Ottawa approved thousands of foreign worker requests at minimum wage, data reveals, Banff profile

2014/05/28 Leave a comment

More evidence of how the Temporary Foreign Workers program expanded without adequate oversight and analysis:

Using Access to Information legislation, the Alberta Federation of Labour obtained extensive statistics about the program and provided its findings to The Globe and Mail. The union sought and obtained information on the number of Labour Market Opinions approved by Employment and Social Development Canada that were for minimum wage jobs. An LMO is a screening process meant to ensure employers have exhausted efforts to hire Canadians before turning to the program.

According to the documents, at least 15,006 minimum-wage positions were approved between March 31, 2010, and Feb. 10, 2014. (Only the numbers for Ontario go back as far as 2010, which means the actual totals for the period would likely be higher.)

Ottawa approved thousands of foreign worker requests at minimum wage, data reveals – The Globe and Mail.

On a more positive note, good profile on how Temporary Foreign Workers have transitioned to permanent residency in Banff, and some of the integration challenges:

Dean Irvine, principal at Banff Elementary, says this can sometimes be a struggle with immigrants from countries like the Philippines, where the culture says you leave education to the educators. “My experience is that is pretty standard in Asian countries for parents to say to teachers: ‘You’re the experts, you take care of things, we don’t necessarily need to communicate.’ That’s been a challenge here, but I think it’s getting better.”

Then there is the adjustment to living alongside moose, elk, deer and sometimes bears. When one elementary-school teacher noticed children from the same Filipino family absent a few days in a row, Ms. Godfrey’s office called to inquire what was going on. It turned out the mother couldn’t walk her children to school and didn’t want them going alone for fear they might encounter some wild creature.

“It’s all about educating them,” Ms. Godfrey says.

Mr. Jalalon says his family has adapted fairly easily to life in Canada, and a decidedly different climate than that of the Philippines. He has been surprised at how welcoming the people here have been, which is much different than the treatment he received in Abu Dubai, where he worked as a paramedic for two years before coming here. There, he says, Filipinos were treated as second-class citizens. Not in Banff.

If anything, he says, he wishes the many Filipinos in Banff worked harder to integrate themselves into the community, to do things like volunteer. Instead, many keep to themselves or stick close to their fellow countrymen. The Filipino community in Banff is too insular for Mr. Jalalon’s liking.

“There was a bad typhoon back home in November of last year – Typhoon Haiyan,” Mr. Jalalon says. “And it was the people of Banff that led the fundraising to help out, not the Filipinos here. I felt quite ashamed by that.”

Many here are concerned about the chill the federal government has put on the temporary foreign worker program. It is a reaction to stories suggesting some businesses are discriminating against non-immigrant Canadians because they don’t believe they have a comparable work ethic to employees they’re bringing in from overseas. But Darren Reeder, executive director of the Banff Lake Louise Hotel Motel Association, says the two resort communities desperately need the TFW to compensate for the loss in workers to higher-paying resource jobs elsewhere in the province.

Mr. Reeder says the fact many of these foreign workers are converting to full-time residents has been a huge benefit to towns like Banff. “It’s been wonderful to see [foreigners] become immersed in the community,” he says. “But we still need assistance in better meeting the needs of our foreign national population.” Despite challenges around housing and other issues, he says, “the fact so many want to become permanent residents speaks to community spirit and the lifestyle we offer. They’re saying: ‘It’s a price worth paying.’”

 Banff’s changing labour landscape 

Filed under Immigration, Integration Tagged with , , , ,

Professors Are Prejudiced, Too – ICYMI

2014/05/28 Leave a comment

Not surprising. Other “blind” tests show similar results (e.g., How an ethnic-sounding name may affect the job hunt):

Now for the bad news. We computed the average response rates for each category of student (e.g., white male, Hispanic female), dividing the number of responses from the professors by the number of emails sent from students in a given race or gender category. Our analyses, which we reported recently in a second paper, revealed that the response rates did indeed depend on students’ race and gender identity.

Professors were more responsive to white male students than to female, black, Hispanic, Indian or Chinese students in almost every discipline and across all types of universities. We found the most severe bias in disciplines paying higher faculty salaries and at private universities. In a perverse twist of academic fate, our own discipline of business showed the most bias, with 87 percent of white males receiving a response compared with just 62 percent of all females and minorities combined.

Surprisingly, several supposed advantages that some people believe women and minorities enjoy did not materialize in our data. For example: Were Asians favored, given the model minority stereotype they supposedly benefit from in academic contexts? No. In fact, Chinese students were the most discriminated-against group in our sample. Did reaching out to someone of the same gender or race — such as a black student emailing a black professor — reduce bias? No. We saw the same levels of bias in both same-race and same-gender faculty-student pairs that we saw in pairs not sharing a race or gender (the one exception was Chinese students writing to Chinese professors).

Professors Are Prejudiced, Too – NYTimes.com.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Citizenship bill flies under the radar, it shouldn’t | hilltimes.com

2014/05/27 Leave a comment

My take in the Hill Times on the Committee hearings on Bill C-24, changes to the Citizenship Act:

One month ago, Parliamentary hearings started on Bill C-24, the Strengthening the Value of Canadian Citizenship Act. Witnesses ranged from those who support the bill unreservedly, to those who oppose without qualification.

It was more Kabuki theatre than debate, given the government mainly probed supporting witnesses and the opposition opposing witnesses. However, many had significant nuances, particularly on due process questions, which may prove significant when the bill proceeds to more formal review.

Apart from the Canadian Jewish community, represented by CIJA, B’nai Brith and J-RAN, there is relatively little testimony from the larger ethnic community organizations. There has also been relatively little press coverage that I have seen in the ethnic media. This is somewhat surprising, given the impact that this bill will have on their communities.

Secondly, lawyers testified strongly against the bill, noting major concerns regarding Charter compliance, particularly with respect to revocation, notwithstanding Immigration Minister Chris Alexander’s assertion that the bill “is fully compliant with the requirements of our Constitution.” Additional concerns were expressed regarding the increased discretion for officials and the minister. Given the track record of the government before the courts, the minister’s confidence will likely be tested as cases emerge.

Thirdly, opinion is highly polarized between those who support the government’s approach of making citizenship “harder to get and easier to lose,” and those who believe the current approach is largely successful and believe in a more facilitative and flexible approach. Overall, more witnesses were opposed to the overall direction of the government.

This article aims to provide the general state-of-play on testimony to date.

Residency: There is no clear consensus and positions are split down the middle. However, some of those supporting the increased residency time and physical presence expressed the need for more flexibility, primarily for those with business reasons for travel. There was general opposition to removal of half-time credit for temporary residence (e.g., foreign students, temporary foreign workers, refugees and live-in caregivers) towards meeting residency requirements. The “intent to reside” provision was opposed by most witnesses, with some fearing that determination by citizenship officers of an applicant’s “intent” could be arbitrary, in addition to the broader question treating naturalized Canadians differently from born Canadians.

Knowledge and language testing: More organizations opposed increased coverage (from 18-year-olds to 54-year-old and 14-year-olds to 64-year-olds), particularly, refugee and settlement organizations. A number of witnesses also opposed the imposition of up-front language testing (introduced to streamline processing), as this effectively increased the language barrier. While some of the concerns regarding older applicants are valid, the 14-year-olds to 17-year-olds automatically will meet language requirements, as they will have been educated in a Canadian school.

Fee increases: Refugee advocates strongly opposed these increases, given that for many the cost could be prohibitive. Citizenship is particularly important for refugees given that many have had to sever connections with their country of origin.

Criminal convictions abroad: While not subject to much testimony, both those supporting and opposing expressed concern regarding the equivalence between Canadian and foreign courts, which needed greater clarity in the bill.

Revocation for fraud: All supported the principle for revocation of fraud or misrepresentation, but the vast majority opposed this being at ministerial discretion with no appeal to the Federal Court. There was support, however, for the streamlined process that removes the Cabinet role and consolidates revocation and removal proceedings.

Revocation for terrorism, high treason, or who take up arms against Canada: Not surprisingly, this formed the bulk of testimony on both sides of the issue, evenly divided. For many, such crimes break the “fundamental social contract of Canada” given that they are acts against Canadian values. For others, the fundamental issue is treating dual nationals, whether by birth or naturalization, differently from Canadian-only nationals, changing Canada’s long-standing policy since Diefenbaker.

Most of those who supported revocation noted the need to add to the existing test, “was the offence equivalent to Canadian law,” a second test, “was the judicial process also equivalent.”

Others opposed the reverse burden of proof on citizens to demonstrate that they did not have dual citizenship. It is unclear whether this includes only the right to another citizenship (e.g., Israel’s Law of Return which has parallels in a number of countries), or actually formally having exercised that right. Retroactive revocation was also criticized (the Omar Khadr provision?).

Less discussed issues included the reduced role for citizenship judges, the requirement to provide tax returns, providing preference to applicants having served in the Canadian Forces (very small numbers), Crown servant first generation exception, and the regulation of citizenship consultants.

A number of witnesses supported the expansion of “lost Canadians” to those born before 1947 (date of the first Canadian Citizenship Act) as well as their first generation born abroad. However, the government suppressed the testimony of long-standing activists Melynda Jarratt and Don Chapman who remain concerned that the bill only fixed war brides and their children, not posthumously recognizing Canadian citizenship of those who died before 1947, including Canadian war dead.

One of my favourite comments, from the Canadian Bar Association, is that the bill should be completely redrafted, with less cross-referencing, in plain language.

After the initial flurry of interest and commentary, the hearings are largely happening under the radar. Mainstream media are not covering it and ethnic communities and media are largely absent. Neither opposition party appears, at this stage, to be making this a major issue, in sharp contrast with C-23, the Fair Elections Act, and controversy over Temporary Foreign Workers. Alexander is lucky indeed.

There are some obvious areas where the government could respond to some of the testimony without changing the fundamentals. There seems no sound policy or political rationale not to count pre-permanent residency time towards citizenship. The intent to reside provision needs further clarification on how citizenship officers will decide whether it is genuine or not. It seems pointless to extend language assessment to 14-year-olds to 17-year-olds given that they have been in Canadian schools for six years before applying. There should be some flexibility for fees for low-income refugees. Greater clarity on Canadian equivalency on foreign criminality convictions will improve fairness. Revocation for terrorism and treason should similarly also test for equivalence to Canadian judicial processes, and have greater clearer criteria and language (e.g., “act” rather than “offence”).

None of this will address the philosophical differences between the government and its supporters, and those of its critics. The overall tightening of citizenship will likely reduce the number of permanent residents taking up citizenship. Increased residency and related requirements may make Canada less attractive to the “best and brightest,” and most mobile immigrants Canada wishes to attract. Revocation for terror and treason changes long-standing policy of treating all Canadians equally, whether born in Canada or naturalized.

As Bill C-24 moves to more formal parliamentary debate, we shall see if the political dynamics change and Canadians start pay more attention to this tougher approach to Canadian citizenship, and the likely effects over time, on Canada.

Immigration bill flies under the radar, it shouldn’t | hilltimes.com.

Filed under C-24, Citizenship, Citizenship Act Tagged with ,

Ideology, minority rule, distrust shaped Harper government’s relationship with public service | hilltimes.com

2014/05/27 Leave a comment

Good piece by Mark Burgess in the Hill Times that echoes some of the themes in Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias: Resetting Citizenship and Multiculturalism, but at a more senior level:

David Zussman, the author of Off and Running: The Prospects and Pitfalls of Government Transitions in Canada who led former prime minister Jean Chrétien’s transition to power in 1993, said the Conservatives came to power in 2006 with a clear agenda and an inexperienced Cabinet, two factors that defined its approach to the public service.

“The more a government is ideological, the more it knows exactly what it wants to do, typically it’s less willing to hear contrary points of view,” Mr. Zussman, the Jarislowsky Chair on Management in the Public Sector at the University of Ottawa, said in an interview.

“This is partly what I think happened in 2006 with the incoming Harper government, is that they had an agenda and they didn’t think it was necessary that they get counter points of view from the public service.”

Elizabeth Roscoe, a member of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s 2006 transition team, said the minority mandate was their biggest concern.

“You don’t know how long you’re planning for, and you don’t know what the opposition trigger points might be, and you don’t know the appetite of the electorate, so all of those things have to factor in,” she said in an interview with The Hill Times.

Minority mandates always make governments “twitchy” as they worry about losing power at any time, Mr. Zussman said, which further complicates the relationship with bureaucrats.

The most experienced voices in the new Cabinet at the time—Jim Flaherty, Tony Clement and John Baird—were ministers from Mike Harris’ Ontario government, which had a very rocky relationship with the public service.

“If you feel that the public service is not going to provide you with analysis that is consistent with your overall policy agenda, then you’re probably not going to pay a lot of attention to it,” Mr. Zussman said.

“There was a lot of resistance to overcome in 2006 and I think it’s been a work in progress,” he said.

In the book, the leader of Mr. Harper’s transition team, Derek Burney, said the government’s tightly-controlled approach would loosen after winning a majority government in 2011 and include the public service more in policy making.

“I don’t want to hear any more crap about minority government and politics every day,” Mr. Burney said in the book.

He called on bureaucrats to stand up and express ideas “because this is a government that is going to be a little more receptive to good policy ideas than it was when it was looking over its shoulder” in the minority days.

Mr. Burney, a senior strategic adviser at the law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, said the minority mindset wouldn’t change overnight but that it was up to senior bureaucrats to get over the Conservatives’ focus on politics and make the relationship work.

Mr. Zussman said he also would have predicted the Conservatives would open up to the public service and adjust to majority rule after 2011 but that the shift never occurred.

“I think what’s happened, frankly, is after five years, the government has a particular way of operating and they’re just continuing to operate the same way,” he said. “They would argue that it’s working well for them, I suppose.”

Mr. Burney couldn’t be reached for this article. Ms. Roscoe said it took public servants some time to understand the Conservatives’ philosophy and approach.

“Once they did, then they understood better how to align priorities, how to align the agenda, and how to help both bring forward ideas and to implement them,” she said.

Ideology, minority rule, distrust shaped Harper government’s relationship with public service | hilltimes.com. (pay wall)

Filed under Government, Public Policy Tagged with , , ,

Wayne Wouters: Public service reform means fixing sick leave too

2014/05/27 Leave a comment

More on Destination 2020 and the Clerk’s messaging on workplace stress and changes to sick leave:

Privy Council Clerk Wayne Wouters told the Citizen his Destination 2020 reforms, meant to bring the public service into the digital age, go hand-in-hand with Treasury Board President Tony Clement’s promise to replace an outdated sick-leave regime created more than 40 years ago for a very different workforce.

Wouters said he supports Clement’s plan to replace the existing accumulated sick-leave regime with a new short-term disability plan aimed at getting ill and injured workers better and back to work faster.

“Our system is not conducive to a modern workforce,” said Wouters. “People go on sick leave and they go on long-term disability and it’s out of sight, out of mind. We never think how to bring these people back, incorporate them and what kind of wellness program they need.”

A large part of stress is fundamental to the different roles of the political and official levels. When a government works well with the public service (without being captive to their advice), stress goes down. When a government is more antagonistic to the public service and often dismissive of their advice, stress goes up. Hopes that the Conservative government would evolve more into the former, given their time in office and having a majority since 2011, have not panned out as any number of recent incidents attest.

As to the replacement of sick leave and disability insurance, I have had experience on both sides of the issue: as a manager, with employees who abused the system, and as someone with an aggressive cancer which forced me to be absent for an extended period of time.

As a manager, there were few tools and support to deal with abuse in a time-efficient manner. Some employees used accumulated sick leave as “pre-retirement” time, which annoyed me to no end. But given that employees can always get a doctor to certify absence and the Health Canada verification process, while helpful, is somewhat cumbersome, there was not much that one can do. The sick leave reforms will address, at least in part, some of this abuse.

But as someone with cancer, who had banked considerable sick leave over my career, having this accumulated sick leave made a difference during my extended absence. I used it when I needed it. I also benefited from extremely supportive managers and HR. In the end, given a relapse, I ran out of sick leave and went on long-term disability.

One can argue, based upon comparability, that these changes may make sense. But as usual, when we focus on abuse, as we have to do, we penalize those who play by the rules, and who may find themselves in a catastrophic health situation where banking and flexibility can make a big difference.

Wayne Wouters: Public service reform means fixing sick leave too | Ottawa Citizen.

Filed under Government Tagged with , , , ,

CBA Canadians on Immigration – YouTube

2014/05/27 Leave a comment

Nice short video by the Canadian Bar Association interviewing Canadians on what they think of immigration. Limitation is that all the street interviews seem to be within a few blocks of each other in downtown Toronto, rather than also interviewing some in rural Canada. 7 minutes.

Favourite interview was a reflective comment on the sacrifices some parents made to come to Canada in order to give their children the opportunity.

CBA Canadians on Immigration – YouTube.

Filed under Multiculturalism

Reconciling Injustices in a Pluralistic Canada

2014/05/26 Leave a comment

Further to an earlier post (Opinion: Reconciling injustices in a pluralistic Canada) on the Simon Fraser Centre for Dialogue on historical recognition and reconciliation, obtained the final report and discussion documents. For those interested, it provides a good overview of recognition/reconciliation challenges, principles and pitfalls. The report lists the following principles:

Values-based decision-making: Rebuilding relationships between affected communities and Canadian society requires trust, shared intentions and long-term commitment. Lacking these, a reconciliation process risks causing further harm rather than healing.

Acknowledging shared history: Recognizing the full scope of past injustices is a necessary first step toward reconciliation. Witnessing stories, incorporating past injustices into the official narrative of Canadian history, and educating the public are critical elements of this.

Accountability: Governments must be accountable for past actions and take substantive actions to repair the resulting harm. The form this takes is circumstance dependent.

Opportunities to work through conflict: Space for comprehensive dialogue must be built into any reconciliation process, including upfront space for consensus building within the affected community and the mutual exchange of perspectives between members of the community and government.

Balanced community representation: Reconciliation processes must engage the full range of actors within the affected community, recognizing that communities are diverse and legitimately include different interests. Where community leadership exists, it must demonstrate the extent to which it accomplishes this goal of balanced representation.

Along with the more structured decisions, participants were also allowed to provide their assessment of one particular step or activity that would most help reconciliation:

Education, where educators and all parts of the education system fully communicate the truth of past injustices, and all Canadians understand a common history.

Substantive legacies, such as policy changes to specific legislation and resources, are provided to communities to correct and compensate for past injustices.

Responsiveness by government and Canadian society, where power structures evolve to ensure they reflect the needs of all communities, especially those that are marginalized or lack political power.

Mutually-held values and support, where all Canadians embrace ideas such as diversity, inclusivity and a shared sense of humanity.

Self-empowerment and advocacy within communities affected by injustice, leading to broader changes within society.

One of the more interesting processes and engagement on how to engage and build consensus.

Looking back at my experience with the Community and National Historical Recognition Programs (CHRP and NHRP), the community consultations were largely led at the political level.

The balance between a full and inclusive reconciliation process, and delivering practical initiatives that recognize past injustices, is hard to achieve.

While there were fairly open consultations with some of the communities, leading to an initial program design under Minister Oda, in the end Minister Kenney found out that these did not satisfy the political needs of some of the key communities such as Ukrainian Canadians. His personal consultations with key community leaders and organizations led him to recraft the programs in order to meet the political needs, and largely did so successfully. Some communities ended up happier than others (e.g., Ukrainian Canadians, Jewish Canadians); similarly some community organizations and individuals were unhappier than others (e.g., some Chinese Canadian and Italian Canadian organizations).

In the end, while there was consensus between the Martin and Harper governments on the communities to be recognized, how each government responded to the communities reflected their political objectives and interests.

In the end, reconciliation has to work through the political process, and this report, by presenting the more ideal scenarios, provides a reference point to judge some of the inevitable compromises that happen in the political process.

On the other hand, many if not most of the projects funded under CHRP were focussed on education and awareness. The recent commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the Komagata Maru is but one example of how a story largely ignored by the mainstream media in the past now attracted major media coverage.

And most of these community experiences are now part of our national narrative in Discover Canada, the citizenship guide.

As to the more ambitious items on the “wish list”  (e.g., legacies, power structures, empowerment), the success of the communities in having these events recognized, and the ongoing political attention to community interests, shows a very different Canada to when these events occurred. For some, this may not be enough; for others, it may be too much. But overall, Canadian society continues to respond to the changing nature of our country, and the democratic pressures of the more organized and influential communities.

Report and discussion document links below:

Dialogue Report

Discussion Guide

Filed under Historical Recognition, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Western women can learn from Islam – Anne Michaud

2014/05/26 Leave a comment

A bit of an odd piece on dress codes. Yes, the hypersexualization of the West in unhealthy, for both men and women, yet my sense, anecdotal, from my daughter and her friends, is that are strong young women, and have navigated the imagery successfully.

As to her comments about Iran, total ignorance. A thousand people demonstration  in Tehran, a city of more than 10 million, is a rounding error:

Women in full burqas and hijabs poured into Tehran’s streets last week to protest the modern dress of their urban sisters. City women usually nod to the conservative religious dress code by wearing knee-length coats and head kerchiefs in public. But earlier this month, several dared to bare their full heads and faces for a photograph.

So, the protesters — about 1,000 women and men — appealed to Iran’s morality police to better enforce the law, which obliges women to cover their hair and much of their bodies in loose clothing when outside, regardless of their religion.

As I studied the images of the mob of black-cloaked women, I thought we could use more public modesty ourselves.

As I see it, the hijab head covering and burqa cloak are symbols of subservience. They erase individuality, represent hostility to girls’ education and independence, and press unique souls into one narrow feminine role.

And yet, I wonder whether the same couldn’t be said about a culture that turns a Hannah Montana into a twerking, crotch-rubbing wrecking ball.

Western women can learn from Islam – Anne Michaud – Newsday.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Christie Blatchford: Evangelical Christianity and aboriginal healing come together to battle transparency and accountability | National Post

2014/05/26 Leave a comment

Christie Blatchford on Makayla and her family’s decision to stop conventional treatment. I have sympathy with their situation; chemo and related treatments are brutal, and treatment success is generally measured only by 5 year remission rates. However, putting one’s faith in prayer and non-traditional treatments will most likely condemn Makayla to death:

The issues that ought to have been central to the correctness of those decisions — was this little girl capable of making her own decision, and she may well have been, and if not, were her parents acting in her best interests? – were never fully explored.

The authorities effectively looked away. As the result, Makayla is both receiving treatment from aboriginal healers at Six Nations, a reserve near her own, and counting on Jesus – the efficacy of both much in doubt except to fervent believers.

Indeed, if it’s difficult to reconstruct from public reports which came first in the little girl’s story – her religiosity or her aboriginal culture – it’s less tricky to establish which had the greater impact.

Christie Blatchford: Evangelical Christianity and aboriginal healing come together to battle transparency and accountability | National Post.

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

Behind the Komagata Maru’s fight to open Canada’s border and the Question of an Apology

2014/05/26 Leave a comment

Fascinating account of the legal battles and the lawyer, J. Edward Bird, regarding the passengers of the Komagata Maru. Well worth reading:

The government’s strategy became clear the very day the Komagata Maru arrived in Vancouver. Health screening, a process normally completed within an hour, followed by immigration board interviews of all passengers, dragged on for days. The ship became a prison – no one was allowed off or on; food and water began to run low. The passengers’ lawyer, J. Edward Bird, was denied the right of access to his clients for weeks.

“I can only surmise that the instructions from the department at Ottawa to the immigration authorities here was to delay matters and delay matters and procrastinate and delay until such time as these people were starved back to their original port from whence they came,” he told a meeting hall packed with both South Asians and whites on June 21. “They talk about socialists and anarchists. There are no set of anarchists in Canada like the immigration officials who defy all law and order.”

Behind the Komagata Maru’s fight to open Canada’s border – The Globe and Mail

Interesting that Leader of the Opposition Tom Mulcair has called for a formal apology in Parliament.

I witnessed PM Harper’s “drive-by” apology in 2008 at the Surrey community picnic and it was not pretty. I quickly came to the conclusion that if governments wished to apologize (without legal liability for events which occurred in the past), the only acceptable way to do so was in Parliament, as was the case for Indian Residential Schools, the Chinese Head Tax, and Japanese WW2 Internment:

As we celebrate Asian Heritage Month this May, we cannot ignore the mistakes of our past — we must remember the history of the Komagata Maru Tragedy.

We must condemn these acts, respectfully, officially, and with sincerity, no matter when they occurred.

That is why New Democrats stand with members of the Indo-Canadian community in their call for an official apology from the Parliament of Canada for the Komagata Maru Tragedy.

In 2012, Canada’s New Democrats presented an Opposition Day Motion calling on Stephen Harper and the Conservatives to deliver an apology long overdue — they refused.

While successive Liberal and Conservative governments have failed to do the right thing, the NDP has always advocated for an apology.

Today, we renew our call.

Let’s not wait another 100 years to do the right thing — it’s time for the government to act now.

Mulcair: 100 years after Komagata Maru tragedy, Parliament’s apology is overdue | Toronto Star.

Filed under Historical Recognition, Immigration Tagged with , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →