Yakabuski | Réparer ses dégâts

2024/09/03 Leave a comment

Strongly worded and valid:

S’il y a une critique qui revient sans cesse à propos du gouvernement du premier ministre Justin Trudeau, c’est qu’il met trop l’accent sur les annonces et pas assez sur la mise en oeuvre des programmes qui en découlent. C’est un gouvernement qui néglige de façon quasi systématique les conséquences inattendues de ses initiatives, se concentrant plutôt sur le message qu’il souhaite envoyer à certaines clientèles politiques visées. Il ne semble pas apprendre de ses erreurs, ou, quand il le fait, il est trop tard pour réparer les dégâts déjà causés.

La preuve de cela demeure sa gestion du système canadien d’immigration. Faisant jadis l’envie du monde entier, ce système était fondé sur des critères de sélection précis permettant au Canada de classer des demandeurs pour que seuls les plus qualifiés parmi eux obtiennent la résidence permanente, peu importe leur pays d’origine. Les libéraux avaient déjà commencé à déroger à ce principe avant la pandémie en créant des exceptions pour certaines catégories d’immigrants. À partir de 2021, toutefois, le gouvernement Trudeau a complètement chamboulé le système en rehaussant les seuils d’immigration permanente et temporaire afin de doper la croissance économique et de combler la pénurie de travailleurs dans certains secteurs de l’économie.

Non seulement le Canada allait accepter davantage de résidents permanents — en fixant une cible de 500 000 en 2025 —, mais ces derniers allaient de plus en plus provenir de bassins de centaines de milliers de résidents temporaires déjà basés au pays grâce à l’expansion massive des programmes fédéraux des travailleurs étrangers temporaires et d’éducation internationale. Les critères de sélection établis avaient été contournés pour favoriser ceux qui avaient déjà une expérience de travail au Canada, même s’il s’agissait d’un emploi à bas salaire ne requérant ni de compétences précises ni de diplôme de niveau supérieur. Mais en procédant ainsi, Ottawa pouvait se vanter d’accélérer l’octroi des permis de résidence permanente et de répondre aux demandes de main-d’oeuvre des employeurs.

Or, on sait ce qui s’est passé depuis. La crise du logement n’est que la pointe de l’iceberg, la conséquence la plus visible de cet abandon par les libéraux des principes qui avaient guidé tous les gouvernements fédéraux précédents en matière d’immigration depuis plus de cinq décennies. Le taux de chômage des jeunes de 15 à 24 ans s’est établi à 14,2 % en juillet, selon Statistique Canada, une hausse de 3,6 points de pourcentage depuis un an et le niveau le plus élevé depuis 2012. Chez les jeunes hommes, le taux de sans-emploi a grimpé à 16 %. La situation est encore pire chez les jeunes immigrants qui sont au Canada depuis moins de cinq ans, dont le taux de chômage s’est élevé à 22,8 % en juillet, en hausse de 8,6 points de pourcentage depuis le même mois en 2023. L’économie canadienne a beau continuer de croître, la création d’emplois demeure bien en deçà de l’augmentation de la population en raison de l’immigration permanente et temporaire. Qu’arriverait-il si jamais une récession ou un ralentissement économique prononcé frappait le pays ? Une « tempête parfaite ».

Cette semaine, le gouvernement Trudeau a enfin annoncé son intention de resserrer les critères d’admissibilité du Programme des travailleurs étrangers temporaires, pas dans un lointain avenir comme il l’avait plusieurs fois suggéré, mais à partir du mois prochain. Entre autres, la durée des permis sera réduite à un an plutôt que deux, et la proportion maximale de travailleurs temporaires au sein d’une même entreprise sera de nouveau à 10 % plutôt qu’à 20 %. Mais avec près de 2,8 millions de résidents non permanents au pays, plus du double du nombre de 2021, des experts s’attendent avec raison à ce que des milliers d’entre eux choisissent de vivre dans la clandestinité plutôt que de quitter le Canada lors de l’expiration de leur permis de séjour. Après tout, la plupart d’entre eux sont venus au Canada sur une base temporaire en espérant obtenir la résidence permanente par la suite, grâce aux changements de critères d’admissibilité introduits par les libéraux en 2021. Or, le ministre Marc Miller a laissé entendre cette semaine qu’Ottawa examine aussi maintenant la possibilité de réduire les seuils d’immigration permanente.

Le ministère de l’Immigration, Réfugiés et Citoyenneté Canada et l’Agence des services frontaliers du Canada (ASFC) sont déjà aux prises avec un fardeau de travail qui dépasse l’entendement. Ils n’ont ni l’effectif ni les ressources pour s’assurer que tous ces travailleurs étrangers temporaires et tous ces étudiants internationaux quitteront le pays dès l’expiration de leur permis. Et on peine à croire que les libéraux, aussi dépensiers soient-ils, vont rehausser le budget de l’ASFC pour déporter tous les nouveaux sans-papiers qui ne quitteront pas volontairement le Canada. Le gouvernement est déjà accusé d’avoir fermé les yeux sur l’exploitation des travailleurs étrangers temporaires par certains employeurs sans scrupule. Procéder à la déportation de milliers d’ex-travailleurs étrangers temporaires forcés de vivre dans la clandestinité lui vaudrait d’être affublé de l’étiquette « trumpiste ».

Le recul du gouvernement Trudeau cette semaine ne sera pas suffisant pour remettre le système d’immigration canadien sur les rails avant plusieurs années et fera gonfler les rangs des sans-papiers au pays, avec toutes les répercussions sociales et économiques que cela implique. Il est difficile d’imaginer que ce scénario du pire surviendra dans un pays qui faisait autrefois l’envie du monde en matière d’immigration.

Source: Chronique | Réparer ses dégâts

Computer translation

If there is a criticism that comes up constantly about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, it is that it puts too much emphasis on the announcements and not enough on the implementation of the resulting programs. It is a government that almost systematically neglects the unexpected consequences of its initiatives, focusing instead on the message it wishes to send to certain targeted political clienteles. He doesn’t seem to learn from his mistakes, or, when he does, it’s too late to repair the damage already caused.

Proof of this remains its management of Canada’s immigration system. This system was once envied by the whole world, was based on specific selection criteria allowing Canada to classify applicants so that only the most qualified among them obtain permanent residence, regardless of their country of origin. Liberals had already begun to derogate from this principle before the pandemic by creating exceptions for certain categories of immigrants. Starting in 2021, however, the Trudeau government completely turned the system upside down by raising the thresholds for permanent and temporary immigration to boost economic growth and fill the shortage of workers in certain sectors of the economy.

Not only would Canada accept more permanent residents — with a target of 500,000 in 2025 — but Canada would increasingly come from pools of hundreds of thousands of temporary residents already based in the country through the massive expansion of the federal temporary foreign worker and international education programs. The established selection criteria had been circumvented to favour those who already had work experience in Canada, even though it was a low-wage job requiring neither specific skills nor a higher-level diploma. But by doing so, Ottawa could boast of accelerating the granting of permanent residence permits and responding to employers’ demands for labour.

However, we know what has happened since then. The housing crisis is just the tip of the iceberg, the most visible consequence of this abandonment by the Liberals of the principles that had guided all previous federal governments on immigration for more than five decades. The unemployment rate of 15-24-year-olds stood at 14.2% in July, according to Statistics Canada, an increase of 3.6 percentage points in a year and the highest level since 2012. Among young men, the unemployment rate rose to 16%. The situation is even worse among young immigrants who have been in Canada for less than five years, whose unemployment rate was 22.8% in July, up 8.6 percentage points since the same month in 2023. The Canadian economy may continue to grow, but job creation remains well below population growth due to permanent and temporary immigration. What would happen if a recession or a pronounced economic slowdown ever hit the country? A “perfect storm”.

This week, the Trudeau government finally announced its intention to tighten the eligibility criteria for the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, not in the distant future as it had repeatedly suggested, but starting next month. Among other things, the duration of permits will be reduced to one year instead of two, and the maximum proportion of temporary workers within the same company will again be 10% instead of 20%. But with nearly 2.8 million non-permanent residents in the country, more than double the number in 2021, experts rightly expect thousands of them to choose to live in hiding rather than leave Canada when their residence permits expire. After all, most of them came to Canada on a temporary basis in the hope of obtaining permanent residence afterwards, thanks to the changes in eligibility criteria introduced by the Liberals in 2021. However, Minister Marc Miller suggested this week that Ottawa is also now considering the possibility of reducing permanent immigration thresholds.

The Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) are already struggling with a workload beyond comprehension. They do not have the staff or the resources to ensure that all these temporary foreign workers and all these international students leave the country when their permit expires. And it is hard to believe that the Liberals, no matter how spendthrift they are, will increase the CBSA budget to deport all the new undocumented who will not voluntarily leave Canada. The government is already accused of turning a blind eye to the exploitation of temporary foreign workers by some unscrupulous employers. Deporting thousands of former temporary foreign workers forced to live in hiding would ear him the “Trumpist” label.

The Trudeau government’s retreat this week will not be enough to get Canada’s immigration system back on track for several years and will swell the ranks of undocumented people in the country, with all the social and economic repercussions that this entails. It is difficult to imagine that this worst-case scenario will occur in a country that was once the world’s desire for immigration.

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Gee: High-ranking Toronto cop who cheated in the name of equity received too light a penalty 

2024/09/03 Leave a comment

Undermines trust and efforts to improve representation:

…Even if she did not act for personal gain, the adjudicator said, her conduct fell “far below the standard expected of a police officer.” Ms. Clarke effectively admitted as much when she pleaded guilty last fall to a series of violations of the Police Services Act, among them discreditable conduct and breach of confidence.

She is lucky she was not dismissed from the force altogether. That she will be allowed to continue in the senior role of inspector is difficult to understand.

Police, quite obviously, exist to enforce the rules. When they themselves break those rules, however pure their motives, it undermines public confidence that the law will be applied fairly and evenly. That takes us into dangerous waters. If people start doubting the police, they are less likely to report crime and more likely to take justice into their own hands.

Those who campaign for racial justice know this better than anyone. It is strange to see some of them making a hero of Ms. Clarke.

Source: High-ranking Toronto cop who cheated in the name of equity received too light a penalty

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TFWP: Setting the baseline to evaluate government changes

2024/09/03 Leave a comment

Just as the impact of the caps on international students is becoming apparent through monthly and quarterly numbers for post-secondary study permits, one can expect the government’s restrictions on low-wage temporary workers to start have an impact in the October-December quarter.

To better monitor and assess the impact, I prepared some charts on Temporary Foreign Workers by NOC Code. For those unfamiliar with the codes A 0 or 1: university degree, B 2 or 3: community college, apprenticeship, more than 2 years on the job, occupations with supervisory responsibilities or significant health and safety responsibilities, C 4 or 5: some secondary education, up to two years on-the-job training or equivalent, D 6 or 7: on-the-job training.

The following slides highlight the shift over the past five years. This provides a good overview and the context for articles like The sudden rise of temporary foreign workers in entry-level office jobs.

Starting with two views by NOC level, the numbers and the percentage shares which show the dramatic increase, both absolute and in percentage, of the low wage and low skilled temporary workers. Interestingly, there has been a squeezing of level C workers:

The next two slides provide the breakdown by NOC sector where sales & service and natural resources & agriculture have increased the most:

And lastly, looking at June year-over-year change and two year change, as well as from pre-pandemic 2018, showing again the greatest increase in level D occupations and, in terms of sectors, Business & Administration and Health, the latter from a low base:

Note to media: avoid year-to-date analysis in drawing conclusions as happened with Postmedia and other publications and focus on quarterly year-over-year changes.

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Poilievre says he would cut population growth after Liberals signal immigration changes coming

2024/08/31 Leave a comment

Ironically, by reversing some of their ill-advised policies that resulted in overly rapid increases in the number of temporary workers and students and, arguably, Permanent Residents levels, the Liberals have provided a pathway for a more robust discussion of immigration. Given that this is based upon the impact on housing, healthcare and infrastructure, not xenophobia and fear of the other, immigration is not really much of a “third rail,” Telling that Abacus Data didn’t include immigration in their polling on third rail issues.

In case you missed it, my earlier analysis of what one might expect under a Poilievre government,What changes a Conservative government might make to Canada’s immigration policies. In retrospect, my assessment may have been too cautious as these policy reversals by the government make further restrictions more politically acceptible:

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Thursday he would rein in Canada’s population growth if elected, claiming the Liberal government has “destroyed our immigration system” and insisting on cuts to the number of people arriving in order to preserve a program that was once widely supported.

Speaking to reporters on Parliament Hill, Poilievre said immigration was “not even a controversial issue” before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was elected, but a surge in international students and low-wage temporary foreign workers has ruined the “multigenerational consensus” that bringing more people to live here is a good thing.

“The radical, out-of-control NDP-Liberal government has destroyed our system,” Poilievre said. “We have to have a smaller population growth.”

Poilievre said a future Conservative government would tie the country’s population growth rate to a level that’s below the number of new homes built, and would also consider such factors as access to health-care and jobs.

That’s an imprecise metric that makes it difficult to pinpoint just how many permanent residents or non-permanent residents such as temporary foreign workers, international students and refugees would be admitted on Poilievre’s watch.

Poilievre has previously said immigration levels should be tied to housing starts. The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) reported roughly 255,000 housing starts in July.

The federal government has already said it will admit about 485,000 permanent residents — immigrants who intend to settle here on a permanent basis — to Canada this year, with the target rising to 500,000 in both 2025 and 2026.

In an apparent reference to research from Mike Moffatt, the senior director of policy at the Smart Prosperity Institute who has studied immigration and housing, Poilievre said Canada “cannot grow the population at three times the rate of the housing stock, as Trudeau has been doing.”

The government hasn’t offered a hard target for the non-permanent resident streams but has already announced an initiative to rein in the number of international students and, at the Liberal cabinet retreat in Halifax earlier this week, announced a crackdown on low-wage temporary foreign workers (TFWs).

The number of non-permanent residents has been growing at a breakneck pace in the post-COVID era after the federal government relaxed regulations around TFWs and allowed Canada’s colleges and universities to dramatically expand the international student body.

Non-permanent resident population more than doubles in 3 years

In the last three years, the number of non-permanent residents — a category that includes TFWs, international students and asylum seekers — has more than doubled from about 1.3 million in 2021 to nearly 2.8 million in the second quarter of this year, according to data compiled by Statistics Canada.

Of that figure, 1.3 million people are in Canada on work permits, a category that includes TFWs.

The low-wage TFW sector, which has admitted workers in food services but also in sectors such as construction and hospitals, has grown from 15,817 such workers in 2016 to 83,654 in 2023, according to federal data.

The forthcoming changes to the low-wage stream will reduce the number of TFWs by about 65,000, the government has said, which brings it back to pre-pandemic levels.

Poilievre said the government has “destroyed” the TFW program by dropping a number of regulations that were designed to limit foreign workers to certain industries in areas with low unemployment.

The agricultural sector has long relied on TFWs to grow and harvest the food the country eats and exports, and Poilievre said he would preserve the program for that purpose.

But he also said he wants to “block temporary foreign workers where they are taking jobs from Canadians.”

He said he would only admit international students if they have a place to live and the means to pay for it, and possess “a real admission letter to a real educational institution.”

Trudeau said Monday the government is considering reducing the number of permanent residents Canada accepts each year — a potentially major policy change after years of increasing immigration levels on the Liberal government’s watch.

Unemployment high among newcomers

Talk of an immigration cutback comes as unemployment rates among immigrants and young people have crept up to concerning levels in recent months, according to federal data.

According to the Bank of Canada’s recent monetary report, the “newcomer” or immigrant unemployment rate now stands at 11.6 per cent — well above the overall unemployment rate of 6.4 per cent that was recorded in June.

Asked by CBC News if the government is considering broader changes to the immigration system beyond cuts to TFWs at a time of higher unemployment, Trudeau said the government is going to review its immigration levels this fall.

Asked if a reduction in the number of permanent residents is on the table, Trudeau suggested it’s an issue he takes “extremely seriously” and said that topic would be discussed among cabinet ministers.

“We’re making sure that the entire package makes as much sense as possible for the needs of Canadians and for the needs of our economy,” Trudeau said.

“We’ll be looking at unemployment rates and opportunities to make further adjustments over the course of this fall as we come forward with comprehensive level plans that will respond to the reality that Canada’s facing now and in years and decades to come,” he said.

He said immigration needs to be “done right,” and that changes may be forthcoming so that “Canada remains a place that is positive in its support for immigration but also responsible in the way we integrate and make sure there’s pathways to success for everyone who comes to Canada.”

Immigration Minister Marc Miller also said “all options are on the table” when it comes to addressing immigration levels.

He acknowledged that some people have expressed concern to him about the current pace of population growth, which is among the highest in the developed world.

Source: Poilievre says he would cut population growth after Liberals signal immigration changes coming

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Brest and Levine: D.E.I. Is Not Working on College Campuses. We Need a New Approach.

2024/08/31 Leave a comment

Good thoughtful discussion:

With colleges and universities beginning a new academic year, we can expect more contentious debate over programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion. Progressives are doubling down on programs that teach students that they are either oppressed peoples or oppressors, while red states are closing campus D.E.I. programs altogether.

For all of the complaints, some of these programs most likely serve the important goal of ensuring that all students are valued and engaged participants in their academic communities. But we fear that many other programs are too ideological, exacerbate the very problems they intend to solve and are incompatible with higher education’s longstanding mission of cultivating critical thinking. We propose an alternative: a pluralist-based approach to D.E.I. that would provide students with the self-confidence, mind-sets and skills to engage with challenging social and political issues.

Like many other universities, our university, Stanford, experienced a rise in antisemitic incidents after the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel’s response. We were appointed to the university’s Subcommittee on Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias, which was charged with assessing the nature and scope of the problem and making recommendations. The upshot of hearing from over 300 people in 50 listening sessions is that many Jews and Israelis have experienced bias and feel insecure on our campus.

A parallel committee formed to address anti-Muslim, Arab and Palestinian bias reached similar conclusions for those groups.

These findings are discouraging, given that institutions of higher learning have spent several decades and vast sums of money establishing institutional infrastructures to promote diversity, equity and inclusion. Discouraging, but not surprising — because our inquiries revealed how exclusionary and counterproductive some of these programs can be.

Our committee was pressed by many of those we interviewed to recommend adding Jews and Israelis to the identities currently recognized by Stanford’s D.E.I. programs so their harms would be treated with the same concern as those of people of color and L.G.B.T.Q.+ people, who are regarded as historically oppressed. This move would be required of many California colleges and universities under a measure moving through the California Legislature. But subsuming new groups into the traditional D.E.I. regime would only reinforce a flawed system.

D.E.I. training originated in the corporate world of the 1960s and migrated to universities in subsequent decades, initially to rectify the underrepresentation of minority groups and then to mitigate the tensions associated with more diverse populations. In recent years, the goals of diversity and inclusion have become the bête noire of the political right, in part to avoid reckoning with our nation’s history of slavery and discrimination in ways that might cause, as some state laws have put it, “discomfort, guilt or anguish.” We do not share this view. We believe that fostering a sense of belonging among students of diverse backgrounds is a precondition for educational success. That said, many D.E.I. training programs actually subvert their institutions’ educational missions.

Here’s why. A major purpose of higher education is to teach students the skill of critical inquiry, which the philosopher and educator John Dewey described as “the active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it.” Conscientious faculty members teaching about race and gender require their students to critically consider differing views of the status and history of people of color, women and L.G.B.T.Q.+ people. Teaching critical thinking about any topic is challenging and humbling work.

While issues of diversity, equity and inclusion are sometimes addressed in rigorous classroom courses, university-based D.E.I. programs tend to come in two basic forms: online or off-the-shelf trainings that are more suitable for airline safety briefings than exploring the complexities of interracial relations, and ideological workshops that inculcate theories of social justice as if there were no plausible alternatives. The Intergroup Dialogue, developed at the University of Michigan and used on many campuses around the country, “assist[s] participants in exploring issues of power, privilege, conflict and oppression.” The program’s success is measured by students’ acknowledgment of pervasive discrimination and their attribution of inequalities to structural causes, such as deeply rooted government policies.

D.E.I. programs often assign participants to identity categories based on rigid distinctions. In a D.E.I. training program at Stanford a few years ago, Jewish staff members were assigned to a “whiteness accountability” group, and some later complained that they were shot down when they tried to raise concerns about antisemitism. The former D.E.I. director at a Bay Area community college described D.E.I. as based on the premises “that the world is divided into two groups of people: the oppressors and the oppressed.” She was also told by colleagues and campus leaders that “Jews are ‘white oppressors,’” and her task was to “decenter whiteness.”

Rather than correcting stereotypes, diversity training too often reinforces them and breeds resentment, impeding students’ social development. An excessive focus on identity can be just as harmfulas the pretense that identity doesn’t matter. Overall, these programs may undermine the very groups they seek to aid by instilling a victim mind-set and by pitting students against one another.

Research shows that all students feel excluded from academic communities at one point or another, no matter their backgrounds. The Stanford psychologists Geoffrey Cohen and Greg Walton have found that “belonging uncertainty”— the “state of mind in which one suffers from doubts about whether one is fully accepted in a particular environment or ever could be” — can afflict all of us. From our perspective, if one student is excluded, all students’ learning is diminished. Belonging is a foundation for the shared pursuit of knowledge and the preparation of students as citizens and leaders of a diverse society.

American campuses need an alternative to ideological D.E.I. programs. They need programs that foster a sense of belonging and engagement for students of diverse backgrounds, religious beliefs and political views without subverting their schools’ educational missions. Such programs should be based on a pluralistic vision of the university community combined with its commitments to academic freedom and critical inquiry.

An increasing number of educators are coming to this conclusion. Musa al-Gharbi, a sociologist at Stony Brook University, presents a holistic approach to diversity. Conflicting viewpoints must be “brought into conversation with one another in a constructive way — to form a picture that is more complete and reliable than we would have were we to look at only the dominant perspective or only at subaltern perspectives,” he has written. Danielle Allen, a professor of political philosophy, ethics, and public policy at Harvard, champions “confident pluralism,” in which we “honor our own values while making decisions together.” And the philosopher Susan Neiman invokes a tradition of universalism that allows for — indeed requires — empathy with others rather than a competition among sufferings. “If you don’t base solidarity on deep principles that you share, it’s not real solidarity,” she has said. The group Interfaith America, which promotes interfaith cooperation, has developed a comprehensive Bridging the Gap curriculum that offers a practical guide for discourse across differences.

At the core of pluralistic approaches are facilitated conversations among participants with diverse identities, religious beliefs and political ideologies, but without a predetermined list of favored identities or a preconceived framework of power, privilege and oppression. Students are taught the complementary skills of telling stories about their own identities, values and experiences and listening with curiosity and interest to the stories of others, acknowledging differences and looking for commonalities.

Success would be an academic community of equally respected learners who possess critical thinking skills and are actively engaged in navigating challenging questions throughout the curriculum — an approach that teaches students how to think rather than what to think.

Pluralism does not ignore identity or pervasive structural inequalities. Rather, it provides a framework in which identity is construed broadly and understood as a starting point for dialogue, rather than the basis for separation and fragmentation. It commits questions about the causes and persistence of inequalities to the classroom, where they can be examined through the critical, evidence-based methods at the root of a university education. Respecting the diverse perspectives of one’s fellows and adhering to norms such as active listening, humility and generosity enable classroom conversations about contentious social and political issues.

Nonprofit and religious leaders are translating these ideas into an emerging movement. A collaborative of philanthropic funders called New Pluralists is organizing and supporting groups that are putting pluralism into practice. Such efforts face headwinds both from conservatives who are suspicious of all efforts to foster inclusion and from groups that believe they benefit from the current system. And it will require heavy lifting by educators to work together with their students to create the preconditions for authentic critical engagement.

The current system is not good for Jews at Stanford and other universities. It’s not good for Muslims, either. And it’s certainly not good for society as a whole.

Paul Brest is former dean and professor emeritus at Stanford Law School. Emily J. Levine is associate professor of education and history at Stanford.

Source: D.E.I. Is Not Working on College Campuses. We Need a New Approach.

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Canada’s immigration system is failing recent immigrants themselves

2024/08/31 Leave a comment

Of note:

The unemployment rate for immigrants who arrived within the past five years rose to nearly 13 per cent in July, which was seven percentage points higher than the unemployment rate for workers born here. Aside from the early months of COVID-19, that’s the largest unemployment gap for recent immigrants in more than a decade, Bank of Montreal senior economic Robert Kavcic wrote in a research note.

“The reality now is that the current rate of inflow is not getting readily absorbed, which is doing no favour to the domestic job market (see youth unemployment), and no favour to those coming to Canada,” he wrote.

It’s a stark reversal from what had been a shining feature of the Canadian immigration experience. Starting in the early 2010s the unemployment rate for newcomers who arrived within the previous five years began to fall faster than the unemployment rate for Canadian-born workers, which itself was also on the decline. In fact, by 2018 immigrants who’d arrived within the previous five years were more likely to be employed than native-born Canadians.

A similar though less pronounced improvement unfolded for immigrants who’d landed five to 10 years earlier, which has since reversed. Meanwhile, by the time immigrants are here for more than a decade, their unemployment rate is largely indistinguishable from that of native-born workers.

Source: Canada’s immigration system is failing recent immigrants themselves

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Majority of Canadians believe Liberals’ immigration targets are set too high: poll

2024/08/31 Leave a comment

Worth reading (link to ppt: https://leger360.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Leger-X-National-Post_Politics-August-26th-2024-002.pdf). Helps understand the ongoing backtracking of the government on many of its earlier and often misguided policies:

Most Canadians believe the Trudeau government’s immigration plan is admitting too many people, but they’re less clear on the temporary foreign worker program, according to new polling.

Leger conducted the new survey, exclusively for the National Post, that showed 65 per cent of Canadians believe the Liberals’ current immigration targets are too high. The government has a target to bring in 500,000 newcomers in both 2025 and 2026.

The poll found 20 per cent of Canadians believe the target is the right number, while three per cent believe it is not enough.

Andrew Enns, an executive vice-president with Leger, said attitudes toward immigration have been hardening over the past few years.

“What’s starting to happen now is that we’re starting to see Canadians, rightly or wrongly, are connecting a few issues to immigration,” he said.

Enns’ polling shows that 78 per cent of respondents believe high immigration levels are contributing to the housing shortage, while 76 per cent said they are having an impact on health care.

The polling also reveals that 72 per cent believe Canada’s immigration policy is too generous and only 26 per cent of Canadians believe the government does a good job vetting new immigrants.

While the governing Liberals have so far left permanent resident immigration untouched, they have indicated there will be changes to the number of temporary residents such as international students and temporary foreign workers who can come to Canada.

The Liberals moved this week to cut the number of temporary foreign workers and said for the first time there will be overall caps on the number of temporary residents let into Canada in a plan promised later this year.

Enns polled on the temporary foreign worker program and found most people (57 per cent) were not familiar with it. Only 43 per cent said they were familiar with it.

Despite the gap in knowledge, 48 per cent of respondents said they thought the program was positive, while 38 per cent said it was negative.

There was considerable support for the program in Quebec, with 61 per cent of respondents agreeing it was positive.

“People just aren’t sure about the program or how it works, so you see that sort of split when it comes to the impression of the program itself,” said Enns.

The program grew considerably over the past two years when the Liberals eased some of the restrictions. The government rolled back the changes this week after the spike in numbers.

Enns said there are parts of the country where business groups have lobbied hard for the program and put forward the message that Canadians don’t want many of these jobs. Enns said that message might have had some impact, but Canadians may have come to their own conclusions about low-wage work.

“I do wonder whether or not there’s also a reflection in the population that there’s some jobs that are just hard to fill.”

Leger’s poll was an online sample of 1,602 Canadians conducted between Aug. 23 and 25.

The sample is weighted to reflect Canada’s demographic makeup, but a similar random sample would produce a margin of error of 2.45 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

Source: Majority of Canadians believe Liberals’ immigration targets are set too high: poll

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A little more than 200 Gazans have arrived in Canada under special visa program: IRCC

2024/08/31 Leave a comment

Latest numbers:

More than 200 Gazans have arrived in Canada under a special temporary residency program launched in January, according to Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

“As of August 24, 2024, 209 people have arrived in Canada under the temporary public policy,” wrote IRCC spokesman Jeffrey MacDonald in an email to the National Post.

This is a four-fold increase in arrivals since late May, when the program’s cap was expanded from 1,000 to 5,000 visas. At the time, officials said that 41 displaced Gazans had arrived in Canada, receiving visas under both the new policy and a pre-existing one.

MacDonald said that getting eligible Gazans out of the war-torn enclave is a major barrier to their resettlement in Canada.

“We have put forward names of people who passed preliminary eligibility and admissibility reviews to local authorities for approval to exit Gaza,” said MacDonald. “However, Canada does not control (how) or when someone can exit Gaza.”

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt has been closed since being seized by Israel in early May. Even so, MacDonald stressed that Israel has been cooperating with Canada’s request to facilitate the exit of Gazans with extended family members in Canada.

MacDonald said that 478 people who left Gaza on their own have been approved to come to Canada but did not say how many of them have made it to the country. He also disclosed that 673 temporary resident visas have been approved for Palestinians outside of Gaza since the Oct. 7 attacks, through pre-existing IRCC programs.

He did not elaborate on how many of the non-Gazan visa holders have arrived on Canadian soil, saying only that they are “able to travel to Canada.”

Source: A little more than 200 Gazans have arrived in Canada under special visa program: IRCC

Filed under Immigration Tagged with

Ling: We’re terrible at talking about the Israel-Hamas conflict. I tried to figure out why. [the need for criteria]

2024/08/30 Leave a comment

Good on Ling for having these conversations.

The most recent example is that of Capital Pride provides an example of the kinds of questions that need to be raised. How should organizations like Capital Pride assess which issues to promote or protest? What should the criteria be? How should one distinguish between different atrocities and abuses? Why Israel/Hamas and not Chinese repression of Uighurs, killings in the Sudan civil war, Russian war crimes in Ukraine, Uganda’s anti-homosexuality act, etc?

So, to encourage some discussion, here are some initial suggestions of possible criteria:

  • Is the protest and actions primarily about LGBTQ rights?
  • If not, how does a country’s or organization’s human rights abuse compare to other human rights abuse?
  • How divisive will the issue/protest be among LGBTQ communities and more broadly?
  • How does the treatment of LGBTQ differ between parties to a conflict?

These have been written for the Israel/Hamas protests and thus reflect my preferences and biases. But the need for criteria, rather than event and particular group driven protests, would reduce the likelihood that some LGBTQ members and allies would feel excluded:

…At least Fogel was willing to be introspective. I suggested to him that Haaretz — the liberal Israeli paper, a fierce critic of Netanyahu, which has relentlessly covered allegations of Israeli war crimes  — could not publish in Canada without being deluged with complaints and criticism. “I don’t think you’re entirely wrong,” he says. “What passes for the norm in Israel is sometimes seen by the Jewish community here as crossing the line.”

How can we have a serious discourse with all these invisible lines? Fogel gave me a fatalistic answer: “I’m not sure you can.”

It’s a variation of an idea I heard from Toney, and Kaplan-Myrth, and a host of other people in recent months: we’re too far gone, too polarized, too emotional to be able to talk about this crisis. Many say they respect the positions of the other side, and are keen to figure out points of agreement, yet often caricature their ideological opposites as inflexible, radical, impossible to reason with.

Mediating this conflict through the body politic doesn’t necessarily mean striving for compromise or capitulation, and it doesn’t entail a return to an age of elite gatekeepers. But it has to mean engaging in discussion, debate and argument without immediately calling it all off. Enabling genuine discourse doesn’t fuel hate, and may act as a pressure release valve to actually prevent it. At the same time, we can’t accept hateful language, online or in the street, just because the author insists their side has a monopoly on morality and justice.

There’s nothing naive about this idea: It is literally the foundation of our society. It is deeply cynical to say that our ideological opposites must be silenced, boycotted, or shouted down because they are dangerous or immoral.

Polarization is not a thing that other people do to us. It is a thing we do to each other. In the same way, mediation is not something that will be done for us, but something we have to commit to and work on, every day, ourselves.

Source: We’re terrible at talking about the Israel-Hamas conflict. I tried to figure out why.

Filed under Antisemitism, LGBTQ, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

LILLEY: Security screening tarnished by accused terrorist’s citizenship quest

2024/08/30 Leave a comment

Understandable that this case provokes these questions. No screening system is perfect after all and likely the high numbers and resulting workload increase the risk. The one bit of good news is that his citizenship could be revoked given misrepresentation at both the Permanent Resident and citizenship approval stages.

Lilley is correct in that this will likely raise questions with Gazan refugees:

When Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi first tried to come to Canada, he was rejected. That was the right answer and I wish it had stayed that way, but sadly he was not only let in but granted citizenship.

“This is the way that the investigative and national security system should work,” Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said in his opening statement before a Commons committee on Wednesday.

LeBlanc was appearing before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, where it was revealed that Eldidi, now accused of plotting a potential terror attack, was screened by our intelligence agencies a half-dozen times. That fact alone is a damning indictment of our system and calls into question how secure our screening is as we bring in thousands of people from Gaza, an area ruled by the Hamas terrorist group.

Eldidi is the father portion of the father-son duo arrested at the end of July on terrorism-related charges. Among the charges Eldidi is facing is one for aggravated assault, contrary to Sec. 83.2 of the Criminal Code.

That section is specific to committing an indictable offence “for the benefit of, at the direction of or in association with a terrorist group.” The accusation is Eldidi was the star of a 2015 ISIS terror and torture video, in which he allegedly performed unspeakable acts on another man.

That this allegation wasn’t unearthed by our security services before he was granted citizenship has led to many questions. The Trudeau government, though, has spent the last month dodging those questions, but less than an hour before Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc showed up to testify, a chronology of events was released.

Eldidi first tried to come to Canada in late 2017, but was denied a visa because he was deemed a “potential non-genuine visitor.” That assessment seems to have been accurate because Eldidi wasn’t just looking to visit Canada from Egypt, he was looking to claim asylum here.

In January 2018, after submitting new information to Canadian officials, Eldidi was granted a “temporary resident visa” and was allowed to enter Canada. He arrived in the country that February via Pearson airport and in June 2018 claimed asylum.

In both his initial visa application (which was rejected) and the secondary one (which was approved), Eldidi was subject to security screening including biometrics, such as fingerprints.

After his asylum claim was made, Eldidi was subjected to biometrics and security screening again.

“Application was reviewed and a favourable recommendation was provided by security screening partners,” the government’s chronology said.

If hearing “biometrics” as a screening tool makes you feel better, it shouldn’t; it just means that we didn’t find his fingerprints in an existing database.

Eldidi worked the system to quickly move from asylum claimant to getting a work permit, then permanent resident status and finally citizenship in May. Then in June, security officials who had approved him at every step began monitoring him after a tip from our allies in France that something was up.

In July, Eldidi and his son Mostafa were arrested and accused of an alleged terror plot aimed at Toronto’s Jewish community.

Asked time and again about the failure to stop a man who allegedly starred in an ISIS torture video from entering the country, LeBlanc refused to say it was a failure. Clearly it was, though Liberal MPs on the committee tried to portray his arrest as a success.

Sure, the cops stopping an alleged terror attack before it happens is a good thing, but we are supposed to have layers of security to stop those who were allegedly involved in terrorism from coming here and getting citizenship.

Right now, the Trudeau government is in the process of bringing in thousands of people from Gaza. They are trying to assure the public that there is no threat thanks to “biometrics” and “security screening.”

Based on what you have heard about the Eldidi case, do you still feel confident or secure?

Source: LILLEY: Security screening tarnished by accused terrorist’s citizenship quest

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

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