Multicultural Meanderings

Ben Affleck and Bill Maher are both wrong about Islamic fundamentalism – The Washington Post

2014/10/08 2 Comments

One of the better pieces responding to the Majer/Affleck debate, by looking at public opinion data from a range of Muslim countries.

Expect that part of the explanation for the variations reflect local and tribal histories, culture and income:

Overall, the picture that emerges of fundamentalism among the worlds Muslims is considerably more complicated than either Affleck or Maher seem to realize. Theres no doubt that, particularly among some Middle Eastern Muslims, support for intolerant practices runs high. It’s quite easy to criticize these practices when a repressive regime is inflicting them upon an unwilling population. But things get much more difficult when such practices reflect the will of the people, as they seem to do in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Egypt.

On the other hand, majorities of Muslims in many countries — particularly Western countries — find these practices abhorrent. Maher tries to speak in broad brushstrokes of a “global Islam,” but Pews data show that such a thing doesn’t really exist.

Ben Affleck and Bill Maher are both wrong about Islamic fundamentalism – The Washington Post.

Filed under Religion Tagged with Ben Affleck, Bill Maher, islam, Pew Research

Should the Canadian government revoke the citizenship of dual-nationals who fight for ISIS?

2014/10/08 Leave a comment

Good CBC Radio interview with Raj Sharma, an immigration lawyer, who was scheduled to testify during the parliamentary hearings on Bill C-24 revisions to the Citizenship Act and revocation.

One of the better plain language explanations of the shortcomings of the Government’s approach:

Should the Canadian government revoke the citizenship of dual-nationals who fight for ISIS? – The 180 – CBC Player. (about 6 minutes)

Filed under Citizenship, Revocation Tagged with Raj Sharma

Toronto school board sets higher improvement targets for students based on race, sexual orientation

2014/10/07 2 Comments

The value of data to inform educators and support communities and groups that are not doing as well as most:

Cecil Roach is the York board’s superintendent of equity and engagement and a strong champion of collecting data.

“The things that are important are the things we measure, and you need to know who your students are. You cannot fully talk about supporting students unless you’re able to peel back the onion in order to see the inequities.

“You have some folks who say, ‘I don’t want to segregate kids by social identity,’ but that’s ridiculous,” said Roach. “We already know gay kids are more prone to suicide, but a lot of our knowledge is anecdotal. We need to know who our students are.”

York University education professor Carl James is such a believer in the value of gathering student data he has created a network of school board officials from Toronto, Peel, York Region and Ottawa to study the issue.

He would like to see Premier Kathleen Wynne call for a “learning gap strategy” like the one she requested this week to close the wage gap between men and women, and for this, surveys would be key.

“Such data would yield very rich information for the province,” said James, “and I would argue it would be of tremendous social and economic benefit.”

A spokesperson for Education Minister Liz Sandals said Friday her government is committed to have school boards “regularly use high-quality data and ongoing research to measure progress and guide programming,” especially after the scrapping of Ottawa’s long-form census, but “it is too early to tell what that will look like.”

But detailed surveys won’t be easy. A fierce split erupted this spring among Toronto’s Somali parents when the TDSB survey showed Somali students have a 25 per cent dropout rate, 10 points higher than the board average. While some Somali parents welcomed the information and joined a task force to examine solutions, others called it unfair labelling.

“These numbers can lead to uncomfortable conversations, especially about race and also sexual orientation,” admitted Spyropoulos, “but they’re conversations we need to have.”

As I go through the NHS data on educational outcomes, some clear and uncomfortable gaps in outcomes for some communities. Again, the conversations may be uncomfortable but silence and ignorance won’t help improve outcomes.

Toronto school board sets higher improvement targets for students based on race, sexual orientation | Toronto Star.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with Carl James, Cecil Roach, education, Liz Sandals, TDSB, Toronto

New PCO Clerk Charette takes on ‘battered’ PS, reform issues in federal election year | hilltimes.com

2014/10/07 Leave a comment

Lots of positive comment on new PCO Clerk Charette and observations on some of the challenges she faces from previous Clerks, Donald Savoie and others:

“There’s no question the federal public service is crying out for some sense of direction,” Mr. Savoie said. “I think it’s been battered about, not just the past 10 years, but it’s been battered about for the last 20-30 years. In some ways it’s lost its moorings. It’s not anchored like it used to be, in terms of knowing it was there to provide evidence-based policy advice, it was there to deliver programs in a professional manner.”

Part of the problem has been the trend across English-speaking democracies to view “the latest management fad coming out of the private sector as a panacea to dress the public sector to look like the private sector,” Mr. Savoie said, which has undermined the public service’s values.

In his final report as chair of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Committee on the Public Service, former Conservative and Liberal Cabinet minister David Emerson warned that public servants had to work to remain relevant amid the digital revolution and global economy.

The report recommended pushing authority down in the organization and empowering people to make changes; streamlining business processes; investing in learning and leadership development, especially in middle management; and focusing on longer-term thinking.

Former clerk Mel Cappe, who served under prime minister Jean Chrétien, said keeping the bureaucracy relevant and attracting bright young people will be Ms. Charette’s biggest challenge.

“I think the challenge is going to be adapting to the Twitterverse and modern communications and the transformation that’s taking place in the political world, and keeping the public service relevant to be the privileged adviser to government,” he said in an interview.

New PCO Clerk Charette takes on ‘battered’ PS, reform issues in federal election year | hilltimes.com. (pay wall)

Filed under Government Tagged with Clerk, Donald Savoie, Janice Charette, Mel Cappe, Wayne Wouters

Are we still that compassionate Canada? – Dueck

2014/10/07 Leave a comment

Further to Erna Paris’ recent op-ed, Canadian mean-mindedness is back, Lorna Dueck picks up on the same theme from a faith perspective:

There are more than 40,000 places of worship in Canada, and care for our global neighbours matters to them. But now is when we will find out whether these communities can put action behind their beliefs. Mark Blumberg of Global Philanthropy reports that faith groups have increased overseas aid philanthropy 300 per cent since the boat people crisis, but my guess is we may be sorely out of touch with what it means to bring a refugee crisis into our suburban and rural homes today.

“It’s extremely provocative and it should act as a question to all of us as Canadians, as people of faith. The generous people who sponsored 70,000 refugees of the South Asian crisis still exist. That is still who we are, but the mean, nasty atmosphere that surrounds us now, that’s also true,” refugee advocate and author Mary Jo Leddy told us recently on Context TV.

“It has blinded us to the simple fact that these are our brothers and sisters,” she added. “… When you see them face to face and they look you in the eye [and they say] please help me, you at that moment are summoned, and it may well be one of the most important choices of your life.”

Are we still that compassionate Canada? – The Globe and Mail.

And more on the government’s inability to bring in Syrian refugees more quickly and the impact of cutbacks:

The Canadian government announced last year it would bring 1,300 Syrian refugees into Canada. The majority of refugees are sponsored by private groups, mostly churches, but to date only a couple hundred refugees have actually arrived.

In comparison, Sweden has taken in 30,000 Syrians with a population that is about one quarter of Canada’s.

The authors of the internal CIC report recommend the government hire more permanent staff, as well as hire some temporary workers to conduct a “blitz” to clear the backlog.

“Improvements to process accountability and processing efficiency cannot be realized without having a sufficient number of dedicated staff in place to handle core functions and to eliminate the backlog that has developed over time,” the report reads.

“It’s a damning report. It doesn’t beat around the bush,” said Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council of Refugees.

“There have been a lot of cuts in Citizenship and Immigration Canada, notably they’ve closed offices across Canada … It’s quite clear that things have not been going well.”

Departmental officials won’t say if more staff have been hired since the report was released late last year. But they said efforts are being made to speed up the process.

“Processing is done according to priority, with Syrian files currently identified as a priority,” according to a statement from a CIC spokesperson.

That concerns people like Showler, though, who wonder about other non-Syrian refugees currently in the cue.

“That means someone who was supposed to come from Thailand, Burma, Africa …that means they’re being delayed even further,” he said.

Showler said in the past, Canada has acted much faster to help refugees escape to safety.

“We did it for Yugoslavia. We brought in 5,000 and we did it within one year … we know how to do this. This is an issue of political will,” he added.

Syrian refugee backlog blamed on federal government cuts

Filed under Refugees Tagged with CIC, Erna Paris, Janet Dench, Lorna Dueck, Mary Jo Leddy, Peter Showler

Are Canadians racist? Yes, let’s stop denying it | Former Senator Oliver

2014/10/07 Leave a comment

Former Senator Don Oliver on racism and equality:

Racism still exists—in a subtle, underlying current of apathy and ignorance that continues to impede the advancement of visible minorities toward equality.

That’s why we must continue to advocate for change within the federal public service—and within corporate Canada. This change is crucial. Canada’s demographic profile is becoming increasingly diverse. Its workforce is aging. Meanwhile, the competition for workers is escalating with the growing global shortage of talent.

If we want to compete effectively, Canadian organizations—both public and private—must bring and keep the best and the brightest on board—and increasingly, the best and brightest are visible minorities. We need visible, committed leadership to effect real change. Most of all, we need to put an end to racism—through proactive non-tolerance of any form of discrimination, through training, and through robust support systems for visible minorities.

Complacency and denial about the reality of racism haven’t made Canada a truly diverse and inclusive place to make a living and build a future. Let’s stop kidding ourselves now.

Are Canadians racist? Yes, let’s stop denying it | hilltimes.com.

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with Don Oliver

The perils of the career politician – Donald Savoie

2014/10/07 Leave a comment

Donald Savoie on the implications of having more career politicians with minimal outside experience:

Career politicians also bring a narrow skill set to their governance. They excel at partisan politics and at surviving the gruelling 24-hour news cycle. But they lack the ability to test policy prescriptions against experiences gained outside politics. If commitments aren’t met, career politicians can always blame others the bureaucracy is an easy target, often bypassing their parliaments or legislative assemblies in the process, since traditional and social media have become the stage where the blame game is played out. This explains why career politicians have redefined the doctrine of ministerial responsibility, always so fundamental to our system of government. Supposedly responsible politicians now routinely blame others when things go wrong.

The proliferation of career politicians goes a long way toward explaining the public’s increasing cynicism about our political and administrative institutions. It also explains why those who have achieved distinction in other sectors tend to shun politics, leaving governance to a much narrowed political class. This, at a time when many Canadians are crying out for less partisan posturing, or are giving up on voting.

What is the solution? We could start by returning parties to the rank and file, by making it easier for non-career politicians to enter the political arena, by decentralizing power so that one does not have to sit in the prime minister’s or premier’s chair to make a substantial contribution. We also need to retool our public services by peeling away constraints to good management, and by rediscovering the importance of evidence-based policy advice.

I would say it depends partially on the individual. Some career politicians, like Minister Kenney, do have a breadth of perspective, others, the Polievres of the world do not.

The perils of the career politician – The Globe and Mail.

Filed under Government Tagged with career politicians, Donald Savoie, Public service

Fowler: Half measures in fight against Islamic State will only make matters worse

2014/10/06 Leave a comment

Former Canadian Ambassador to the UN, foreign policy advisor to Canadian prime ministers, and kidnapping victim of an al-Qaeda offshoot in Mali, Robert Fowler essentially answers the question he poses at the end of his long and thoughtful commentary in the Globe.

Well worth reading:

Were we, though, to seriously seek to excise the jihadi malignancy – to stop those who are so clearly bent on destroying the underpinnings of our civilization – we would have to engage far more thoroughly than we seem willing to do. We would have to convince our so-called friends in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States to stop – really stop – financing jihadi preaching and terror networks throughout the world. At home, we would need to make very clear that we will not abide jihadi teaching, jihadi recruiting, or the dissemination of jihadi propaganda.

Should we seriously seek to damage the barbarous IS, we would have to prepare for and then commit to a long and ugly war against an implacable enemy who is genuinely anxious to die in battle with us. In addition, we would have to abandon the inane restrictions we have so hurriedly and complacently put in place arbitrary time frames, no-boots-on-the-ground, and accept that it will take some up-close and personal combat to get the job done and that there will be casualties, among them a full share of innocents.

Finally, and however improbably in today’s politically correct context, we would have to “maintain the aim” – the removal of an existential threat to our way of life through the crippling degradation of al-Qaeda and its clones – and make it abundantly clear that until that mission were truly accomplished, such a struggle would not be about those nice, distracting things politicians would much rather talk about when they talk about such engagements: development, jobs, democracy, corruption, individual rights, gender equality, faith.

We would also have to accept that, to achieve such an objective, it would take vast budgets and clear-eyed focus over the long haul to convince Muslims in the West and throughout the world that such an engagement had nothing to do with jihadi allegations about crusades; indeed, little to do with religion of any stripe, but rather that global jihad was simply inimical to a peaceful world. Once such a mission were truly accomplished, then and only then could we turn our attention to reconstruction and development.

Short of all this, it’s not worth attempting, and we should walk away, right now: A flaccid attempt, such as that upon which we now seem to be embarked, will undoubtedly make matters worse.

Half measures in fight against Islamic State will only make matters worse – The Globe and Mail.

Filed under foreign policy, Radicalization Tagged with Canada, Iraq, ISIS, Robert Fowler, Syria

Robert Fulford: How to avoid sounding like a bureaucrat

2014/10/06 4 Comments

As a former bureaucrat who constantly struggles against my decades in government writing and tries to write more plainly and clearly, enjoyed this piece by Robert Fulford on Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century:

Pinker advocates what he calls “classic style,” a combination of inventiveness, good manners and the awareness of a reader’s needs. In the classic style, the writer pretends to speak conversationally to a single person. But this works only if the writer can overcome the main obstacle to clear prose: “The difficulty of imagining what it’s like for someone else not to know something that you know.”

The opposite of classic style is jargon, a language that’s terrifyingly easy to learn. A bright graduate student can produce bales of it without breaking a sweat. There are those who believe scholars use jargon to hide their lack of something to say or to protect their status in a priestly class. Pinker argues otherwise. Many scholars have nothing to hide and no need to impress, he says. He finds them “honest, down-to-earth people. Still, their writing stinks.”

Pinker’s research in linguistics has taught him to respect the human “hunger for coherence” and specific easy-to-imagine words. The classic style calls for prose that all of us can follow. Readers need to see the connector between the first sentence and the second, between the second and the third. Working on this book, Pinker came to a fresh understanding of connective words, like “but, despite, because, even so, however.” He calls them the cement of reason, “unsung heroes of lucid prose.” (“Cement of reason” is a Pinker-approved phrase.)

He’s full of helpful advice, based on the study of mental processes — including one rule that I’m centuries late in learning: When setting down a series of ideas, “Save the heaviest for last.” He quotes a famous Scottish prayer that used the proper order by asking for deliverance from “ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night.” Research shows that it’s hard to absorb a series of small details while holding in memory a big one.

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” gets it right, as does “Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!” Pinker tells us that light-before-heavy is an ancient principle in linguistics, discovered by a Sanskrit grammarian in the fourth century BCE.

Robert Fulford: How to avoid sounding like a bureaucrat

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with he Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, Robert Fulford, Steven Pinker