Foreign workers issue delays trade deals

2014/05/20 Leave a comment

The higher-end of Temporary Foreign Workers. But given that one of the original cases was in relation to foreign IT workers displacing Canadian IT workers at the Royal Bank, not an easy issue for the Government. Particularly given that in contrast to NAFTA and the upcoming CETA, India is a low-cost supplier of IT services:

While discussions have also been delayed in part because of India’s lengthy election cycle, the fact that foreign workers have emerged as a potential stumbling block has implications for other lucrative trade agreements that Canada hopes to realize. It remains to be seen whether the resounding victory by Narendra Modi, a pro-business Hindu nationalist who heads the Bharatiya Janata Party, will help Canada overcome the impasse.

Rentala Chandrashekhar, the president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), which represents India’s IT community, recently visited Ottawa to stress the negative impact Canada’s reforms are having on trade and the potential that further changes could make things worse for both economies.

Mr. Chandrashekhar, a former senior public servant with the Indian government, met with Immigration Minister Chris Alexander, senior officials with Employment Minister Jason Kenney’s department and Don Stephenson, the chief trade negotiator for the Canada-India talks.

“Most important is perception, the perception that the Canadian economy is becoming more closed,” Mr. Chandrashekhar told the Globe. “The perception that walls are being put up … [This] is not something that is very conductive to the kind of environment that you need for pushing forward the idea of a freer trade regime.”

Foreign workers issue delays trade deals – The Globe and Mail.

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , ,

Review of Living with Cancer: A Journey

2014/05/20 Leave a comment

Nice review in our community newspaper of my book, Living with Cancer: A Journey. My other identity that unfortunately, too many of us, or those close to us, have.

Glebe Report Review

Filed under Other Tagged with , ,

Immigrants more likely to fail citizenship test the longer they’re here

2014/05/17 1 Comment

Some internal data from CIC on citizenship pass rates and trends. Delivering on “harder to get,” C-24 revocation provisions aimed at “easier to lose.”

Based on two immigration databases, the report, marked “confidential,” said the pass rates of the citizenship exam dropped significantly from 83 per cent in 2011 to 72.6 per cent in 2012, after the government introduced new test questions and raised the pass mark from 60 per cent to 75 per cent.

More than 80 per cent of immigrants applied for citizenship within the first five years of permanent residency and the group had a pass rate above 83 per cent — compared to the low 70s among those who have been in Canada for at least 10 years.

“That’s the irony,” said Meurrens. “People who want it do it quickly and are more motivated.”

…

The report also found immigrants from South Korea and China led the rest of the pack in passing the citizenship test, averaging 90 per cent and 88 per cent respectively.

In contrast, those from Sri Lanka and Vietnam had the lowest pass rates, averaging just 70 per cent and 67 per cent.

,,,

The number of rejected applicants has also remained consistent, averaging 2,308 per quarter. Flunking the citizenship test accounted for 65 per cent of all refused cases, followed by failing the language requirement (24 per cent) and not meeting the residence obligation (6.6. per cent). The rest were rejected on criminality and security grounds.

Immigrants more likely to fail citizenship test the longer they’re here | Toronto Star.

Filed under Citizenship, Language Tagged with ,

Ottawa welcomes more new Canadians – Canada News Centre

2014/05/17 1 Comment

Continuing with the selective release of citizenship statistics by city rather than the overall national numbers – which are the ones that matter to know if CIC is on track to eliminate the backlog and improve processing times:

Over 3,500 new citizens have been welcomed in Ottawa so far in 2014–more than three times the number of newly naturalized Canadians over the same period in 2013.

Ottawa welcomes more new Canadians – Canada News Centre.

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with ,

Au Musée de l’histoire, une majorité d’événements célébreront la guerre

2014/05/17 Leave a comment

Have not seen anything recent in English media on the Museum of Canadian History programming. Liberals have raised over-emphasis on military ((26 out of 30 events), Conservatives have claimed, with straight face, that this was Museum’s decision:

«On est un pays qui a fait de grandes choses», juge le député Stéphane Dion, citant le Canada comme un «pionnier de la démocratie et des droits de la personne». «Il y a plein de choses que l’on peut célébrer et tout est orienté vers le militaire», déplore-t-il.

Il est d’accord que le «passé militaire glorieux» du Canada – l’armée n’étant intervenue à l’étranger que pour assurer la paix et la justice, selon lui – mérite d’être souligné, mais il estime avec cette vision réductrice des célébrations, les conservateurs «appauvrissent la richesse de notre histoire».

Selon lui, tout n’a pas été que conflits armés au Canada. Le député libéral de Saint-Laurent-Cartierville aurait aimé voir dans la liste des festivités une célébration de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés et du centenaire du droit de vote des femmes, entre autres exemples.

Questionnée en Chambre à ce sujet, jeudi, la ministre du Patrimoine canadien, Shelly Glover, a répliqué que le Musée canadien de l’histoire prend ses propres décisions en matière de programmation.

«Les musées font leur propres décisions opérationnelles», a-t-elle répondu, écartant toute forme d’ingérence de son gouvernement.

«Ce sera un succès partout au pays grâce aux consultations que nous avons faites auprès des Canadiens et Canadiennes, et des consultations se poursuivent», a-t-elle ajouté au sujet des célébrations du 150e.

Au Musée de l’histoire, une majorité d’événements célébreront la guerre | Stéphanie Marin | National.

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

Premier Clark apologizes for B.C.’s historical wrongs against Chinese immigrants

2014/05/17 Leave a comment

A reminder of the power of an apology (without admitting legal liability) for the Chinese Canadian community in healing old wounds:

Shui Lee endured decades of intolerance and racism in Canada just because he is Chinese, but on Thursday the 58-year-old restaurant owner said he is finally proud to be both Canadian and Chinese.

With tears in his eyes and holding the 1914 head-tax document belonging to his great, great grandfather, Lee described what British Columbia’s formal apology for racist and discriminatory government policies against Chinese immigrants means to him.

“When I walk out this door today, I feel so proud that I can put my head up and I tell everybody I’m proud to be Canadian,” he said. “I can be proud to be Chinese.”

Lee, a Kelowna, B.C., restaurant owner, said he often argued with friends, relatives and others about what he considered Canada’s racist and intolerant laws and policies towards Chinese immigrants, but was told not to rock the boat.

“They don’t want to apologize to you,” he said he was told. “But I prove it today, they are wrong. The government did apologize to us. And they admit they were wrong.”

Much like the federal government’s Chinese Head Tax ex gratis payments and historical recognition program, or PM Harper’s apology to First Nations for residential schools, recognition of the past helps reconciliation in the present and future. While challenging to governments, particularly which communities are recognized and which not, the old hard-line approach of earlier Liberal governments that we do not apologize for what happened in the past does not address this need.

Of course, the more organized the community, the better the chance for some form of historical recognition. Democracy in action.

Clark apologizes for B.C.’s historical wrongs against Chinese immigrants – The Globe and Mail.

Filed under Historical Recognition, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

A 10-year record of immigrant success: TRIEC

2014/05/17 Leave a comment

Good profile on Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC) celebrating its 10 year anniversary:

Over the past decade TRIEC has become so admired that it is now copied in 12 cities across Canada and in countries around the world, including the U.S., Finland, Germany and New Zealand.

Indeed, it is a true Canadian success story.

“Ten years ago the landscape facing skilled immigrants was pretty dim,” Omidvar said at a recent event in Toronto celebrating the 10th anniversary of TRIEC. The event was attended by hundreds of newcomers and employers who have been helped by TRIEC.

“Today, we’ve made much progress, but we’ve a long way to go and in many cases have actually fallen back in terms of immigrant jobless rates and poverty levels,” she said.

In general, poverty rates have been rising among immigrant groups and falling among Canadian-born residents. More than 36 per cent of immigrants who have been in Canada less than five years live in poverty, according to a 2012 Canadian Labour Market Report. In the 1980s the rate was 25 per cent.

At the same time, researchers have found that while 70 per cent of immigrants find a job within six months of arriving here, only 40 per cent of those get work in their chosen occupation.

A 10-year record of immigrant success: Hepburn | Toronto Star.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Non-profits benefiting from data access – Post-Census

2014/05/16 Leave a comment

Good piece in the Globe on the use of data at the neighbourhood level and how the private sector has partially filled the gap caused by the cancellation of the Census and its replacement by the weaker National Household Survey (which does not offer the same level of granularity – the Census went down to the 250 household level):

“We’re not saying we didn’t need the mandatory census or that these data would be as good as if Statistics Canada had done a mandatory long-form census, but businesses absolutely rely on income and ethnicity data for small areas and Statscan didn’t release them,” said Jan Kestle, president of Environics Analytics.

“It’s easier to do when you’re only five years out from a [mandatory long-form] census. In five years time, we’re going to either need more mandatory questions or we’re going to need better access to good quality administrative data.”

Most people use the company’s data in conjunction with a mapping tool and segmentation analysis, which sorts the population into lifestyle categories such as “Middleburg Managers” and “Young Digerati,” to better understand their habits and tastes. A library, for example, found that despite having a large population of senior citizens, programs advertised to “seniors” were a bust. Having looked more closely at their income and lifestyle data, they targeted the same group as “mature adults” and had much more success.

“Often, the real power is in the melding of the data. They know things about their users, but not their neighbourhood, then they marry them,” said Doug Norris, chief demographer at Environics Analytics.

Non-profits benefiting from data access – The Globe and Mail.

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

How Change.org amplified the act of protest

2014/05/16 Leave a comment

For those interested in social media campaigns, an interesting article on change.org and what makes a successful campaign:

Started in 2007 as an online activism platform by Ben Rattray, a Californian educated at Stanford and the London School of Economics, Change.org transitioned to a petition-only platform in 2011. The site made world headlines when a Change.org petition started by the parents of murdered teen Trayvon Martin helped secure charges against George Zimmerman, his killer. That earned Rattray a spot on Time’s 100 most influential people of 2012. Today, the site has offices in 18 countries—and nearly 70 million users across the globe.

The site is an often-cacophonous clearing house for petitions calling for some sort of action in just about every imaginable domain. In Canada alone, there are petitions to “add women from Canadian history to Canadian bank notes”; to have fluoride removed from tap water; to have fluoride added to tap water; to have a “fully independent investigation” into the Senate scandal; to reverse Canada Post’s decision to end home delivery; to have Prime Minister Stephen Harper stop “using Sir Paul [McCartney’s] beautiful music to humanize his evil robot-man public image.” Some are successes. Most aren’t.

Successful campaigns “have two things,” Rattray says. “It has to be specific, for one, and there needs to be good reason to think that a sufficient amount of public attention around an issue can convince a decision-maker to make the choice to change.” David and Goliath narratives seem to work best, which might explain why Garrett’s petition was so successful. It spiked the contentious issue of animal rights with a dose of celebrity (Barenaked Ladies) and pitted both against a large, faceless corporate entity. Not coincidentally, animal rights is also one of 10 “cause areas”—criminal justice, environment and immigration are among the others—Change.org tends to promote on its site. In Garrett’s case, Change.org staff contacted him to help in the PR push for the petition, and emailed the petition to site users who had signed animal rights petitions in the past.

“We look at things that are most popular, that are trending, that people are interested in, and some things that are already taking off in the media or that have an appeal to a wide audience that the media might want to cover,” says Rattray. “Those are the ones where we’ll reach out to the petition creator and make sure that they’re using the tool most effectively.”

How Change.org amplified the act of protest.

Filed under Other, Public Policy Tagged with , ,

Higher immigrant population means lower municipal voter turnout: Study

2014/05/16 Leave a comment

Interesting analysis of municipal voting and immigrants and minorities in Toronto:

Siemiatycki said the top 10 wards in 2010 had average voter turnout at 56.8 per cent, with 36.3 per cent of their population being immigrants and 27.3 per cent being minorities.

In contrast, the bottom 10 had a turnout of just 44.6 per cent, with an average of 63 per cent and 62.7 per cent of their population being immigrants and minorities.

Siemiatycki attributed the low turnouts in wards with high immigrant and minority concentration to the nature of municipal elections, which are not guided by a party system like the provincial and federal elections.

“Municipal elections are confusing and it’s hard to wrap your head around because candidates have no open party affiliations. It’s more difficult for voters to identify with the candidates and what they stand for,” he explained.

“There is also the incumbent advantage in local elections. There are fewer immigrants and visible minorities elected municipally. People are less likely to vote if they are less likely to see themselves in the candidates.”

Higher immigrant population means lower municipal voter turnout: Study | Toronto Star.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →