against Roma – or ‘Romaphobia’ – adds a particular negative political and media sting that further destabilises Hungary’s already intercultural, but frequently divisive, society. Not facing these problems, we argue, will make any new migration flows and the potential for their future integration impossible to deal with.

Hungary’s future: anti-immigration, anti-multiculturalism and anti-Roma? | openDemocracy.

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Chapin: White people, stop getting defensive | Ottawa Citizen

2015/08/05 1 Comment

Angelina Chapin on white privilege and defensiveness:

A study from New York University found that the concept of white privilege messes with our sense of personal achievement. It’s easier to believe you landed your job at a law firm through long hours and smarts, not because your parents shelled out for Ivy League tuition and knew a senior partner at the firm (in reality, of course, success involves a mix of hard work and opportunity.) To preserve the self-made myth, white people deny or distance themselves from privilege. You faced struggles, too. You know white privilege exists for some, but you have black friends. Maybe you don’t “see race.” All these tactics dodge personal responsibility.

To fight racism, white people need to own up to their privilege. Of course, the right mentality alone won’t erase discrimination. But without it, there’s little hope of political change. Authors of the New York University study concluded that white people who deny their leg-up in this world don’t support affirmative action policies. That’s a huge shame, since the best way to reverse the racial oppression rampant in criminal, housing and education systems in North America is to legislate greater equality.

White people need to reject the instinct to become defensive about racial issues. Save those feelings for your diary. We must instead recognize our personal role in big picture discrimination, rather than create a narrative that exempts us from blame. You can own up to white privilege without being a bad person. But denying oppression in any way – whether through a hashtag or spraypaint – is at best tone deaf and at worst racist. Canadians should really know better.

Chapin: White people, stop getting defensive | Ottawa Citizen.

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Millionaire migration to Canada didn’t fall after investor scheme’s axing – it rose, new data reveals | South China Morning Post

2015/08/05 3 Comments

Millionaire_migration_to_Canada_didn_t_fall_after_investor_scheme_s_axing_-_it_rose__new_data_reveals___South_China_Morning_PostMore on the Investor Immigrant Program and how Quebec continues to encourage investor immigration through its own program:

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) spreadsheets demonstrate that, yes, immigrant investor visa approvals under the federal IIP plunged 42 per cent as the scheme  wound down, falling to a mere 2,541 applicants and family members in 2014.

Yet, astonishingly, overall investor immigrant approvals nationwide were up by 7.2 per cent, hitting 8,762 approvals, the most since 2011.

How? Because, even while Ottawa was hitting the brakes on millionaire migration, the province of Quebec (which runs its own IIP) was hitting the accelerator. And l’accélérateur was winning.

In 2014, Quebec approved a bumper 6,221 millionaire migrants and family members, a whopping 62 per cent increase compared to 2013. It was a near-record year, surpassed only by the 6,292 approvals in 2011.

Quebec’s programme matters to Vancouver, because 89 per cent of Quebec investor immigrants do not end up living there, according to federal data. Most likely end up in Vancouver, assuming those 89 per cent disperse in a fashion similar to their counterparts in the federal scheme.

At this point thanks should go to Richard Kurland, the Vancouver immigration lawyer who has been a relentless pursuer of data that CIC does not prefer to release as a matter of course. The CIC spreadsheets that he shared with me this week were only obtained under access to information requests.

The spreadsheets demonstrate in clear fashion how Quebec has historically approved a majority  of Canada’s millionaire migrants, and has likely approved a majority of those who end up in Vancouver. From 2002 to 2014, Quebec approved 65,151 investor migrants, compared to 45,294 okayed under the federal IIP.

Millionaire migration to Canada didn’t fall after investor scheme’s axing – it rose, new data reveals | South China Morning Post.

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