Revenue Canada targets birdwatchers for political activity

2014/10/18 1 Comment

This may be the over-reach that helps clarify the issues – targeting birdwatchers (see earlier Canadian charities in limbo as tax audits widen to new groups – Politics – CBC News):

But longtime member Roger Suffling is speaking up, saying the issue is about democratic freedom and not about arcane tax rules.

“Effectively, they’ve put a gag on us,” he said in an interview, noting that the letter arrived just after the club had written directly to two federal cabinet ministers to complain about government-approved chemicals that damage bee colonies.

“You can piece together the timing,” said Suffling, an adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo. “The two things are very concurrent.”

Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq responded to the group’s complaint in a March 14 letter — or just days after the Canada Revenue Agency letter arrived — and Suffling is convinced the two events are linked. Aglukkaqs office denies there’s any link, saying the agency operates independently.

Suffling said that if government is using the tax agency as a “pit bull to stifle dissent, then there’s something very wrong.”

Revenue Canada targets birdwatchers for political activity – Politics – CBC News.

Filed under Government Tagged with , , ,

Surrey’s Radio India to cease broadcasting

2014/10/17 Leave a comment

Expect in the long-run, as the recent CRTC television hearings and Netflix and Google testimony indicated, fighting a losing battle as more and more radio and TV shifts to the Internet, beyond the control of regulators:

The CRTC made it clear during Wednesday’s hearing, and with the consent orders, that it will no longer put up with stations that defiantly produce all their broadcasts, and collect 100 per cent of their advertising dollars, on Canadian soil without operating under Canada’s broadcasting regime.

That scenario has existed under the nose of not only federal regulators but Canadian politicians who beat a path to the doors of the pirate radio stations.

“Radio India is regarded as a must-do communications vehicle for politicians,” Gill, who last week mailed photos of himself with Canadian politicians, boasted Wednesday in the same presentation in which he promised to shut down operations. “The B.C. premier, members of parliament, MLAs, city mayors and councillors have been visitors to Radio India studios.“

Radio India has interviewed past and present prime ministers of both Canada and India. During elections, Radio India is chosen as a vehicle to connect with the South Asian community.”

Two CRTC-licensed, B.C.-based Punjabi-language competitors to the pirate stations testified by a remote hook-up Tuesday, saying their unsanctioned rivals have had an unfair advantage in scooping up millions of advertising dollars, including the estimated $2 million to $3 million that Gill says goes annually into Radio India’s coffers.

CRTC-approved broadcasters pay costly licence fees, copyright tariffs and must meet Canadian content rules, said CKYE-FM Red FM lawyer Mark Lewis, who testified along with Spice Radio formerly RJ 1200 owner Shushma Datt.

Surrey’s Radio India to cease broadcasting.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Veiled Women Need Not Apply « The Dish

2014/10/17 Leave a comment

Interesting US reasonable accommodation case with respect to the hijab and Abercrombie & Fitch (the company, while allowing a yarmulke, argued against the hijab):

The company has changed its dress code since then, but it’s fighting this case on the ground that it didn’t deny her a religious accommodation because she didn’t ask for a religious accommodation. That is, it had a dress code that applied to everyone, and she violated it, so she was treated like anyone else who fails to comply with the dress code, not subjected to discrimination based on religion.

If she’d asked for an accommodation based on religion, the company would have had to make some conscious decision about whether an exception to the usual rule could be made. Without having been given that chance, the company argues, there’s no discrimination, the company says. The EEOC, which brought the case on behalf of Elauf, doesn’t want the burden to bring up religion to rest entirely on the employee.

Veiled Women Need Not Apply « The Dish.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Cultural competence: An essential skill in an increasingly diverse world – Slaw

2014/10/17 Leave a comment

Short article on cultural competence with respect to lawyers. Starts with awareness:

Instead of trying to be “culture-blind” a common strategy of minimization, a culturally competent lawyer should strive to build a working knowledge of behavioural predictors: cultural dimensions of behaviour that are shared by the majority of individuals within a cultural identity. Unlike stereotypes, behavioural predictors are grounded in science for example, anthropology or sociology and allow the user to assess a person’s behaviour against cultural generalizations.

Cultural competence: An essential skill in an increasingly diverse world – Slaw.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

With number of immigrant detainees growing, border agency explored holding them in prisons

2014/10/17 Leave a comment

Officials doing their job to find possible solutions to one of the consequences of a change in policy:

In a letter to Correctional Service commissioner Don Head, Portelance noted the border agency was assessing options for “increasing its capacity” and wanted to explore the prison service’s “expertise and facilities to hold immigration detainees.”

The border agency holds people who are considered a flight risk or a danger to the public, and those whose identities cannot be confirmed.

It has also become easier to detain newcomers. Federal changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act allow officials to hold people 16 or older who enter Canada as part of an “irregular arrival” — a group whose origins are unclear or a case where criminal human smuggling is suspected.

An internal border agency background memo notes the organization has three immigration holding centres across Canada, but relies on provincial jails in other locations to house higher-risk detainees.

“In some cases, the provinces have indicated their intention to cease holding detainees in the long-term or limit how many individuals can be held within their facilities,” the memo says.

It adds that the federal government’s “current legislative agenda concerning immigration matters and the potential for an increase in the daily detained population” make discussions with the prison service necessary.

The documents, prepared in early 2012, were recently released under the Access to Information Act.

Neither the border agency nor the prison service would make anyone available for an interview. However, in emailed answers to questions, the agencies confirmed that discussions about use of federal prisons took place.

The border agency did an internal review of options for the detention program that was presented to the organization’s executive for approval early this year, said agency spokeswoman Line Guibert-Wolff.

“As a result of this process, in February 2014, the CBSA decided that federal correctional facilities would not be used to hold immigration detainees.”

With number of immigrant detainees growing, border agency explored holding them in prisons

Filed under Refugees Tagged with , , ,

David Baddiel interview: Comedian on mixing Islamophobia and Antisemitism in his new stage version of The Infidel

2014/10/17 Leave a comment

Using comedy to increase awareness:

Having spent two years turning his 2010 low-budget Brit-flick into a musical, David Baddiel sure knows how to pick his moment. In it, a middle-aged Muslim man, Mahmud Nasir Omid Djalili, discovers that he was actually born to Jewish parents and adopted shortly after birth, triggering an enormous identity crisis. Of course, this being an upbeat comedy, he comes to realise that the two aren’t so incompatible after all.

“Look, I’m not trying to fix the world with this,” Baddiel starts, shrugging off any sniff of worthiness before we’ve even got going. “I’m just trying to create an entertainment, albeit around a subject that has become very, very serious and dominant in the cultural discourse.”

…. For all its feel-good flippancy, though, Baddiel knows its message needs repeating. “It’s unbelievable how much polarisation on both sides has happened,” he continues. “More and more, it seems to me, people in the Jewish community have got an entrenched idea of what it is to be Muslim and vice versa. There’s lots of anti-Semitism in parts of the Muslim community. There’s no point denying this.”

David Baddiel interview: Comedian on mixing Islamophobia and Anti-semitism in his new stage version of The Infidel – People – News – The Independent.

Filed under Antisemitism Tagged with , ,

Citizenship Week Celebrated with New Canadian – First Fast-Track from Armed Forces

2014/10/16 Leave a comment

The first fast-tracked applicant for an applicant in the Canadian Armed Forces:

The new measures improve the Citizenship Act in four ways, according to [Kelowna Lake Country MP Ron] Cannan.

“Firstly to reinforce the value of citizenship, secondly to strengthen the integrity of the system and counter fraudulent attempts to gain citizenship,” explains Cannan. “Third is to improve the process by which new comers become Canadian citizens and help applicants get their citizenship sooner and lastly, we honour those who helped serve our country and the Canadian Armed Forces and fast track their citizenship.”

On September 12th, 2014 McGinty became the first person in Kelowna to become a Canadian citizen under the new measures. McGinty, originally from the United Kingdom, said the decision to bring his family to Canada was an easy one.

“Much of the reason I brought my family to Canada is because of Canada’s global reputation as a nation that not just recognizes but perpetuates those values of citizenship,” said McGinty. “Not only at home but overseas, I am extremely grateful to the government and people of Canada for having offered this fast track of citizenship for those of us who were not citizens but nevertheless served with the Canadian Armed Forces and have been recognized for having stood on guard for Canada.”

Citizenship Week Celebrated with New Canadian.

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Race and racism central issue of Toronto election

2014/10/16 Leave a comment

Margaret Hageman on racism and “white privilege:”

… We know that differences under the skin barely exist. Talking about race only becomes uncomfortable when we talk about different experiences among races in our shared society — such as why over-qualified brown people are driving Toronto’s taxis, or why so many young black men get questioned by police for no good reason, and why white men are over-represented in high-powered positions. It turns out you can’t talk about race without talking about racism.

There is a head-in-the-sand logic that needs to be called out when people deny white privilege. It denies the experiences of black people who get followed around in a store, over-scrutinized by security; or the voice of a black person driving a high-end car who has been stopped by police, over and over again. White privilege is invisible protection against all forms of racial profiling, including a pervasive form on Toronto’s streets called “carding,” where thousands of black and brown youth have been questioned and documented by police in Toronto over the past 10 years. White privilege is not having been carded, and subject to its cascading negative consequences. Investigative journalism done by Jim Rankin of the Star, reveals the numbers that tell the undeniable story about racial profiling by Toronto Police Services.

White privilege is an invisible protection in the streets and in the job market as well, where as a white person, your credentials are generally not called into question, your pay cheque is higher and your networks open doors. This is not opinion. Again, the facts and statistics in the workplace prove that unchecked systemic racism works to the advantage of white people, as shown by Grace-Edward Galabuzzi and Sheila Block’s research on the colour-coded job market in Canada. Denying this injustice will not make it go away.

I have heard people say that if we just stop talking about race, then racism will go away — like pundits who think that we must become colour-blind because the history of racism, the kind of deliberate discrimination against blacks and other non-white races has been discredited and legislated out of existence.

Race and racism central issue of election | Toronto Star.

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

Appeal court overturns racial profiling case involving customs officer

2014/10/16 Leave a comment

The Government’s favourite non-Supreme Court judge (Supreme Court rejects Harper appointee Marc Nadon) delivers a ruling likely in line with the Government on racial profiling:

Writing for the panel, Justice Nadon said there was no evidence of racial profiling.

“The officer simply asserted in his statement that in his experience it was not uncommon for Chinese persons to bring agricultural products with them upon returning from China. The officer’s hunch, based on his experience and his observance of the respondent’s demeanour, was confirmed by the secondary examination.”

It was “totally devoid of merit,” he said, to find that the officer had engaged in racial profiling.

The decision represents an important development in the law that surrounds racial profiling since the Federal Court of Appeal is among the nation’s highest.

The country’s highest court, the Supreme Court of Canada, has yet to hear a case that speaks directly to the issue.In Canada, racial profiling has been defined by a number of criminal cases in which defendants have sought to exclude evidence obtained by what they contend were racially motivated pedestrian stops or car searches. The courts have defined racial profiling as “the targeting of individual members of a particular racial group on the basis of the supposed criminal propensity of the entire group.”

There’s a chicken-and-egg quality to the debate. Police officers have argued that their actions are informed by years of on-the-street experience, while minority groups maintain that experience has been built on old, discriminatory attitudes.

The issue is also alive at Canadian airports where Muslim passengers have often complained of being singled out for interviews and inspection in the years since 9/11. Last year, a fine imposed against Youssef Bougachouch for illegally importing meat was thrown out after a tribunal found that he was among a group of Arab passengers targeted based on their race at Montreal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport.

Appeal court overturns racial profiling case involving customs officer | Ottawa Citizen.

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

Lady Warsi on Palestine, Islam, quitting … and how to stay true to your beliefs | The Observer

2014/10/16 Leave a comment

Good interview with former UK Minister Sayeeda Warsi:

On domestic issues such as extremism and the government’s approach to counter-radicalisation, Warsi refuses to be drawn. “My argument is that extremists are more of a threat to British Muslims than the community as whole; not only do those people cause us harm like everybody else – they’re indiscriminate – but also the backlash. It’s a double whammy. British Muslims have more incentive to rid society of extremists.”

However, she says there is mounting concern among Muslim organisations that the government is failing to engage enough and build trust. “If the British government doesn’t keep the majority of the community on board then they are not helping resolve the issue.”

For her, the issue is how will Islam evolve and overcome an atmosphere of mistrust and misunderstanding towards it. “What will British Islam look like for my kids, grandkids? Chinese Islam is very different to Saudi Islam; the challenge for our times is how we find this place.”

In the immediate future, she says, the challenge is tackling the normalisation of anti-Islamic views among some, an Islamophobic mindset she referred to in 2011 as having “passed the dinner table test”.

Another concern is the threat to repeal the Human Rights Act and withdraw from the European convention on human rights. “I hope we don’t move away from our commitment to human rights, domestically and internationally. We have to be careful we aren’t seen as defenders of human rights overseas but behave differently at home.”

Lady Warsi on Palestine, Islam, quitting … and how to stay true to your beliefs | Politics | The Observer.

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →