Richler: Is the Jewish moment in North America over?

2024/05/20 Leave a comment

Interesting long read:

….But later tides have washed the North American beach clean for other groups to land and make their mark. Jews, by virtue of their success, are seen as a part of the establishment now. Not allies, as Jews were to African Americans during the civil-rights era, but “white-adjacent” and fair targets for shunning. We are living, now, in a time in which our “common humanity” matters less than the particular, than the difference in our identities so often brandished to set a community apart. It may only be passing, but at least for today whatever qualities we may share falter before the imperative of fair representation so that where, earlier, Jewish authors dominated bookstore shelves, the cinema, Broadway and television, now a story by a Jew is unlikely to be chosen by, say, the CBC, over a Black, Indigenous, Asian, South Asian or Muslim one.

Which is a positive and as it should be. Jewish novels are not so novel, their stories, their idiom are familiar, and any reader, any patron of any art, craves the new and what it teaches for good reason. Through art we learn about each other and how to share the spaces, real and abstract, that we live in. Other communities’ stories are invigorating the arts and it is their turn for good reason.

But for Jews there is a negative in this receding from public view and therefore interest that is, when it comes to immigration and settlement, the ordinary historical order of things. For the integration of Jews into North American life – what the writer and critic Dara Horn, author of People Love Dead Jews, has called the diaspora’s “fantasy” of acceptance – was, in North America, realized. And this acceptance was doubly important to Jews because it constituted, in the second half of the 20th century, a mirroring of the establishment of the nation of Israel, a state for a stateless people, and the hopes it represented. The stark truth is that a loss of security in either country brings its own existential peril: No place in America or no place in Israel, each dour prospect augurs in a new iteration of the precarity Jews knew in the Middle East and Europe for two millennia.

How did this come to be? Well, through simple demographics for a start, the 20th-century waves of Jewish immigration vastly superseded by the arrival into this continent of peoples whose own traumatic histories either do not intersect with the Jewish ones or contradict them. This demographic shift is one that politicians, many caught off guard, have been compelled to recognize – we are democracies, after all – and especially after its furious acceleration by the entry into social and political arenas of younger generations for whom terms such as “the Holocaust” and “genocide” have markedly different meanings.

No longer is the Holocaust a literal burning – instead, a confluence of horrid circumstances that may even be inadvertent is enough. No longer is genocide the realization of the meticulously planned and organized murderous intent of a specific, targeted people. It can be cultural, or, as we are seeing today in Gaza, a crushing, deleteriously ham-fisted and ultimately self-defeating military campaign that is the result of a profound and inalienable existential fear in a grievously injured population whose motives there is no will to understand, let alone permit. In this age in which “lived experience” is ultimately what validates a truth, the manner in which Jews remember both the Holocaust and the Nazi attempt at genocide is not shared. Jewish references are historical and effectively redundant. They are not this generation’s, and useful only as weapons to be turned back against Israel and the Jewish “Zionist” by activists and also governments benefiting from the distraction – Colombia, Nicaragua, Russia, South Africa, Turkey. (I used to think that, yes, to be anti-Zionist or anti-Israel did not necessarily mean a person was antisemitic but now, what with Jews basically regarded as colonists “from the river to the sea” – well, I’m not so sure.)…

Source: Is the Jewish moment in North America over?

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Canadian immigration asks medical worker fleeing Gaza if he treated Hamas fighters

2024/05/20 Leave a comment

Sigh… Good comments by Kurland and Waldman:

….The federal Immigration Department said that an interview with its minister, Marc Miller, was not possible. In an emailed statement, spokesperson Jeffrey MacDonald said visa applicants may be asked additional questions about their employment and travel history, and their online presence, as part of Canada’s screening process.

MacDonald declined to comment on why it asked a medical worker about whom they had treated, citing privacy reasons.

Canada lists Hamas as a terrorist group, and Canada has the right to screen visa applicants for possible security threats, said Lorne Waldman, a Toronto-based lawyer who wrote a widely used textbook on Canadian immigration law.

“But this type of question is completely unacceptable,” Waldman said in an interview. “If there was a shootout in Toronto between members of a gang, a doctor wouldn’t stop to ask whether a person was a gang member before they treated them.”

Canada also cannot ask such questions of a visa applicant strictly for intelligence-gathering purposes, he said.

Richard Kurland of Lawyers for Secure Immigration, a group urging the government to ask pointed questions related to Hamas and terrorist activities, said he rejects the question on two grounds. One, because it only targets Hamas and not other terrorist groups operating in Gaza, and two, because it’s “problematic,” he wrote in an email.

“Even murderous terrorists deserve medical treatment,” he said.

Source: Canadian immigration asks medical worker fleeing Gaza if he treated Hamas fighters

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It was once a center of Islamic learning. Now Mali’s historic city of Djenné mourns lack of visitors

2024/05/20 Leave a comment

Sad:

…Djenné is one of the oldest towns in sub-Saharan Africa and served as a market center and an important link in the trans-Saharan gold trade. Almost 2,000 of its traditional houses still survive in the old town.

The Grand Mosque, built in 1907 on the site of an older mosque dating back to the 13th century, is re-plastered every year by local residents in a ritual that brings together the entire city. The towering, earth-colored structure requires a new layer of mud before the rainy season starts, or it would fall into disrepair.

Women are responsible for carrying water from the nearby river to mix with clay and rice hulls to make the mud used to plaster the mosque. Adding the new layer of mud is a job reserved for men. The joyful ritual is a source of pride for a city that has fallen on hard times, uniting people of all ages.

Bamouyi Trao Traoré, one of Djenné’s lead masons, says they work as a team from the very start. This year’s replastering took place earlier this month.

“Each one of us goes to a certain spot to supervise,” he said. “This is how we do it until the whole thing is done. We organize ourselves, we supervise the younger ones.”

Mali’s conflict erupted following a coup in 2012 that created a power vacuum, allowing jihadi groups to seize control of key northern cities. A French-led military operation pushed them out of the urban centers the following year, but the success was short-lived.

The jihadis regrouped and launched relentless attacks on the Malian military, as well as the United Nations, French and regional forces in the country. The militants proclaimed allegiance to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.

Sidi Keita, the director of Mali’s national tourism agency in the capital of Bamako, says the drop in tourism was sharp following the violence….

Source: It was once a center of Islamic learning. Now Mali’s historic city of Djenné mourns lack of visitors

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May: Building a culture of public service on hybrid work, Speer: It’s time for public servants to return to the office

2024/05/20 Leave a comment

Some good comments by those interviewed:

….Spicer, who teaches values and ethics, expects the government will face clashes between “individual values and organizational values.”

“There hasn’t been a lot of weight put behind ethics … and we now have a lot of younger folks coming in who don’t have the same kind of understanding of what it means to be a public servant, what it means to act purely within the public interest,” he says.

Spicer says many have a weaker connection to the notion of public service. Some still have the “spark” and see it as a calling. Others, however, see it as little more than a secure and steady job with benefits. Then there are advocates who want to advance a cause, such as climate change or sustainability.

The last group is more likely to quit if they don’t see progress, if their advice isn’t taken or if a change in government takes policy in a different direction or undoes policies, Spicer says.

New recruits are also more culturally diverse. Many have experience in the private sector, other levels of government or are transitioning between sectors. They tend to be professionals, bring expertise from their respective fields and often identify more closely with their profession’s code of conduct than with traditional public service norms.

The era of social media and gig employment

Spicer says they grew up on social media and juggling different jobs. Many see no reason why they can’t voice their opinions on social media or pursue a side hustle while working in government – both of which were traditionally frowned upon and are still controversial.

Public servants claim to be more productive since they began working from home, but a consensus that government needs fixing has emerged. It is too big, slow and risk-averse to deliver its basic services, let alone get ready for the world’s crises. On top of that, trust in government is dropping.

Turnbull says the political timeline “is already so much faster than the public service timeline” and working from home slows that down. The “values-transmission question” is urgent, especially with so many new public servants, she argues.

Fox says the government is committed to a hybrid work model, but departments must be more deliberate about creating a workplace culture that reflects “who we are.”

“We’ve got to have more emphasis on our environment and our learning within so people feel that they’re part of something larger and they understand the responsibilities that come with that.”

Linda Duxbury, a professor of management at Carleton University and expert on work-life balance and remote work, counters that both the unions and the government are misguided in the battle over hybrid work.

She argues there is no one-size-fits-all solution and that people need to be where the jobs can be done. A meat inspector must go to a processing plant and a customs officer must go to the border, but many other public service jobs can be done from anywhere.

However, she added that public servants’ complaints about time and money spent commuting and on lunches and child care are not the employer’s problem. These gripes also don’t fly with Canadians.

“Your job is to serve the public. So, are you serving them? Are you serving yourself?” she asks.

Duxbury says both the government and unions need to “stop with the stupid rhetoric” and start designing jobs to get the best work done. “There is not a simple solution here, so stop talking as if there is.”

Source: Building a culture of public service on hybrid work

And from Sean Speer on the politics and perceptions:

It’s time for Canada’s public servants to return to the office

On last week’s Roundtable podcast, Rudyard Griffiths and I were critical of the public sector unions’ over-the-top reaction to the federal government’s new policy that public servants must be in the office three days per week beginning in September. 

Our weekly exchange generated a bigger reaction than normal. Most of the response was positive. But some were critical of our comments, including those who support remote work in general and those who believed we were wrong to single out public sector workers in particular. 

I thought it might be useful to elaborate on our objections to the union reaction to Ottawa’s back-to-work plan. 

Although we generally think that the negative effects of remote work are underestimated and that all things being equal, workers benefit, individually and collectively, from being in physical proximity with their colleagues, we believe that it’s reasonable to have asymmetric expectations of public sector workers. 

That is to say, while our personal belief is that people should generally be back in the office, we recognize that in the private sector those decisions will be made by employers based on their understanding of the interests of their respective companies. 

Government workers, by contrast, should, in our view, be thought about differently. As taxpayers, we have a collective interest in their workplace arrangements.

There are three chief reasons why we think public servants should be back in the office.

First, we’ve discovered through the We Charity scandal, the ArriveCan scandal, and the details of public servants earning millions of dollars as third-party contractors that there’s a “crisis of culture” in the federal government. One proof-point: The federal public service has grown by more than 40 percent since the Trudeau government took office and yet its service standards and state capacity seem to have deteriorated. Getting back into the office is a crucial step to restoring a more performance-driven culture.

Second, the unionization rate is almost five times higher in the public sector which means that there are inherent limits on the employer’s ability to terminate unproductive or underperforming staff. This is important because we know that public-sector productivity is already generally lower than the private sector’s. Working-from-home can enable public sector workers to lower their productivity even further and yet the government has little to no recourse to address it. Getting back into the office should be understood as a key mechanism for accountability in an employer-employee environment in which traditional forms of accountability are weak or essentially non-existent.

Third, as we discussed on the podcast, there’s something inherently unfair about public sector workers who already benefit, on average, from higher wages, more benefits, and greater job security relative to their private sector peers to also have more flexible workplace arrangements. But there’s also a risk that, in an era of labour scarcity, an asymmetry between the public and private sectors could create perverse incentives for where people want to work. A growing concentration of scarce talent in the public sector due its long list of advantages could come at the expense of Canada’s long-run dynamism and productivity. 

That’s because, whatever the strengths of the public sector, it’s not generally viewed as a source of productivity. Many in fact would argue that Ottawa is actually a drag on productivity—which is to say, the deadweight loss of financing and staffing the government typically subtracts from the more productive deployment of these resources in the broader economy. Therefore, as we face a combination of slowing labour growth and ongoing weak productivity, we cannot afford for the government’s workplace arrangements to distort the labour market. 

The upshot: Federal public servants—it’s time to return to the office. 

Source: https://thehub.ca/2024-05-18/the-weekly-wrap-being-young-doesnt-make-right/

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Changes are coming for international students’ postgraduation work permits in Canada. Here’s what experts say is needed

2024/05/18 Leave a comment

Comments by Kareem El-Assal, Barbara Jo Caruso and Kanwar Sierah. Always questionable that the government can manage these programs in an agile and dynamic fashion along with inadvertently creating new pressures and interest groups:

For more than a decade, international students have been able to pursue any postsecondary program and still be eligible for an open work permit upon graduation — whether or not their studies are relevant to what the Canadian economy needs.

But that’s about to change.

With a cap in place to rein in the number of international students, Immigration Minister Marc Miller has already hinted at coming changes to the rules on postgraduation work permits.

Those permits have helped make Canada a top destination for foreign students and have been blamed for the country’s runaway international enrolment growth. But experts say Ottawa needs to use them as tools for Canada’s labour market needs, and to provide a clearer path to permanent residence.

“When it comes to international students and the issuance of postgraduate work permits, it’s clear that the work is not done on that end,” Miller told a news conference after a recent meeting his provincial counterparts.

“Provinces said that they need postgraduate work permits (to) have a longer date for people that are in the health-care sector and in certain trades. And I simply said to them, ‘Bring us the data and we’ll be accommodating.’ ”

The access to an open work permit to remain in Canada after graduation has been a strong incentive for people to come study here, as the immigration system has increasingly drawn on candidates already in the country to be permanent residents. It rewards those with Canadian education credentials and work experience.

Over the years, enrolling in post-secondary education has been promoted by recruiters as a shortcut for immigration to Canada, contributing to the exponential growth of international enrolment, which has put pressure on the housing market and other resources.

Following public backlash, Miller in January introduced a two-year cap on the study permits allotted to each province to rein in the international student population, which surpassed one million last year.

The applications Canada is prioritizing

To better align the economic immigration streams with the labour market, Miller has also started prioritizing the permanent resident applications of those with a background in health care; science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professions; trades; transport; and agriculture and agri-food.

Experts said the postgraduation work permit system could be an effective tool to achieve Ottawa’s objectives in restoring the integrity of the international education program, improving the candidates’ quality in the permanent resident pool and aligning their studies with labour needs.   

The last major changes to the postgraduation work permit program came in April 2008, allowing recent graduates to obtain an open work permit for up to three years — depending on length of their program of study — with no restrictions on location of study or requirement of a job offer.

As a result, an increasing number of international students have gravitated to cheaper and shorter academic programs in colleges with no bearings on Canada’s labour needs, and got stranded in lower-paid jobs in warehouses, restaurants and gas stations.

A recent report by the CBC found that business-related programs accounted for 27 per cent of all study permits approved by the Immigration Department from 2018 to 2023, more than any other field. However, just six per cent of all permits went to foreign students for health sciences, medicine or biological and biomedical sciences programs, while trades and vocational training programs accounted for 1.25 per cent. 

What the experts say we could do

Immigration policy analyst Kareem El-Assal said the government could easily manipulate the durations of the postgraduation work permits to international graduates based on their enrolled programs to gear them toward studying in fields that are in demand.

By lengthening the permits for international students with backgrounds in these occupations while shortening it for those in a field with an oversupply of labour, El-Assal said it would encourage students to pursue education in the targeted disciplines and hence, increase the pool of immigration candidates with the relevant skills that Canada needs. 

“Part of it is going to be blunting the demand and part of is going to be aligning the skills of new students with what we are looking for with the (permanent) immigration system,” noted El-Assal, founder of Section 95, a website dedicated to analyzing Canada’s immigration system.

Since January, Miller has made some changes to the postgraduation work permit program by stopping to issue work authorization to international graduates of public-private college partnerships, which the minister has blamed for the international enrolment surge.

He has also extended the work permits of graduates of master’s degree programs to three years while restricting work permits to spouses of international students in a postgraduate degree program only.

Barbara Jo Caruso, co-president of the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association, said that was a smart move.

“We should identify programs that match what the labour needs are,” she said. “If we need a lot of nurses or we need a lot of computer programmers, then those programs should have a pathway for postgraduation work permits.”

However, to make it work, Caruso warned that immigration officials must have clear messaging to prospective students about what academic programs are entitled to postgraduation work authorization and state the information front and centre on the person’s study permit, so they could decide if they still intend to come here.

“That’s really incumbent on the government to be transparent,” she said. “Otherwise, the whole international education program would take a bad hit.”

It doesn’t help that the federal government has continued to promote Canada as a destination to “Study, Explore, Work and Stay” on the Immigration Department’s website and in its international student recruitment posters.

Immigration consultant Kanwar Sierah said he’s concerned that tying postgraduation work permits to specific programs would have little impact on the supply chain of skilled trades workers, as most students learn through apprenticeship, and the post-secondary sector may not have the capacity and infrastructure to to deliver.

“You might be missing a lot of occupations and you might only be targeting just 10 per cent of the trade occupations that offer formal education,” said Sierah, who is also calling for a revamp of provincial apprenticeship programs.

In March, Miller announced the goal of reducing the number of temporary residents in Canada by 20 per cent or 500,000 people by 2027 from the current 2.5 million people, which include hundreds of thousands of postgraduation work permit holders.

Source: Changes are coming for international students’ postgraduation work permits in Canada. Here’s what experts say is needed

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MacDougall: Memo to the CBC and the public service — prepare to change

2024/05/18 Leave a comment

Fair warning…:

Dear staff at the CBC, Radio-Canada and federal public service:

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your salad days are over. If the polls are correct, Justin Trudeau is destined for the glue factory, with Pierre Poilievre coming in to be your new lord and master.

If you’re feeling some existential dread, that’s good. It means you’re sentient. It means you’re alert to the threat and open to taking advice on how to cope with it. For it’s going to require a shift in attitude.

As a believer in both public broadcasting and a strong public service, I want you to succeed. The country needs you to succeed. After all, the corollary to “Canada is broken” is “Canada needs fixing.” And those fixes will require more than a few strategically promoted YouTube videos. They will require long-term planning and sustained execution, and decisions properly communicated to Canadians. That’s where you can help.

So, what to do (besides reach for the Xanax)?

First, to the CBC and Radio-Canada: I know you will dispute the characterization of the past nine years as “salad days.” It’s tough out there for any media organization, including the CBC. The radio listenership is still strong, but you need a microscope to spot The National’s audience. What Peter Mansbridge bequeathed has been squandered. The picture is rosier in la belle province but not by much.

Let’s be honest: current CEO Catherine Tait has made you look ridiculous. There was the bonus stuff. And all the happy-clappy talk of content, digital and marketing triangles is the buzzword bingo of a media executive who DOESN’T already have a cool billion-plus dollars parked in the budget. It’s the talk of someone struggling to release Meta and X/Twitter’s chokehold, not someone who can quite literally afford to rise above it.

The members of Heritage Minister Pascal St-Onge’s new advisory committee on public broadcasting won’t see it this way, but the days of telling Canadian stories that “inform, enlighten and entertain” are over, at least non-hard-news wise. Canada’s “content” is now but a dribble in the face of the global content hose, and Canadian viewers are voting with their eyeballs. You won’t reverse that trend.

Stories in the form of news — particularly local news — are different. Those stories still need to be told, even if there’s little click money in it. Your job as a public broadcaster should be to water the news deserts springing up all over the country and provide the accountability journalism that no longer sells when forced to compete against sexier content on platforms run by technologists who don’t care about the scrutiny of public officials. This same function should be delivered in Ottawa and the provincial capitals, too. Your mission under a Poilievre government should be to hold a mirror up to power and society, without — and this is the key — advocating for any particular outcome.

Now, to the public service.

Let’s start with the bad: cuts are coming. You can’t increase by nearly 40 per cent in nine years without expecting a trim. The public won’t care about cuts, as you have it better than most. The simplest thing you can do to demonstrate good will is turn up to work. Literally. The pandemic is over. It’s time to come back to your cubicles and look your new bosses in the eyes. For one thing, they’ll be less likely to sack you if you’re one of those actually in the office.

It won’t all be bad news. For one, those consultants the Liberals have hired to do the “real” policy thinking are going to get it in the neck. More to the point, the political wing of the government quite literally cannot do anything without you. This isn’t an invitation to oppose or frustrate, by the way. It’s a reminder that while you advise, the elected officials are the ones who decide what you’ll then execute. Stay on the right side of those roles and responsibilities and it might all just be OK.

Good luck / bonne chance!

Andrew MacDougall is a London-based communications consultant and ex-director of communications to former prime minister Stephen Harper.  

Source: MacDougall: Memo to the CBC and the public service — prepare to change

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Le Devoir Éditorial | Un formulaire en échange d’un toit

2024/05/18 Leave a comment

To watch how these discussions progress or not:

…Il y a un bon moment que le Québec s’indigne à juste titre de l’apathie d’Ottawa dans ce dossier. Les deux gouvernements se disputent sur les chiffres, au point où cette querelle a paralysé les actions sur le terrain. La famille Aguamba en a vécu le contrecoup à la dure.

Québec affirme qu’en 2023, il a reçu plus de 65 000 des quelque 144 000 demandeurs d’asile entrés au Canada, soit 45 % de la totalité. Des données ouvertes d’Immigration, Réfugiés et Citoyenneté Canada (IRCC) consultées par Le Devoir montrent une autre réalité, avec environ 35 % des entrées associées au Québec. L’écart s’expliquerait essentiellement par le fait qu’une proportion des demandeurs d’asile bel et bien entrés au Québec vogue ensuite vers d’autres provinces, dont l’Ontario.

Les ministres de l’Immigration des provinces et leur homologue fédéral, Marc Miller, ont convenu la semaine dernière de créer un comité fédéral-provincial dont la mission sera précisément d’étudier finement cette répartition des demandeurs d’asile entre les provinces, afin de mieux se disputer ensuite la part de la tarte financière. S’agit-il d’une diversion politique et d’une manière de pelleter vers l’avant un problème qui, pendant qu’on l’ausculte en comité, ne peut que s’aggraver ?

Ce comité est créé sous l’impulsion de la ministre de l’Immigration du Québec, Christine Fréchette, qui dit s’inspirer d’initiatives semblables tentées dans l’Union européenne, en Allemagne et en Suisse par exemple. Parlementer autour d’une meilleure répartition entre les provinces, pour décharger le Québec et l’Ontario d’une pression indue, est une idée à laquelle on ne peut s’opposer. Espérons que ce nouvel espace de dialogue servira à mettre sur pied des solutions constructives plutôt qu’à poursuivre une guerre de chiffres stérile.

Source: Éditorial | Un formulaire en échange d’un toit

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Silverstein: The blind spots in diversity and inclusion

2024/05/18 Leave a comment

From Pizza Pizza, some interesting broader ways of looking at diversity in terms of use of health and wellness plans:

When Pizza Pizza decided in 2021 to form a diversity and inclusion council, one of the first things we did was send out a survey designed to give us a foundational snapshot of our workforce.

The results told us about 60 per cent of corporate employees who participated were from racialized groups and more than 40 per cent were women. Almost 80 per cent said they viewed Pizza Pizza as a diverse organization.

Despite the inherent limitations of survey data, our results were a good starting point for building our initial slate of diversity and inclusion policies and programs. But we knew it wasn’t enough.

A key challenge with diversity and inclusion efforts is they tend to address only the diversity that’s visible and known, and organizations often have limited insight into the full range of interests and needs within their ranks. This limited perspective is caused by a number of reasons, including companies’ reliance on employees’ self-disclosure as well as the widespread use of tick-box questionnaires that leave little room for anything that falls outside pre-defined diversity groupings.

Consequently, many organizations must navigate forward with blind spots in their strategy, potentially missing opportunities to strengthen their culture and corporate brand. But how do you address blind spots you don’t know exist?

You need to think – and look – outside the box.

At Pizza Pizza we’ve started to use data analytics to find hidden patterns of inequality as well as unexplored areas of opportunity to strengthen our diversity and inclusion strategy. One example of how we’re doing this is through analysis of aggregated, anonymized data pertaining to use of company-sponsored health and wellness benefits. Do data patterns show, for example, more frequent use of our family resources? Are there increased claims for particular drug categories or health services, such as mental health or physiotherapy?

We undertake this and other types of data analyses with the goal of identifying unmet needs we could potentially address with new programs. For example, we might learn from our analysis that we need to expand our focus on wellness. This insight could also lead to actions that ensure stronger awareness of the resources available to employees, and that our leaders are trained to handle conversations around physical and health wellness challenges.

This data-driven approach doesn’t apply to all blind spots. Some instances of “unconscious bias” and inequity are hard to substantiate, but we know that when they happen, they erode an organization’s culture of inclusion. Consider, for instance, a department’s habit of automatically assigning overtime work to employees with no spouses or children. Or think about the manager who answers emails during meetings while lower-level team members sit and wait quietly. Would that manager behave that way in the presence of a peer or a more senior leader?

Ultimately, building a solid strategy – one with minimal blind spots – is about instilling and nurturing the right values within the organization. We do this by training leaders and team members and by having ongoing conversations about diversity. We also do this by asking questions.

Since we launched our first employee engagement survey in 2021, we’ve continued to ask what and how we can do better to make our employees feel like they belong. Through one survey we learned that our team members felt there was a need for more inclusive language. That prompted us to work with our partners at Pride Toronto to organize lunch-and-learns focused on inclusive language along with allyship.

These sessions proved to be relevant beyond the 2SLGBTQI+ context. Inclusive language and allyship, we all learned, are useful in virtually any dialogue or circumstance.

We know that as the country’s demographic makeup evolves, our diversity and inclusion strategy will inevitably run into more blind spots. Our increasingly multigenerational, racialized and gender-diverse workforce continues to be vulnerable to all manner of unconscious bias, which is why we also continue to fortify the strong culture we’ve built so far.

We know there are emerging needs among our team members that are likely to grow in urgency in the coming years, as many start families or, as we’re seeing with our more experienced workers, become caregivers to aging parents. We’ll need to adjust our programs accordingly.

As it is today, an evidence-based approach will be critical going forward, along with an ongoing commitment to a truly diverse and inclusive culture.

Amy Silverstein is the senior director of People for Pizza Pizza Ltd.

Source: The blind spots in diversity and inclusion

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‘It’s not that easy’: plan to allow dual citizenship leaves Indonesia divided

2024/05/18 Leave a comment

Of note:

Members of the Indonesian diaspora have welcomed an announcement from a high-ranking government official that plans to allow for dual citizenship are in the works, but they are wary of whether there is enough political will to make it happen.

“We welcome the discourse [to allow] dual citizenship, because in the end, the diaspora and children of mixed marriages also benefit from it, as well as the country,” Enggi Holt, an Indonesian who lives in Britain, told This Week in Asia.

“But we also have to see how far the government dares to change the paradigm, from single citizenship to dual citizenship, because the costs will be very high. [An amendment to the law] is a political process between the government and the legislature, so the sticking point is, do they have the political will or is it just a political campaign? If it’s a political campaign, it’s not worth digging further.”

Indonesia does not allow adults to hold dual nationalities, and children of mixed marriages must decide their nationality at the age of 21.

However, Luhut Pandjaitan, Indonesia’s coordinating minister for maritime affairs and investment, said the government was working on changes to that law.

“We are welcoming the Indonesian diaspora soon with the provision of dual citizenship. When they [diaspora] fulfil the requirements to obtain Indonesian citizenship, in my opinion, it will really help the Indonesian economy and also bring highly skilled Indonesians [diaspora] back to Indonesia,” Luhut said at an event attended by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in Jakarta on April 30.

However, he did not offer any particular timeline or further details about the potential change to the law, and nothing else has been announced since.

The statement by Luhut, also known as President Joko Widodo’s right-hand man, has sparked hope among diaspora members, particularly those who have campaigned for years for the country to “progress” towards adopting a dual-nationality principle.

Source: ‘It’s not that easy’: plan to allow dual citizenship leaves Indonesia divided

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Half of racialized people have experienced discrimination or unfair treatment in the past five years

2024/05/17 Leave a comment

Latest GSS. Interestingly overall observation “Between racialized groups, there were no significant differences in experiences of discrimination.”

But “For instance, nearly half of Black people experienced discrimination or unfair treatment in a workplace setting (48%). This was significantly more than other racialized groups (39%) or non-racialized people (41%). Black people were also more than twice as likely to report discrimination when seeking housing (13%) compared with other racialized groups (6%) or non-racialized people (6%).:

Over one in three people (36%) aged 15 years and older living in Canada have experienced some form of discrimination or unfair treatment in the five years prior to the latest wave of the Canadian Social Survey. These experiences occurred in a variety of settings—while attending school, applying for jobs, working, shopping, and seeking healthcare, among others. The results, based on new data from the survey collected from January to March 2024, suggest that while the proportion of self-reported incidents of discrimination has remained relatively stable since 2021, discrimination and unfair treatment continue to disproportionally affect racialized groups, Indigenous people, women, 2SLGBTQ+ populations, people living with disabilities, and young adults. 

Discrimination and unfair treatment is a headline indicator in Canada’s Quality of Life framework. This framework enables the federal government to identify future policy priorities, to build on previous actions to strengthen evidence-based decision-making and budgeting, and to improve the well-being of Canadians. 

Racialized people, especially Canadian-born Black people, are more likely to face discrimination

Using pooled data from six waves of the Canadian Social Survey, it is possible to examine the intersection of various characteristics of people who have experienced discrimination. From 2021 to 2024, just over half (51%) of racialized people aged 15 years and older reported experiencing discrimination or unfair treatment within the five years prior to the survey. This was nearly double the proportion (27%) recorded for non-racialized people. Between racialized groups, there were no significant differences in experiences of discrimination. 

Reflecting the diversity of intersectional identities in Canada, experiences of discrimination varied across intersecting identities of racialized people and immigrants. Consistent with previous findings, reports of discrimination were more common among the Canadian-born racialized population (57%) than among racialized people who recently immigrated to Canada (48%) or who immigrated more than 10 years ago (49%). This difference was most pronounced among Black Canadians, with Canadian-born Black people being significantly more likely to report having experienced discrimination (71%) than either recent (51%) or established (59%) Black immigrants. 

The higher prevalence of experiences of discrimination among racialized groups was perceived to be largely motivated by race or ethnicity. Specifically, discrimination based on race or skin colour was the leading perceived reason for discrimination against racialized people (66%). This was followed by discrimination due to ethnicity or culture (49%), accent (28%), and language (27%). 

Discrimination is also more common among other historically marginalized groups such as 2SLGBTQ+populations, Indigenous people, and people with a disability

Chart 1 
Discrimination in the five years prior to the survey, perceived reason for discrimination, by sex and total population, Canada, 2021 to 2024

Chart 1: Discrimination in the five years prior to the survey, perceived reason for discrimination, by sex and total population, Canada, 2021 to 2024

Reasons behind discriminatory treatment varied among groups, as did the actual prevalence of discrimination. For instance, the leading perceived reasons behind discrimination and unfair treatment against 2SLGBTQ+ populations were sexual orientation, physical appearance, and sex. This population was also nearly twice as likely as the non-2SLGBTQ+ population to face some form of discrimination or unfair treatment in the five years prior to the survey (61% versus 32%). 

Among First Nations people living off reserve, Métis, and Inuit, 46% reported experiences of discrimination, compared with 33% of non-Indigenous people. The reasons for these experiences were largely perceived to be due to Indigenous identity and physical appearance. Indigenous people (23%) were also nearly twice as likely to be discriminated against due to a physical or mental disability compared with the non-Indigenous population (12%). 

Elevated levels of discrimination were also recorded for people living with a disability. In all, 44% of people with a disability reported experiences of discrimination, compared with 32% of people without a disability. The most frequently-cited perceived reasons for discrimination against people with a disability were due to physical or mental disability, physical appearance, and age. 

Age and sex also played a role in both prevalence of and perceived reason for discrimination. Experiences of discrimination consistently decreased with age, from a high of 45% among those aged 15 to 34 to a low of 17% among people aged 65 years and older. This may be explained by the fact that the racialized population and people who are 2SLGBTQ+ tend to be younger. 

Perceived reasons for discrimination varied by people in different age groups, with race or skin colour (38%) and physical appearance (38%) being the most common reasons among those aged 15 to 34, and age (50%) being the most common reason for people aged 65 years and older. There were also sex differences in prevalence of discrimination: 37% of women reported experiences of discrimination, compared with 30% of men. Women were more often discriminated against because of their sex or age, while for men, discrimination was more often on the basis of their race or skin colour, ethnicity or culture, language, accent, or religion. 

The work environment is the most common context where discrimination is reported

Chart 2 
Discrimination in the five years prior to the survey, situation in which discrimination was experienced, by sex, Canada, 2021 to 2024

Chart 2: Discrimination in the five years prior to the survey, situation in which discrimination was experienced, by sex, Canada, 2021 to 2024

There were differences in the context in which discrimination was experienced across groups, though the workplace (41%) was the most common location of discrimination or unfair treatment, whether it was while working, applying for a job, or seeking a promotion. This was followed by discrimination experienced in a store, bank, or restaurant (33%) and while using public areas (29%). 

While differences in the prevalence of discrimination did not significantly differ between racialized groups, the contexts in which they occurred did. For instance, nearly half of Black people experienced discrimination or unfair treatment in a workplace setting (48%). This was significantly more than other racialized groups (39%) or non-racialized people (41%). Black people were also more than twice as likely to report discrimination when seeking housing (13%) compared with other racialized groups (6%) or non-racialized people (6%). 

Conversely, Chinese people were less likely than other racialized groups to report experiencing discrimination while attending school (17% versus 23%), in the workplace (26% versus 44%), when crossing the border into Canada (5% versus 8%), and when seeking housing (3% versus 8%). Similarly, reports of discrimination towards Chinese people were lower than reports of discrimination against non-racialized people in the workplace (41%) and against non-racialized people when seeking housing (6%). 

People who experience discrimination also report lower measures of quality of life

Chart 3 
Discrimination in the five years prior to the survey, confidence in selected types of institutions, Canada, 2021 to 2024

Chart 3: Discrimination in the five years prior to the survey, confidence in selected types of institutions, Canada, 2021 to 2024

Experiences of discrimination and unfair treatment may influence overall perceptions of health and wellbeing. People who experienced discrimination in the five years prior to the survey compared with those who did not were more than twice as likely to report fair or poor mental health (31% versus 14%), were less likely to report high life satisfaction (37% versus 57%) and were less likely to report high levels of meaning and purpose (46% versus 63%). And while two-thirds of people who experienced discrimination (66%) reported that they always or often had someone they could depend on, this was lower than those who had not experienced discrimination (79%). 

People who experienced discrimination were also less likely to report a strong sense of belonging to their local community compared with people who did not experience discrimination (39% versus 51%). Furthermore, they were less likely to report confidence in various institutions, including the police, school, courts, Canadian Parliament, and media. These results were consistent with a previous study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic using crowdsourced data. 

Source: Half of racialized people have experienced discrimination or unfair treatment in the past five years

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

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